hungover

this post started off as a response to a comment on my previous post, but then it started growing legs and a tail of its own so i decided to give it wing. it's about the so-called indian obsession with the raj. suitably tempered since this is a public forum, but rant alert anyway.

i hear it every once in a while, but i never get *what* the point is with people saying indians are obsessed with the raj. first question: does this statement mean that we love it to shreds, or are we supposed to hate it to shreds, or do we just give it too much importance, or do we over-pretend to ignore it and say it doesn't affect us when actually we're tearing up inside?

notice that that covers all bases. i.e., when the topic of the raj comes up, pretty much whatever we do can be attributed, by the above means, to an obsession with the raj. to me, that signals that the obsession is in the eyes of the attributor, not the attributee. it's as scientific an analysis as dr. freud's saying you did x because you loved your mother -- all behavior can be explained by that diagnosis, since your doing not-x was also due to your having loved your mother. whatever we ever say or do wrt our mother the raj is due to our obsession with her. it. of course.

frankly, the raj is very very low on the list of things that worries me right now. or even attracts my attention -- this post notwithstanding. i have a lot of things on my mind, and believe me, that period of history, with its trappings, has not had very much airtime recently. in fact, the concept of england as a whole hasn't bothered me very much of late. i can think of only two intersections between my paths and that of the ye olde -- one, the telephone operator (a *manual* operator!) at london business school where i've had to call a few times this semester, and two, the brits on the cricket fields in india. okay, so i've thought about the latter a bit. they've played very well indeed, but i don't see how the raj comes into it. i certainly don't see how the raj could have anything to do with the fact that i've been rooting for india during this series -- that would take us back to dr. freud and the conclusion that my rooting against *any* countryis due to the raj. well, put that way, we wouldn't have had an india without the raj. consider me suitably obsessed.

but turn the question on its head -- would that explain why england is the lowest on my cricket-cheering hierarchy? i have the cricket-playing teams in a sequence all worked out in my head, and generally cheer for a team that's ranked higher on my list when it plays one that is lower. i consider that logical, more importantly, it makes it more fun for me when i follow games between neutrals. and yes, england is always at the bottom, which means the poor sods never get my support (big flipping deal). now is *that* due to my obsession with the raj? or is it due to the fact that i cut my viewing teeth on the broad nothingness of chris tavare and geoffrey boycott's bats? followed by such eternal sunshines as graham gooch, graeme hick, and mike atherton (yes, he of the shocking, "aleem dar, the so-called neutral" comment). i admit gower was good and botham was interesting, but from then to flintoff has there been a larger collection of bad, boring, and pretentious non-characters in a team? or is that my raj obsession speaking?

would that explain my aversion to the english weather? wet, wet, wet, and pissing rain. avacoopuvtea, luv, the place is one of the most morbid places to live and that has nothing to do with history.

would that explain my liking for monty python and rowan atkinson? ooh, they enslaved us and now look how silly they act. ribbit ribbit. or yes minister or the office? or the beatles or the stones or van morrison? how about goodness gracious me? i knew that.

it's a broad brush indeed, that paints me in with the raj lovers. i don't deny that there may be a bunch of people who are actually obsessed with it. are these the same indians who are obsessed with the england of today? and how are these indians different from the indians who are obsessed with america, or canada, or the middle east or new zealand or any other place where the world is phoren like in the movies they subsist on? how many of them even make the connection between the glitzy world of the whiteskin, and the long-ago indignities that supposedly morphed all their forefathers into coconuts?

someone i know visited london for the first time a while back and went to see the tower jewels. on the way out, he saw the voluntary donation thing, and he stopped and exclaimed loudly -- "they stole all of that from my country, and now they want me to donate to see it!" obsession?

or touche?