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Portuguese, Indian authors call to fight 'McDonaldisation' By Hindol Sengupta, Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, Dec 12 (IANS) Communism is dead, so is fascism, ideology has evaporated, long live McDonald's. Five prominent Indian authors and two of Portugal's best lamented the decline of politics and personal principles across the world, shaking heads and clicking tongues at the "McDonaldisation" of the 21st century. "It's the same all over, and it's a shame," said 42-year-old Portuguese author Clara Pinto Correia, her red hair falling like licking flames over her shoulder and coal black eyes blazing. "We have to constantly fight against cultural domination, where everything becomes a McDonald's," said Correia at a seminar organised by Delhi's niche literary magazine, The Little Magazine. The seminar on the writers and politics was also attended by one of Portugal's most well known authors, the white-haired, 78-year-old Urbano Tavares Rodrigues and Indians Keki N. Daruwalla, M. Mukundan, Nirmal Verma, Upamanyu Chatterjee and Mrinal Pande. Moderated by Pande, a writer, journalist and television anchor, the deliberations centred on the decline of traditional political stances and the arrival of new-age angst in literature. "The main forms of experimentation today are in disoriented and disjointed writing," said Rodrigues, who lived through the grim years of Salazar's dictatorship and was expelled from university as a young man. "We were more active against a certain type of autocracy," said Rodrigues, one of whose books was banned in Portugal until the fall of Salazar. Those were the times when people like Rodrigues found ways to express their opposition in diverse and subtle ways. "We used humour and sometimes very sexy mediums to get across our message," smiled Rodrigues, bespectacled and in a grey suit looking more like a loving granddad than a revolutionary. "That's nice," replied Pande, "if caught, you could always say it was about sex." Added Verma: "I was in Czechoslovakia during the revolution and I know that using alternative means is the best ways sometimes." But times have changed and somehow there's nothing left to fight. "Everything that we used to protest about is gone," said noted Malayalam author M. Mukundan. Said Correia: "A lot of the old authors and journalists who were very effective fighting old regimes suddenly cannot function in normal times. But these times too are very traumatic and need reflecting upon." She spoke of the constant hunt for material goodies that are making people insensitive and insignificant. "By the time you are through with gathering all the things you think you need, you are too tired to delve into your spirituality. "This is why Portugal has one of the highest intakes of psychotropic drugs and one in every five take anti-depressants. Everyone works more than one job and there is this constant need to look like a winner," she said. "The situation in India is quite the same, in many ways we are even a more unhappy country," said Daruwalla. All this is pouring into writing. "More and more, we must reflect on our times, our angst is different from those like Rodrigues, we must fight McDonald's." Started three years ago, The Little Magazine is a very niche and elite literary magazine that has had everyone from Noam Chomsky, Pete Seeger, Amartya Sen to Harold Pinter writing for it. --Indo-Asian News Service ---------------------------------------------------------- ***** CHRISTMAS PARTIES 2002 ***** Dec 14 - Goan Association of New Jersey, Inc., Somerset +1 (732) 599-7644 Dec 21 - GOA-LA, Los Angeles, [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1 (714) 821-6168 (late fee on tickets after Dec 10) Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] to announce a party. This service is FREE! ----------------------------------------------------------
