Our Sunita complex

Sunita Williams was on the front pages of newspapers across India all of last week. Hard-boiled hacks sang paeans in her praise, while TV channels tirelessly followed her every move. Sunita on a treadmill in space, Sunita floating, Sunita posing for a farewell shot, Sunita longing to wash her hair and walk on the beach with her husband and dog, Sunita sad because her return to Earth was delayed. Sunita fever reached a hysterical pitch by late Thursday evening when that thunderstorm over Florida prevented her spacecraft from re-entering the atmosphere.

Hindus, Muslims and Christians came together to pray for her safe return — remarkable unanimity in our religiously divided land even if they prayed in their separate places of worship. The media was insatiable in its appetite for Sunita news. Intrepid TV reporters trawled schools in remote places to bring us soundbites of children saying things like, “I want to say to Sunita, you rocks (sic).”

Sunita Williams brought out the worst in us. Through no fault of hers, she reminded us of how very Third World and second rate we are and how desperate for recognition from the West.

The Indian economy may be booming and there may be those who talk of how we are on the verge of superstardom as the world’s newest economic power, but our minds and hearts remain those of a colonised, defeated people. Our inferiority complex manifests itself most sickeningly every time someone with one drop of Indian blood gets recognition in the West. Sunita Williams is not Indian. She is as American as apple pie but we claimed her.

At least Sunita’s is a real achievement. Six months in space makes her the first woman to have spent that long a time away from Earth. But, had she been just a beauty queen, we would have been as excited. Remember the hysterics when Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai became Miss Universe and Miss World in the same year? In a minute we forgot our qualms about our sanskriti being polluted by decadent western ways and behaved as if these two lovely ladies had won a Nobel prize. They made national headlines and were feted and fawned upon, but when Amitabh Bachchan tried to invite the organisers of the Miss World contest to India, we remembered that beauty contests went against Indian culture. The contest was driven out of India because offended Bharatiya womanhood took to the streets to show its rage.

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