>> HINOJOSA: In 1977, his
parents left India to give him a
better life.
30 years later, he moved back
and found himself witnessing the
greatest transformation in the
country's 2,000 year history.
New York Times columnist and
author of India Calling, Anand
Giridharadas.
I'm Maria Hinojosa.
This is One on One.
>> HINOJOSA: Anand Giridharadas,
it's great to have you here.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Great to be here.
>> HINOJOSA: So how'd I do with
the name, all right?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Yeah, very well.
>> HINOJOSA: Because it's an...
>> GIRIDHARADAS: That was like top two
percent.
>> HINOJOSA: Now, when you were
growing up in Ohio... okay, so
this is a couple of years ago,
you're growing up in Ohio.
You're born there, from Indian
parents, and they looked at your
name and what did they do?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: They often asked if there was
anything else they could call
us, and my... one of the ways
that my family, my parents,
thought of coming back against
this was when these
telemarketers called and asked
us, you know, to spell our name.
Someone gave us the idea of
spelling each letter using a
disease, so we'd say, "G for
gastroenteritis,"
"I for intestinal disorder,"
and people stopped calling.
So that's one of the advantages
of a very... of a very difficult
name.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, it's
interesting, because your name
is one way to enter into this
conversation only because, you
know, it is an interesting name.
But in fact, right now in the
United States of America, your
name, Anand Giridharadas, is
kind of normal, almost, right?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: The president's name is
Barack Hussein Obama, so, uh,
anything goes now with names.
>> HINOJOSA: You finished school
here in the United States, and
your whole life, you have been
going to visit India as that
place where your parents came
from, and then you basically
decide, "I'm going.
I'm going back."
And there's that moment when
you're on the plane ride going
back and somebody who is
returning home looked at you and
they were like, "What are you
doing?
You're leaving the United States
to go to India?"
>> GIRIDHARADAS: This guy... I was filling out
my landing card to arrive in
Bombay, and he kind of looked
over and he asked for help with
his, so we got to talking and he
said, "So what are you going to
do over there?"
I said, "I'm going to go live
there."
He kind of looked at my American
passport and he looked at me and
this data point that I was going
to go live there, and he almost
thought that I had made a kind
of ticketing mistake, and he was
like, "No, no, no, we're all
trying to go that way."
>> HINOJOSA: (laughs)
>> GIRIDHARADAS: You know, and I... in a way,
I didn't yet have the vocabulary
to tell him because I hadn't
seen this new India up close
yet, that the world is
changing, and the world of...
the assumptions that with which
he came of age and that he had
in old age, that India was a
better place to depart, were
giving way to new assumptions,
and that's happening country by
country all around the world.
>> HINOJOSA: There's something
that you did in your book, which
is a beautiful book.
It's called India Calling: An
Intimate Portrait of a Nation's
Remaking, and it really is very
intimate.
This is your story, your very
personal story, and there's a
kind of honesty that you have in
terms of your perspective,
again, born in Ohio and looking
at India.
And there's one thing that
you-- I'm going to read this
back to you-- you wrote, "I used
to look at the cracking paint
and white florescent tube lights
and dank bathrooms and wonder
how anyone could be happy in a
home like theirs.
And I supposed they might have
looked back at me, with my
burning and unfulfillable
American cravings, and wonder
how anyone could be happy with a
mind like mine."
So where does that stand now?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: I think, when I was growing
up, I only had access to half of
that thought, the first half of
that thought, which was, India
was this place, the first thing
I knew about it was my parents
left it.
And so, that fact was then
mingled with other facts like,
uh, what you saw in the
newspapers in the '80s and '90s
when I was growing up.
It didn't seem like a
particularly desirable place.
Maybe a stampede here, a
fraudulent collection there, a
poverty, you know, a human
interest story there.
>> HINOJOSA: A political
murder...
>> GIRIDHARADAS: All of those kinds of things.
And, over the course of my
childhood, therefore, I pushed
it away, and that feeling of
wanting to push it away was
actually deepened by going there
rather than annulled by it.
You know, it seemed to be a very
different place, both from here
and from the place that it's
become now.
It was a place that felt very
shrunken, uh, this great
civilization of the world that
we all read about.
It didn't feel that great and
that dynamic when you were
actually there.
And, when I then, toward the end
of college, was thinking about
what I wanted to do and that was
something like, "Be a writer,"
but I wasn't quite sure how...
>> HINOJOSA: And this is after
2001, after September 11th, so
there's a whole other mentality
going on in our country.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: And I think that was part of
it.
It was also that, you know,
there's a lot that we all don't
know about that outside world,
and for me, I was thinking
about, "Where do I go in the
world?"
I think I had the idea of going
somewhere that would kind of
stir me into being a writer, but
that was a very undeveloped, uh
plan.
And once I had that idea, then
it came to me that if you're
going to go anywhere, go to the
place that you have this strange
relationship to.
It's on your face, it's in your
blood, and yet I knew very
little about it.
I knew much more about the
history of, you know, almost any
country in Europe or the U.S.
than I did about Indian history.
But I went, and a whole kind of
world opened up to me.
>> HINOJOSA: When you told your
parents, "Mom, dad, I'm moving
back," what did they say?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: It's funny, they were very
supportive, um...
>> HINOJOSA: Your parents sound
amazing, by the way.
I mean they're, in a way... they
should be held up as role models
of, you know, the true American
spirit, if you will.
They were so open.
They came from a society that
was incredibly closed, and yet
here they are, Shaker Heights,
Ohio, and they're... they're
open to you, to your new way.
I mean, that's pretty amazing.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: I think when you're an
immigrant family, there are two
ways my parents could have seen
the logic of their lives.
One way was to pay a lot of
attention to the specific places
you left and places you went to
and to say, for example, "I left
India, I came to America,
America's great, India's
terrible."
Or the reverse, you know, "I
just came here to make money,
but India's the true worthy
country," et cetera.
And to kind of cling... it's a
kind of clingy attitude that a
lot of immigrants end up having.
My parents, fortunately,
abstracted from their journey to
see an idea behind it, I think,
rather than a specific country
leaving and country arriving.
I think they saw in it the idea
of reinvention, the possibility
of reinvention, as being a
beautiful ethic, the chance that
everybody should have to go
somewhere else and make
themselves new.
They happened to leave India and
happened to come to America, but
when it came time for me to say,
"I want to actually go to
India," they didn't see that as
a kind of cancellation of their
entire life.
They saw it as a fulfillment of
their life.
>> HINOJOSA: You talk a lot
about how one of the things that
impressed you, when you would
return to India, was this kind
of sense of so many people
before being kind of resigned to
the caste system, to their lot
in life, to their future, to
their mediocre job, and now,
when you've returned, you know,
to a more modern India, is it
the same thing?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: It's night and day.
If anything has moved, because
there's a lot in India that has
not moved at all, but if
anything has moved, it is what
you just said.
The most striking thing for an
outsider about that old India
was what you may call karma, or
the kind of attitude to fate,
destiny, or position in the
world.
And this was partly a kind of
concession to just a bad
economy.
It's not terrific to kind of
dream of big things if you're
living in an economy where those
are not going to happen
very often.
But it was also an entire kind
of spiritual, philosophical,
religious paraphernalia that had
really convinced large numbers
of people that destiny is
something you get from the
outside world, that you inherit
rather than make.
And when I moved back, the most
striking thing I found, and I
found it day after day over six
years, was that people now
believe that destiny was
man-made and woman-made and
child-made, and they believed
that you... as one of my
characters says in the book,
"Our generations believes our
decisions are our destiny."
There's, in a way, no more
subversive idea a society could
get a hold of than that idea.
Everything else can kind of be
derived from that idea.
And so a lot of things have not
yet come to India, but that has
come to India, and a lot is
coming out of it.
>> HINOJOSA: But this notion
that now, you know... when I'm
watching popular culture with my
kids, teenagers in the United
States of America, and then they
all know the Bollywood dances.
I mean, you know, Dancing with
the Stars or, you know, So You
Think You Can Dance?, and
actually competing in Bollywood
styles in mainstream American
popular culture.
Tell me how weird that was for
you as a kid who grew up, you
know, in Ohio, again, who never
saw that stuff on American
television.
What's it like to see it now?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: It's very... it's surreal for
me, because I... you know, I
feel that I lived, just by
virtue of when I was born, on
kind of both sides of this
divide.
You know, when I was growing up,
this still hadn't happened yet,
and so there was, you know... no
one really knew anything about
us or where we came from.
People in Cleveland would ask my
mother a question that, you
know, she's wearing a bindi on
her forehead, red bindi, and,
you know, she was asked in an
elevator once, "Is that a hole
in your head and that's the
blood?"
You know, it's unimaginable
today.
And I just recently was all over
the country for my book tour.
It's amazing.
You can go pretty far out in the
U.S. to all kinds of places and
people are asking sophisticated,
third-level questions about
what's happening with the Maoist
movement in India, what's
happening with this, what's
happening with that.
So the days of asking whether
that's a hole in your head are
really over, and that's partly a
result of great media coverage
in this country of India in the
last many years, many more
correspondents, books, but it's
also obviously a result of
popular culture and just India's
changed stature in the world.
It's important to remember that
when a country's stature
changes, it doesn't just affect
the things we often think of in
terms of economy and diplomacy.
It filters right down into
whether an eighth grader feels
comfortable doing a Bollywood
dance for the talent show, or
just does ballet like everybody
else.
And these big geopolitical
things trickle down, in a way,
to these very small, human
things in immigrant families.
>> HINOJOSA: So would you have
ever done a Bollywood dance?
What would have happened if your
mom had said, "Anand, let's do,
you know, for the talent show
this week, let's do this
traditional dance that my mother
taught me."
You would have said what?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: "No chance."
>> HINOJOSA: And she would
have... ?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: I still wouldn't, but that's
just me.
But I think, you know, I
wouldn't have then, and it would
have been a very unwise thing to
do then.
Today, I may still not, but it
would be a very wise thing to
do.
I think it would make me a very
popular eighth grader, based on
some of the kids I've met and
spoken to.
They are now... and my mother
now teaches in a high school,
and she just says all these
Indian-American kids and kids
from other backgrounds are dying
to find any way to show where
they're from.
It's just a very, very different
universe.
>> HINOJOSA: So, given that this
is clearly a trend that is
happening... I mean, more and
more immigrants in our country.
But you know the resistance.
You don't have to look too far.
I mean, we have, you know, in so
many places, openness of, you
know, the true American spirit
of being open, and then you have
a lot of retrograde
perspectives, and looking at
you, and, you know, there have
been hate crimes, assaults.
So put those two things together
for me.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: I think they are the two
sides of the same thing, and
it's important to remember...
I mean, I'm actually very,
despite my own background race,
sympathetic to the psychology of
people on the other side of
this, because...
remember, this is not just
an American problem.
We have a world that is changing
in this aspect very quickly.
So, to give you one statistic
that really captures this, the
world has been majority rural
for all of human history until
the last decade.
So this is a huge milestone in
human affairs.
It should have been a banner
headline in every newspaper.
Most of us now live in cities.
Now, the important thing about
that is, most people didn't
originally, a thousand years
ago, you know, spring out into
lower Manhattan, right?
Cities are places to which
people come.
They come from other countries,
they come from rural areas, but
they're all migrants.
There's not... no one's from
cities, ancestrally.
And what that means is we're
living in a world that, not just
people like me going back to
India or immigrants, but in
which rootlessness, people
unconnected from where they
originate, is the central fact
of the human condition, more and
more.
How many people live in one
country and work in another,
either by crossing a border on a
bus or by putting on a headset
and taking credit card... you
know, customer service, phone
calls, or by doing any number of
other things?
How many people have
relationships across ethnic
boundaries, national boundaries?
How many people don't speak...
how many children don't speak
the language that their
grandparents spoke or speak?
This is an increasingly common
thing.
Now, for people like us, this
may be a wonderful thing.
It's a multiplication of
possibility.
Someone with the middle name
Hussein can be president.
That's terrific.
I think we also have to be
empathetic about the fact that,
for a lot of people, for good or
ill, will experience this as
quite a serious shock.
Doesn't mean it's...
>> HINOJOSA: And something
scary.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Doesn't mean it's wrong, but
we have to understand, and I
often feel people from
complicated backgrounds take it
for granted that everybody
should immediately be cool with
this.
Cosmopolitanism is a quite
difficult idea, and if you are
living in the middle of Missouri
and suddenly globalization comes
and, you know, wipes out your
manufacturing industry, suddenly
the average skin color in your
neighborhood in the course of
40 years changes drastically.
Suddenly, women gain all sorts
of privileges that they should
have, but are still quite
unsettling to every institution
as you've understood it.
Suddenly, the president is
someone of a kind that you've
never had as a boss or you've
never had as a friend.
And all these things are
happening in, like, a 30 to 40
year period.
It's a lot of change.
And so when we think about...
when I think about these hate
crimes and all this other stuff,
I think about it as a very dark
outcome of what is just a
genuine fear and anxiety and
inability to process this new
future that a lot of people
are struggling with.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, you
understood that part of
conquering that fear was by
speaking, writing, talking,
telling your story.
So that's what you do now, you
write because you want... and I
mean, the cool thing about
writing now is that it isn't
just for an American audience.
I mean, you work... you write
for the New York Times.
It's an international audience.
I mean, your book, now, is doing
great in the United States, but
I'm sure that in India... is it
on the best-seller list?
Has it... it is?
Already?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Yep, yep.
>> HINOJOSA: Wow, amazing.
Which means that, actually, if
it's on the best-seller list in
India, you're, like, selling
tons and tons of books
because...
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Here's what's more important
than the best sellers in India.
It's been pirated in India...
>> HINOJOSA: (laughs)
>> GIRIDHARADAS: ... And you are nobody in the
Indian book market until your
book has been ripped off and...
Because you know why?
They bookstores can store 2,000
titles or 10,000 titles, but
those kids in Bombay at the
intersections can only hold,
like, ten books.
>> HINOJOSA: Oh my god!
How did you know that... what
happened?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Someone, uh... I think told
me on Twitter, if I remember
correctly, and I felt, finally,
that I had arrived in my career
because my book had been ripped
off by the...
>> HINOJOSA: But it actually
means something, in terms of...?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Those people understand the
market.
The people who sell those books
at the intersections in Bombay,
they understand the market
better than anybody.
>> HINOJOSA: So put that into a
context of being somebody who is
from the United States, who's
got a deal with a publisher
who's looking at that and
saying, "Oh my god, we've just
been ripped off!
Wait, wait, wait a second!"
So this is, you know...
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Well, this is one of these
few issues where the publisher's
interests and the author's may
not be aligned.
You know, the publisher,
obviously... and I don't support
piracy as a policy matter, but,
uh, it's very interesting that
in a country like India, where
the kind of, you know, elite
bookshops where my book is sold
in a place like Bombay or Delhi
are, in many ways, still only
for certain people.
And it's kind of this sense that
it's going a little bit down
into the layers when you see it
on the street.
There's a wonderful story
Amartya Sen told me a few years
ago.
He landed in Bombay and, as he
made this turn out of the
airport, this guy knocked on his
window and had this stack of
books and he noticed his own
book, The Argumentative Indian.
And he writes a lot of very
complex philosophical and
economic works.
This book was not one of those,
and it was available on the
street.
And, um, the guy leaned in and
he said, you know, "So how's
that one doing?"
And he said, "Oh, it's very
good."
>> HINOJOSA: (laughs)
>> GIRIDHARADAS: So, you know, I'm going to go
wait to get the reviews, now,
from the street kids.
>> HINOJOSA: So why, after
having spent six years in India,
and it's... I mean, look, it's a
booming economy.
I mean, in terms of growth, it's
the place to be.
So why come back to the United
States that is struggling
economically, that is struggling
in terms of our own identity?
Why come back?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Two things to say about that.
One, I think we overblow the
extent to which everything's
over for America.
We drastically overblow this.
And all you need to do is go to
a place like India or China to
see this.
Because you have to separate
certain areas where America
genuinely is in trouble from
areas where it's not.
If you're trying to make
software, America is in trouble.
There are a lot of people who
can do it cheaper, better,
faster elsewhere.
If you're trying to make shoes,
there are a lot of people who
can do it cheaper, better,
faster elsewhere.
If you want to create Yale...
name the country in the world
for me that can create a Yale
or can create more than one, let
alone one.
>> HINOJOSA: Okay.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: And the Indians and the
Chinese will be the first to
tell you that they don't have a
Yale and don't know how to
create one.
>> HINOJOSA: Okay.
If you want to create Silicon
Valley... tell me someone who's
doing that.
Why is it that the iPad and then
the iPhone before it and the
iPod before it.
In this era of decline,
why does all the cool, new stuff
always seem to come from here?
You have to separate...
I think the important point is
Americans are doing very badly,
certain Americans, a large
number of Americans.
America as a kind of collective
entity, is still very much at
the helm of a lot of things and
is losing ground on other
things, and I think segmenting
those is important, number one.
In terms of... for me,
personally, one of those areas
that's more like the Yale and
the iPad is, what kinds of
places in the world are good
places to sit when you want to
think, not just about India or
not just about one industry, but
where you want to think about
the world, which is what a
writer does, a journalist does?
And India has many advantages,
and I will live in India again,
I'm sure, but I felt, for my
development as a writer, for my
ability to speak about more
things other than just India,
you have to be in a part of the
world where... that is global,
and where people are thinking
about all kinds of different
problems, and, um, India's not
quite at that place yet.
The focus in India is India.
There's not great global
think tanks that are thinking
about, you know, all kinds of
issues.
There's not a real literary
culture that writes about things
other than what's happening in
India, and that's fine, but I
think it's very important, if
you want to have a voice on a
number of things or think about
a number of things, to know...
to know people beyond that one
subject, and that's what I
wanted to do.
>> HINOJOSA: So, as I said, one
of the things that's really
cool about your book is the fact
that you are a so honest.
There's one part of it that I
just had to underline and I was
like, "Okay, we have to talk
about this," because you said
that you were... it was the
story of you also adjusting to
being back in this home country,
and you said, "Yes, I had to
come to terms with the incessant
male touching and hand-holding."
So how did you come to terms
with that?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: You know, um... a friend of
mine... there's a crude and a
sophisticated way to answer
that.
The crude way is that, you know,
a friend of mine once was... was
heard saying, "Friction is
friction," and I think there's
part of the reason that people
have been fascinated by Indian
men holding hands.
It's nothing other than the fact
that in a society where
male/female contact is still,
for many people, still fairly
limited, people still have a
human need to just touch and
hold and be touched, and some of
that gets kind of transferred
onto friendships that are in no
way romantic-- well, in some
cases they may be-- but just
kind of, you know, it's nice to
touch another human body or hold
another hand.
And if you are, you know, lower
middle class for a reasonably
traditional family in Bombay or
Delhi, you cannot walk around,
even today, holding hands with a
woman very easily.
And so some of that is absorbed
by kind of male friendship.
If you're rich and privileged
and educated in India, you can
do whatever you want today.
Unfortunately, for 95% of
Indians, they really don't have
the freedom to, you know, walk
around holding hands in public
or to even have a girlfriend
that they can go to a
restaurant with.
And I think that's unfortunate,
that's... at this end of the
spectrum.
I think what will happen over
the next many years and decades
in India is a kind of
liberalization in romantic
affairs, and the self will begin
to assert itself more and people
will have more romantic love
rather than family-arranged
love, and it'll become, in that
regard, a little bit more like
the West.
What's scary is that we know
what stands at the other end of
that spectrum, because we're in
it, and that's 50% divorce rates
and, you know, people who have
eight marriages and serial
hookups and, you know, a culture
in which the idea of commitment
is almost kind of vapid.
And I think it's interesting for
both societies, for India to
think about, "How do we move
along this curve without having
50% divorce rate?"
And women who, according to
surveys in the U.S., are
unhappier than they were before
the feminist movement.
And for people in this country
to think about, "How do we kind
of preserve this wonderful gift
of empowerment, freedom, young
people being allowed to kind of
pursue lives of their... that
are meaningful to them
without having that kind of
spill into degeneracy and no
one... and people feeling only
rights and no obligations?"
>> HINOJOSA: So... just to end
up here, so are we hopeful?
Are you hopeful?
Is it, um, you know...
if your vision... if you could
decide what the world looks
like, actually, in the next 40
years, what does it look like?
Is it in fact... yes, the United
States will always be powerful,
but there is an undeniable
increasing power, presence
politically, demographically,
culturally, religiously.
So... optimistic?
Or it's going to be painful
before we get there?
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Those two things are not
exclusive.
I'm optimistic and it will be
painful.
But here's why I'm optimistic.
The analogy I would make would
be to what happened with the
entry of women into all kinds of
spheres of life over the last 50
years, which has happened in
this country and elsewhere
in the world.
What we have now realized, 50
years on, is that half of human
ingenuity, half of the great
ideas we could have had, half of
the ways of seeing things were
actually not in the room, and we
didn't realize, in a way, that
they were not in the room until
they were in the room, and now
life is at least twice as rich.
This is happening, in a way,
with the entire geopolitical
puzzle, except it's worse than
half.
Until now, about five percent of
the world has led the
conversation and has shaped
everything from how we dress to
what we wear to what we eat to
our political philosophy.
Everything.
And we're now entering an age
that will see a massive infusion
of all the perspectives that
weren't in the room, and it will
be painful.
But I don't think you can
seriously say that it won't be a
better world.
>> HINOJOSA: Or that it won't be
fun.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: (laughs) Absolutely.
>> HINOJOSA: And thanks for
helping us understand a little
bit more.
So, thank you again Anand
Giridharadas.
Not bad.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Very good.
>> HINOJOSA: Congratulations.
>> GIRIDHARADAS: Thank you.
>> HINOJOSA: Good luck.
Continue the conversation at
wgbh.org/oneonone
Share
Embed
Transcript
Podcasts
