We all have a bazillion things to be grateful for everyday, every hour, every second.
For me, one of those things that tends to remain constant, is the fact that I have the blood of my Indian predecessors running through my veins.
As someone who grew up outside of India, the connection you feel towards your home country is unfortunately, pretty limited. You visit once a year for a month during summer break, you read about your history and rich culture, you sing your anthem with great pride every single time,…but you still see it as your home away from home. A myriad of all things sentimental, powerful, and yet, alien.
Thankfully, after moving back to my homebase for college, I’ve been lucky to realise the true value of the things I was missing out on.
One of those things was the practice of Yoga.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no yogi sitting in the middle of the woods, somewhere atop the Himalayas, chanting Om whilst white-cheeked nuthatchs cheer me on. Heck, I haven’t even performed my asanas in over a couple of weeks(the blame rests with my chronic inability to wake up anytime before 7:30; thanks, lockdown!).
But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped appreciating this beautiful art(and lots of sciene) that’s sadly buried in a chest deep, deep into the soil of our generation.
What’s even sadder is the fact that our own compatriots tend to mock at the very art+science their own ancestors used to perform religiously.
Even sadder? The very forces that unfortunately deem people of our country to be “filthy, smelly and ugly”(Cue: Citizen Khan) are the ones who take great pride in putting on their nike slacks, taking a sip of “turmeric chai latte”(god save us) and singing to the world, “Nama-slay everybody!” whilst folding their hands and bowing their heads, making sure they get something spiritually peppy for the ‘gram.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to bash people from foreign lands for enjoying the million benefits that stem from yoga. Far from it! I only ask that you watch any Hollywood movie/show, or for that matter, any American piece of entertainment, really.
What’s the one thing all (if any) of the Indians in said piece of entertainment have in common? They all have that funny Indian accent which Apu from The Simpsons (white man :|) has “mastered”, over the years. If you go deeper, you’ll notice that they almost always tend to be the outcast, the ones with no friends, who eat “funny curries” for lunch, the cab drivers, and are just generally used as objects of humour, rather than actual characters with like, proper dialogues and displays of emotion (too much to ask?)
Is it fair for people to take pride in being experts in Yoga, whilst being unabashedly racist towards the people who introduced it in the first place?
Is this a clearcut sign of the cultural appropriation that follows white supremacy; which has direct connations to the ignorance of other cultures?
Something to ponder over!
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