Comments on: Authenticity and the banana pancake trail in India

By: darmabum

darmabum — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:40:48 +0000

Very thoughtful reply, Anita. Your take on the article and, on your own country are valuable. As an Indian, you have a certain informed sensibility regarding India, a certain day in and day out personal experience that can offer something for those of us who come from the West.

And then again, we Westerners too can present a picture that is perhaps foreign to your experience, just as foreign friends coming to my country can do the same for me and my perception of my own home. Without the cultural connection, without the day in and day out knowledge and experience of life in India, we as visitors can only come at India with so much information – and that can be as varied as the books we have read about India, the movies we have watched, the stories each of us who goes to India have heard.

For you, it appears that India is not an enigma, for many of us who visit, it is. It was for me, on my first trip in 1982, as far away from “home” – in every way – as any place I could go (which is why I went in the first place). In time, by my second trip, the enigma gave way, for me, to the beginning of seeing less difference and more similarities. Language aside, culture aside, a shared humanity displaced the enigma that it had been.

Hands down, my personal favorite destination in the world. India is for me what Life is: it is everything you’ve ever heard about it.

By: Anita Satyajit

Anita Satyajit — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 05:54:04 +0000

As an Indian, I like the way you have challenged a tourist’s quest for the ‘real’ India. I alternate between feeling amused and irritated when I hear about a visitor’s quest to experience the glory and grime of this country. India is not an enigma; it is a country with a billion, united solely by their status as Indians. Even Indians who travel from one state to another are often confounded by the difference in lifestyles. But these startling contrasts seem to be the very things that make India so appealing to a traveller.

In India, everything is authentic. A traveler just needs to choose what kind of experience he/she prefers and head to a destination that fits the bill. And if you are up for varied experiences, then one should just stay off the tourist circuits.

By: Authenticity and the banana pancake trail | some important places with their respective distances

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:16:05 +0000

[...] posted on Glimpse.org, this story was published on MatadorAbroad on 22 July [...]

By: Ameya

Ameya — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:55:39 +0000

I love this. It’s so ridiculous when people make claims like “It’s not real India.” Who does anyone think they are to make such statements? A country is diverse. Because it doesn’t look just like it’s stereotypes does not make it inauthentic. To try to keep a certain image of ALL of India (and how ridiculous is that) is both ignorant and rude. Indians have a right to be any way they like.

By: Jo

Jo — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:17:23 +0000

You should try a little ground cardamom in those pancakes…

Strangely enough, I’ve never had a banana pancake in India! (Though I found them in more than one of the cook books I returned with.)

By: Jo

Jo — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:15:34 +0000

I can relate to much of what you’ve described, having lived in Pune for half a year and having traveled throughout India. I think you’ve very eloquently described the experience of many an outsider, trying to reconcile their experience of the dichotomies that comprise India.

A friend of mine accurately put it, “You can say any one thing about India, only to discover that the exact opposite is true at that very same moment.” Perhaps this is a part of the authenticity of India?

By: Andi

Andi — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:17:38 +0000

You are such a gifted writer! I so didn’t want the story to end. You know, you just have to accept India for what it is, it’s an enigma wrapped in an enigma!

By: Joseph Ugalde

Joseph Ugalde — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:18:27 +0000

Wow – your best post yet. I often think about the concept of “authenticity”, even in local contexts. Hipster versus yuppie, tourist trap versus local treasure, folk art versus passing fad. The various labels may be the very things that keep people – who may otherwise have much in common – from connecting. Thanks for sharing your experience so thoughtfully.

By: Sara C.

Sara C. — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:48:25 +0000

“As though by choosing to stay here I’ve temporarily checked out of India.”

I think this can be sort of a problematic way of thinking about a country/destination.

Cafe Coffee Day is as much “India” as chai on a railway platform. India being a real place where real people live, a place with as many mass cultural changes and shifting identities as any other country has. We don’t say that eating curry temporarily checks one out of Britain, or that taking a yoga class temporarily checks one out of America.

That said, I can see how it can feel that way at a slick coffee joint in Rishikesh as opposed to the outlet in a place like Pune or Bangalore which is more associated with “modern” India rather than “spiritual” India. But then, isn’t compartmentalizing that way somewhat unfair to the country as a whole?

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:47:02 +0000

Ahhhhh, India . . . the place that launched a thousand ships . . . I’m a five-timer myself, almost three years in country, and over a third of that time in Varanasi and Varanasi only. It’s changed much since I first went in ’82 . . . and much has remained unchanged; and it that unchangeablitlity, that Eternal quality that keeps me going back to Varanasi. Showing up at my perch beneath a large tree at Tulsi Ghat well before dawn, stars still in the sky, not a hint of color in the east . . . but by the river, in it, the sounds of chanting . . . of water being poured into the river from small brass pots . . . laughter . . .
Before I first went to India I had no preconceived idea of what I would see, no agenda of any kind, no expectations . . . and in doing so, I believe I allowed India to simply be what it is, and am reminded that the Eternal is invisible.
(And as for “the Real India” . . . I find it no place more than on a train, and the longer the ride, the better. India for me is people, and they all ride the train . . . )