Mirror, Mirror, On My Mind
Friday’s probably a good day to Wax Lyrical for a change. So,with some trepidation, I share with you the first poem I ever wrote; or, at least, the first poem I ever thought was halfway decent.
The Background
I wrote this in 1992, when India was just starting to experience a loosening up of the airwaves, with access to things like American soap operas and MTV (though MTV India wasn’t launched until a few years later). Doordarshan – Indian public television – was suddenly no longer the only entertainment option (and I use the word “entertainment” loosely).
Artistes like Anuradha Paudwal, a popular Indian singer, were in danger of being toppled from their pedestals as more Americanized performers started to appear. Words like “yuppies” were making their way into our vocabulary, foreign brands were moving from the “black” to the “white” market, and the cocktail party circuit was bulging with “culture vultures,” as they were often referred to. India – at least, my India – was encountering a kind of cultural colonialism from “the West” that it was unsure of how to respond to. (Whether or how it responded is a whole other discussion.)
I was in drama school, and this poured out of me after a particularly cathartic exercise. I was naive enough to believe that a “four-figure job” was something to aspire to. Re-reading it, I point a pretty good finger… but it was always pointing back at me as well.
Oh, one more thing: we don’t use American-style punctuation in India… at least, we didn’t then. This is just as I wrote it, many years ago.
Filed under Personal, Shonali Burke | Tags: anuradha paudwal, culture, doordarshan, india, mtv, national school of drama, nsd | Comments (20)
