The Great Indian Void

The CWG-2010 opening ceremony was a boring and unnerving mess that attempted to portray the diversity of India and, inadvertently, ended up manifesting the insincerity and chaos that reigns in India today.

If this is what we can come up with in 7 years, we'd better stop; before we do any more damage.

The barrage of drums, of all sizes and shapes being beaten by thousands and one 7 year old. Where's the theme in that? It might have made a bit of sense if the drum beating started with the kid and was lead by him.. a sort of projection of a young and talented India. But just like everything else in India, the massive drums virtually drummed the poor little kid out and we had to be given a visual clue to learn that he too was indeed trying to make some noise.

I'm trying to recollect the next spectacle that unfolded, but am getting this suffocating feeling, of something hovering above me and making me feel like I'm on the sets of a cheap sci-fi movie, the kind made by the likes of Rakesh Roshan, if i might add. The balloon. I must admit, my mind made valiant efforts to rationalize the use of the contraption - the changing colours, the moving projected images, the stuff being raised from beneath it, the thousand reflecting eyes on its ventral side. But it could not. Somehow, a massive balloon that starts to float up and then just sits there, tied down by wires elicits a feeling of being trapped. Perhaps Rahman's screeching rendition of "jiyo utho badho jeeto, let's go" was an entreaty to the balloon... to set itself free and fly the hell away like helium was meant to. All through the ceremony, this monstrous floater continued to be a distraction and added to the chaos that unfolded below it. To make matters worse, the irony seems to have been lost on the organizers when the Dandi march was sand painted for the prince of wales and its image projected on a balloon rented from a British company. What were they trying to say?

The delicate eye movements and the finely nuanced hand gestures of Indian classical dance are meant to be observed closely to be appreciated. The massing together of dancers from different traditions, all of them attempting to stay in tune with the cacophony reduced our finest art forms to pitiful acts of comedy. I get this nauseous feeling that pop culture in India, today, is a nebulous entity that vacillates between abusing traditional forms and reveling in blatant consumerism and the worst comes out when the two are forced to meet.

The railways display has been lauded by the press as, among other things, portraying an India unafraid of its quirks. What is the need to spend money to create an incomplete capsule of the Indian mess, when just outside the stadium, a more complete chaos reigns? What could be a more amusing spectacle that depicts India than the convoy that ferries the 'foreign guests' from A to B? There is a lane dedicated for CWG traffic, which is mostly empty. And as in everything else, we have made it a punishable offence for non-CWG traffic to trespass into this lane. And as in everything else, it is a rule that we can never enforce; thus making the situation worse than it would have been without a rule. We now need a police pilot on a motorcycle, followed by a jeep full of police belting out a siren behind which a bus carrying stunned athletes moves ahead like a silent island in the midst of the heat and dust.

The public display of a complete lack of depth in thinking does not bode well for the wisdom of a 5000 year old civilization. Why yoga and not avurveda? Why some disconnected guru-shishya metaphor and not the isolated rishis in the Himalayas. Why Kundalini and not Ramana Maharishi? Where do the tribals with their peacock dances and dravidians with their karagattam figure in the 5000 years of the "Indian" civilization? This does seem to be a season of sweeping statements - from judges declaring that Rama was born at the spot marked X to self proclaimed keepers of Indian culture declaring that India has always existed and Yoga is its pinnacle.

The intention was probably to say that India is a very old civilization that is waking up to the modern world and has much wisdom to offer to the world. The reality, I suspect, is that the world is interested in our population (aka market). People who force themselves into saying that the CWG-2010 opening ceremony was good, when for all practical purposes it was shoddy, do themselves and the country a disservice - by promoting the mediocre and hence playing into the hands of those who would make them mere consumers, of anything.

The ultimate consequence of yesterday's avoidable display of misplaced pride is that the world will be left a little more confused (which is good in a convoluted way) and thinking Indians left a little more marginalized by the mediocrity of it all.

Update: While my post drew parallels between the opening ceremony and Indian society, P. Sainath's article in the Hindu, draws parallels between the entire CWG-2010 and Indian society.