Lofatmo is curious about the sudden surge of Indian expatriates in the media. Let's see who has made news in recent times - There's Manoj 'night' Shyamalan who's also making a movie based on
The Life of Pi (which is the story of an Indian written by a Canadian), there's A.R Rahman whose musical
Bombay Dreams' is debuting on broadway next year and who is also scoring the music for the West End version of
The Lord of the Rings, and of course, there are those authors Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie.. (now that's an endless list). What could be the reason for this sudden upsurge in Indians making news? (I'm of course, referring to news on the Internet since television and newspapers in the United States are moronic, to say the least - I'll write about that later).
Indians have been creating great art for a long time. I could mention the Nobel prize winning Tagore, but public memory is more likely to remember the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Salman Rushdie is probably the most famous of them all, for all the wrong reasons. (I still consider
Shame to be among the best books I have read). Newsmakers like them have been rare and it was certainly not due to any dearth of talent. Having grown up in India, I'm witness to the amazing collection of actors, poets, composers, writers and other artists who routinely create great art that the rest of the world never gets a chance to enjoy. Things changed tremendously during the early nineties when new liberal investment rules and removal of state monopoly over television and radio brought in an exposure to western media including movies and music. Suddenly it became common for movies to be shot abroad and producers began to realize the importance of showing movies in film festivals, along with the art of promoting movies abroad. All this exposure definitely works both ways, and Indian artistes have become known beyond the societies which traditionally enjoy Indian movies and music.
In the past decade or so, there has also been a vast increase in the number of Indians who are comfortable living in India and abroad and have taken to writing about characters that are Indian in a style that's familiar to western readers. Personally, I'm no fan of Arundhati Roy's
God of Small Things, but it has been appreciated enough out here to beget her the Booker. Probably the Indians have found that presenting an exotic view of India, however untrue that might be, is what sells here. There are exceptions though - Mira Nair, whose
Monsoon Wedding is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time and shows a hugely entertaining picture of a north Indian wedding.
So my answer to Lofatmo's question is that the surge in Indians in the media is probably due to the increased exposure Indians have to the media, and the increased number of young Indians who live abroad. And yes,
The Life of Pi is a good book, though not exceptional enough to be really compared with Garcia Marquez. Though both both involve similar styles, Pi doesn't come near any of Marquez's books.. not by a long stretch.
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The New York Times has come out with an article on the second anniversary of the iPod. In an attempt to look under the untouchable veneer of the iPod to see what makes it so cool, and what drives Apple to make "innovative" devices, Jobs tells him that Apple doesn't really try to innovate - innovation may result, but the attempt, always, is to create the best possible product for a given set of consumer expectations. The best part of the article:
