Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
What most defines Indianness? The quintessential dhaba or the iconic seals from the Indus Valley Civiilisation, the Ganga or the Taj Mahal by the banks of the Yamuna, Nehru
jackets or Gandhi topis, the Lux beauty queen commercials or the revolutionary Nirma television ad? Team BS came together for som
me collective thinking but
ended up squabbling in Amartya Sen’s argumentative mode over the merits off their own and others’ inclusions. From among hundreds, we
edited down to the very few choices our pages could accommodate. As a result, several meritorious icons were dropped, leading to
heartbreaks and not a little unhappiness in the office. We are sure you will find your own reasons to be upset over our selection, but we
hope you agree that these final ones on our list are worthy icons of Indiaanness. Have a happy new year.
Dabbawalla & Co
The Mumbai dabbawallas have not only enthralled
Britain’s Prince Charles but also taught Sir Richard
Branson a thing or two about service with a smile.
Well-chronicled for their network and
trustworthiness and rated Six Sigma performance
for the precision of delivery by Forbes magazine,
the Dabbawalla Association’s error rate surpasses
the benchmark that blue-chip telecom and IT Writes photographer Raghubir Singh in A Way Into
companies have set for their products. India: “...It has become a metaphor for modern
India, for independent India. Lizard-like, it has shed
its colonial coating of Morris Oxford to don
W ah! Taj Hindustani colours. Unlike the Oxford don, tweed,
thick-cut marmalade and an English breakfast of
It’s the white elephant that wasn’t: the Taj has been called, with superb sentimentality, “a teardrop on the cheek of time”, a monument to love and so on. Many myths
surround its creation, such as that its architects and craftsmen had to forfeit their hands or eyes so as never to outdo themselves. Some iconic moments attend its kippers and herring, it was never a British
present, like the 1992 portrait of Diana alone in front of the Taj. It’s a huge tourist magnet, one of the so-called Seven Wonders of the World, the root of all the many monument but it is an Indian one.” No one
Taj-based brand names, and by far the most recognisable symbol of India. disagrees.