ams@philabs.UUCP (Ali Shaik) (02/18/86)
> >When I came to USA, about three years back, one of the americans > >asked me, whether there are still horses used for travel on the roads in > >Bombay and other cities!!! > <FLAME ON> > Really? HORSES? Jesus Christ!! Did someone really ask you > that?! I can't believe how ignorant > some people can be! I mean to say, I have lived in Delhi > movies are specially imported from some third-world country where > they still use this incredibly outmoded form of transport. You > When I would go out on one of our 8-lane super-highways in my > Ferrari Testarosa my grandfather would tell me stories of the old times > <FLAME OFF> > Sanjaya Kumar > Duke University > afford have drive around a used car. Very few own foreign made cars > (you have to be one of the movie stars or a big time politician to have > enough money to afford a Ferrari). The flame on use of horse drawn > vehicles was needless. I have indeed used such horse drawn vehicles IN > Delhi. There are a couple of horse stables in the vicinity of Old Delhi railway station. > sundar r. iyengar This is perhaps getting away from m'batten, but let me add my 2 paisa's worth: It seems to me that Sanjaya was using a kind of reverse- sarcasm, ie, saying that there really ARE horse 'jutkas' around in India. He did this by writing an exaggerated form of the opposite, ie Ferraris & 8-lane highways. This type of humor was used by someone else in all that stuff about Sudras, if I remember right. Anyway, my experience has been that sometimes Americans see some of the stereotypes, like the man sleeping on a bed of nails (Octopussy) (or was it Indiana Jones?) or the 'Indian Rope Trick'. Elephants and the Taj Mahal are also popular instances. Not to deny that these things do not exist in India, but I feel that the stereotypes are taken as representing a picture of India in general. Sometimes they will ask about something *really* negative about India (eg, the dowry or caste system, or poverty). Again I do know that these things exist, maybe to a significant extent. But then there certainly are much happier things about Desh. My (somewhat :-( tenuous) reply usually is something like: what would you say if someone came to the US, and made stereotypes out of the homeless people in New York City. Ali "Bangalore" Shaik ...ihnp4!philabs!ams Someone asked about the 'Bangalore'. Too many people from home, at the mention of my name, immediately ask: "Are you from Pakistan?" I find this vaguely annoying. Hence the B. I enjoy my sambar and curd-rice as much as anyone else, so there!
dss00@amdahl.UUCP (dss00) (02/20/86)
>When I came to USA, about three years back, one of the americans >asked me, whether there are still horses used for travel on the roads in >Bombay and other cities!!! > <FLAME ON> . Lots of lines here... . > Sanjaya Kumar > Duke University Ah! The pangs of being stereotyped... Tch! Tch!! And how much do *WE* know about life of people in countries closer to India, huh? Take Burma for example. But then why go to Burma. I grew up in Indore (M.P.). When I came to IIT Bombay, my newly aquired friends, who had grown up in Bombay, made more offensive and stereotypical querries about Indore, M.P. etc. etc.. They seemed to believe that civilization ended outside the city limits of some major cities like Bombay, New Delhi, Madras, Calcutta etc. Just to drive a point home, friends, allow me to remind you all that few weeks back, I posted a request in this news group for places I could find a copy of Gitanjali. Guess how many of my Indian friends responded. You guessed it. Zilch. Only some American readers of this group responded. Mere Desh ki Dharati, Sona Ugale, Ugale Heere Moti..... -- Deepak S. Sabnis ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!dss00 (408) 746-6058 (Usual Disclaimer Here) Where the mind is without fear; And the head is held high Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been divided into narrow domestic walls; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way, in the dreary desert sand of dead habits; Into that Kingdom of Heaven my Father, let my country awake. -- Rabindranath Tagore
mvramakrishn@watdaisy.UUCP (Rama) (02/21/86)
Looks like every body is assuming "Horses, jutkas,..." are "bad" !
What is wrong with them?
What would happen to the oil reserves if the per capita oil
consumption in India becomes same as that in US?
When some body asks me questions about India,
I sum up the modern India's features by saying
"Yes, in India we use bullock carts to transport the
sattelite from the assembly plant to the launch pad"
and it looks like Aryabata, Bhaskara (Names of Indian built
satellites, I think they were launched from russia-I am not sure.
India also has SLV program) do not mind this.
Prof. Ramaswamy (If I remember the name correct), Management
Institute, Bangalore published the results of his study of bullock
carts in India.
The total tonne-mileage hauled by bullock carts exceeds
that by the Indian railways. Note that the haulage by
Indian Railway haulage is one of the largest in the world.
In fact as a follow up a better design of bullock cart
was produced by some body (I think there was a compitition).
(With out proper bearings, the efficiency of bullock carts
is very small. The problem is to come up with a solution
which is cheap, and which can be implemented by
not so skilled village carpenter (or who ever that makes them).)
Anyway, I still remember that when I was very young,
8-10 neighbours used to rent a bullock cart to go to a movie 2 miles
away. I think it costed Rs 4 for the evening trip. (Rs. 0.50 each).
It was much faster (considering the waiting time also) and cheaper
than using bus. (in spite of the fact that it was a national highway
we were to travel in, one may have to wait hours for a bus)
An Assistant prof. gets about Rs. 35,000 per year in India
and a car costs around 100,000. Gasoline costs about Rs.8 per litre.
An Asst. prof. would have to spend all his monthly salary to buy about
400 litres ( about 110 gallons) of gasoline.
Much less than 1% of the population has this good an income.
(the other 99% earn less).
(For non-indians: US $1 = Rs. 13 or 14)
It is obvious what kind of people can afford a car.
M.V.Ramakrishna, Dept of Computer Science, University of Waterloo.
UUCP: {decvax,utzoo,ihnp4,allegra,clyde}!watmath!watdaisy!mvramakrishn
CSNET: mvramakrishn%watdaisy@waterloo.csnet
ARPA: mvramakrishn%watdaisy%waterloo@csnet-relay.arparaven@ihlpl.UUCP (S. R. Venkatramanan) (02/23/86)
> Just to drive a point home, friends, allow me to remind you all > that few weeks back, I posted a request in this news group for > places I could find a copy of Gitanjali. Guess how many of my > Indian friends responded. You guessed it. Zilch. > Only some American readers of this group responded. > I think it is a basic human tendancy to be more curious about things you are not used to in your usual environement. If you pose a question of availablity of a particular literature on destruction of hiroshima to a japanese or a particular literature of america to americans, i would think of a same kind of response. Either people don't keep track of details or don't care to respond. e.g. There is a temple at les than a k.m. from the place i lived in india. I used to pas by that temple DAILY and go for worship ocasionaly. Stil when somebdoy asked me about a burglary in that temple i was not able to respond to it. But at the same time, I used to go temples on the other end of the city frequently and knew more about them. <network disclaimers go here> S. R. Venkatramanan ihnp4!ihtnt!raven
jis1@mtgzz.UUCP (j.mukerji) (02/24/86)
> that few weeks back, I posted a request in this news group for > places I could find a copy of Gitanjali. Guess how many of my > Indian friends responded. You guessed it. Zilch. I did reply to you, apparently you did not get it. However, that is not the reason I am sending this message to you . I write this mainly to try to fill in some of the missing and/or incorrect lines in your quotation from the great poet. I understand that you do not have a copy of Gitanjali, and neither do I (the English version) at this moment. However, let me try to fill in some of the missing lines from memory. It used to be one of our school prayers back home. Your posting brought back very fond memories from the past. The poem reads: Where the mind is without fear; And the head is head is held high Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow doemstic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless strivings stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the nation is led forward by Thee, into an ever widening world of thought and action, Into that heaven of freedom, My Father, let my country awake. -- Rabindranath Tagore I am still somewhat reluctant to vouch for the accuracy of these lines. In particular, I am not very sure about the third line from the bottom, but it is pretty close. Glad to find a fellow admirer of "Where the mind is without fear..." Thank you very much Jishnu Mukerji mtgzz!jis1