Greece brings to mind the late Nani A. Palkhivala’s fear that a nation that had peaked once would never be great again. He was speaking of India but my expensive hotel clinging to the mountainside above the Aegean Sea in the Greek island of Santorini reminded me of the remark.
The hotel didn’t belie any single advertised point but, somehow, the totality fell short of the space and elegance conveyed by the Internet pictures the travel agent in Athens had shown me. The view from my balcony is pleasant but hardly as spectacular as his excited exuberance about sunset and sunrise suggested.
If Santorini is any indicator, modern Greece is all about marketing. Despite its glorious inheritance and civilisational contribution to the West-ern world, Greece lives by selling scenery and history. Tourism is the mainstay. It contributed 12.2 billion euros to Greece’s 249 billion ($342.7 billion) economy last year. That imposes its own morality on the people.
Some countries invent a past. The Shah of Iran, representing an upstart dynasty, staged elaborate ceremonials to bolster his pretended descent from the Sixth Century BC Cyrus the Great who was styled “King of the Four Corners of the World”. Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej basks in the equally fanciful title of “Rama IX”, ruler of a country called both “Ayodhya” and “Suvarnabhumi”. Sukarno’s claim that Indonesia was the Srivijaya empire’s successor enabled him to seize territories to which, otherwise, Jakarta had no claim.
But Rome, Egypt, Spain, Portugal and Turkey all boast noble lineages. As an American politician pungently observed, Britain had lost an empire without finding a role. There are many reasons for this disconnect. Some would say today’s Britain is culturally and ethnically very different from Victorian times when the Protestant work ethic shaped entrepreneurs and empire-builders. Turkey consciously renounced its Ottoman legacy. Geneticists might argue that DNA tests will show modern Egyptians have no blood links with the creators of the pyramids. Today’s Italians are not yesterday’s Romans.
Wandering among the ruins of Akrotiri at one tip of Santorini I wondered if today’s Greeks are also a new people. Or are they descended from the builders of the flourishing late Bronze Age maritime city that suffered so many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes over the centuries that archaeologists can’t tell how far it extended? The Minoan magnificence of Crete’s 1900 BC Knossos palace, the classical splendour of the Parthenon crowning the Acropolis above Athens, and Byzantine relics in Turkey and North Africa all speak of what poets called “the glory that was Greece”.
The glory had vanished long before the economic crisis that began five years ago when Greece’s government was caught out falsifying the books. What concerns me more is the implication of Palkhivala’s comment: Has the genius that inspired ancient Greece fled forever?
Political arguments can be advanced to explain why history doesn’t repeat itself. Marxists must have an economic rationale. New theories will be articulated if China does surpass the United States as an economic power and flexes its financial muscles.
But China’s former ambassador in Athens, Du Qiwen, disagrees with Palkhivala’s fear that a national sun that sets once can never rise again.
China is investing heavily in Greece’s recovery. In return, it expects Greece to smooth Beijing’s relations with the European Union. Du sees the current depression as “a small wave in the long river of thousands of years of (Greek) history”. He predicts that “after the storm” Greece will again “impress the world with its vigour and vitality”.
Not everyone agrees. Seeing me look at my watch on my first day here, a British lawyer who has made Athens his home said, “No one looks at the time in Greece!” And, indeed, I have discovered that lunch can extend into late evening, and dinner go on till dawn.
Conviviality and hospitality make Greeks amiable company but don’t make for productivity or efficiency. The ancient Greeks were thinkers, philosophers and builders.
They dabbled in ideas, gave democracy to the world and raised grand structures like the temple at Ephesus in Turkey and the fortified mountain town of Mystras near Sparta.
Their present-day successors aren’t manufacturers or traders. Greece’s biggest industry is tourism. That means spin doctors and PR.
In 2013, more than 20 million foreigners descended on this land of 11 million people. But per capita spending was only 604.2 euros against 976 euros in Spain. That means Greece’s prosperity depends on persuading itinerant Canadians, Australians, Americans, Russians, Swiss and Austrians — last year’s main spenders — to spend more.
With a 202 per cent increase in Chinese arrivals, China must rank high this year. I keep seeing young Chinese men in dinner jackets with clip-on bows and their brides in white lace or bright red going-away gowns always with a photographer in tow.
Thanks to shrewd marketing and a popular Chinese TV serial, Santorini and Crete have become favourite nuptial destinations. Chinese tour groups wave red flags. Chinese eateries are cropping up everywhere. That is salesmanship. A Santorini shopkeeper even chanted out “Namaste!” to me.
As my hotel experience confirmed, salesmanship — any service industry in fact — also involves conning the unwary to some extent. I am sure that is also true of Indian tourism. But India now has more to offer the thinking world than just the Taj Mahal, Ajanta and Ellora, the snows of Gulmarg or Kovalam’s sands. Despite bumbling on many fronts, India epitomises the vigorous search of a billion people for a place in the sun. I wish Palkhivala were alive today to confirm that industry and activity guarantee that India’s future is not hostage to its past or its geography.
The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author
