Of Ants, Grasshoppers, NGOs & Big Business

Following is one of those forwarded emails entitled "Enjoy the Truth" spreading around Rich's office. It's a retelling of Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper." I found it fascinating. Rich said, "Not very funny, but a highly interesting glimpse into the Indian mind. Shocking, really..." Another great thing about being a foreigner: something as pedestrian as forwarded email becomes cultural artifact. . .


From: [An Indian rising-middle-class engineer]
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 6:41 PM
To: [The Indian engineers at the office & Rich]
Subject: FW: Enjoy the truth

Jokes!!

OLD VERSION...

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

ArundhatiRo y stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance). Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry. CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Institutions & in Govt Services.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Ro y calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley. 100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...

As a result of losing lots of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers, India is still a developing country......

Merinda's Two Cents:
Interesting, eh? So this is clearly a revision of a similar email that bombarded American inboxes during various recent presidential elections. Here's one American revision of the ant & grasshopper fable. Fascinating how two different cultures can take an idea and spin it so differently. This Indian version seems to blame the world's well-meaning aid to and capitalistic exploitation of India as the reason the grasshopper is still starving. In America, it's simply the Democrats who are to blame.

Even more fascinating is that in India the grasshopper is the loser, while in many American interpretations (in Disney's old flick the grasshopper ends up playing his fiddle for the ants in their tunnels and they all live happily ever after) the grasshopper is the winner because he is the artist, the party animal, the one who truly enjoys life. In India where starvation is a stark reality, not just a romantic idea (i.e. "a starving student or artist"), the ant is clearly the winner simply because he's alive, enjoying life or not. And with so many people starving here in India, the only way some can reconcile the injustice is to conclude that the grasshoppers must deserve it. If only those NGOs would stop feeding them . . . !!

I guess in the end it's not all that different from the Democrat vs. Republican rhetoric. Just looks shocking from an outsider's perspective, especially an American who used to believe the world is dying to have a piece of the "American Dream" and it's our job to share it. Not so sure about that anymore when I read about poor remote villages in India horribly polluted because they don't have electricity in their huts so they are using diesel generators to charge up their battery-powered TVs to get a slice of such delectable American fare as Friends and Desperate Housewives. Okay, I don't know if that's what they're really watching, but American TV is definitely here in India.

This week there've been protests in India because of some racist comments to an Indian actress on a British reality show. Sometimes I wonder if this global culture thing is really a good idea . . . Maybe we were all just meant to stay home with our mothers minding our own business.