Priyanka and Susha

Thursday, September 27, 2007
USS Cole – Strait of Pratee 58°14N 005°40W

In the interests of simulating all the features of contemporary warfare, journalists are also “embedded” with the forces. Two fledgling members of the fourth estate were helicoptered aboard yesterday. Armed with cameras and laptops they were eager to stage the requisite interviews and practice writing the stories we all want to read. Priyanka and Susha (left to right)—the first born in Mumbai, the second raised in Bahrain—are both masters graduates of the journalism school at University of Westminster in London. Their casual assumption of their role and their personal histories are surely a more interesting story than anything they’ll report about the “air attacks” and other details of these war games. Two kids, fluent in Hindi, Arabic, and English, learning the trade in the UK but planning on careers at CNN-IBN—the Indian Broadcasting Network CNN affiliate—in New Delhi. In conversation at dinner I learn that all the popular TV in India is in English.

It’s not by invasion that the planet is being globalized. Language and the movement of people is doing it much more completely and effectively. The British abandoned India to its independence and paroxysms of internecine killing exactly sixty years ago this month. Now the people of India all watch television in English and work nights to provide tech services for U.S. businesses. Marx was right.

…jb