India

The study also highlighted the issue of immigrant parents who resisted interracial or religious relationships. “It’s not ok for me to marry outside of my religion—I have to marry a Muslim. My parents would prefer someone Arabic because the culture is the same,” a Yemeni female participant said. In conversations and a survey with young San Gabriel Valley residents with immigrant parents, I also heard many youth say that they were up against stiff parental restrictions on dating, uncomfortable conversations, and resistance to marrying outside of their racial or ethnic group.

The gang rape of the Swiss tourist in Orchha, Madhya Pradesh was front page news in newspapers across the country. The reverberations of the shocking story were felt well outside India’s borders. Even friends from as far away as California, emailed me the story. But while going through the newspaper, it was an inside page that shocked me even more. Under the headline of news about the Nation, there were eight stories. Six of them were about violence against women.

My senses are overrun – a foraging pendulum grasping the air. Begging for answers. Who constructed the pieces of this puzzle? India. I’m a visitor in this enigmatic southern village; an Oceanside town smothered by coconut trees and heavy rainfall. Broken dirt roads lie flooded. Men wearing dhotis drift by. Women walk in small packs, in silence, their solemn majesty reined beneath an ornate sari. I haven’t slept. The undulating energy of this country has found its way into my soul. And I don’t want to miss a beat. 

The color and visual spendor of India tends to overwhelm any film that is set in India. And Life of Pi is no exception. Ang Lee pretty much admits as much to DNA when he says “the country overwhelms you, with the warmth, the culture and its beauty”. Even in the hands of a director as astute as him, India feels over saturated, wide-eyed and eye-popping, prone to fortune cookie maxim. It’s a striking contrast to the richly detailed but so much more atmospheric Shanghai he created for Lust, Caution. That felt epic and intimate at the same time. This India feels Amar Chitra Katha – bold colors without much shading.

A very well-intentioned Krishna Tirath, India’s Minister for Women and Child Development, wants to introduce a bill that would require women to be legally compensated by husbands for house work. Yes, we are talking about a monthly salary, paid out of their own salary by the husbands. “A majority of women in India are involved in household chores after getting married but they do not get any salary for it,” Tirath told the Indian Express. “The socially accepted behavior becomes a tragedy when a woman gets divorced or widowed when she is left with nothing for survival."

India has not had any problems producing a birthrate to support the world’s second-most populous nation. They have a highly educated workforce. Anyone, from anywhere, that has needed tech support knows their telecommunications infrastructure works. They are creating their own products to meet the growing material demands of Indian citizens.  Since the turn of the century, India has become a hotbed for computing innovations. First, they assisted American companies to avoid any Y2K complications. Today, Indian technology entrepreneurs are creating intellectual property to compete on the global market.

West Bengal’s chief minister promised to turn Calcutta into London. But Joss Whedon in the Marvel comics saga, The Avengers, has gone backwards instead. Calcutta in the age of superheroes looks suspiciously like the one described in the City of Joy circa 1985 – cramped, squalid and leprous. Mark Ruffalo is Dr. Bruce Banner, keeping his inner Hulk under control by saving the eternally ill slum-dwellers of Calcutta.

A recent story about the global rise in living solo says while countries like Sweden have the most number of singletons (47 percent), the countries where single person households are growing the fastest are Brazil, China and India. Living solo has usually been regarded as something profoundly abnormal, especially in a culture where a parent’s job is not done until the children are “settled,” ergo married. We like to think we were designed to live communally even if it’s in shared misery.