> The people calling out her “colonialist” references to Mars claim to be speaking on behalf of their friends. Then you have actual Indian people coming along later, wondering what the fuss was about and welcoming the author to India.
Eh. Actual Indian person here. I think it's pretty stupid to comparing a flight to India to "going to Mars". You have Pizza Hut, Subway, and KFC in India, for crying out loud.
In normal times, the person saying things like this would have been chided by a few of their friends. Now they are viciously attacked by the whole of the Internet – which is the real problem.
In case anyone is curious, here is the paragraph including the "pretty stupid" comparison:
> I’ve wanted to go to India for as long as I can remember. I’ve a lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent. Photos of India fill me with longing like no other place. One of my closest friends from that pink-striped tube skirt era (we originally met at JC Penney) is Indian, and her family had offered back then that if I ever wanted to go with them on one of their trips, I could. To a suburban midwestern teenager with a severe anxiety disorder, that was like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars. It was fun to think about, but are you kidding me? I was so young and dumb then that I didn’t even partake of her mother’s Indian cooking. (Talk about regrets!)
From the quote it seems obvious that the 'flight to Mars' comment is really focused on her own limited experience as a ""suburban midwestern teenager with a severe anxiety disorder". Not saying India is so weird it's like Mars.
She could have said the same expression about New York.
That struck me too. One of the first casualties of this sort of purity spiral seems to be simile and metaphors, everything gets taken literally and in totality.
to be fair, (if india is anything like srilanka in that regard) she might be shocked when she finds the quality of the food is better. American ingredients are relatively poor. I remember having pizza hut in srilanka and it was delicious and used fresh pineapple. the American version was greasy and disgusting with meager portions of the canned stuff
That's not really fair, America is just like any other part of the world -- some places have good ingredients, some not so much. I had great food in India, but I also had some that gave me a major case of the runs. I've had plenty of really great food in America, but I'll grant that if Pizza Hut is your thing, then you're after something different from me.
Also, the woman in question was coming from the UK, as I recall, so alleged food quality in America wouldn't be terribly important to her.
I think the parent comment is trying to allude to Pizza Hut in india being higher quality than Pizza Hut in America. It's an apples-to-apples comparison.
I know that the McDonalds in Germany at least used to be considerably better than the McDonalds in the USA. Pizza Hut being better in India sounds totally plausible to me.
Going to Mars might be overkill, but I did feel like it was a little bit of a mindfuck the first time I went. Especially when we left Hitec City and visited Charminar. I can totally see how that would seem really exotic to someone who's spent their entire life in a western European nation.
Eh. Actual Indian person here. I think it's pretty stupid to comparing a flight to India to "going to Mars". You have Pizza Hut, Subway, and KFC in India, for crying out loud.
In normal times, the person saying things like this would have been chided by a few of their friends. Now they are viciously attacked by the whole of the Internet – which is the real problem.