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Fighting To Impress The West Melvin Durai Melvin Durai is an Indiana-based writer and humorist. Born in Tamil Nadu, India, he grew up in Zambia and moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s. In 1995, while working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Chambersburg, Pa., he began writing a regular humor column. His weekly column now appears in several newspapers and on a number of Web sites. He also writes a twice-monthly column on Indian and Indian-American issues. He is a diehard fan of the National Football League and also likes to run, lift weights and play soccer, tennis and pool. An award-winning feature writer and aspiring novelist, he plans to publish a collection of his best columns. You can write to him at comments@melvindurai.com To read his older columns, go to http://www.melvindurai.com

"India has done it again" began an Indian newspaper article about the awarding of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and for a moment I thought that India-born novelist Rohinton Mistry had captured the prestigious prize, joining the ranks of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy. It was time to pop the champagne, release the balloons, and riot through the streets of Mumbai.

But alas, it was not so. As I read further, I learned that Canadian Yann Martel had wrested the Booker out of his compatriot's hands, depriving Indian literature a prime opportunity for self-glorification and ruining at least one newspaper headline: "India's Booker Win Is No Mistry."

But all was not lost, as far as some Indian journalists were concerned. The Booker may have gone to Martel, but he couldn't have won it without India. After all, the main character in his novel "Life of Pi" was Indian, the son of a Pondicherry zookeeper. So India had in fact done it again! Jai Hind!

The journalists doubtless searched Martel's background for other links to India. Did he ever room with an Indian? Did he watch the movie "Gandhi"? Did his mother cook with curry powder?

Martel's name may soon appear in articles praising the impact of Indian authors on English literature, the type of articles that make you believe that finding any Indian novel in American bookstores is easy -- just go to the section called "Reader Favorites."

If there's any way to embellish the influence of India and Indians in the West, we're sure to find it. It's not enough that Indians have achieved eminence in many fields, that one billion people recognize their accomplishments, we need to believe the western world has validated their success. We need to believe that Amitabh Bachchan is a household name in America and George W. Bush can't stop thinking about India. (He can't, but only because India is the name of his cat.)

Nothing illustrates this better than the excitement over the nomination of "Lagaan" for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. To follow the Indian media, you'd think that not only Hollywood, but all of America was bubbling over "Lagaan," marveling at the acting and cinematography, wondering why the movie had not been nominated for Best Picture. Tom Cruise, Meg Ryan and other icons were standing in line, eager to star in the next Aamir Khan blockbuster, even if they had to learn Hindi and paint themselves brown.

The merits of "Lagaan" had, of course, been well-established by critics and moviegoers in India, but the Oscar would have apparently propeled it into another stratosphere, earning Bollywood so much honor and respect, it might have taken Salman Khan an entire month to ruin it. Perhaps even two months.

Though millions of Indians prayed for an Oscar win, poor Aamir Khan returned home empty-handed. He didn't even get the consolation prize: a kiss from Julia Roberts.

But the Oscar loss shouldn't diminish "Lagaan," nor should it diminish Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding," which didn't garner an Oscar nomination, yet impressed me more than the Best Picture-winner "A Beautiful Mind." Perhaps we should heed a simple rule: When the West sets the standard for the best, the East will often feel like the least.

For an email subscription to Melvin's regular weekly columns (not the ones that appear here), go to www.MelvinDurai.com

Graphic Copyright © Sudeep Ross

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