we were on this boat with a group or fat, middle-aged indian tourists. they were north indian but that is incidental. they saw a local wearing snorkelling gear and got very excited - they brought their cameras out and started asking him to 'dive! dive!'.
Made me think again of a couple of things:
one. India makes a spectator sport of anything. When it is possible, available and affordable, we would still rather watch someone else do it than try it for ourselves. I suppose you could argue that one can't reasonable make judgements on all of india based on obese, middle-aged tourists. Which neatly brings me to my second point - that's practically the only kind of indian tourist there is. It's amazing how since my cousin and I are two young girls travelling by ourselves, everyone comfortably assumes we're foreigners. And when we tell them we're not, they look around confusedly, and then ask, 'But where's everybody else?'
Where indeed?
In a country where the young people exceed the old ones, and I don't have the stats but I think they're pretty conclusive, where are all the young people? The people who should be taking the time while they have it, to do silly things, meaningless things and just-because stuff.
On Marina Beach in Chennai, the surf looked pretty awesome, and I was there in the evening when the wind wasn't offshore, but I'm guessing in the morning there's a good offshore wind, which, as far as I know, makes for ideal surfing conditions. And yet, nobody does. Not even the young people who study, work, live in Chennai. The only surfing club I found in India was started by a foreigner and caters primarily to them.
What is going on? Or, rather, why isn't anything? Why is the average young person so insecure, so obsessively petrified of falling off the treadmill? If you can't do it now, when as a young person you're still driving your life with the training wheels on, when will you?
