Punjabi Parmesan: Dispatches from a Europe in Crisis
Pallavi Aiyar
Penguin Books India, 2013
In a review of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers in Bookforum, Jonathan Shainin begins by dissecting a segment on the ABC program 20/20, on sex-selective abortion, titled 'India's Dirty Secret'. Anchor Elizabeth Vargas, Shainin claims, employs all the stock clichés associated with the foreign-correspondent-meets-third-world genre. We get, he writes, "obligatory references… to 'spiritual' India," a "needless… reference to 'ancient tradition' as an explanation for contemporary behavior", and even an irrelevant quote from M K Gandhi, accompanied by a misspelling of the great man's name. "If you were playing Sentimental Orientalist bingo while watching at home," writes Shainin, "your card would have filled up pretty fast."
And, to be sure, in my first few months reporting in India, the same snares entrapped me. For almost a week I desperately pitched a story about an open sewage stream running through New Delhi's posh Defence Colony neighborhood, and the ridiculous sheet-metal 'cap' that the local government offered as a solution (presumably in an effort to disguise the smell's source, so that it could be blamed on the dog). During the summer, I'd taken Hindi classes next door and, between the scorching 40-degree plus heat and the chewable humidity, I could almost feel the stench crawling on my skin. But the response I always got from my editor was a sardonic 'boo-hoo' and an eye roll. Open sewage is a long-standing problem that wouldn't constitute news to an Indian journalist. But coming from me, it would perhaps reek of Occidental snobbery.
Ultimately, I confronted what I believe is the central dilemma for any ambitious journalist hoping to write comprehensively in a foreign environment: if the writer focuses too much on the shock of the new with a novice's moral relativism, then in-depth reporting devolves into sensationalist travel writing. But if the writer attempts to cast judgment on the host culture's failings too resoundingly (as I found myself doing), the writing will ring of colonial or anti-colonial resentment. Navigating these tumultuous waters and seeking to produce good journalism that speaks to any reader are lofty goals, often out of reach for those handicapped by culture shock (and the polarising emotions associated with it).