Mehta goes on to describe his peripatetic family. He has cousins in London, New York and Nairobi. Over the past few years, I’ve met Indians from Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and more countries than I can name. I once had an Azerbaijani cab driver tell me “your people are everywhere.” It's true - most Indians have close relatives on at least three continents.
Indians are migraters, as much as they are invaders or traders. This country was built by Persians, Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Africans, Caucasians and Arabs. This means that people who were once Persians, Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Africans, Caucasians and Arabs are all Indians today. So there must be something about India that holds people, at the same time that it disperses them throughout the world.
Whatever that something is, I don’t know if I’ll find it in Mumbai. Mumbai seems, among other things, to be a city in the midst of an identity crisis. Half of its residents still call it by its old colonial name, Bombay.
The counter currents of tradition and globalization tear at society, but they tear at individuals too. The rich extol India’s vast population, but have nothing to do with the rural poor. Politicians socialize with all types of foreign dignitaries, but don’t want to shake hands with a garbage collector in the street. Executives push to redevelop the slums, but forget that they depend on residents’ household labor for the most basic daily tasks.
Indians are migraters, as much as they are invaders or traders. This country was built by Persians, Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Africans, Caucasians and Arabs. This means that people who were once Persians, Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Africans, Caucasians and Arabs are all Indians today. So there must be something about India that holds people, at the same time that it disperses them throughout the world.
Whatever that something is, I don’t know if I’ll find it in Mumbai. Mumbai seems, among other things, to be a city in the midst of an identity crisis. Half of its residents still call it by its old colonial name, Bombay.
The counter currents of tradition and globalization tear at society, but they tear at individuals too. The rich extol India’s vast population, but have nothing to do with the rural poor. Politicians socialize with all types of foreign dignitaries, but don’t want to shake hands with a garbage collector in the street. Executives push to redevelop the slums, but forget that they depend on residents’ household labor for the most basic daily tasks.
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