I was planning to do a post on the ‘Glow’balisation of Diwali as many of my friends living abroad call me and wish me Diwali the day they see lights and fireworks around their city, be it far away London / Canada or nearby Dubai. Sadly, the events in the financial markets around the world have made it a Globalisation of Diwala this year.
This Diwali the retail sector is worried about their sales of consumer durables. I’m worried about the bigger question, is the consumer durable? Those investing in the financial markets with the dream of having enough money to buy some property are now left with the prospect of having money which can only get them a proper tea!
You will probably see newspapers screaming Black Friday, Kaali Diwali etc. This once again makes me think about black being used for anything bad, sad or depressing! Recently there was a program ‘We The People’ on NDTV discussing our bias towards fairness in skin tone and why we should not discriminate against dark skinned people. Whilst there is no doubt that I agree with this I also believe that such discrimination is something born out of our own learning / teaching.
We are taught to think of black as being bad in most scenarios....what do we think of when we read the words Black Mail ....Black Magic....Black Sheep (in the family)...Black Friday (bomb blast)...Black Money....(the list can be endless)? Don’t we overtly and subliminally learn to associate the color black with something evil...bad...etc? This feeling then percolates into our behaviour when we meet black (skin color) people.... the first impression is of suspicion. Do we have to blame ourselves or our teachings or the English language itself...??
Even sports have not been spared of this preference. Take chess for instance, it’s always the white pawns which get to make the first move and when sportsmen mourn they always wear a black band!
Be it black or white, discrimination has always been a grey area! Grey also reminds me of the moon this week. India’s first unmanned mission to the moon had a successful lift off. I have never seen more misplaced allocation of resources in our country. The mission aims to find out if there is water on the moon and take pictures of the moon’s surface. I wish they had spent the money on finding water in our country where millions don’t have water to drink or wash. As for the pictures of the moon's surface one just needs to take pictures of the eastern express highway near my house which is full of craters which even the moon will be proud of.
Wishing everyone a Happy Diwali and prosperous new year may sound as misplaced as our mission to the moon but then the phrase “Its darkest before dawn” also comes to mind!
This Diwali the retail sector is worried about their sales of consumer durables. I’m worried about the bigger question, is the consumer durable? Those investing in the financial markets with the dream of having enough money to buy some property are now left with the prospect of having money which can only get them a proper tea!
You will probably see newspapers screaming Black Friday, Kaali Diwali etc. This once again makes me think about black being used for anything bad, sad or depressing! Recently there was a program ‘We The People’ on NDTV discussing our bias towards fairness in skin tone and why we should not discriminate against dark skinned people. Whilst there is no doubt that I agree with this I also believe that such discrimination is something born out of our own learning / teaching.
We are taught to think of black as being bad in most scenarios....what do we think of when we read the words Black Mail ....Black Magic....Black Sheep (in the family)...Black Friday (bomb blast)...Black Money....(the list can be endless)? Don’t we overtly and subliminally learn to associate the color black with something evil...bad...etc? This feeling then percolates into our behaviour when we meet black (skin color) people.... the first impression is of suspicion. Do we have to blame ourselves or our teachings or the English language itself...??
Even sports have not been spared of this preference. Take chess for instance, it’s always the white pawns which get to make the first move and when sportsmen mourn they always wear a black band!
Be it black or white, discrimination has always been a grey area! Grey also reminds me of the moon this week. India’s first unmanned mission to the moon had a successful lift off. I have never seen more misplaced allocation of resources in our country. The mission aims to find out if there is water on the moon and take pictures of the moon’s surface. I wish they had spent the money on finding water in our country where millions don’t have water to drink or wash. As for the pictures of the moon's surface one just needs to take pictures of the eastern express highway near my house which is full of craters which even the moon will be proud of.
Wishing everyone a Happy Diwali and prosperous new year may sound as misplaced as our mission to the moon but then the phrase “Its darkest before dawn” also comes to mind!
1 comment:
Happy Diwali to all!
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