Myth of the Car

Below is a text borrowed from 'forums' that we maintain for classes here. This one is for the "French Theory" course I took  in Fall 2012, led by Prof. Yue Zhuo. We read Mythologies and had to write on Mythologies around us. I chose to write on the myth of the car.

The discussion has trailing comments by the professor as well as student (s).

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Anuj Daga:

In cities like Mumbai, where density of people is very high and everyone is struggling for space, owning a car goes much beyond owning a vehicle that takes you from point A to point B. A city stuck in traffic, a city with not enough road for the pedestrian and the public transport, a city with no space to park and petrol prices shooting up, it should almost discourage any person considering to buy a car. Still, we see that urban development plans for more layers of fly-overs above existing roads and developers sell apartments with ‘extra parking space’, banks extend loans for cars, and newer car companies promote their purchase through flexible installment plans. Between this tension of need and luxury, the car assumes a new meaning.

I have always wondered why do cars have four doors when buses have only two? Why do automobile companies introduce bigger and bigger cars (read private modes of transport) when public transport in the city carries almost twice the people than it can accommodate and the city roads have no space to take up more cars? Over some time now, I have realized that the car has become a symbol of luxury. With an individual door for everyone to access and constantly increasing leg space to stretch, the car wants to be your new home. Luxury dictates need. The size of the car is a scale of the potential of luxury that you can afford.

As a reaction to the fact that the car could only be afforded by those who have a lot of money, where the car had come to construct your identity as a ‘rich’ person, TATA motors in India introduced the NANO car in 2009 which was to be a vehicle that even the ordinary mass could afford – it was targeted at Rs. 1 lakh (US $ 1800). TATA claimed that it would make the car affordable for all. It was expected that there would be a huge demand for the car by the middle class whose spending potential was modest as compared to the upper class who owned cars. The Nano being offered at a modest price of Rs. 1 lakh took an appearance of the local street cab (the auto rickshaw) and was a much light-weight car. Its production base ran into some complications with acquisition of land for setting up the factory and hence it opened up the policy of ‘placing order’. Initially there was a lot of interest in purchasing the car, for those who genuinely wanted to invest in a vehicle for everyday purposes. But the sales of the Nano decreased dramatically after the first few production runs.

It appeared that Nano didnot fulfil the middle class aspiration of being identified as the owner of a car. In the neighbourhoods of a city like Mumbai, you are often known by the quality and bigness of the car you own. The car defines your identity and social standing. It talks about your image and becomes a signifier of your way of life. Further the number of cars talks about your economic status and fetches you respect. In such way, your car starts owning you more than you own it.

Owners of Nano are frowned upon. Those who feared that the Nano would dramatically increase the traffic on streets by its virtue of being so affordable to masses didnot anticipate that the story will be an anticlimax. People crave to have larger cars, at no cost Nano, and they label it as a light, unsafe and unaesthetic car although it fits the context of the city perfectly – it is small (thus uses less parking space), slow (uses less petrol and adjusts with the pace of the city) and perfect for singles driving on the road. But unfortunately, it doesnot fit in the conventional image of corporate businesses and those who attend meetings at five star hotels. The car had reduced to, or extended its existence to its image.

It is thus I find Barthes’ Mythologies apt to talk about the new value system the car has generated.

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Yue Zhuo: 
The story of Nano is very telling, well recounted. Thanks. What's in confilct here is the value of utility and the value of "conspicuous consumption" (Veblen). Perfect transition to today's class.

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Zhiyan Yang:

Thanks Anuj for the Nano example. A rough examination of this "myth of car" with Barthes's double-layer sign formula: car in the context of your example has been deprived of its original "meaning" as a vehicle, and new "signification" of wealth and social status is instilled in the "form." But who creates the myth this time? The middle-class (it is not quite the same with Barthes's French bourgeoisie, is it?)? or a collaboration of the car sellers and consumers? How does this myth spread? Some form of nation-wide power must have something to do with the creation of myth here.

Thanks again!

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Anuj Daga:
It was interesting to think of your questions, some of which co incide with those that were raised in the class today. I have been thinking of these too. Especially on the idea of 'bourgeoiesie'. I always kept asking my friends what do they mean when they used this term. I always got new answers.

I read Marx, Raymond Williams (Keywords) and discussed with people, but never understood the context of France entirely. The French theory class has been helpful in understanding the context in which all these texts were written. So I am able to make some connections with those loose understandings.

One of the best ways I like to understand the bourgeoisie is that they are the asipring middle class. They are quite materialistic. Now these can again be complex phrases. I will try to elaborate. What I mean by aspiration is a desire to be like the upper class, so there is a form of imitation of something that you aspire to be or want. This imitation of the original want, falling in a changed economic bracket creates a new materiality. It is also when the original is studied or reproduced as an image.

I think the bourgeoisie consume this new materiality, this new image...
Another question raised in the seminar was "what is wrong with the bourgeoisie?" - If I may say, the removal of rationality from the use of an object, its reduction to an image and its altered value is something that creates discomfort within intellectuals towards the bourgeoisie. To Marx's 'use value' and 'exchange value', Baudrillard Jean added 'symbolic value' and 'sign value' as meta systems through which the materiality of the bourgeoisie is created. Perhaps the warped rationality through which the bourgeoisie consume is ideologically disturbing. Probably that may to some extent answer the question?

I had a lot of things in mind on the introduction of new appliances in the post war period in the French household. An intersting thing to know would be that a lot of technology geared towards defense of nations during the war created corollaries of inventions. Many of our household items were actually invented for wars. The washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc. are actually parts of larger war weapons which find place as docile domestic equipments in our homes today! Historian Beatriz Colomina talking about this kind of new domesticity in  one of her publications.

However, perhaps, it may have also become important to dismantle the huge amount of intellectual and economic investment that went into making the mega-devices of war into everyday consumable products. The post war saw these machines in a completely new way  and appropriated technology for innovative purposes...

I also liked the question on 'who produces myth' and 'how does it spread?"- And it will need a fairly deeper reflection to answer that.

But today's discussion was very interesting. Thanks to all for these doubts and questions.

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Yue Zhuo:
Good to read the exchange between you too. This is the type of "forums" I was hoping to see..

We talked a little about "leveling" yesterday in class.The Nano example was very much both an example of wanting to be like others ("aspring to be bourgeois" as Anuj puts it), and at the same time the desire of not wanting to be like others (if everyone can have this inexpensive car, then I want something better). It is both a compliance to social homogeneity and the desire for distinction).

Who is the creator of the "myth" is an interesting question. If I find time tomorrow, I will bring up the topic of reader/author.

Visual Conversations

And there are those moments when simultaneously, in a restaurant waiting for your friends to arrive you await the order you just placed to be brought. You look at people around sitting in the restaurant, noticing expressions, reading thoughts on their minds and occasionally, you hit sight with a person whom you would like to have shared a table with. Sometimes, as if things just have to happen, the line of sight that connects you to that person visually is absolutely clear. That person looks at you too (is it the clear line of visual axis at work?).

Both share glances. Initially hesitating. Then growing confident. Both try to overlook occasionally so that there are no misunderstandings. But the assumption of it being a misunderstanding itself is a misunderstanding. You distract yourself by talking to your table mates and wait to turn back your glance to that stranger across who you suspect is glancing back at you. Your postures are calculated consciously. You like the attention you receive. And while you smile at your table mates over a random conversation, you also actually want to impress that stranger across...

The person makes expressions as if thinking or day dreaming while turning to you. You wonder then, if he/she is looking deep into you or whether he/she is daydreaming in reality. You abolish the suspection...because you know it is not daydreaming. How is it confirmed? It is through the rhythmic sharing of glances. You know that one doesn't daydream in rhythms! Eventually you are transported mentally to his/her table. There are mini imaginations... "what if..." moments.

There are conversations that happen between both made up only through deep glances. You too feel that the smiles that person makes for his/her table mate are actually meant for you... You enjoy the parallel world you have created for yourself, which you assume is also sustained by this stranger. Do you wonder if this parallel world would ever or could ever collide with the present...or near future and with a secret desire of sharing this mental conversation with the person...? Do you wonder if the screen of gaze would rupture and bring you two in a space that you are no longer strangers?

You leave the space with these questions, and wonder if you would every confront this person - the real or the imaginary that you created in the head. However, I record this for if we ever meet in the future.

Of Love

Love happens when we start attaching meaning to certain actions of people, events that concern us and reflect upon us in our life. There are only a few people with whom we (can) sympathize and share our innermost thoughts feelings and desires. These are people who do not judge but let you be. 

But what is the question of meaning? What is meaning? What does it hold? Why is it important? And how does meaning get produced? Who allows the production of meaning? How do we relate to people who allow us to construct, develop and evolve these meanings? 

Meaningfulness is something that perhaps makes you feel complete as a person. Meaning brings coherence to your thoughts. It brings together the tangibility of the outside world and the intangibility of the internal world of the mind. By making them respond to each other harmoniously, meaning gives a sense of completeness - the idea of one's completeness is in various aspects. 

Different people make us feel complete in different aspects of life. I think we live these people. They bring a structure to our otherwise variegated thoughts towards forming a conception of that aspect. The idea of aspect is the different projections we have of ourselves. Most of our projections manifest in the real world. Sometimes we just don't know how. But these reflect in our actions - in the ways we operate. We search for response to these actions. 

Perhaps all respond to our actions. Very few respond to them in the way we want, our perceived ideal way. These people validate our actions by accepting them, without judging them, by allowing them to be the way they are. I think these gestures become meaningful to us because they legitimize our being. The meaning that gets constructed in the legitimization give us a fullness and come to define our identity. The formation of identity helps us gain confidence, and confidence drives our actions in life. 

People who help us attain such confidence through accepting us, giving us an ear, making us feel comfortable with ourselves become lovable. Such love is meaningful. We associate value to such acts which help us understand ourselves, and construct meaning. We thus possess meaning through love. We possess completeness of ourselves through love. And hence, when heart breaks, we feel incomplete about ourselves, therefore uncomfortable and restless.

Each one of us looks for this completeness. It gives us balance and comfort. And perhaps that's how it works...

Landscapes / US Road Trips

White Outlines

Rubaru...(English Translation)

Movie: Rang De Basanti

Music: A R RahmanLyrics: Prasoon JoshiSingers: Naresh Iyer, A R Rahman


aye saala

abhi abhi huaa yakeen
ki aag hai mujh mein kahi
hui subaah main jal gaya
suraj ko main nigal gaya
roo-ba-roo roshni
roobaroo roshni hai

jo gumshuda, sa khwaab tha
woh mil gaya woh khil gaya
who loha tha pighal gaya
khincha khincha machal gaya
sitaar mein badal gaya
roobaroo, roshni
roobaroo, roshni hai..

dhuaan chhanta khula gagan mera
nayi dagar naya safar mera
jo ban sake tu hamsafar mera
nazar mila zara

aandhiyon se jhagad rahi hai lau meri
ab mashaalon si badh rahi hai lau meri
naamo nishaan rahe na rahe
ye karavaan rahe na rahe
ujaale mein pee gaya
roshan hua jee gaya
kyon sehte rahe
roobaru roshni
rubaru, roshni hai..

dhuaan chhataa khula gagan mera
nayi dagar naya safar mera
jo ban sake tu hamsafar mera
nazar mila zara

***

Oh shucks...I just realised... 
That I have a fire, somewhere inside me 
As soon as it dawned, I just burnt
And I gulped down the sun....

I am face to face with light 
I am absolutely seeing light in its face... 

A dream that was almost lost 
Has been resurrected and blooming now 
Something hard like iron has now melted 
It got pulled, danced 
And has transformed into the strings of a sitaar 

The flame of my life is fighting the storms 
Now...it's growing like the flames of the torch 
Whether now I exist or not 
Whether this journey exists or not 
I have gulped down streams of light 
I have become radiant...
I have started living

I am now face to face with light. 
Why bear anymore? 

The fog has now cleared up the sky 
Now I see a new path and a new journey 
If you can become my friend in this journey 
Hint into my eyes 

Oh shucks...

The Mirror of Strangeness

Sometimes, a stranger allows you to open up much more than you generally would to a known person. In introducing yourself to a new person, you think, rethink  and construct and consolidate yourself.

In this strangeness, I find doing so many things that I would otherwise not do...I realize now what it would mean to be alone, to be detached from others, to not talk to any one, to not have a feeling of belonging...In an absolutely alien world, one constantly searches for familiarity - and even the slightest of it is so valuable that you cherish it, and in order to preserve it, do what ever you can. You are ready to change yourself, and mould yourself to be known and to feel belonged.

There is a general sense to be liked and therefore to go beyond yourself to experiment.  Isolation, although someone may consider essential, can not be sustained for a long time. To a stranger you may reveal a new self. To a stranger you can redefine your characteristics. And in order to test them, you can behave in new ways.

And a stranger thus allows you a canvas, that is a semi-mirror. A mirror through which you look, reflect and rediscover. A mirror that only gets as deep as you want it to be. When you don't accept it, it becomes a painting, and when you accept it, you wonder which side is real...

One's own World

I always feel at loss of words when I attempt to talk about America. I wonder if there is not enough I know to say, or there is not enough the country has to offer to speak about itself. Perhaps neither. I think they have documented their country so intensively that every brick and stone has been written about. In such a scenario, one wonders if there is any thing new one could contribute. Their lifestyle, pace and developed conditions offer them ample time to engage in intellectual activities. I believe most of us in the developing countries work too hard to just makes the ends meet for the day. Our race is for survival. Most Americans have a dream beyond survival, and they can get pretty aggressive in order to fulfill it. America maintains high energy and enthusiasm all the time.

But this is not something that I wanted to talk about at all. And I wonder if what I want to talk about is really related to the above. Or it's just to do with the first line I wrote. I generally am at loss of words to express myself. Am I becoming more and more neutral about things? Am I losing my sense of opinion? Am I maturing to be more accepting of things and to be less "judgmental" (as many people often used to tell me) - I wonder if any of this can be called a change? Have I changed? Did I want to change? I don't know...

Many people here call me "funny" and it's not a new adjective that has been used for me. I have never understood my description as "funny" completely, just like another which people tag along - "cute". It's funny! When I asked one of my friends here about why would she call me so, she thought and answered: "because you say strange things". I asked her to clarify further. And she said - "because you say things which people won't otherwise say..." I did not know what to make of it. But I immediately connected it to what my mother used to tell me all the time - "You live in your own world!" - I think she was disgusted about the fact that I never lived in the real, present world. She would give me instructions while leaving home and I would completely forget to execute them - all the time. I would try hard to be attentive and still overhear. I don't know what happens in my head.

I register words, things, places, actions and completely mix them up? Is it? After the new year hangover, I had an interesting discussion with my friends at Rohit's house. It was about my general weak sense of geography. It all started with me confusing the capitals of states in south India, as well as mixing up the languages. Over a general confusion between the relationships between Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, Odisi, Bangalore and Andhra Pradesh, Karthik brought up a key question - about how could it be possible for a person to remember quotes from French theorists and not know of one's own geography. This was the first time any one considered it to be a legitimate issue for discussion. I have had similar problems figuring out relationships between Paris, Italy, France and Rome - Generally when I mix up capitals and states, people get disappointed and disgusted very quickly. (I am inclined to believe that they also judge my achievements through this lens). However I tried to decipher if this was because of my attitude to understand my own associations and trajectories with places and knowledge?

Karthik went on to share that his knowledge was a product of the general talks around his social space as well as his interest in current affairs. In the same way, Debashree said that her mother was a key figure in making her realize these small associations like cuisines and places, geographies and states, etc on her travels. We soon tried to trace the logic in which my memory worked - and I realized that I slip into my imaginative world too soon to be able to hold on to a tangible fact like the Capital of a state or the language of a place. I can still broadly compartment ideas into geographic zones, but it could be very difficult for me to talk about such ideas using facts. 

I stay with a playwright in America currently. through him I have come to know of a lot of humanities. We often engage in conversations, but lately, he has started playing with me a game: he puts on a piece of music and asks me to identify the style, and thus the composer and place. I must mention here that it was only recently that I gradually started to understand the principle behind Western classical music (over a night dream, literally) and now I appreciate it much better than I did before. I interpret the music, and my landlord, playwright (Lazarre) builds it up. We paint a scene together through the interpretation of the music, which we then situate in a geography. When the music ends, we eagerly wait for the announcement of the composer - most of the times he is right. I am getting better.

But that is not all, he recently visited the newely extended and opened Yale Art Gallery only to notice that he didnot like the way in which it was curated. I immediately picked up to say my ideas of how the objects must  have been kept - and he, agreeing completely, was almost completing my unfinished sentences. The idea of telling stories in space connected both of us.

But what have these two experiences to tell of? Perhaps we live in our own world. Yes. I do. And it is important to have a world of one's own. This world is not factual, it finds space in the imaginary, more specifically the semi-fictitious. And ironically if I was to bring in Derrida and say that my world is stuck between the multiple layers of representations (sound, visuals, language, word, object, etc.); I would only talk of a world which is filled with infinity. Hence I feel lost. 

Occasionally I have pulled some strings off it, and there remain many ideas to be re-strung together. Why re-strung? Because all reality is perhaps an idea, and so the real is an imagination. Imaginations have already been structured. Like our knowledge systems - in the discourses of factual histories and geographies, where is the discussion for place and phenomena - that resonate across cultures and humanity? Often our parameters for understanding the world around us have become strictly structured through these external knowledge systems. I do not think it is fair to evaluate every one through these systems. Where is other wise the place for a person to think of a falling apple and discover gravity or to believe in the whole universe to be understood through energy and mass?

But given all that, I remain concerned of my world and being able to decipher it. My mother pointed at this world and I must be able to convince of her of its merit. Meanwhile, Lazarre (my playwright landlord) too calls me funny!

New Year 2013 Celebrations

My first New Year in USA was made completely memorable by my friends at New York: Rohit, Karthik, Vinit along with two new friends - Debashree and Jasdeep, joined by Neelima straight from San Francisco on the New Year! We went around the Times Square looking at the craziness of people to see the ball dropping event. It was for the first time after coming to USA that I saw a density as huge as something I would see in Mumbai everyday! Immense security and pretty organized New York streets allowed us to cut across the avenues to move to less crowded areas. The bars were full, the pubs shouted loud, the streets were lit up - New Year celebration was all around.

Strolling around the Rockefeller center whose courtyard was turned into a skating rink, and looking around the beautifully lit Christmas tree, we went towards another part of the city, quieter and as merrier as the above. We chose a beautiful cafe to hang out, where we went insane at our table - actually a blackboard! We architects and lawyers from Harvard, Cornell and Yale took over our drawing skills drafting out a construction sheet on the table. Occasionally we corrected each other to show guidelines, formatting and essential details! We soon had to order extra chalk exhausting that kept on our table.

Our next session at the night was a long game of Pictionary with Bollywood movies. And let me see if anyone of you can guess the drawings below. Some were so funny and obvious that mere 4 blanks did the job. Others were quite intellectual. Debashree proved to be the most prolific drawing out iconic scenes from movies, while Jasdeep did a good job of guessing some despite not being good at drawing!

We went home late, by around 1 30 am when we started a 6-player Ludo - something retrofitted with the old Ludo version, that Rohit had! The game went on non stop for 4 hours, when we finally decided to retire leaving the game unfinished!

On a round of New Year Resolutions on the next day in a south Indian Restaurant, where everyone decided some, I had none. In the meanwhile, Karthik asked me to visit Boston instead of returning back to New Haven. While I went into my grey zone, Neelima made me go for it, asking me to be more instinctive this year. I thought for a while and dived in. And I think that was one of the better decisions I made. I thoroughly enjoyed Boston - a great city, with great friends, great buildings, and absolutely unforgettable moments.

Boston Story next.

Happy New Year 2013