Shakespeare in India

Alright, last semester I spent 4 months in India researching the westernization of Jalari (a fishing caste) women who worked outside of their village. Side note: it also happens to be where my husband and I fell in love so India is pretty close to my heart for that reason alone. Anyway, when Professor Burton started talking about Bollywood and Shakespeare I realized that I would love to study Shakespeare Cross-Culturally....and what better place to start than India?

So for starters, I found a Bollywood film adaptation of Othello called Omkara....which I am totally set on watching. There, I said it, now I've got to. This also suggests that I should probably read Othello, so I'll do that too.

But it gets cooler than that. I found a sweet article called "William Shakespeare is our heritage too" which said the following " A fine piece of filmmaking that should win its director Vishal Bhardwaj more than just a Filmfare Aware. What Bhardwaj has done deserves bigger accolades -- he has convinced more friends and countrymen to lend Shakespeare their ears."

Moving on, I also found a Shakespeare Society of Eastern India and while the site isn't extremely well developed it is crazy to me to think that somebody went to such great effort to form the society, to develop the website AND organize a World Shakespeare Conference in 2000 in Calcutta.

What does this tell me about Shakespeare? India is one of the most culturally diverse place I've been. I wanted pancakes for breakfast, India gave me spicy noodles, I wanted a mint after dinner, they gave me a leaf that tasted like toothpaste, I wanted a sweet pork salad, they gave me vegetarian potato curry. I said things one way, they said it another. I thought one think was polite, they took offense. And somehow they always thought it a compliment to tell me I looked homely. I told them to keep a secret, they threw flower petals at me because they were so excited. I wanted cold cereal they gave me cornflakes drowned in boiling buffalo milk. I wanted a Jack Daniels burger from TGI Fridays, they gave me rice. You get it. And I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. India is not America, nor is it England. But somehow, regardless of all the cultural differences, Shakespeare still manages to captivate and enchant any audience. It tells me that his words just may be universally applicable. I just need to figure out why.

Here's just a couple little India snippets...couldn't resist...