("Why can't they ridicule Indians' elephant nose?")
Meant to be humorous, there is this article in Time by Joel Stein on how the famous Menlo Park, where Edison invented the light bulb, is now culturally decayed beyond repair, swarming as it is with curry-eating Indian traders and their witless cousins. All the haunts of the author from his teens - like restaurants, pubs and movie halls - have now been indianised. The author, living in Manhattan with its hookers and mistresses, is lamenting how his home town has been lost culturally.
Imperialism is funny. It cuts all ways. It upsets them when they come to dusty India and brown Babus serve them ineptly. It upsets them when the wars don't go the way they started them between Pakis and Indians and Afghans and so on. It makes them unhappy that Indians come to America as doctors, engineers and traders, with their curry and crowding. Indians should crawl around quietly like termite, doing their bit in the ecological cycle but unnoticed and unsmelled. These folks like to see Slumdog Millionaire, which shows a pathetic slum called India. But they don't like to lose their cultural trademarks to the Indian onslaught. In any case they are clueless how to run this world their way.
They are clueless no doubt. Edison's light bulb, the computer chip, and the Internet seem to be the lasting contributions of America to the world. Also wars, atom bombs, and debt crises and large scale economic ills that no one can correct. They are happy they voted a Black President...but it will take another big war for them to really prove how they can run this world. This guy is trying to do just that, and won a Nobel Prize for his efforts already.
Meanwhile Indians like me will migrate and crowd other countries with our curries and colourful if dotty culture. My friend, that is why some people say this world is flat. The water, or oil, or Indians, can spill and flow any which way.
