The Golden Plague of India
by Charles Polet, JGSM '09
Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: Features
It must've been the fever. Stuffed in the back seat with fellow hunched classmates, I looked out the taxi window and momentarily saw a mashed-up New York and Miami: towers, traffic and tiny stores all along the eastern shore of the Arabian Sea. But this is Mumbai, I told myself, as I watched metal and people hustle along Marine Drive. As the black cab sneaked through traffic, the driver proudly leading our tour to some structure or other, and my fever escalated, I felt a different kind of heat creep over me to compete for my senses. I felt the glow of a cosmopolis beam through the window. I felt the heat of life: the friction of motion from pedestrians, the combustible snarl of car engines and motorbikes, the cacophony of car horns, the kinetic burst of dialogue and emotions on people's faces. As the setting sun traipsed on the snapping ocean, I felt at home. I could live here, I said. There was energy, an energy borne by optimism.
In retrospect, this optimism was not confined to Mumbai. It was evident everywhere we went across India. From the expansive lands of an entrepreneurial landowning family in Delhi to the tourist stalls with worldly vendors in Pushkar, from the house of (arguably) India's national living sculptor, Ram V. Sutar, who spoke of his "monument to put India on the map" to the Radharamana Temple in Mathura where devotees did not plead for divine help but shrieked and pushed for divine blessing as if in a rock concert, there was optimism that ignited hearts and minds, flesh and voice. The fever of optimism rages across the subcontinent. The people of India are infected with this Golden Plague.
There are those who recall India as a land of shoegazers. It is no longer. Nor is it simply stargazing from the gutter. The captains of industry have launched westward from the Gate of India in Mumbai to counter-prey on the likes of Arcelor, Tyco Global, Tetley Tea, the Ritz-Carlton Boston, REPower and Jaguar (pending) to name but a few. With every successful western acquisition or expansion broadcasted, the media enwrap the Indian like a pox-blanket, infecting him with exuberant optimism. The febrile nation, once despondent and down, now reaches upward and outward.
In retrospect, this optimism was not confined to Mumbai. It was evident everywhere we went across India. From the expansive lands of an entrepreneurial landowning family in Delhi to the tourist stalls with worldly vendors in Pushkar, from the house of (arguably) India's national living sculptor, Ram V. Sutar, who spoke of his "monument to put India on the map" to the Radharamana Temple in Mathura where devotees did not plead for divine help but shrieked and pushed for divine blessing as if in a rock concert, there was optimism that ignited hearts and minds, flesh and voice. The fever of optimism rages across the subcontinent. The people of India are infected with this Golden Plague.
There are those who recall India as a land of shoegazers. It is no longer. Nor is it simply stargazing from the gutter. The captains of industry have launched westward from the Gate of India in Mumbai to counter-prey on the likes of Arcelor, Tyco Global, Tetley Tea, the Ritz-Carlton Boston, REPower and Jaguar (pending) to name but a few. With every successful western acquisition or expansion broadcasted, the media enwrap the Indian like a pox-blanket, infecting him with exuberant optimism. The febrile nation, once despondent and down, now reaches upward and outward.
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