Happy 60th, India!

Well, the land of my birth is sixty years old, enfin! Only twenty years younger than her (there, I gave my age away, not that it was much of a secret), I have seen her through socialist self-restraint and hyper-capitalist excess. K. tells me that things were pretty restrained here in the U.S. too till the eighties when the culture of consumption gripped every sphere of life, from clothes, to cars to houses to education. According to K., my one-person resource on things American, the culture of malls, etc., was pretty alien to him till his late teens. Now of course, that is all there is here. Except small, boutique-y bouts of defiance, like the farmers' markets held in different small towns in Fairfield County.

To me, not being much of a shopper (except for used books, but that's a different story), the biggest difference between my Indian childhood and my American middle age is my use of the bicycle. Growing up in small army cantonments (or bases as they say here), my bike was my chief mode of transportation - to school, to dance lessons, to friend's houses. Grown men and women biked to work, the milkman balanced a precarious load of cans full of milk on his rear wheel, soldiers and officers rode bikes to the parade ground and to the lines, stiffening their arms and straightening up whenever a flag car approached them. Here in Fairfield County, as I bike around the neighborhood behind S., keeping an eye on his wobbly forward movements, I realize that my bike is now my chief mode of recreation. And that's the way it will stay, unless K.'s prophecy of impending energy crisis comes true in the near future. In which case, I guess I will be hauling loads of groceries back on my bike like this unknown.

Anyway, happy 60th India, here's to many more! As for you, Hero Cycle of my childhood, I have more ambivalent feelings towards you. Not sure that your gears were up to scratch, given the tumble I took on the second day of my ownership of a brand new bike.

Health Culture vs. Youth Culture

One of the nice things about living in this part of the country is that most people who live here are not obese. That doesn't mean that they are all skinny, but in general most men and women here are fairly health-conscious and make a conscious effort to stay fit and eat healthy. At the gym, I see women and men in their sixties and seventies ambling along on the treadmills, rowing determinedly, strolling outdoors or riding their bikes, their grey hairs damp with the honest exertion of body and limb. In the Pilates classes, there is a good mixture of the senior brigade with the more youthful lot. And this is a good thing, folks. I remind myself of this whenever I head out to visit family and friends in the Midwest, where I see many people groaning literally as they drag their bulk hither and thither.

The flip side of this is that the fitness obsession sometimes dovetails into the national obsession with youthful looks. It's pretty disgusting to overhear locker-room conversations where women stand around discussing casually the recent liposuction procedure of a common friend or talk about which doctor does a better job than the other.

What's my take on it? I am less critical of some procedures than others. It's mostly to do with the level of pain (physical coward that I am), although I generally disapprove of cosmetic surgery. Restylane injections and Botox: well, if you already wax your legs and your eyebrows, is the pain really any different? But tummy tucks and liposuction? No way. That much pain for something that doesn't involve saving your life or having a baby? Not worth it, ladies. You only need such radical intervention for your looks if you have had a serious accident and/or suffered some serious disfiguration. Otherwise, we women are more than the sum of our physical looks or at least that's how we should raise our daughters to think about themselves. So in this instance, I will take the mu-mu clad midwestern woman over the svelte Fairfield-ite. At least the former is not trying desperately to turn the clock back to some vanished fresh-faced youthful time in her past.

This is also a cultural thing, I think. Nobody I know in India has had her appearance altered surgically, atlhough sadly, the culture of artificial youthfulness is catching on in India too . What is not so good though is that a lot of older women in my family also lead very sedentary lives, except for the exertion of housework. Personally, the happiest blend I find are among some of the older Indian women I see who now try to fit in some physical exercise into their routine. And instead of surgery, they pamper themselves with facials and massages and manicures and pedicures. Among the middle class , I loved, and still love, the sight of older Indian women, well-coiffed, skin glowing with good care and a judicious use of make-up, their cotton saris starched and worn elegantly in summer, their silk saris immaculate in winters, their single well-chosen gold chain, their gold bangles...you get the idea. As for the others, who could have a problem with this? Beauty defying the oppressive weight of poverty. Now if any of these women appeared with their face pulled hideously tight by surgery, I would scream and run in the opposite direction.

Reading List of Shame

OK, so instead of working on well, work, I procrastinate. Some women go shopping, others go to the spa, yet others call their friends to gossip. Moi, I go - reading. So here is my reading list of shame: the books I read to escape the world of reading for work. Last week was Innocent Blood by P.D. James. You see, this makes the shamefulness of my reading list even worse. Most of the time, I don't escape into abstract masterpieces of literature. I procrastinate by immersing myself in thrillers, mysteries, chick-lit, sometimes a good novel to balance things out. OK, back to procrastination now. Next on the list is An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, again by P.D. James.