Incomplete Information
An Elementary Education
For me, the allure of India, the country, the people and the music was slower to develop than my fascination with the food. Back in elementary school, I had a vague idea of who Ravi Shankar was because one of his albums was in the small collection of records in our dining room. But I don’t remember listening to it back then. I was more interested in hearing Peter and the Wolf or Rusty in Orchestraville.
I knew nothing of India at the time, and probably would not have even been able to locate it on a map! Except, maybe in the Columbus Atlas that sat on the shelf of our den. But that would have been cheating because by then, I likely knew how to use an index. Back then, I did not think about other countries even though I vaguely remember a few lessons in elementary school. I was still trying to master the multiplication tables with my third grade teacher, Miss Quinn.
That began to change, however after I watched a documentary about Calcutta on PBS with my parents. The film included many unfamiliar scenes including a few upsetting sections that remained stuck in my mind including a scene from a leper colony. As a third grader, I didn’t actually know what Leprosy was but it seemed scary to me. I don’t think I watched the entire film back then. I suppose this could be where I formed some of my initial impressions about India. They were at best scattered ideas which probably were exaggerated by an overactive imagination.
Many years later I found the documentary posted on You Tube and I watched the whole thing. It was filmed in 1968 by the French director Louis Malle and contained very little dialog. The pictures more than told the story of the difficulty of day-to-day life for so many residents of Calcutta. Parts of the film still prove disturbing to me. The sheer poverty that so many were living in back then must have left an indelible impression on my third grade mind. It was nothing like the life I knew growing up in a suburb of Boston.
While YouTube has allowed us to watch old documentaries such as Calcutta, it has also helped new filmmakers showcase their work. This, along with the recent affordability of quality cameras has made it possible for anyone to create their own films. And a large group of amateur documentarians have sprouted up creating videos about everything from current events to street vendors. Likewise, vlogs have become the new television series leading to the creationg of a huge number of cooking shows covering many different cuisines. It was these shows that I was initially drawn to frequenting shows such as Vah Reh Vah. I quickly discovered other YouTube channels that were showcasing the omnipresent street vendors who specialize in dishes that can be assembled and served quickly. Indian fast food!
As a by product these food-related videos, I began to catch glimpses of India the country, the society, the people. Occasionally I would eschew the food vlogs for videos about festivals, rural life, architecture, music or even the numerous Goods Carrier trucks (making hairpin turns on narrow mountain passes). I began to read books and search for movies based on historical events. I was developing a better picture of the country, but as with food, the more I learned, the more questions I would inevitably have.
After a few years of absorbing non-food information from different sources, I began to assemble basic knowledge of India’s recent history; learned the names of most of the states; and even started to learn a few words that were not related to food. And then, returned to my main interest with a new focus. I started to pay closer attention to things such as religious dietary restrictions; how local geography and climate influenced the availability of different ingredients; and the part outside invaders or rulers played in changing the cuisine (and much more). This wider net eventually introduced me to the wide range of regional dishes.
With the plethora of new sources of information easily available today, it’s often easy to forget that detailed information about the diversity and complexity of India’s society was not so readily available back in the seventies without going to a library. Especially not for an elementary school kid growing up in the United States.
However sheltered we may have seemed in elementary school, we were not completely ignorant of the world around us. We would occasionally host exchange students from other countries in our classes. While I think there must have been more, I only remember two: Bachman, who joined us from Iran when I was in third grade and Ivar, from Sweden or Norway, who was with us during my junior year in high school.
But it was middle school where my world began opening up in an unexpected way. Up until seventh grade my exposure to rock and other popular music had been provided by AM radio. But when I heard Jimi Hendrix in music class a whole series of fireworks were set off that literally changed my life. Music was going to be my career. And I was going to learn to play guitar.
My Hendrix fixation eventually gave me the opportunity to hear Ravi Shankar perform in the film Monterey Pop. And as my musical tastes expanded to other 1960s bands, I started to hear the sitar used in novel ways. The George Harrison song “Within You Without You,” made use of tabla as well as sitar and likely was an inspiration for dozens bands during the late sixties. Hendrix even used an electric sitar for the track “Cherokee Mist” that remained unreleased during his career.
Interestingly enough, with Hendrix there was an India connection as well. Although I didn’t put six and nine together at the time, the cover for Hendrix’s second album Axis: Bold as Love drew heavily on vibrantly colorful religious imagery common in India.*
While I was in college the song “Ever so Lonely” by the band Monsoon caught my ear. Unlike so many of the late-sixties psychedelic exploitations of sitar, this song blended a contemporary pop song (that I might have ignored otherwise) with sitar, tabla and western instruments over a somewhat predictable drone. Fronted by a young Sheila Chandra, the song was a hit in England and at least made it to commercial radio on this side of the Atlantic. I found the 12″ single and their album pretty easily, but my ears still had as much to learn as my taste buds. Since music was an subject that I knew better than cooking, learning and exploring was much easier. And learn I would, even if most of what I initially began to hear was more western than eastern.
- This cover was not well received everywhere though: This article from 2014 details a complaint by the Penang Hindu Association and now the cover art came to be banned.