The New and Old


          I think it was Jasmine that so demonized the characteristics of “old India”. It spoke of superstition, of futile pursuits, and of a lack of agency. The “old India”, the recently postcolonial India lacked a motivation to it. The “new India” as it were, thought to be prime for a younger generation of rationalists, working in “productive”, timely jobs like tech and medicine. It was believed that the two were incompatible and one could not exist without the vanquish of the other. But I would argue that Dharma’s Love and Longing in Bombay, from what we have read views the India of old in a much more romantic light. Can it be no wonder that the very solution to Jago’s problem is an embrace of the ancient and spiritual? Jago’s apparent conversion then seems to be the driving force of this excerpt and, in turn, an attempt at blending or at least fostering a camaraderie between the “new” and “old” India’s.  

           The narrator self identifies as someone in tech, adverse to superstition, he calls himself a rationalist who can vanquish “every argument with efficiency and dispatch.” This introduction serves as a perfect demonstration of the “new” Indian mindset that rejects the old fundamentalist beliefs and takes a marked shift towards logic and formal education. However, the setting and the narrator’s being there seem very dreamlike, as does most of the story, which perhaps reflects the author’s opinion on the validity of a totally logical lifestyle in a country so impacted by mythology and storytelling. The hidden bar, the glint of the sea, and the remoteness of the vessels all have this dreamlike quality to them when observed by the narrator, and as he drifts further into his drunken tale, Jago’s experience develops a certain haze to it as well.

          Dreams, as their meaning is still largely up for debate, need some sort of context to make any sense. I would say that Dharma, uses the dreamy imagery to highlight the fact that perhaps both realities of the “new” and “old” India’s are dreams in their own right, and that a truer India lies somewhere in the middle of rejection and reflection. Jago himself “converts” in a way and sees the supernatural as part of the living history of his culture rather than a burden placed upon it. It would seem that both India’s in fact need each other to carve out a suitable identity.

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