I’m going to take the next couple of days to write about something that really caught my attention tonight. If you only want to read my same-old-same-old, I suggest you pick up my RSS feed, and ignore my posts until the word “India” stops appearing in the title or first paragraph.
If this new subject matter (even though it will only be for a brief amount of time) intrigues you, please, let me know by commenting on one of the posts!
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I’ve got a confession to make: while I was writing the post two days ago about intelligence (summary: recognizing and applying relevant patterns from the seemingly-irrational is possibly the greatest intelligence there is), I was implicitly drawing comparisons to Alan Moore’s hyper-intelligent character, Ozymandias, from Watchmen.
The key idea here, and how this fits with today’s subject matter, is that Ozy was so intelligent that he could sit down in front of a thousand television screens and be able to understand the world’s mass consciousness by recognizing patterns in this massive collection of source material.
Tonight, I think I pulled an Ozymandias.
While watching Slumdog Millionaire (like everyone already told you, it’s a wonderful film), I realized how similar it was to a novel I recently finished reading, Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. And, while reading Tiger, I was drawing comparisons between Life of Pi and The Great Gatsby… with a little bit of Heart of Darkness thrown in there, too.
These three works of fiction, combined with news reports, Tim Ferriss’ suggestion in 4HWW to outsource what we can (often to India), and probably many other works of fiction and non-fiction that are simply passing below my radar seem to be pointing to one thing: the final demise of the American Dream… and the rise of a new one, one that I’ll unimaginatively call the Indian Dream.
Before you get out of your chair, throw a brick through the window, and start yelling to the streets below about the opportunity that America can still afford you, let me make three things clear about this concept of the Indian Dream:
- It’s not just about India, it’s global. Martel’s character, Pi Patel, makes this clear in Life of Pi: his instinct to survive brings him to a new, promised land… and fulfills his spiritual needs. For a real-life example, look no further than Thomas Friedman’s 2004 article in the NY Times, The Great Indian Dream. Pay particular attention to Rajesh Rao’s quotation in the second paragraph…
- It’s not about Indians, it’s about the choices the country has made and the world it finds itself in — the factors that make it a true outlier. Again, credit goes to Friedman, this time in the second-to-last paragraph on the first page.
- It’s not just about money, but it is, too. This is where Slumdog Millionaire and Adiga’s Booker-prize-winning The White Tiger come in: there’s a vacuum of ambition in India, and the opportunists who can act on it are finding ways out. On one hand, there’s Salim (from Slumdog) and Balram (from Tiger); characters who will stop at nothing to get out of their lower-class lives. On the other, there’s Jamal (from Slumdog), who will break laws only to survive, remaining loyal to his friends, family, and morals.
There you go. Now you can get up, grab that brick, and start yelling. If you must.
Am I making too much out of works of fiction? Perhaps. Regardless, there are lessons to be learned from India, its characters, and its rapid rise in global status. And I intend to work through a couple of them with you, dear readers.
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Tomorrow’s post will be about the effect settlers had on the American Dream, and what this means for the Indian one. I don’t have a snappy title yet, but just you wait…
