Mohan:
True and tried Indophile, a chip off the old block.
Sen. Moynihan's daughter Maura's
continuing romance with India
By Taani Pande
NEW DELHI--
She first came to India as a 15-year-old when her father was appointed
United States Ambassador here. And right from the moment she landed, it
felt like home.
Since then, Maura Moynihan, daughter of U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, has returned again and again to the country she refers to as the
only home she has had.
Maura Moynihan, center, with Hindu sadhus, or hermits. Moynihan,
an unabashed Indophile, was in India recently for the release of her
collection of short stories, titled "Masterji and Other Stories.
"When we arrived in Delhi (in early 1973), one of the first sights I saw was
an old man wearing a dhoti (loincloth); it seemed so familiar that I felt at
home at once," said Moynihan, who was here to introduce her first
collection of short stories, "Masterji and Other Stories."
An artist, actress, a musician and dancer, Moynihan describes herself as a
cultural refugee who comes to India seeking a vision. She expresses her
sentiments in one of her songs, "Vision of Light," in which she says: "I come
to you on bended knee/Hoping you will purify me."
"An artist, actress, a musician and dancer, Moynihan
describes herself as a cultural refugee who comes to
India seeking a vision. She expresses her sentiments in
one of her songs, "Vision of Light," in which she says:
"I come to you on bended knee/Hoping you will purify
me."
An unabashed Indophile, she told India in New York: "America does not
inspire me. I feel depressed when I am there. I feel like a misfit."
India, on the other hand, is "home and I just love it; maybe I was an Indian
in my last birth."
Her two and a half years in India while her father was posted here was an
"initiation" into adulthood, she said.
"India has given the world the philosophy of nonviolence,"she emphasized.
"Can you imagine at a time when Europe was still in the Dark Ages,
Buddhism was flourishing in India?"
The "cultural richness and complexity" as well as the "warmth and
hospitality" of the people draw her to India, she said.
Her book is an experience of India, seen through the eyes of a foreigner.
Thus, it has stories in which reactions to India range from contempt and
indifference to love and reverence.
"I am not any of the characters, but all the stories are based on places I
have visited while I was here," she said.
So there are vivid descriptions of the temples and bathing ghats in Varanasi
and Hardwar, interspersed with an urban landscape of shopping
complexes, discotheques and parties.
A Buddhist and follower of the Tibetan Dalai Lama, Moynihan, 41, serves
on the board of the International Campaign for Tibet and is based in
Kathmandu, Nepal, where she is working with Tibetan refugees.
As an advocate for the freedom of Tibet, a cause close to her heart, for
which she has been working over a decade, she has written numerous
reports highlighting the plight of refugees.
She has testified before the U.S. Congress on human rights abuses in Tibet
and has traveled through that country.
"It has been a deeply moving experience," she said. "You meet so many
people. Some of them have fled brutalities and torture.
Then she quoted from one of her stories:
"People are tortured in the third world. That's just the way it is. You get
one out, two go in."
That is something a diplomat once told her, she said.
Expectedly, unlike the protagonist in one of her stories -- the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who panics and runs away when
approached by Tibetan refugees -- Moynihan swears she will continue to
work for her cause.
"The refugees outside Tibet are well cared for," she noted, "but for those
inside, I sometimes think that maybe we are all too late now.
"But I will never give up. What India has done for the Tibetans is simply
wonderful. I think India deserves a gold medal for it."
Moynihan has studied Indian music, dance and philosophy at Harvard,
from which she graduated in 1980.
After her first stint in India, she came back in 1985 as project coordinator
for the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of India.
And she has been returning regularly ever since. |
