Both these images come from an advert for a slimming company featured in the Mumbai Mirror on 26th November 2008; printed just a few hours before the attacks started...
When we first saw them on a flight from Vadodara to Mumbai (which portentously had an aborted landing) we thought them hysterically funny. Now, after the attacks, they seem less amusing, more symptomatic of core problems.
Clearly there has been some pirated Photoshop work going on as the afters are not wholly the befores, if you follow my drift. and while it may be possible to lose 15kgs in 4 months or 22kgs in 3 months, one cannot lose 80 inches - that's over two metres! Yet here they are, unquestioned by any form of ethical code, trading standards, nor credibility. We have statements in concert with images. It matters little whether there is any consistency between the one and the other. The medium here is the message...
Booker-hailed Aravind Adiga encapsulates a similar aspect of cultural acceptance in The White Tiger. Here he describes fowls waiting their turn to die while held in a Rooster Coop. However, Adiga's wide-boy murdering anti-hero, Ashok Sharma, not only succeeds in escaping the Coop of his caste, but actually becomes a successful entrepreneur.
While failures of intelligence compounded by palpably inept action on the parts of both police and military during the Mumbai attacks raise questions about general security in India, there is a bigger issue glaringly obvious to anyone visiting India – over-staffing.
India’s cabin baggage screening is actually more effective than in Europe and USA. I had inadvertently left a scalpel in a carry-on bag which was not picked up at Stavanger, Oslo-Gardermoen, Heathrow (twice) and Baltimore-Washington – it was immediately picked up on a domestic flight out of New Delhi. But you only have to enter an airport in India and you will see droves of non-uniformed staff literally wandering around both landside and airside. Indeed, when I flew out of Mumbai on 29th November, there were still staff wandering around unchallenged and without any form of ID, wholly negating the effectiveness of carry-on baggage screening. More worrying still is the frequency of dogs airside. If a dog can get onto the airfield so can a person…
Then there was the official presence of moustachioed strutting be-medalled leaders of police and armed forces with their cabals of strutting moustachioed stick-wielding minions - none of whom were seen to be doing anything about the 'situation' they were supposed to be dealing with. Visible high-profile over-staffing.
And while all was unfolding in front of the barking media, India's Secretary General never-to-be was quick as ever to dash off a wide ball. "There is a savage irony to the fact that the unfolding horror in Mumbai began with terrorists docking near the Gateway of India. The magnificent arch, built in 1911 to welcome the King-Emperor, has ever since stood as a symbol of the openness of the city. Crowds flock around it, made up of foreign tourists and local yokels; touts hawk their wares; boats bob in the waters, offering cruises out to the open sea. The teeming throngs around it daily reflect India's diversity, with Parsi gentlemen out for their evening constitutionals, Muslim women in burkas taking the sea air, Goan Catholic waiters enjoying a break from their duties at the stately Taj Mahal hotel, Hindus from every corner of the country chatting in a multitude of tongues. Today, ringed by police barricades, the Gateway of India - and gateway to India's soul - is barred, mute testimony to the latest assault on the country's pluralist democracy."
It is amazing that Tharoor (author of the above screed) can not only mistake a physical embodiment of imperial repression as a symbol of welcome, but he goes on to dress it up with Disney parodies. He seems blind to the real people killed during the attacks...
