What is the hymn for India?
When I was told that we’re supposed to maintain a culture journal as a part of an assignment, I was confused as to what we’re supposed to write. In the class, we were later explained how culture forms smaller details of our day-to-day conversations. It is omnipresent. I started listening, with particular intent of finding cultural references in every conversation. This has now become a habit and since the next theme for the journal was cultural representation in media, I was in for a treat. Culture is portrayed and stereotyped in almost every form of media. More so now, since the advent of meme culture. Over the past one week as I deliberately started looking for signs, and have been tracking various forms of media but one particular thing that irks me the most is how our country is presented to the world audience in the western media. Slumdog Millionaire limited itself by showing only the poor, cringe-worthy conditions of living in the largest slum of Asia. The Darjeeling L...