When I was a young teenager, growing up in India, I once visited an international exhibition. It had pavillions from countries all over the world. There were even representatives from those countries staffing their them. Some had translators, many did not. It was very popular in those days. We went with our families. In those days, when the Soviet Union was considered strong and was a friend of India, it naturally had a good sized pavillion showcasing its many republics. The pavillions of the USA, UK, and many countries in Europe were also very popular. It was like a mini-whirlwind tour of the world. We could see a tiny slice of many countries and continents.
For us children, it was an opportunity to see foreigners up close as much as products from their countries, watch popular music or dance performances from distant lands and generally feel that we too were at the centre and hub of world culture.
We had Black-and-White televisions in some parts of India then. Colour TV was only heard of and talked about by people who returned from visits to exotic places overseas. I was a technology follower and badly wanted to see real colour TVs 'in action' - there was no real broadcast and they were playing recorded tapes. It was all analog TV, not digital. It was those days when cassette tape players were just coming into the world consumer market.
I had a friend of mine, who came along with my family on this outing. He and I were close friends. We shared many common interests - world news, politics and new technology were among them. He had learned to speak and write Japanese, so we definitely wanted to visit the Japanese pavillion. He could speak and surprise any Japanese we encountered.
Certain countries' pavillions were very popular and word got around certain interesting things to see or hear in other countries. The usual popular list of course included the USA, UK, Germanies (there were two then), Japan, China and of course the good friend of India - the Soviet Union. Pakistan's pavillion was quite popular too, with people still pointing out, some with surprise how similar they were to us!
From the media and newspapers, we knew some of the countries were with us, some were not with us and some against us. Note that we had a different outlook from G.W. Bush. The USSR, Cuba, Africa were supposed to be friends and the USA, UK and Europe were not with us, some even with our enemies - Pakistan and China the foremost among them. So, naturally, we were all curious and most eager to see the pavillions and people of these countries, in addition to some random points of interest that we heard about.
The following were the 'must see' list. We had heard about them from friends who had visited the exhibition before us and there was some coverage in the newspapers.
There was a video of the moonlanding in the USA pavillion. Colour TV was playing in the Japanese pavillion. The African pavillions had some things on wildlife, the West Indians were performing some cool music, there was Jazz from the USA, the Russian dancers and gymnasts were absolutely riveting. There were white-skinned people (we could never tell the diffference between a German or English or Italian or USAnian!) We could never tell the Americans from the Russians by looking at a person then. In someways it was mystifying that we could not tell our friends from our foes!! We developed an admiration for the Indian political leaders and government officials who seemed to possess the skills to understand these strange people and tell them apart - who were friends and who were not!
We could not even tell the difference between many from Arab and Middle Eastern countries from the Europeans. We were so surprised at the variety of non-black hair on their heads that we just stared and stared, hardly believing they were real. They were to us, unearthly - Blond, Brown, Golden, Platinum and Red! Secretly, we wanted to touch them and pull or stroke their hair. We would fondly hope that they ran into us or accidentally bumped into us so that we would touch their skin. It was a strange fascination with totally foreign things and people.
There were Chinese and Japanese who we could not tell apart. There were many Africans too. It was fascinating to see their dark, beautiful shiny black skin. There were some Indians from the south who are a bit like that, but the Africans really stood out. We thought they were really cool. We loved their accents and friendliness. Their hair too was eye-catching.
In my own family there are people with dark and fair skin, such contrasts as one could never believe we were related. My parents and us kids had an interesting conversation trying to see which of us in the family matched closely to foreigners from which country! I was definitely in the African category. My fairer skinned sibling could pass for an olive skinned European! I loved the eyes of the Chinese and Japanese, their smooth skin and jet black hair. Many of the Europeans looked less glamourous than we expected from pictures in magazines. They had freckles and it seemed like brown spotted pink skin! It was not as smooth and even coloured as we imagined from their moview. Of course, some did seem to have a stunning, smooth pinkish skin that was our imagined ideal of white skin. The variety of eyes and their colours too fascinated us. Some reminded us of cats!
We were fascinated hearing the foreigners talk. We, mostly, could never understand a word, even if they spoke English. Occasionally, we could identify one word that sounded familiar and be thrilled. There were massive crowds, even by Indian standards and one had to keep moving in queues or rough lines. Some of the most memorable sights we saw were the sight of some Africans eating Indian food at a stall and how they seemed to be enjoying it even as they ate it 'clumsily' with their hands. There was the image of Europeans at another food stall and how red or pink some seemed to turn under the sun. Some were carrying strange looking bottles or cans and eating things we could never figure out what they were! We thought all Europeans ate bread and cake other than meat. We would all stare and point to make sure our sibling or friend did not miss out such interesting things that we spotted, so that we could talk about it later.
There was not much time to linger over anything for too long, even if we liked it very much. Sometimes the foreigners would smile at us and say something and we could not understand. Some of us would pretend that they did and felt superior!
We had just seen the colour TV showing Japanese origami using coloured paper. I kept staring at the pixel to see how the colours came to be. The television set was not properly set up with the right contrast and brightness, one could make out the colour from a distance, but it seemed to vanish when we came close, right up to the screen. I was mystified. I had been reading about John Logie Baird and his invention of television and fancied myself as a bit of the engineer or scientist in the family, among my siblings! I tried to say something intelligent, but it was only the childish ignorance of my younger siblings that let me get away with it!
As I caught the various 'must see's' on our list and ticked them off and went on to the next, I looked forward to seeing the USSR pavillion. We saw posters of their industry, rockets, fields and tractors. I had heard that photography was very popular in the USSR and that they had such a large number of photographers per capita because they made it cheaper. In the comparison of 'standard of life' between the capitalist west and communist USSR, in fliers and books and news reports, there were lists that we were familiar with. That all in the USSR got milk delivered to their door, free every morning, they all had houses to live in and that more of them could indulge in the luxury (in those days it WAS a luxury) to have camera, even if it was Black-and-White. Colour photography was so out of reach for most, even in the West, that it was surprising that the USSR was so advanced. Of course, the colour pictures from the USSR looked a bit different from those from the USA with a different mix of the primary colours in printing. It was a difference in the chemicals and system, we read or were told by people who had been there.
As we walked up to the USSR pavillion, we saw some cameras in a showcase with a glass frontage that looked out into the side of the pavillion, near the entrance. I noticed that the tops of the cameras, all black in colour, seemed to have a top surface that was strangely brownish. The showcase was not lit up and so we could not tell anything clearly in the natural light. It was uniform across all the cameras kept on the top surfaces, even the top half of the curved lens tubes that protruded out. My good friend and I, were curious.
"What is the brown stuff?" my friend asked.
'"Looks like it is dirty," my little younger brother said.
"Oh! Silly! It cannot be!! It is not dirt. It must be something special, a special feature. I will ask inside!" I and my friend, we laughed at my 'silly' little brother. We older ones knew better. The Soviet Union was a superpower, comparable to the USA and Europe. They were mighty, they could match the West for everything and surely they would not keep dusty, dirty cameras in showcases, bringing them all the way from their distant country!! We had seen how spotless,shiny and brightly lit the pavillions of Japan, Germany and other Western countries had been.
We went inside and saw one Russian or citizen of the Soviet Union, someone in a far corner, with an exhibit. We asked the Indian exhibition attendant nearby about photography and they showed us a poster and pictures with some statistics. I said I had a question about the cameras that we could see from outside the pavillion. We were not allowed to go near them. We moved along. When we reached the 'Russian' looking person at the other end, he spoke reasonable English. I was persistent and determined to solve the mystery and find out about the brownish tops of the cameras. I raised my hand and asked the question,"There is something I want to know about the cameras that you have on display. It is an important question."
I really wanted to know the cool technical secret or reason why they had the tops of a different shade of colour.
The Soviet man stood up and walked with me to the showcase. He turned to me and I pointed to a camera. As he picked it up, we could all see the layer of dust on top of it getting shifted in the wind and blowing away a bit.
I and my friend quickly exchanged looks, hiding our disappointment We walked out quickly, thankful that my little brother did not observe or gloat. He was too young for that.
That incident and memory came to mind, when many, many years down the road, I heard of the break up of the Soviet Union. I came to realise what can defeat Socialism - the laziness, uncaring, non-ownership and pride in presenting even little things - either with the sense of personal pride for profit or with pride for one's society or country. There seems to be something in the nature of some humans, which when kept in completely socialist environment, does not care to wipe the dust off a bunch of cameras for display at a world exhibition in a different country, thousands of miles away when being seen in comparison to others who are keen to present their country, their culture and their system in the best light possible. It is such apathy, laziness and corruption of the soul that can defeat Socialism. That layer of dust on the cameras was a good indicator for those that could see it for what it really was - the defeat of a faulty, badly implemented Socialist system.
We see today the indicators of what can defeat capitalism - unrestricted personal greed, selfishness, unrepayable debt, lies that everyone knows are lies but still proclaimed as truth in politics, false advertising, human created suffering and war in many countries, preying on the vulnerable in society and treating the poor as less than worthy humans without going into the reasons why they ended up like that.
I believe the only viable way to achieve a vibrant, thriving, human society is by a judicious mix and balance of socialism and capitalism.
Copyright (c) Kannan Narayanamurthy 2015
All rights reserved
Copyright (c) Kannan Narayanamurthy 2015
All rights reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment