Suresh Menon, a Bangalore-based writer, looks at India from the other end of the telescope.
India turned 16 this year – if 1991, the year the economy was liberalised and a nation was re-born – is taken as the starting point. Sixteen-year-olds are no longer children; nor are they full-grown adults. It is an awkward stage between dreams and realisation. The old order has changed, but the new hasn't quite taken its place. Things nearly happen.
We nearly had a secretary-general at the UN, a former Prime Minister nearly killed Bangalore's reputation as the IT centre of the country, sportsmen nearly won championships. A new professional arose, giving himself and the gentle art of making money a new respect. This professional – the businessman – had always existed, but only now was it cool to be like him. Now you could make money without guilt, and spend it without regret.
Like a 16-year-old, India ignored some of these events, overemphasised some, and stood back looking confusedly at others. IT is passé; knowledge economy is the new catchphrase. It allows one to convert wisdom into dollars; there is no pressure to acquire knowledge for its own sake. Even the failures take place at a higher level than some previous successes. The biggest thud was heard when Shashi Tharoor, the man who would be secretary-general of the UN, fell.
Tharoor had many advantages. He was young, he was articulate, he was media savvy, he was a child prodigy who completed a Phd at the age of 22, he was a novelist, he came from an emerging economy ...
When he graciously conceded defeat, his advantages looked like their opposite. Suddenly, he was young, glib, too close to the media, had too many interests outside his job, came from a nuclear-power state ... There was media support for Tharoor in the West, with The Guardian calling him the "one man capable of strengthening the UN's ability to be a genuinely effective global player." You could read more of the same on his website which was divided into the literary and the 'SG race' sites. Perhaps this worked against him. Clearly he is too self-aware, and is willing to help you find his sterling qualities without your having to google.
In another generation, such awareness will be seen as a necessity; worldly knowledge can only radiate from self-knowledge. Tharoor may have been ahead of his time in ensuring his light is not hidden under a bushel. And what a light!
If it was a defeat for a suave, sophisticate like Tharoor, it was a triumph for a Lalu Prasad Yadav, at the other end of the sophistication scale. His success as Railway Minister strained credulity.
He has a simple ambition: to become the Prime Minister of India. When coalition is the name of the game, Lalu Prasad's greatest advantages lie in what he is not. He is not a rabid right-winger and is thus hated by the BJP. He is not a card-carrying Communist and is hated by the Left.
In 15 years at the helm in Bihar, he managed to make it one of the most lawless, corrupt and backward stretches of land in the country; in two years as Minister of the loss-making Railways, he helped it make a profit of Rs150 billion.
Tharoor and Lalu might represent two facets of India, but there are so many more, it can be both uplifting and depressing. In the former category was the single woman fighting Horatio-like on the bridge between commerce and politics. Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment caught the imagination of the nation with her campaign against pesticides in cola and other drinks in India.
Narain took on both the government and the market. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry said this sent out the wrong signals to investors. The Indian Soft Drinks Manufacturers Association defended the colas who ran a media campaign, getting some of their models to look pained and say there was nothing wrong with the stuff they endorsed for millions of rupees. Buffalos and donkeys which don't get nearly as much, were forced to swallow the colas to prove something or the other. Irrelevance is part of any campaign in India.
After Independence, India occasionally worried about the coca-colonisation of the country. Six decades later, there is greater self-confidence. Sunita Narain shook the symbolism out of Coca Cola and made the problem a specific, manageable one.
Only the terminally cynical would see a connection between Pepsi's troubles in India and the elevation of Chennai-born Indra Nooyi as the CEO of Pepsico. Nooyi was groomed for the job. She was the fourth most powerful woman in the world according to Forbes magazine.
Corporate America paid Nooyi the compliment of ignoring she was Asian, female and dressed unlike any other person in her position, the saree being her business suit.
Then she leaped from the business pages to the front pages, and went through a phase that launched a thousand blogs. Delivering the graduation speech at Columbia University Business school, she began innocuously enough, comparing the fingers of the hand to the continents.
The thumb, she said was Asia, the index finger Europe. The ring finger was South America and the little finger Africa. This left the middle finger for North America, and in particular, the US.
"If used inappropriately," she continued, warming up to her theme, "the middle finger, just like the US itself, can convey a negative message. We must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand, not the finger."
It was as if Pepsi, Gatorade, Lays chips, Quaker Oats, Tropicana (Nooyi's acquisitions for the group) all hit the fan simultaneously. She made an apology of sorts, but the speech breached the corporate wall around her, and Nooyi spilled over into the daily lives of Americans.
Nooyi is in her fifties, but the self-confidence of the nation saw the thirties too being successful in their fields. Not everyone, for instance, might fancy Karan Johar as a representative of this group, but his movies are hits, his talk show on television is looked forward to, and he is the coming movie mogul.
The chemistry in his movies is in the titles. K2H2, K3G and K2AN sound like formulae schoolchildren break their heads over. Johar is big on formula but his real gift is the ability to pass off the banal as profound.
What he lacks in talent, he makes up in pretentiousness ("I am an observer of human relationships"), and what he lacks in originality, he makes up in self-importance ("my movies change people's lives.").
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He came, he was seen, and he was conquered. Rather like Julius Caesar walking backwards into Pompeii. Last year cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni told the media, "Please stop rushing to my parents' house every time I make 30 runs." I am not sure if he flicked a speck of dust from his sponsored T-shirt when he said that, but the tone was that of a speck-flicker.
Dhoni, Jharkhand's then-favourite son could do no wrong. If he violated a traffic rule, it was the traffic cop who apologised. For those who couldn't get enough of him on the cricket field, he thoughtfully provided many viewing hours on television as he revealed the secrets of his success: a bike, a cola, a pair of shoes, a pen, toothpaste, milk.
And then came that terrible distraction known as the World Cup. You could drink milk, grow your hair and even ride your bike in a unique angle, but the fans expected him to make runs too. In three matches, he made 0, 6 and 0.
One minute the great majority of his country wanted to walk like him, talk like him, tonsure like him. Next they pretended they hadn't heard of him. The same hands that had reached out to touch him, to pat him on his back now picked up axes and crowbars to destroy his house. Seldom have the pet obsessions of a country – politics, cricket and films – come together like this.
Modern India is both 16 and 60 (we were Independent in 1947); it is a duality that is apparent in everything we do. We behave both like 16-year-olds who are spoilt and mature 60-year-olds with a nuanced understanding of the world. We try to understand ourselves, and then give it up. India continues to be both what you think it is and what you never expected.
Shashi Tharoor expressed it well: "The only possible idea of India is a nation that is greater than the sum of its parts." Or, as we have seen above, as elusive as some of its parts.
