Amitabh Bachchan: Our Hero for All Times!

It was January of 1979, I was 11 and our Air India flight from Karachi was about to land in Bombay (now named Mumbai) International Airport. Our trip had taken us from Tehran to Karachi and after two days in Karachi we made it to Bombay. After we landed there, we were driven to Poona (Pune) and onto to Panchgani, a hill station in the western State of Maharashtra where my sister, my brother, I would attend, New Era High School, an international boarding school.

One day we were in Ahvaz, in the comfort of all that was familiar to us…our city, our home, our language, our food and above all, our family and friends…in what seemed to be, a blink of an eye, we were taken away from it and put in India. Fortunately for us, we went to a boarding school where most students were our age and came from all over the world, from Iran to Canada, United States to Ethiopia, and Somalia to Australia. Exposure to this rich mixture of diverse cultures at a young age developed within me the ability to mingle with all peoples and see diversity as a strength and looked for it rather than avoid it! Give me a work force from 10 countries, 50 cultures/tribes and a table with chicken briyani, Awaze tibs, chelo-kabob, goat curry, and Tuo Zaafi with bito soup and Guinea Fowl meat on it and I am as happy and productive as can be!

That was the campus of New Era High School….But outside of that, there was India. India with its populations of 700 million (1979)! The wealth of Indian culture was immense, this wealth was a direct reflection of its diverse population. Different languages, nationalities, tribes, religions, food, music and geography, all within this huge land mass. For me as a kid, nothing and no one brought these difference into one arena as did Bollywood and its incomparable hero, Amitabh Bachchan.

 

 

Amitabh Bachchan became our hero. I remember the first movie I saw with Amitabh in it. It was in the city of Sholapur and the name of the movie was “Suhaag”. The movie was “house-full”, no seats available! A few minutes into the movie, Amitabh finally appears on the screen, with him drinking a bottle of whisky and the theater erupted…as if he was standing on the stage in person!! People started to throw coins towards the screen! The best a Hollywood megastar could do was get a clap or two!! Whether you were an 11 year old kid like me or a 50 year woman sitting behind us, we were all taken over and mesmerized by Amitabh baritone voice, acting, singing and dancing. And when the movie came to an end, it was as if you woke up from a dream! It was an amazing feeling. The songs from the movies were all around us, whether walking in the bazaar or in school. We would try to imitate Amitabh’s dance moves and the term “hero” and “Amitabh/Amit” were interchangeable in our lingo…Ultimately, Amitabh’s heroism on the screen infused some of us with the wealth of Indian music, and our love for it.

 

In 1984 when my siblings and I left India for the United States, we brought with us a piece of India, which was our love for Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood and its music which had sustained our childish spirit during the five years we lived in India.

Till today, when the times are tough or when my days are not going well, one of the avenues I turn to for spiritual upliftment and motivation is an old Amitabh song and dance number! So it was in 1989, my first semester at Holyoke Community College, when taking one of my first international affairs classes. It was mid-terms and we had to write a paper. Let’s just say my professor did not like my paper, she came quite hard on me, and told me “what the hell is this?” She used the word “hell’ because she was too polite to use the “F” word! I took the paper came home and just fell on the couch, depressed and looking at the ceiling. Not knowing how to get myself up and motivated after that very negative encounter with my professor!  I simply got up and took a cassette and put it in the video player and turned to Amitabh, the hero of my childhood to save the day and put some motivation back into my being!! It just took a song from the movie “Mr. Natwarlal” where Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha sing and dance to the song, “Oonchi Oonchi Baaton Se”! A week later I stood in my professor’s office and she turned to me and said, “This is what I was looking for, much better…good job”.

If I told her what was behind the better performance, she would have never believed me!

The Armenian Genocide and Humanity's Conciousness!

 

“Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler August, 1939

We flung the door wide open and ran outside into the hot and humid Ahvaz summer day. It was time for my sister, brother and I to meet up with the rest of the kids of our neighborhood, a neighborhood in what today would be termed as diverse. We spend the late afternoon to late evening playing our local games, one of the favorite kids were the Armenians, Albrik and Mari Hakoopian. Their uncle Alan, who was older would often teach us new games to play and coach the older kids on new bike tricks. These early play-dates with my Armenian neighbors, would, as I grew up, expose me to the fascinating and at times dark but ultimately triumphant history of Armenians as a people.    

As I left Iran and eventually made it to the US, I got to know more Armenians, who shared with me their family history. It seemed each family, though always successful in their adoptive country, had walked a painful path to get there. Today’s Armenians are scattered everywhere, the main reason for which is the genocide of 1915, carried out by the Ottoman Turks. The total killed was around 1.5 million.

What makes the Armenian Genocide, important historically, is that 100 years after it was carried out, the international community, continues to debate whether it was a genocide or not!! The Armenians have proven themselves, as survivors and strivers. This commemoration for the Armenians, though extremely painful, is also about their survival as a community.  Now all is needed, is for the rest of us and our collective consciousness as humanity to once and for all give the respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and recognize this dark chapter as a Genocide.     

 

 

The Good Afghan: Race, Ethnicity and Diversity in Foreign Service!

Bill stood up and said, “we are now going to have a session on Pashtun cultural norms!” And now Bill, our trainer, started to tell us, a number of USAID field program officers working in western Afghanistan, how the Pashtuns behave! Bill, was a former military personnel who, after coming back to the US, had hung up his boots, came back to Afghanistan, and was hired as an Afghan expert! The problem with him speaking about the Pashtun culture was that, in our group of trainees, we had five Pashtuns, who were more than capable of presenting a view of their own culture. They worked for USAID, they were all educated and the cream of the crop in their respective field. But still it was Bill, who perhaps lacking a bit of "situational awareness", stood up and gave us a superficial understanding of a very diverse and complex culture. During his presentation, he never alluded or asked the opinion of the real, live, Pashtuns who sat with us. Can you imagine if Jumah Khan, from Farah, Afghanistan, flew to Mississippi and told Bill and his family about the American culture?!!! This example underlines one of the fundamental problems with foreign aid, development and diplomacy, where local expertise are often ignored. Race and ethnicity determines who is an expert and who is not, who should lead and who should not, who should be trusted and who should not.  

If there is a “local” expert hired, he/she can’t “act” too local! If your name is Mohammad, you better change in it to “Mo” because the Country Director who is from Iowa can’t pronounce the world’s most common name! The local expert is only considered an expert if he or she can push the goals and the agenda of the donor. If you show or care too much in finding solutions to the problem of the local communities then expect to be sidelined!! I know people, in this case Americans, who changed their “ethnic” names because they were afraid that there would bias against them. They worked for agencies, who go around the world and tell people about the importance of diversity, yet it has created a system that does not allow room for the “other”!  This is not 1492, when Christopher Columbus met the “Red Indians” this is happening in 2015, when Barak Hussein Obama is in the White House!

In 2009, before flying out to Afghanistan, we were given a series of training to prepare us for our work there. Our main trainer was a retired US Diplomat, another “expert” on Afghanistan. The last slide that he showed us before sending us to improve the lives of Afghans, was something that still shocks me!!! The slide had on it, the image of an old American family, riding a horse-pulled wagon, surrounded by the US army, and in the horizon were the Native Indian horsemen with their spears drawn out coming to attack the family!! Our diplomat and “Afghan expert”, ended by saying, “this is how you will feel when in Afghanistan!” We, the USAID, State Department folks were the good guys, whose lives were being protected by the US military against the savages, the Afghans. If he was trying to show his cultural “sensitivity” he did not do a good job. His last slide is an example of how the local population and the “other” is looked upon! To be feared, subdued and civilized, and shaped like us, whatever that is!

 

Hopefully those who are hired to work in the Foreign Service and foreign aid will be hired based on their skill sets, their mutual respect and understanding of their own culture and the local culture, and most importantly to truly work for a world that people's diversity is valued not feared! Until that day more resources will be wasted and the voices of the real “experts” silenced!