Western Culture Taking Over India? Not Anytime Soon

   Beyond the many Hindu idols that exist in the form of 100 feet statues or small shrines in the streets and men who wear dress like outfits, India has no doubt been influenced by the west, but is in no danger of losing itself.  

   Let's begin by considering the two restaurant chains that most typify America that have been brought here: McDonald's and Pizza Hut.  Yes they are here, but a McDonald's ice cream is very small, the top item on the McDonalds menu is the McVeg for $2 (an item missing in America).  Also on the menu is the Chicken Maharaja Mac and the Paneer Salsa wrap.  In Pizza Hut, teens congregate with their Dolce and Gabbana fashionable clothes, but order the spicy and popular Paneer Masala Pizza.  

India sells more movie tickets than America.  But, their theaters normally only show one movie, and typically it has lots of singing an dancing in it.  The popcorn is tiny, they serve veggie burgers, the coke is a kiddy size, and the movie that we saw contained zero plot and a whole lot of fluffy mush.  The singing was awesome, but far too happy and flamboyant to ever appear in America.  Also, the stench of the man sitting beside us and the dozens of cell phones that not only rang but were picked up in the theatre would never have been tolerated.  

   English is interspersed with Hindi sentence by sentence in the Hindi TV stations and in the Bollywood movie we saw.  LEET such as "UR" is used in professional business advertisements and cell phones abound.  While a person may not have a shirt that is one piece or may not be wearing a shirt, they do have a cell phone. Notable was the time when I tripped on some stairs and even beneath the glow of the American McDonald's sign, three people reached out and caught me before I fell, a very non-American reflex.

   While modernity was complete in some areas of India, there was still a striking contrast in other areas.  Most notable was the donkey carrying a man with vegetables to market outside of the India Center for Brain Research.