India often breezes through the window of Australia’s national consciousness, but rarely lingers. Will India once again disappear from our collective awareness, following a short summer in which we were captivated by a sublime test series in Australia?
Cricket has been a common denominator whenever attempts were made to make sense of our relationship with India. References to “the three Cs” – cricket, the Commonwealth and curry – were an early attempt to grasp for familiarity. This was replaced by more recent references to a different triplet: cricket, democracy and the English language.
As we clutched for familiarity, we overlooked the more challenging goal but enduring outcome: understanding. All the while, we have struggled to build a spiritual or intellectual connection to do justice to the potential economic or strategic benefit.