The only people who have ever asked me for directions in DC are other foreigners.
When we want to find our way to someplace in
Hindustan, we do it the simple way: we ask someone.
In Jesustan, the natives grapple with maps instead.
Herein lies one of our profound cultural differences.
I’ve long suspected maps aren’t just guides to geography. Maps are, rather, an opiate to numb us to the uncertainties of life; a means to pretend that we are not in fact lost; an instrument of revelation, if you like. Like their idea of god, maps perpetuate the illusion that the lives of Jesustanis have some profound purpose, and that there is reward for virtue and punishment for sin.
No coincidence, then, that Jesustanis have maps for almost everything. Young E., an enthusiast for international peace who recently finished her undergraduate degree, told me she intends to solve at least three of the world’s problems before the age of thirty, and then get married and have two children. Already, at twenty-one, she has a map. So do most people in Jesustan. E., like most people in Jesustan, will more likely than not, be bitter and hard-edged; few maps, as those of us who travel the world know, actually correspond to the realities on ground.
Mapmaking is a major industry in Jesustan. Consider, for example, the business of getting married. Barnes and Noble in Georgetown has an entire section devoted to marriage-planning magazines and books. Today’s Washington Post Magazine quotes one map-maker as saying “taking lessons before your wedding gives you confidence and can reduce stress”. He wasn’t sadly, talking about new brides’ alleged terror of the one-eyed snake, those unhappy days having, fortunately, long passed us by. He was discussing, instead the virtues of mapping life before walking its course. Of course, all the proliferation of maps doesn’t stop one in two marriages from ending in divorce.
Eventually, I’m told, maps will be rendered redundant by Global Positioning Systems, which will mark a triumph of science over mumbo-jumbo. Already, schools in the District of Colombia are tracking not just the movement of their buses, but the precise times their young passengers get on and off. Parents are assigned codes which enable them to monitor the movements of their children online. Several companies are attempting to use GPS to monitor the ways in which their employees spend their time; workers, quite understandably in my opinion, resent this effort to eradicate that most important activity, slacking off.
Radicals in Jesustan claim all this is a sign of the coming of The Monster State. Perhaps. More likely, it is merely a manifestation of the profound belief in the existence heaven, a place where happiness is constant and uninterrupted if only you can find your way there. Witness the proliferation of internet matchmaking services, enhance-your-self-esteem books, make-your-first-million guides, and body-part-enhancement shops. A map to paradise? To most of us in Hindustan, I suspect this would sound as credible as the penis-enlargement oil sold at Dhabas on the Ambala-Delhi highway. Not so for the residents in Jesustan: here, they call it their national project.
2 comments:
A footnote on the Jesustani faith in maps: according to The Washington Post, a nuclear submarine recently ran aground because the ocean-floor map its crew depended on did not indicate the presence of a reef. The crew, I surmise, chose to rely on the map, rather than the plain evidence of their eyes about the shape of the ocean floor, as it would have manifested itself on their radar screens.
Way too cool. Me too sometimes wonder on all these things that Jesustanis do(newly baptised;-). But you put it very well. I myself have a few thoughts to blog about sometime.
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