Looking back at the Durga Pujas of my childhood — spanning the decade of the 1960s — it is impossible to imagine any year when the five-day festivities weren’t simultaneously accompanied by groans and moans over the deteriorating economy of the country. From daily conversations to evocative wall writings on the streets of Calcutta, existence seemed marred by the cruelty of shortages and steep inflation. In the six years between 1966 and 1972, daily life was also unendingly tense over fears that a handful of crazy extremists owing allegiance to the bizarre thoughts of a Chinese dictator would somehow destroy civilisation as we knew it. The fear of turbulence was, at the same time, offset by the simple pleasures of life that centred on common conversations. Choice was limited and all Indians listened to the same radio stations, viewed the same films, and even shared similar sartorial styles. The absence of any meaningful consumerism helped, ironically, breed a sense of community that the market economy has dissipated.
It makes sense to mull over the profound changes India has experienced since the socialistic model was unceremoniously discarded after 1991. The fear of economic fragility recurrent in my childhood didn’t entirely disappear with the market economy. ‘Price rise’ — as inflation was described in the vocabulary of politics — was a recurrent problem till the Narendra Modi government decided to regulate the indiscriminate printing of currency notes. What did, however, end was the era of shortages. The ready availability of consumer goods has made Indian festivals resemble the Christmas festivities of the West. More interesting, each year saw the narrowing of the gap between what was available in Dubai and Singapore and what the shopping malls of urban India had to offer.
The other big change in India was the dramatic increase of its middle classes to global exposure. During the bad old days of the shortage economy when air travel was an unaffordable luxury and train travel necessitated an unreal degree of advance planning or lots of political connections to leapfrog over the long waiting lists, community conversations tended to be quite insular. Yes, there were the elderly relatives who may have taken the slow boat to either Marseilles or Southampton and, subsequently, dined out on the experiences of post-War Europe, but by the 1960s foreign travel had become a rarity. People emigrated with the permissible $8, but overseas tourism from India was zero.
This deprivation had two unfortunate consequences. First, it bred a fanatical craving within Indian middle classes for ‘phoren’ goods, available courtesy the makeshift, ‘smuggled’ goods shops or even entire markets devoted to the contraband. In New Delhi, Mohan Singh Place market, just off Connaught Place, had shops that specialised in second-hand Levi’s jeans. These were procured from impoverished backpackers from Western Europe and the United States of America who were always in need of a few extra rupees to maintain their alternative lifestyles. The trendier Delhi University students in the 1960s and the 1970s frequented these shops in search of the hand-me-downs of the Hippies.
The second unintended consequence of this autarky was that popular perceptions of the West became caricatured versions of reality. The 1960s, for example, witnessed an ostentatious rejection by a section of Western youth of the drudgery that accompanied the post-War economic boom. The search for alternative lifestyles and the quest for ‘happiness’ led to experiments with drugs, spiritualism and sexual promiscuity. These were coupled with the disavowal of the politics that made for the US military intervention in Vietnam.
A minuscule minority of India’s youth did devour the literature and emulate the lifestyle shifts of their counterparts in the West. Some even chose to become copycat Red Guards and go ‘underground’ in pursuance of a perverted radicalism promoted by Charu Majumdar, the ideologue of the Naxalbari movement. In the main, however, Indians were exposed to the churning in the West through perfunctory contacts with the dropouts who congregated around Manali, Varanasi, Goa and Kathmandu. Popular films, such as Manoj Kumar’s Purab aur Pachhim and Dev Anand’s blockbuster Hare Rama Hare Krishna, contrasted the permissiveness and overall decadence of the West with the noble purity of Bharat. In hindsight, the portrayal of Western women was crude and insensitive. This wasn’t due to any misunderstanding of the film-makers’ message. The underlying theme — that these unfortunate women needed to be rescued from moral depravity by the upright heroes of India — was just a cover for the portrayal of White women as sexually uninhibited.
No doubt many of these crude impressions have been corrected following greater global engagement, but some of the earlier stereotypes, particularly of European and American women, linger in the popular imagination.
In recent times, perhaps because of the old Nehruvian elite losing its relevance in Modi’s Bharat, there is a tendency to become nostalgic about the India of overcrowded trains, bell-bottomed trousers, and endless song requests from Jhumri Telaiya on Vividh Bharti. The phenomenon is reminiscent of the nostalgia in East Germany over the erstwhile German Democratic Republic. Imagining that the old days were better always has a context.
Cricket enthusiasts will easily comprehend the difference with the past. It is not merely that winning a Test — or even coming close to winning — was a rarity that used to be savoured years on end. The sheer exhilaration of India’s victory over Ted Dexter’s MCC side at Eden Gardens in 1962 remains firmly etched in my memory. It was bettered only by the World Cup victory at Lord’s in 1983. What, however, is also to be remembered is the collective fear at the sight of Wes Hall hurling it down at nervous batsmen. Indian batsmen, to put it bluntly, were not at ease against genuine fast bowlers, something that the legendary Fred Trueman used to gloat about, recalling India’s disastrous tours of 1952 and 1959. Of course, the likes of Trueman, Frank Tyson and Brian Statham never toured India, and we never got to see them. That was because the facilities in India and the overwhelming dread of ‘Delhi belly’ were huge deterrents.
That just wouldn’t happen today. The best players in the world are anxious to be signed up by the IPL teams, each one willing to pay handsomely. Schedules of tournaments are decided with an eye on TV audiences in India. And if the Indian team deems that it will not shake hands with its opponent, the match referee quietly gives his nod of approval. The headquarters of world cricket has shifted from Lord’s to Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
The old India was exotic. The New India is power.
