On a bright and sunny morning in August 2008, I and a fellow
Indian student were waiting at a bus stop at Marshal Street, Syracuse - an
upstate town in the state of New York. We were new to the town and to the
country still trying to make sense of things that seemed so overwhelmingly
organized. The bus to our destination- Carousel Mall was slated to arrive in 20
minutes. An amiable looking old lady just joined us on the waiting bench
and extended her kind courtesies before asking us whether we are Muslims. We
were both stunned at the suddenness of the question and quickly replied that we
are Hindus. She didn't seem to know much about our religion but she went on
saying that she thought all Indians are Muslims. Just at the same time a group
of three black young men wearing hats, low waist jeans and sneakers walked
past. They were happy and they spat on the street merrily. The old lady hissed
scornfully. She then said in a sarcastic tone that our own president is going
to be a Muslim. It's only going to make America Great, she added just as our
bus arrived and we hopped onto it while the lady continued to wait. When Donald
Trump announced his campaign line - " Make America Great Again" I got
instantly reminded of the lady, the conversation and that day.
A fellow classmate, a fine looking black girl, watched live
streaming of Oath taking ceremony of Barack Obama months later, even as the
Professor went on talking about fundamental role of 'Ideation' in the process
of Entrepreneurship. The girl was in no mood to care for the professor's words.
Clearly, it was one of the proudest moment of her life. She was evidently happy
and beaming with pride. Afterall it represented a common aspiration among her
community to rise to the top and be treated as equal. I myself was enchanted by
the message of the leader - he offered the country a "Hope". I
decided to read his biography- 'Audacity of Hope'. And so I did.
The university campus was a fair mix of races, cultures and
communities. Everyone seemed to get along so nicely. Black guys dated beautiful
looking white girls and they all went on sharing beers, barbecues and pizzas
around the whole campus. I thought to myself it's such a blessed nation to have
risen above the basic differences. And then I started noticing the
superficiality of the apparent cohesiveness in the society ; in supermarkets,
in Coffee shops and in the restaurants. The more I started scratching below the
surface the more I could see the deep fissures that are covered with
superficial layers of rosy Political Messages and every person's desire to be
seen as Politically correct. Sipping on a hot cup of Americano, I wondered how
long these layers will survive before the fissures are wide open to the society
and the world at large.
One rainy morning in Mumbai in 2015, on my way to office I
flipped open the Twitter. My timeline was flooded with news articles covering
the riots that broke open in the city of Ferguson. And I mused to myself,
whether it's the beginning. Within weeks the protesters formed a larger
movement of # BlackLivesMatter which spread throughout America. The fissures
were now glaringly visible not just to America but to the whole world. I
wondered if most Americans could see this coming even on that morning back in
2008. Or whether It's only now that they have started to realize it's true
gravity.
When one of my (white) American friend visited me in Delhi
in 2012, we were at a busy junction in Chhatarpur. He told us how his
colleagues back in Boston mentioned Indian cities as utter chaos. And how he
replied to them that it's like a " large beehive ". That the chaos in
India is organized and most people don't seem to get it. The remark was
striking and has stuck with me ever since.
Ironically enough, now when I look back at that beautiful
morning in Syracuse, I see a place which was wonderfully organized on the
surface but in utter chaos underneath. The Chaos is now out in the open- and
they even have a beautiful line to describe it. 'Make America Great Again!'
