Dispatches from a foreign correspondent in crisis

Punjabi Parmesan: Dispatches from a Europe in Crisis
Pallavi Aiyar
Penguin Books India, 2013

In a review of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers in Bookforum, Jonathan Shainin begins by dissecting a segment on the ABC program 20/20, on sex-selective abortion, titled 'India's Dirty Secret'. Anchor Elizabeth Vargas, Shainin claims, employs all the stock clichés associated with the foreign-correspondent-meets-third-world genre. We get, he writes, "obligatory references… to 'spiritual' India," a "needless… reference to 'ancient tradition' as an explanation for contemporary behavior", and even an irrelevant quote from M K Gandhi, accompanied by a misspelling of the great man's name. "If you were playing Sentimental Orientalist bingo while watching at home," writes Shainin, "your card would have filled up pretty fast."

And, to be sure, in my first few months reporting in India, the same snares entrapped me. For almost a week I desperately pitched a story about an open sewage stream running through New Delhi's posh Defence Colony neighborhood, and the ridiculous sheet-metal 'cap' that the local government offered as a solution (presumably in an effort to disguise the smell's source, so that it could be blamed on the dog). During the summer, I'd taken Hindi classes next door and, between the scorching 40-degree plus heat and the chewable humidity, I could almost feel the stench crawling on my skin. But the response I always got from my editor was a sardonic 'boo-hoo' and an eye roll. Open sewage is a long-standing problem that wouldn't constitute news to an Indian journalist. But coming from me, it would perhaps reek of Occidental snobbery.