Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and Invitations to Love
Jonah Blank's Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and Laura M. Ahearn's Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, & Social Change in Nepal add a dimension of understanding to the study of South Asian culture. Blank's book is essentially a travelogue, but it is much more than that by virtue of including his observations and insights about South Asian culture and customs. Ahearn's book is an ethnographic study specifically focused on the culture and customs of Nepal. Both books deal with the transformation in South Asian culture from traditional ideas of marriage to modern, westernized ideas. South Asian culture today embraces both the arranged marriages of the past, based on duty, and the western concept of marriage for love, and a mix of both still exists throughout the region.
In Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, Blank ties together family, religion, and marriage as interconnected ideas that impact each other. He compares the Hindu reverence for cow dung with the Christian reverence for "the dead body and dead blood of a poor man nailed to a cross" and finds both illogical but contends that "All religion is shot through with illogic. Otherwise it would be mere science" (Blank 10). He cites the Christian theological Tertullian, who wrote, "I believe it, because it is absurd" (Blank 10). Blank (10) uses this assertion as the underlying justification for the continuing appeal of the Ramayana, noting that since it is an idea that cannot be confirmed or denied rather than a fact, it will "continue to dominate India in a way no objectively verifiable chronicle ever could." Adding one more metaphor to the mix, Blank (13) contends that Hinduism identifies India as "our mother," explaining that people must defend their parents no matter what the sacrifice and extending that analogy to Hindus' obligations to the nation of India.
The transition from arranged ...