In his recent New York Times column [1], Akash Kapur describes how India’s image has changed over the years with positive shifts in stereotypes following newfound material prosperity. Replacing the “three C’s: caste, cows and curry” are “technology, outsourcing, billionaires, Bollywood”.
He cites examples culled from sources of but limited casual contact with Indians. A taxi driver, working as a shuttle-bus driver in last summer’s U.S. Open, is astonished that his Indian passengers are taking expensive box seats. A newspaper vendor notices the young Indian sisters next door do not wear the “red dot” on their foreheads and that they walk with an “American swagger”.
That is, perhaps, why such perceptions brush only the surface. As the third largest Asian American ethnic group and with close to 2 million Indian Americans living across this country [2], the odds are that more personal interactions with Indians would merit a strong influence in shaping stereotypes other than what is skin-deep.
A writer for various other publications such The Atlantic, The Economist, Granta, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, among others, Mr. Kapur himself acknowledges that the clichés belie the more complex layers of what is India today. “I know there’s a lot more to the country than smart and rich technology workers who are stealing American jobs and buying box seats in the U.S. Open”, he writes.
I trust also that Akash Kapur whose father is Indian and whose mother is American has himself received more substantive feedback from more personal sources other than the occasional taxi driver and newspaper vendor. Living in America for twelve years before his decision to move back to India six years ago puts him in an auspicious position to capture such complexities from various perspectives of those he touched and who touched him. I am anxious to read such revelations in his future works, perhaps in his upcoming non-fiction slated for publication next year.
In an earlier column for Granta Magazine [3], he alludes to the “genuine openness and friendliness” of Americans that he first misconstrued as superficial. He also reveals that it was “a feeling of estrangement, and of cultural and ideological isolation” that has also driven him to move back to the home that he missed. He seems severely impacted by “the ‘war on terror’ and the war in Iraq – and more broadly, the war on civil liberties “. He writes, “It had taken me many years to feel American; by the time I left, I was once again an outsider.”
Indeed, it would also be interesting to understand his own perceptions of India--and, yes, American--from both the eyes of the American and the outsider. I’m guessing his view have shifted just as well from when he first received “crude reactions” as a child to when he now wields the fearless maturity to share his reflections in his well-polished craft. I’m hoping his optic cuts more deeply through the stereotypes and clichés.
[1]Akash Kapur, “Letter from India: Exchanging One Cliché for Another”, The New York Times, Nov. 5, 2009[2]U.S. Census 2000
[3]Akash Kapur, “Learning to Love America, Again”, Granta Magazine, Nov. 3, 2008
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