Kochi – India is giddy with optimism. Not merely optimism, it’s more like assurance. India is on the verge of becoming a global superpower and there is nothing to stand in the way (except maybe for China.) Indians are feeling jubilant about development and international success, and the celebration has already begun. There is a tremendous sense of national pride. Striking up a casual conversation with an Indian, it will be only moments before you are asked “How do you find India?” Fully expecting you to tell them that India is the best country you have ever had the privilege of visiting, if you hesitate, they’ll offer up that opinion for you, face beaming. This kind of good-natured unselfconscious confidence and pride isn’t at all challenging, belligerent, or annoying; it’s refreshing, infectious. It’s the polar opposite of the kind of feeling you have as a traveler when you tell someone that you are from the USA.

This assurance of progress and better times ahead as a nation seems to transcend the myriad internal conflicts of regional, racial, and religious identity and strained competition for resources that such compressed diversity in such large numbers is bound to bring. India has its problems, sure, but what else is new? They’ve been living with violence, poverty, domination by this empire or that regime, wars, famines, and moral and natural evils of all kinds since long before anyone can remember.

I was chatting with a shrimp exporter from Bangalore as we sat in a dingy open-air rooftop cafe above the fray of the Kolkata streets. He said that he doesn’t meet many traveling Americans anymore, not since 9/11. He and his buddy, a dealer in ayurvedic natural plant extracts, were drinking whiskey and water, smoking cigarettes, and eating plates of meat– strictly taboo for a huge number of Hindus and all women, and the sure sign of a modern Indian businessman. “The thing with you Americans,” he said, “is that you never think it will happen to you, in your own home. Then you find out one day that you are not invulnerable and you freak out. Terrorism is just a part of life for Indians. We’re used to it.” Case in point: the train bombing only a couple weeks ago in which dozens of innocent people were burned to cinders when their train exploded on the way from Delhi to Pakistan. There was an official fuss, the papers stayed focused on the story for a couple days, but most Indians didn’t even blink an eye. I’m sure the next train that ran the same line was just as full as any other day. Continue reading →