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Snakes and Ladders
India, the land of opportunity? A lot of foreign
investors think so. Indian-born writer Gita Mehta does, too.
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW YORK
Issue cover-dated June 16, 1997
"SIT DOWN, for God's sake,"
Gita Mehta demands, interrupting her phone conversation to light
a British Silk Cut cigarette. My eyes run down the bookshelves:
Mann, Twain, Okri, Rushdie, Anais Nin.
Gita Mehta is the modern Indian, at home anywhere in the world
but definitely Indian. Her first book, Karma Cola, published
18 years ago, is a wicked look at the West's encounter with
India: gurus, charlatans, incense, yoga, meditation. "The
hippies loved India, hated the Indians," is how Mehta,
who is finally off the phone, describes it.
But times change. Mehta's newest work, Snakes and Ladders:
Glimpses of Modern India (Doubleday; $22.95, hardcover), is
a collection of essays about an India that the West looks to
for software rather than mysticism. "The new enlightenment
is money," the loquacious lady declares.
Born in New Delhi in the early 1940s, Mehta has lived in New
York for the past ten years. Her new book is a patchwork of
anecdotes that support her conviction that India can rise above
the incompetence and venality of the provincials who rule it.
"Anyone who doubts India is changing should cast a quick
glance around our cities," she writes. "Whole families
dressed in shiny synthetic fabrics squash onto scooters driven
by men with pomade hair wearing shades and Terylene trousers....If
you've got it, flaunt it. In the old days if you had it, you
hid it."
The water is boiling. She scampers off, a lithe figure casually
dressed in trousers and a T shirt. I peek at her CD collection.
Edith Piaf nestles next to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Snoop Doggy
Dogg, Marianne Faithfull and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Phew.
She's back with a pot of tea.
In Germany last March to promote her book, Mehta was asked
why Germans should be interested in India. "Just remember,"
she responded, "the next century is ours, and you will
become interested because it will matter to your pocketbooks.
Gates knows it."
We pour out the tea. It's a trifle weak. Mehta moves on: "The
two great countries of the next century are China and India,
and India will win the race, because of its culture of ongoing
debate." That's a rather polite way of describing India's
elections--which tend to be chaotic and sometimes bought rather
than won--but still, India is a democracy while China remains
a dictatorship.
India's dynamism, she says, shows in its contrasts. She marvels
at the rapid growth of the Indian computer industry while much
of the population remains illiterate; she's struck by the sight
of cell phones in the hands of poor rural Indians; she delights
at meeting traditional folk balladeers in the state of Rajasthan
singing about telecom scams.
"Once it was the dream of educated Indians to be hired
by government. The dreams are changing," she writes. "[Indians]
can sense that the wind is now blowing from another direction."
On the elevator down, I read what she inscribed in my copy
of Snakes and Ladders, a message to a fellow Indian: "With
many thanks and don't rush with the Green Card. The next century
is ours."
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