I was watching the closing ceremony of the Asian games held in Doha, y'day night. It was a fantastic end to the games. The closing ceremony was based on the Arabian nights stories. Alibaba, Sindbad and Aladdin came alive in front of the audience.
Just imagine what would've been the theme if this was held in India? Aishwarya Rai and Priyanka Chopra dancing to hit bollywood songs !!! Sonu Nigam and Sunidhi Chauhan singing popular numbers..and the whole setting would have resembled a bollywood movie. Infact we got a glimpse of what would happen in the Common Wealth games in 2010, ( or is it 11?? ) in the closing cermony of the previous c'wealth games.
In the handover ceremony where the country which will host the next edition, (which is India), we had Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherji , Sonu Nigam ,Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghosal.
Does Indian culture mean only Bollywood? I feel that we are presenting such a homogenised image of ourselves to the world. A look at the Doha opening and closing ceremony should put us to shame. It was such a vibrant and colorful presentation of their culture, folklore and people. China which is hosting the next Asian games, came up and presented a fabulous show at the end.
I could not find one hot movie star in it.
We are so good at celebrating the mediocre and not care about performers. That is why, we could find Ash and Rani running with the olympic flame when it came to India, and not many sports persons.
I don't think we deserve to be called a culturally rich country. What is the point of having such a diverse and heterogenous culture and people when it is not being made known to the outside world. Then there is no point in cribbing when people abroad visualise of magicians,snake charmers and elephants when talking of India.
