Monday, August 21, 2006

Hitler themed restaurant in Bombay ...!!

THIS IS JUST WRONG!

India's Hitler-themed restaurant draws fire (MSN)
Hitler’s Cross, which opened last week, serves up a wide range of continental fare and a big helping of controversy, thanks to a name the owners say they chose to stand out among hundreds of Mumbai eateries.

“We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people’s minds,” owner Punit Shablok told Reuters.

“We are not promoting Hitler. But we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different.”

But India’s remaining Jews — most migrated to Israel and the West over the years — say they are outraged by the gimmick.
Well I hope that it's not just India's minuscule Jewish community that is appalled. I mean how low can this lust of greed go? I can just see the chattering classes getting all aflutter and people lining up to see and be seen here .... UGH. I can see Balasaheb (with his professed admiration of Hitler) and his Shiv Sena thugs joining in.

Want to ban something in ban-happy India? How about starting here? SHEESH! Please hold on while I throw up ...

5 comments:

Warren said...

There was a similar incident in Singapore, I believe.

Having no sense of taste or decency is hardly unusual these days. Who would want to go to a restaurant like that?

Warren

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Yeah alex ... nouveau riche indeed. I forget where I read this, it was years ago, and I think it was Cardinal George who said it (but really don't know): that in his travels in the developing world he'd come across a kind of rapacious materialism that was breathtaking in its ferocity. The realization that the trible/village isn't the limit brings out this dark side of human nature ... while this is far from the best example of this from India, I identified instantly with what was said (I really must dig that quote up).

Warren: if something is glam and glitzy enough, I'm afraid people will go. Particularly the glam and glitzy wealthy set of South Bombay. I do hope that there is all around opprobrium heaped on this venture.

assiniboine said...

When you first posted this I thought, oh, silly to read any political agenda into it: Hitler is doubtless as far from the proprietor's zone of awareness as Savonarola, say, from thine or mine (and I'm quite sure that if someone opened a Bonfire of the Vanities restaurant in New York no one would have the foggiest idea....) But then a Pakistani friend sent the same news item you quoted, with a considerably less sanguine reaction: "Hmmm....Fatema. And with a name ending in “ni” she is of gujrati memon provenance, presumably."

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Hmm ... so you think there might be a Muslim anti-Jewish angle to this? I didn't think of it at all until you mentioned the memons. (I saw the "-ani" ending and thought "Sindhi" and forgot about it, not having noticed the first name, which is Muslim, not Hindu.) However, the memons don't strike me as being a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism ...

assiniboine said...

Well, I was sceptical as to its being anything more than bone-headedness; but cosmopolitan Pakistanis these days are for obvious reasons extremely nervous about this sort of thing, and you just never know. (My friend has an employee who is in fact Jewish: his family all have Muslim names for safety's sake; the synagogues of Karachi are long since closed and Jews meet for religious services in private homes under cover of deep secrecy.) I am inclined to Pollyanna-ishness about these things but I don't have roots in places where that may be folly.