The Reverse Culture essay

Is there any way to judge what life surrounded by squalor is -- except to visit it and see and smell it yourself?

You look at the people sitting there, and they look back, a little suprised, for you're not their usual visitor. Then they go back to doing whatever it is they were doing... and you wrinkle your nose, trying to breathe shallow... as though to keep as much of that air from entering your clean and sacred body, and you too move on. A wry and enigmatic smile on your face that no one can make anything about, and we know, you have no idea what to think. So what really can you even express on your face ?

You see a woman in a tattered sari, no slippers on her feet, carrying some utensil, too over-used. She is waiting her turn by the community tap to fill it with water. You notice her nose-ring, she looks at you, a little defiantly, as if to say I am as much a woman as you are. I do my thing, do you even understand? You with the fancy blue jeans, fancier sandals and rosy toe-nails. Are you here to look at me, are you pitying me?

Ah, then you do move on, a little ashamed and you don't know exactly why. That you are so rich, that you have been to the best places in the world, as a traveller, as a student. Yet you feel that that poor woman has something over you which lets her look upon you in taunting disdain. Funny though, all the time listening to all those old and wise men around in the boardroom, they really seemed to give the impression that you were the great benefactor of these people. That these people would look to you for their succour, and you started believing that yourself and that you would change this landscape. Change the conditions of these weary and dirty people. Not dirty, but covered with dirt. Yes you did think they were so naive, so very ingenous.

But you are a privilged one, of that there isn't a doubt. Not only the enormous wealth you have at your command but also so much power now. That's how you have been groomed. To take the reins of this vast industry, use those canny skills you learned in the hallowed grounds of your Ivy league school. Strange they did not talk of this poverty, the kind you see before you now. The kind you don't know what to make anything of. Somehow that woman you just saw by the community tap, was of your age, looked you straight in the eye, but somehow she did not fit anywhere in the economic pyramid they always talked of in school. Here too in the board room everyone stays away from talking of them, as though they aren't even an entity. As though they will just go away if you ignore them.

Now you may have become a little confused. The business model and all its bells and whistles beckon you with familiarity. These are things you've seen before. You can work the bottom line. You can analyze the balance sheet. You can look over the drawings and choose which way to go. But this picture of reality, this picture of your people that you may have talked wistfully about to your friends, sitting with them in some kerbside cafe, where everything was nice and clean, and smelling nice. Yes this picture you called up then was the country you knew her to be. You wanted to be your own person and to come here and do the right thing by her. But now as she stands before you, wanting to connect with you, you feel your self assailed by doubts in your own capacity to do what you then promised yourself.

Ah well !!! That's life, we must go on !

The first paragraph is so great! I am pretty impressed. For whatever its worth, I think that really has the energy of inspiration.

Italics might work well here to show her hypothetical dialogue:
...as if to say I am as much a woman as you are. I do my thing, do you even understand? You with the fancy blue jeans, fancier sandals and rosy toe-nails. Are you here to look at me, are you pitying me?

Ah, then you do move on, a little ashamed and you don't know exactly why. --- great sentences in this essay...

sometimes people will judge yu for using a comma splice:
But you are a privileged one. Of that, there isn't a doubt.

Thanks for sharing this! It really resonated with me. Especially the part about feeling embarassed to not be poor when in the presence of a poor person.

Questions for you Kevin !

Could I say that our circumstances, though appearing individual and personal, must somehow have a bearing on who we also are ? In this sense, what I write may be meaningful to anyone, like a solution in a mathematical space. If it exists, it must be true, and that is the mathematician's interest in it. Forgive me if this analogy appears obtuse, but it's quite close.

Students have a 'topic sentence' which defines the scope for them, to write and think about, albeit with freedom in that.

But what would a person without any such restriction choose to mull about ?

One might say, whatever matters most at that time to that person. An easy response in such situations to not appear prying into the other's affairs.

But, thinking of life philosophically, if the abstract is as real -- can we really be considering it as true as matters material, if we shun going deeper into it, however we justify our action?

Our intuition is how we recognize existence, of material things as well as those of an abstract nature. And the rational we build is more like the dressing on the truth we have already in our grasp.

Therefore a person, unencumbered by any assigned topic, would in some natural way select a topic which is real, that is, was there for him. Like some meditated reality.

And would that not be so indicative of the course of his life ?

So far it seems like you are saying something reasonable.


I think you mean that the truth you express has absolute value absolute validity that cannot be measured or judged in an appropriate way. That's true, too. When we teach composition, we are committing a necessary evil. It's just like when the Kung Fu master that tells the student to stand this way and kick that way. It is not always good to stand this way and kick that way, but we have to teach the basics.


Yes, if you want to write composition with what teachers call "good structure" it helps to have awareness of the way topic sentences work. You, Rajiv, understand why topic sentences can be useful, so you are able to go beyond them. You are like Bruce Lee, who was a student of Wing Chun, and he realized that the forms constricted him. In his mastery, he abandoned all form and created Jeet Kune Do, a formless martial art.

Your writing is formless, like good brush calligraphy and good Judo.

Another example of writing like that is The Catcher In The Rye.


Yes, and this is good to do if you are using proprioceptive writing or some other form of therapy... but when you create your art, you get to choose how to present it so as to have a particular effect on the reader. What if you express yourself without being constrained at all, but then it makes it hard for the reader to understand?

Yes, it would reflect a lot of things, and it would be meaningful. But what are you getting at? Is this a continuation of that discussion about whether I am doing a disservice to students by encouraging them to constrain their writing by conforming to the "rules" of composition?

There has to be a way .. to gradually remove the folds of these tattered clothings.

I put myself in a poor man's mind .. I have come to this place from somewhere far away. I am around thirty or thirty-five, I am not sure. The last place I had worked, they asked me my age, and when I sounded unsure, the person had laughed, as though to say.. I probably couldn't count anyway. I do think, how does it matter? A friend in my village, knew someone who lived here, and sent me to him.

It has been only a few months now. I went the first day with him to work, to the same place he goes. When we reached there, he asked me to wait by the side while he went up and spoke with the boss. I stood there trying to look active and strong, because that is what he had told me to look like. The 'boss' glanced towards me, then said .. fine, I could join the group working here, on the daily wages offered for my kind of job.

So, I became a part of the labor force working in this town, with these high-rise buildings and bustling traffic. We would come at 8 o'clock in the morning, then break for lunch around 12:30 in the afternoon. It was nice to be working with this group because they were quite friendly. I most liked it when they spoke about the lives we had all left behind in our villages. Each of us had reached that stage where it was futile to hope to make any money there, there simply weren't any opportunities. One by one, it seemed most sensible for each of us, to go to the nearest city and take our chances.

Now, I live with my friend's friend, sharing a single room with him and a few others. We pay our rent to him, which is half of my earning, but it seems worthwhile, because I can walk over to the building we are working on, in fifteen minutes. There is a woman who makes lunch for us to carry, and that is another big part of my wages. The meal at night is a different matter. Sometimes it isn't a meal at all. I join the others and we find some dingy place to sit and drink the local hooch. No one really talks with each other. Some smoke, and that helps to keep away the smell of the trash.

We are living on hope alone. Hope that somehow we will get a break, that our wages will suddenly increase, or there will be some miracle and this place we live in, will become like our village again. That we will get up to smell the clean breeze coming in from the fields. The cows mooing, and sounds of people stirring as they prepare to head to the fields. My own room has a fresh smell of earth and dung. Soon my little sister will come in, she'll bring my cup of tea and tease me for being lazy. Yes, it was for love of her and my parents that I decided to come to the city.

I write to her sometimes, but it's easier to phone. She says everything is fine and she can manage the few cows and the little land we have by herself. I know she is making that up, and it is not easy for her. My conscience begins to hurt as I realize I have sent them much less money than I thought I would. Forgive me God, I am just waiting for a better job. I have to help my aging parents, and marry my sister into a good household. She doesn't say that to me, and that's why it hurts me more. Her hopes from me..