Airplane to Stamboul

A terribly shy author once remarked that mornings were the same everywhere, people had dreams and they would get on with life.

8:45am, April'19 - Stamboul.

I decide to throw on a pair of denim shorts, like I would in South Bombay, where I live, and jog downstairs to grab a bite.

My Tophane apartment doors open to the sleepy morn of a night crazed city. Unlike other major cities, Istanbul  is less in common with the rest of Turkey. I have had this conversation frequently  and people have always posited that the city of Istanbul has a streak of electricity to it.

I order my Turkish coffee, overlooking the Bosporus strait. Before I can catch it, my mind runs to the tragedy of the fact that time assigns not only significance to a place, but also decides its destiny. Anything other than the ‘now’ is thrown out of job. Souls and bones of the Godlike Achilles, the scholarly Parmenides- all lost within its metropolitan waters that now host night cruises to spawn tourist capital.

Turkish Coffee with Turkish Delight

A strait that was remarkably insignificant to ancient Greeks, becomes significantly remarkable today- connecting two of the prime continents of modern day- Asia and Europe.

I’m interrupted by the Doner Kebab vendor who catches my attention. He points out towards his aged father, white beard, Shisha in hand. The vendor translates his father’s dialogue for me to understand, and our conversation goes:

 "You’re a very pretty girl, you know that?" 

"Well you’re very nice, thank you."

"Where are you from?"

"I’m from India."

"Wow, we love India. Given the way you look, I bet you’re from Kashmir, right?"

"Ha-ha. Sorry to disappoint, but I live in Mumbai’.

Conceptions of beauty are not only culturally determined, but also time bound and source specific. Anybody who’s been to Turkey can testify to the Turkish obsession with Indian cinema. Further conversation revealed that the man had been exposed to films such as Junglee (1961), Arzoo (1965), and Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) when he was younger and that cast his mental identification of Indian feminine beauty to Kashmir.

The translation of beauty is an assignment of physical attributes to locational origins. Again, this assignment is done through broad generalizations taking into consideration ideas as simple as Weber’s ‘ideal type’, where in a certain match of existing knowledge is established to the immediate reality regardless of source/authenticity.

 

The apartment that we were living in belonged to a 26 year old Turkish millennial. My dad being my dad invited him over for a drink of Old Monk one evening, to provide him with an ‘Indian’ experience. He reciprocated with bringing in a local Turkish liquor brand.

Being incredibly exhausted, I was taking a shower when my habitual instinct of eavesdropping a conversation commenced.

Selcuk claimed that he couldn’t drink without smoking (a common habit among habitual smokers) and my dad offered to go downstairs for a smoke. Selcuk instinctively asked my mother, “Hey A., won’t you come out too?” Now my mother’s response bewildered me. There was a wide disparity between what she really wanted and what she portrayed she wanted, all in pursuit to establish a certain image of the ‘nice’/ traditional- reserved Indian female, create a sense of fellowship with Selcuk and his similar traditional middle eastern culture that sees the ideal female as ‘Good’ – who’s reserved, doesn’t smoke/drink etc.

Unfortunately, she erred at two points which further illustrates the problem of broad generalizations. Turkish culture is more European than Middle Eastern and hence the template of an ideal female, or any social construct is diabolically different from the collectivist attitude we easterners have. My mother being in her 40’s, skipped considering Selcuk’s age group while assessing his motivations. Such is the importance of cohort effects that if she did assess his age group, her tact might even have worked out.

I honestly anticipated a response  along the lines of, ‘My knees hurt from the sightseeing’, ‘I’m a lazy person and don’t like moving around while conversing’ etc. Instead, she confidently put up, “Indian women don’t drink/smoke. The men do, but women don’t, unless they’re of the very recent generation. It’s not our culture really.”

A wide eyed Selcuk inquired puzzled, “Really?”

My mother suavely shoved in, “That’s why my daughter doesn’t smoke too, even when kids her age in Europe do. Though things are changing but...

This was enough for my dad to cut in, pretty offended. He disagreed indignantly, “Please don’t listen to her; she’s being ridiculously ignorant and is talking rubbish really.” And then there was an awkward, not-knowing-what-to-say Selcuk, standing confused with his Turkish liquor at the doorstep, the  Old Monk already kicking in.

Here we see someone like my dear mum reaching the limits of culturally appropriating herself, or at least endeavouring to. In order to do this, she distorted her own culture willingly to establish a similar strain of thought as the ‘other’s’ culture.

This is a fascinating example of the strangeness of the concept of ‘cultural empathy.’ My main problem with the idea being, who sets the limit for it? And where does it, if it ever does, stop?  Again, if she would’ve kept the time frame logic in mind maybe her trick would’ve actually worked out. It’s fascinating how often we’re willing to give up our identity or to distort it completely for the sake of integration, but rarely ever swing the other way round.

 

Written by:

Anshruta Banerjee- SYBA'19