Where is the East?

The many libraries I have visited in Lyon, France, revealed that the French (read Europeans), despite all their cartographic craze, do not know where the "East" is. In some libraries, its the Middle-East and then in others it is shelves after shelves of the 'Orient'. At other times it is simply only China and Japan. The shelf on Eastern Philosophy did not have a single Indian text, can you believe that? Do they think we never produced any philosophy, any systematic thought?

Shelves marked Indian Literature possessed Arundhati Roy to Salman Rushdie and V S Naipaul! Rushdie, of all people, who resisted the 'commonwealth literature' category vehemently kind of squirms on that shelf. Europeans to this day consume literature and other objects from Asia like they were exotic stuff! It makes for a good reading on the metro, eh? Or perhaps, to sigh a the rich man's sigh and say--"'they' have more authentic lives, ours are empty!" In any case, for all its travels and travelogues, the 'East' of their own creation, is still an unstable, ever-shifting amoeba in their heads.

Oh Europe! where, on earth, is your East?

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