By Patricia Lee Sharpe
I was truly tempted to open this blog piece with epithets. Instead, I'll introduce the shock more gently because, maybe, this thing I'd run up against wasn't intended to be brash and overbearing. Maybe it was just another example of cluelessness masquerading as public diplomacy. In Kolkata this time.
Imagine you joined me in my taxi, heading for what was once the outskirts of a megalopolis but is now thoroughly incorporated. I was off to the annual Kolkata Book Fair, trying to reach there by two pm, when it opens each day, to avoid the crowds. This was a totally futile ambition. Already, miles away, the stop-start of a major traffic jam had begun, which gave me plenty of time to scan the horizon, where you would also have seen an enormous white dome lording it over the city. A gigantic mosque, minus minarets? A Vatican-sized cathedral? Neither, as I knew from previous visits and re-confirmed, when I reached the predictable sprawl of non-descript temporary structures that house the Kolkata Book Fair. It was the American Exhibit.
So there it stood, a replica of the American Capitol! A clever idea, perhaps, but ludicrously, embarassingly, out of scale. It loomed like the Second Coming of the Moghuls. Or maybe the Second Coming of the English, who built their neo-Moghul monuments to power in New Delhi. No wonder the curious were queuing to enter.
Being these days an ordinary tourist, I joined the line and ended up in a dimly-lit (the better to view computer screens, I suppose) cavern that dwarfed people and everything else, especially the bank of computers plopped on a long counter. Very few of my queue mates touched a keyboard as they filed by. It's 2011. Computers aren’t exactly novel, even in India, and these weren’t set up to entice interaction from the uninitiated or the jaded. In fact, the only thing that mildly curious visitors were invited to contemplate, re computers, was the popularity of social networking. Now Facebook may be a global phenomenon. Millions belong. But it's hardly a gateway to worthwhile knowledge of the U.S.
I wasn't surprised,though. I'd been told that the American public diplomats currently posted to Kolkata aren’t interested in purveying literature or lecturers or any kind of boring intellectuality. Just fun stuff for cool Under Thirties. This cohort, I might uncoolly remind them, doesn’t include today’s decision-makers, and it probably doesn't include tomorrow's either! Anyway superficiality is the order of the day, it seems. Although India has great writers and world class universities along with a vibrant print and electronic press employing courageous editors and many fine investigative reporters, the recently hired top local for the PD section in Kolkata used to head.... a fashion magazine! A mere clone of an international brand at that. What's the motto for India’s glitz-and-glamor industry? If you’ve got it, strut it! flaunt it! knock 'em dead! Ergo: the vulgar Capitol look-alike.
I continued shuffling along with the queue. People in front of me. People in back of me. I was looking for something that would have told the uninformed something about the significance of the hulking white shrine that had sucked them in. Nothing came to eye. Maybe I just missed it. In fact, maybe I missed a lot. There was no coherence, no order, no clear sequence of focal points in the dusky half light. Pretty soon, approaching the exit, we passed a big flat TV screen that signaled the end of hope for engagement. All it offered was a list of what you’d get for your money should you join the American Center (at cut rates) during the Book Fair. Not many visitors gave it a glance as we turned toward a sliver of daylight. It was well above eye level.
Now what if that last chance screen had beckoned with attention-compelling videos? The library info (animated, maybe?) could have appeared at frequent brief intervals between artfully-chosen clips. People would have stopped. They'd have craned their necks up, watching for awhile They'd have seen THE MESSAGE several times over. Producing such a piece isn't technically difficult. As for expense, negligible. Especially compared to the cost of erecting an overbearing faux Capitol.
Instead: another muffed opportunity. My companions kept moving-moving-moving toward the exit.
Get ‘em in. Get ‘em out. Was that the plan? Certainly no one was gathering around any of the bookcases lurking in the shadows like ghosts of yesterday’s world. Books! Real books! But displayed so negligently and creating one inescapable impression: the American Center doesn’t think that books matter anymore. So why stop? Keep moving!
Actually, there was a spot in this vast unpleasant space where, undoubtedly, it was hoped that visitors would pause: the counter with staffers to sell memberships. Unfortunately poor lighting obscured its purpose. And shouldn’t the point of sale come after the pitch, not the minute you enter? (Some new members were probably roped in (there were PRIZES as inducement), but imagine how many more if only the exhibit had had some oompf and integrity to it!)
Yes, there were PRIZES for new members, a loud unpleasant voice told us, repeatedly, over a PA system. I’m not sure whether every newbie was to get a prize or whether a drawing was involved, so I suspect that at least some of the others passing through were equally befuddled. What I did catch was this: we’d come to a Book Fair, but the prize wasn’t a book. It was a tee shirt.
Once upon a time there was an exhibits division within U.S.I.A. It was abolished years ago, during one of many cost-cutting exercises. But frankly it doesn’t take much money or A.I.A. architects to create an appropriate presence at a book fair whose infrastructure is traditionally as modest at that at the Kolkata Book Fair. Look carefully at the pix that accompany this piece. These unimpressive, even crude structures were crammed with people quite contentedly seeking and buying books. Within an hour the crush would be almost unbearable.
If there’s anything worse than a pretentious exterior, it’s a pretentious shell with nothing much inside. The American presence at this year’s Kolkata Book Fair managed to offend on both counts. That makes it a prodigious accomplishment of some sort.
Meanwhile, let's concede, for the sake of argument, that history is on the side of the electronic media, which I and many other compulsive readers also appreciate. This exhibit made it clear that American public diplomacy lacks the skills or (more likely, since geeks can be hired) the imagination to make effective use of the enormous electronic resources already at its disposal. The impossible lighting, which could have been used as an aid to focus and sequencing. That wallflower-like bank of computers! The stupid static screen by the exit. The grating voice from the depths. My thirteen year old grandson does better than this.
As I filed out of that dark and unprofitable cavern, I had a vision of the real Capitol, in Washington D.C., and what’s usually going on when crowds of people file through without stopping. They’re passing a bier, paying last respects. So, American public diplomacy, rest in peace.