Playing Raji and Thinking about India

Yesterday I spent the day, strangely enough, really contemplating India. I thought about its massive population of 1.3 billion people compared to America's 329 million people, and then I just started comparing and contrasting all kinds of things between the two countries. I spent a lot of time thinking about the majority religion there and perhaps began to understand just ever so slightly a bit more?

I really don't know anything, of course. I look at America and all of our nuances that would be hard to explain to someone or even realize they were going on around you until you started a deep dive into the real-life social stratosphere of where we live. Who are you people and why are we like the way we are? Likewise, I'd love to spend some time really getting to know a new friend from India and their culture.

The closest I think I've come was when I was working outsourcing for WIMO and had the opportunity to work with a few professionals from India on a weekly basis. I would try to guide and direct design while monitoring milestone due dates as they made a game with us. I'd slip in a few things after the meetings to try and get to know them better. Questions like what foods do you eat when you celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi? Spoiler alert, it was nothing like what I had read online. I'd also entertain them by coming back each week with a little bit more memorized of how to count to 20 in Hindi. I'm a dumb American. They found it entertaining. The song Ek Do Teen helped a lot. I miss talking them them every week.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time flying over a few towns in India on Google Earth VR. I was surprised to see that major cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad weren't even 3D modeled.  Of course, I could still go into street view and look around, so it's not all lost. Funny to think that Google Earth VR in a way has a caste system of its own . . . not based on any social structure mind you, but probably based on likely markets or what people typically search for? I'm not really trying to make a political statement here though.

The 2-D map overlayed the flat geography of Bengaluru, India

After that, I jumped on to Steam and downloaded and played the demo version of Raji and put the full game on my wishlist. It's an absolutely beautiful, isometric Action Adventure game filled with the mythology of India.

Raji and Shiva

For the most part the demo is just the tutorial, but it's also a lot of story set up, which is done through a kind of puppet show presentation and also through interactable murals as you're scaling the walls.

This has to be my favorite mural so far in Raji

The final boss was a little challenging and it took me a few tries to understand what I needed to do to defeat him, which is always a sign of a good game, right?  I don't want things to be too easy or it doesn't hook me.

Gulp. Here we go again!

Raji isn't without its social problems come to find out. I guess there's some cultural issues that I don't fully understand where mythology was re-written to glorify nationalism and conservativism? There's a Vice article that gets pretty angry about it. On the other hand, you get Steam store reviews like this, where you realize that there's a lot of under representation in a world steeped with mythology.

But they didn't like the combat ;)

At the end of the day my wife asked me to cook burgers out on the grill for the family, and it suddenly felt very American. As it turns out, my oldest returned home from work earlier than I expected, so the hamburger I had slated for myself went to them, which left me needing to make something for myself. I was almost tempted to spend 30 bucks on Indian food delivery from Grub Hub, but instead I turned to my spice cabinet. 

I ended up taking asparagus tips and broccoli and cooking them in a mixture of vegetable oil, curry, ginger, almond flour, ground mustard, salt, onion powder, chili powder, chili flakes, and monk fruit sugar. It filled the air with a really nice aroma, and I gave it a passing grade for my dinner. Throw in some chicken and I would have given the recipe a name of my own and shared it!

At the end of the day, my thoughts turned to the millions of Hindu widows who by tradition can't remarry and take upon themselves social isolation and poverty. It's absolutely heartbreaking to read about, but it's again, something I understand little about with limited sources. There are, of course, several charities you can donate to if you so choose.

I didn't go as far to actually watch a Bollywood production. I just . . . can't really . . . get into those. Although I might cave to watch Mutamestri because of its Batman cameo. 

All in all it was a complex and interesting delve for me over Labor Day Weekend. One that I wouldn't mind repeating again. I'm fascinated with India lately, and I'm on the hunt for more information, games, and experiences. If you have insights, please share.

Happy Dueling!