American sanskriti

AMERICANS just cannot get enough of sanskriti. Any aspect of Indian culture will do - arts, crafts, literature, mythology, cosmetics, yoga, dance, music and of course, cuisine and religion. When Arundhati Roy was in Washington for a second reading and signing of her The God of Small Things, the Smithsonian auditorium was packed. I waited half an hour for my moment of darshan and her signature. Ustad Vilayat Khan also packed them in recently.

You can buy a snazzy Henna Body Art or a Bindi kit at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore and doll up for a night on the town. The great sage Vatsyayana has many devotees here. The illustrated Kama Sutra is number one on the list of gifts for newlyweds. One of my students recently offered me a bidi, the trendy new smoke. I respectfully declined, suddenly hit with a flashback to a by- gone era. It all came back - the fits of convulsive coughing, the more than usual disorientation, the respiratory distress in that back alley of Sipri Bazaar, the derision of putative friends, the snickering of passers-by. No longer forbidden fruit, the thing had lost its allure. Besides, I added smugly, I didn't recognise the brand. Not that Ganesh Chaap stuff, or that weed which once brought into question the very meaning of existence.

We Americans sit all day in an office, then rush off to a yoga class to work off surplus tissue or tone up what we want to keep. We are a nation of yoga fanatics if not exactly yogis. South Asian restaurants spring up all over the place like croci in the spring. We love the sitar. The Indian Palace, a creditable new Baltimore restaurant, features Jay Kishor, a gifted young American sitar and surbahar virtuoso, student of Annapurna Devi. Jay is a visiting artist with the internationally acclaimed Baltimore Symphony Orchestra now under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov, the great Russian conductor. Ours is a truly international city.

Last week Jay tried out a new "fusion" piece he was working on. I liked it, having encouraged him not to disparage exploring new musical languages. The best Indian restaurants here are those which spice up the traditional menu with a "specialite de la maison" or two inspired by classical Indian gastronomy. For some reason, perhaps because creative chefs are better at basics, their khormas and naans sometimes remind me of pukka Hindusthani food back home in India. My gustatory and olfactory memory rarely fails me. Tradition is dynamic and American tastes are no more a threat than alu tikki burgers are to fast food culture.

American interest in all things Indian took a noticeable jump after The Festival of India in 1986-87. During the summer of 1987 the Mall (maidan) at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, was set up as a virtual Indian mela. There were pavilions for classical and folk dance, musical groups, arts, crafts and cuisine from all over India. For me, the Aditi exhibit featuring a Rajasthani family of minstrels and stunning visual displays of village folk art was the crowning glory of the Festival. The crowds were mesmerised by the colours, the sounds, the fragrances, the images, the exquisite craftsmanship, the lithe movements of the dance, the costumes. Indian peasant artists were mesmerised by the loud, "Ah Gee, this is cool! Freaks me out, man!," baseball cap wearing, bubble gum chewing, flashy tanktops, shorts, extruded morph Americans in summer molt. Who was watching whom? The only thing missing perhaps was the follow-up. As far as I know there were no joint Indian-American designed primary, secondary and university-level instructional programmes to capitalise on the enthusiastic reception of the American people. This was, perhaps, a missed opportunity which may yet be remedied.

Celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian Independence took place all over America, capitalising on the success of The Festival of India. One of the most elaborate programmes was put together by Swashpawan Singh, the first Indian Consul General in Houston, Texas. Exhibitions of paintings of Indian school children, of village folk art and individual artists gave a glimpse of ordinary India. A Distinguished Lecture Series brought Indians from all walks of life to Houston. It was my privilege to talk about the Hindu tradition as an emerging American religion.

The Smithsonian Institution must be one of India's best friends in Washington. Though the Festival of India was a tough act to follow, two Smithsonian exhibitions have come close. The Sackler Gallery's current Puja Exhibit not only presents Hindu temple worship with reverence but it also has the power to awaken a sense of spirituality in anyone open to the possibility. The recent Devi Exhibit at the Freer Gallery conveyed the abstract idea of the goddess in an extraordinarily artistic way through the display of voluptuous form. Both exhibitions won major international awards.

Last spring the Smithsonian's College on the Mall highlighted a lecture series on Rajasthan. The series was a smash hit from the opening lecture by the Maharaja of Jodhpur. Once a Maharaja, always a Maharaja in America. We love royalty here. Bapji, as he was known during our Oxford days, gave a slide lecture to a packed house on the art and architecture of Rajasthan with special emphasis on Jodhpur. Following up on the Maharaja's very popular presentation, Milo Beach, the Curator of the Sackler and Freer Galleries who organised the Festival of India, is leading a Smithsonian study tour to Jodhpur and Rajasthan this month. Bapji very kindly accepted my invitation to give a special lecture at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. My own summer 1999 lecture series "Hinduism: Living Faith in America" at the Smithsonian's College on the Mall was clearly another follow-up response to the interest in India stimulated by the Puja and Devi exhibitions and by the Maharaja's Rajasthan series.

Throughout America, mini-festivals spring up during the summer months particularly. Baltimore's large Indian community puts on one of the best every year. Private and public collections abound. The Walter's Art Gallery in Baltimore is home to one of the world's finest collections of Indian erotic painting. The Walters has sponsored Indian cultural education programmes for secondary school teachers in which I have been involved.

The Festival of India, the nation-wide fiftieth anniversary celebrations of Indian Independence, the Smithsonian's many exhibitions, Indian writers and celebrities like the Maharaja of Jodhpur and others have all helped to broaden the spectrum of American appreciation for Indian culture. One very significant indication that Indian culture is accepted within the mainstream of American popular culture is the sometimes disconcerting fun we poke at it. Take note of this very important though often misunderstood unwritten rule of American society. If we can't have a good laugh or two at your expense then you and your group are not on the screen. You are invisible. But you have arrived, you are one of us (whatever the worthiness of that) if we satirise you.

Americans love a good roast. We love to put people up on a pedestal then knock them off just to see them fall. Everything or everyone in American public life is fair game. Have you heard the latest Jay Leno or Letterman Clinton (Bill or Hillary) joke? Or on Mark Russell's political satire show? Sometimes, no - most of the time, our satire crosses the line into scandalous ridicule. This is an elemental part of our strange national brand of humour.

The risk is part of the roast. Will the thing go too far, we ask ourselves balancing there precariously on the edge of the sofa, bug-eyes riveted to the tube, washing down cheekfuls of popcorn and veggie samosas with coke or trendy microbrew in rapt anticipation of the "kill". We are rarely disappointed. The recent lawsuit over the cover of a popular arts magazine featuring a famous comedian dressed up vaguely as a Hindu deity was viewed by most who paid any attention to it at all as petty nonsense. Hyper-sensitivity is usually a lightning rod for more down and dirty satire.

One memorable episode of the popular but now discontinued TV comedy series "Seinfeld" featured an Indian wedding shot in India satirising Americanised Indians who cannot quite break away from strong family ethnic traditions. This episode poignantly called attention to the tension many Americans experience between the old and the new. We are, after all, an emigrant nation. Most of us either have or have had living relatives in other countries or want them so badly we invent them. I once belonged to the St. Andrews Society of Baltimore, the oldest ethnic heritage society in America. Ostensibly the salient requirement for membership was authenticated Scottish ancestry. Many members, I soon discovered, needed a high-priced attorney if they had any chance of squeaking a case by for even the remotest connection with Scotland.

"The Simpsons," another even more irreverent comedy series, has regularly made fun of the rage for all things Indian in American society. Among the most amused by all of this are some of my Indian-American friends. American sanskriti is a nutrient rich Sargasso Sea of the best and, alas, sometimes the worst of world cultures which find their way to our shores, to which we add our own home grown best and worst. It is Saturday evening and the last scherzo of dint gat in tintal of Vilayat Khan's Raga Shree CD (jacket signed of course) has faded away in a rhythmic flourish and my family and guests are off to another pukka American dinner party at the Indian Palace.

BRUCE C. ROBERTSON

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Toss a pancake
Next     : Between change and futurism