On the Indian Identity.

I was on my way back from dropping my sister to tennis class today. Papa's out of town, so the car was miraculously available. That saved me from the post-summer-pre-monsoon humidity. Of course, I got stuck in traffic, even with the sports club being just 5 minutes away. (Mumbai isn't the most populated city for nothing.) Watching the pedestrians crossing the street absentmindedly, I noticed a girl with a nose ring. She looked about my age, was dressed in torn jeans and a black t-shirt that read Iron Maiden in jagged letters. In contrast, there are many thousand middle-class women around the country who get their nose-pierced at a young age. For them, the nose ring is a sign that they adhere to the traditional image of womanhood and femininity in India. But for the pedestrian I'd just happened to notice, the nose ring symbolized the membership of an alternative community, one that exists on the periphery of the mainstream youth. Essentially, the nose ring had travelled around the world, and assumed a fringe meaning, while its traditional meaning remained ingrained in our country's essence.
Same thing with Yoga. And Buddhism. And Chicken Tikka Masala.
What was behenji at first, is now in vogue post a whirlwind world tour.

Walk down Bandra Linking road and you'll see stalls brimming with Judas Priest and Homer Simpson t-shirts alike and pushy salesmen proclaiming their clothes are of the best quality, just a little dirty and torn, madam. Enter the colleges of the city, travel by a local train, peep into a BEST bus, and everyone from the irritable bus-driver to the college peon has such a t-shirt on. In many countries in the West, wearing such items of clothing would automatically make you part of a genre; it would become a lazy conversation starter at the very least. People would be enormously conscious of what band their t-shirt says they like, and it would be a general statement on their music taste. There, a guy wearing a Porcupine Tree t-shirt would probably be condescending to a girl wearing a Miley Cyrus cap. Here, it doesn't matter. A t-shirt is a t-shirt, and nothing else. If it looks good, buy it. There is zero guarantee that a guy wearing a Metallica t-shirt actually listens to the band. People don't really care because they don't really know what it means. And in big cities like Mumbai, everyone is a stranger. You can live anonymously, no matter what your t-shirt says.

The identity of the average Indian is a confused, albeit multi-faceted one, which makes it immensely difficult to stereotype. I'm not sure what made me notice that girl in the metal t-shirt, but if looks could be valid indicators of preferences, my bet is that she just bought it because it looked cool. And her nose ring is just another form of identification to fit into her social circle. Or to break away from it.