How to write about India

Disclaimer: This response is inspired by the article authored by Binyavanga Wainaina, 'How to write about Africa'. The article I am writing is not meant to offend any culture, religion or ethnicity. Just so that I make it clear, I am an Indian  and this is my opinion about how she is represented in the popular media, through books and other tools of entertainment. If anyone finds this offensive, please bear with it and keep in mind the purpose and intent of writing a pastiche.

Remember: Overflowed sewages and Slums are vital to creating the perfect setting for your story and MAKE SURE that very important quote that “in India, even exceptions run into millions” is known to your readers, actually never mind, that should be your title. It is key to making let the world know what millions of people are doing with their miserable lives.

FIRST, list the values and ideals that define India, that basically are the essentials that make up their everyday life; the ideals upon which the 1.3 billion people of India have laid the very foundation of their lives:

 
1. Arranged Marriage/Child Marriage is okay.

2. Rape is normal.

3. Corruption is fine.

4. Curry is the staple of their diet.

5. Every Indian aspires to be an engineer, or a doctor.

 
Most of them are one of those call center lads who have a hard time talking because the only language they know how to fluently speak is 'Indian' or the more popular name 'Hindu'. Not to mention that it seems kind of odd that the followers of Hinduism and the language of India are both called the same. Such is the logical Indian approach. Overpopulated, dirty, jammed with stupid 1980's cars: without these things you might as well not write about India.

 
Your Indian characters could include rich people,  or no...... include call center lads, struggling teenagers, construction workers, clerks because it won't feel right to the audience to have a rich or successful guy because that takes the whole thrill out of it, which is the whole purpose about writing about India. Show in detail what you intend to do as you would only want to write about something that would benefit India, because you care. You care about the people below the poverty line, you care about the Indian economy, you care about what our government is and what it will do. Show this love to the people of India and they will love it. They are oppressed, they are misguided, they are lost in the enormity of the population,, they have no purpose to their lives, and therefore you should be the mentor and you should preach and they should follow.

 
Describe, in detail, the food in India and how they eat too much of those spicy curries. Tell the audience the plight of the poor lads and girls who have to everyday go through the pain of letting the smell out through their sweat pores. Indians don't eat anything else, they don't know how to make anything else. All the way from north to the south, from the east to the west, all they eat the thick red curry because that is the Indian cuisine. They also make 'roti' and 'naan' to go along with their rich spicy curries which will kill you if you try it. Make sure that your audience knows the facts: Indians are vegetarians, the small amount of people who are non-vegetarian don't eat beef because its religious. After all, Indians, all of them in fact, follow cultures that are no different to each other. 'Hindis', and the minorities: that's it.

 Talk about the very small amount of educated professionals in India and talk about how you called an Indian to help you out with your laptop. Such generalization is good as it makes other Indian people feel educated. ABSOLUTELY, NO DOUBTS, INCLUDE in your text that women are oppressed like never before, they are held within the four walls of the house. Chuck in some pictures of sad women into your text and make sure that it is colorful so that through that diversity, you can communicate the magnitude of the number of women who don't have basic human rights. Remember, this way, you are empowering them, you are teaching the simpletons of India how they should treat their women. Also, make sure that you include the traditional norms of the Indian life. They get married to people they have never seen before and both families of the husband and wife have fights all the time. Through that you can bring in that 'desi' mood you have been waiting for so long and this will allow you to add an extra layer of important information about the ‘common’ culture of India, which you really care about.

Through ‘BOUNCE’, the all-knowing Iggy Azalea has enlightened us with the interest of the Indian people. They love to ride elephants, all of them love to dance, and all of them worship idols which are taken care of by priests who smoke weed. Mention that India’s culture has benefited from the 400 years of British rule and it has made them more civilized. Also talk about the accents, about how everyone in India sounds like Russell Peters’ dad. You must talk about Bollywood: it is such an essential tool to your success because literally every single Indian loves it. Movies like ‘Singham’, ‘Dabaang’, ‘Phatta Poster Nikla Hero' are the building blocks of the Indian society…….

I have so much more to write about the media representations of India. I could go on talking about how to represent India in the manner that popular culture does, but for now I have other priorities than this. Mock exams after all decide what your life will be like afterwards. You might as well die if you fail for a subject in these tests.

Again I don’t intend to offend anyone, this is written solely for the purpose to mock the media for its popular descriptions of what India is like which creates stereotypes . Quite honestly, I find these funny because in Chinua Achebe’s words people don’t have that ‘balance of stories’ to make educated decisions.

How does Things Fall Apart conform to, or deviate from, the conventions of a particular genre, and for what purpose?

Things Fall Apart, authored by Chinua Achebe, is a book that is one of a kind. It shows characteristics of conforming to be part of the genre of realistic fiction but is also close to creating a whole new genre as well. The author’s use of non-linearity in his book makes it an interesting read which is away from the conventional norms of realistic fiction.

In realistic fiction, real conditions found in the real world are used along with fictional characters. This is evident in Things Fall Apart as the theme is set in the 1800’s and the book, in the first part, informs the reader about traditional African culture but to give it life and humaneness, Achebe uses fictional characters such as Okonkwo, Obierika and Ezinma. Achebe puts his fictional characters in the environment he created and presents them as following their everyday lives and through that he shows the great dynamics of his Ibo culture by adding events such as marriages, funerals,, sacrifice, exiles, crimes etc. Since most of the book is dedicated to inform the reader about the Ibo culture and the people in it, we can deduce that Achebe aims to bring the African people, specifically Nigerian culture to the forefront to give it meaning and significance. This is one of the main evidences of Achebe’s book conforming to the norms of realist fiction.

The non-linearity present in the first part of the story deviates from the conventional linear approach of most realistic fictional writers. This has a very significant implication as it is following the art of speaking which is highly prized in the Ibo culture. Achebe’s non-linear way of presenting the culture in the first part presents a direct parallel of how skilled Ibo speakers can speak for long periods of time and hit the point at last just like Achebe did for part 3 of the book where at last Okonkwo commits suicide. Achebe also uses a significant amount of proverbs to express the importance of them being the palm oil with which words are eaten. Therefore the art of speaking or conversation is held in high value in the production of this book and hence is deviating from the norm of a linear approach used within realistic fiction. It could also be that Achebe wanted to prove himself as a matured writer and wanted to add his own personal flair to the book.

The purpose of not following the conventions of European realist fiction could be the cause of one of many reasons. It is possible Achebe wanted to embrace his culture or show how complex its structure actually is and it’s actually just not a matter of “black and white” as Reverend James Smith says. Achebe intends to bring out the whole culture in front of the readers like an open book before the start of its rapid decline due to colonization to show the readers that the Ibo were once great people, who had unknowingly given into the cunning plots the white people like Mr. Brown had created...............................

Social status in 'Things fall apart'

Social status is one of the most important concepts discussed in Things fall apart. Ones worthiness and status in society was determined by his success: number of wives and titles, amount of land and yams. Chinua Achebe, is critical of how important status and power is to Okonkwo, the protagonist of the story, and this helps develop his character into a self-made, over-ambtious and warrior-like man.
 In part 1 of the story, Achebe presents the Igbo social hierarchy in a nutshell, starting with a man at the lowest end of the spectrum, Unoka and comparing him to his son, Okonkwo, who is presented to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. The author emphasises Unoka’s low status by staging him to be a man who had no titles and was heavily in debt. In addition to this, he was left to die in the Evil Forest which was a place only the osu, twins, or men who had committed sins were buried. Things fall apart depicts the internal struggle of Okonkwo to be the opposite of what his father was and this eventually leads to his downfall in Part 3 of the story.

Okonkwo resented his father, but he was fortunate that the Igbo didn't measure the worth of a man based on the worth of his father because the Igbo people believed that a man had to work hard and be skilled to climb the ladder to the top of the social spectrum. Okonkwo was made fun of by being called Unoka agbala which was a reference to a woman but also a man who had taken no titles. Because of this Okonkwo grew up to be a very ambitious man and started from the bottom by being a sharecropper then one by one bought his well deserved titles.

There were 4 titles that the Igbo man could earn in his lifetime. They had to be bought and hence it showed how much money a person had and this was fundamental to the concept of social status. A wealthy man would have a big compound, many wives and could provide his wives with huts which was an indication that the man had a high status in the society. In addition to his wealth, Okonkwo had beaten Amalinze, the Cat and 'earned' his wife Ekwefi and was also a very successful warrior.  

In part 2 of Achebe's story, we can see an Okonkwo who lost his titles and land due to a 'feminine crime' he committed, killing Ogbuefi Ezeudu son. The extent of man's personality being a masculine was an influential factor in where one was put on the spectrum. Unoka and Nwoye are seen as 'feminine' by Okonkwo who is a self-confident, self-made 'man' as he is recognized among the clan.  The influence of age on social status can't be understated and unless one was a man like Unoka, an elder was respected in the village. According to his novel Okonkwo had "washed his hands" and so he was held in high regard depute his short-tempered behaviour. 

Overall, the significance of social status is huge in the characterisation of key characters in the story and provides great insight into how the igbo life and clan is structured. It provides the readers with a template to view the characters at a particular level in the society to help understand their sorrows. It is also significant as the Osu's and the social outcasts are the first ones to join the church in Mbanta which further deepens our understanding of how these people were ignored within the society and ends up being the cause for the uprise of the missionaries in Umuofia.