Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Three parties, identities and the biggest problem India is facing.

This was the week-end of parties and events. Started with St. Patrick's Day party at my friend Danielle's house where she and her frieds baked yummy cup-cakes after the assorted appetizers and other Irish food. Then on Saturday to all guys desi party to celebrate a friend's birthday in La Jolla brew house. And on Sunday, Rang-Panchami (holi) celebrations at Lake Poway organized by San Diego Maharashtra Mandal. Three different events, three different identities - each subset of the previous one. Interesting.:-)

On a totally different note, everything about Tendulkar gets magnified - good, bad or ugly. After the Endulkar debate, now it seems the biggest quandary we are facing is why the Wankhede crowd booed the little master. Amongst all this brouhaha in newspapers, sites and blogs; this article in Hindu stands out in its clear analysis.

5 comments:

Ajit said...

Gaurav's report here says there was not much booing or hai-hai-ing on Wankhede. Since he was there in person, I guess we could shrug off the media hype with even more confidence :)

Sudhamshu said...

Festivals and subsets? how did you put them in sets? Strange :)

I agree with Ajit. Couple of my friends Amit & Kaushal too said that they were booing at Andersen and the Barmy Army and not Sachin. But you know me, I had the sadistic delight in knowing that the fog which draped Mumbaikars finally swept off. But the article you pointed to was excellent and portrays the actual truth.

Nandan said...

hmm, I guess the media would love to have Tendulkar in team (even though, it seems that their opinion is otherwise) just to provide fodder for their reports.

Sudhu, I meant the roles/identities by which I attended these events (viz. as an international student, as an Indian and then a Marathi-speaking individual) are subsets of each other. Well, not very rigidly - but just something that I noticed.

Seemantini said...

identifying our true identity is an existential crisis some stumble upon but few pursuade.

the point is it's so hard to have a unifying, wholistic indentity independant of the subsets we have.

tying them altogether is hard and breaking free, even more.

Nandan said...

Very true, vb and a nice point, too. I recollect reading an article once which mentioned that sometime in early 60's, a ban was imposed on some of the Hindu rituals in Tamil dominated provinces of nothern Sri Lanka, it was bitterly opposed by the people. At the same time in Tamil nadu, the Ramaswamy Naicker/Periyar movement was gathering momentum denouncing Hinduism as the Brahminic religion and in stead celebrating Vesak. (Of course, you'd know more considering that this is your area of interest). Appears contradictory, but it isn't - though it was (linguistically) the same community, the identity crisis they faced were different and hence the seemingly opposite reactions.