Thank You For the Music

Tuning in to the Christmas program on NPR, I drove around on last minute errands on Christmas Eve as the voice of Mahalia Jackson filled my car with rich golden notes. It was cold, wet and grey here in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Still, despite the horrible traffic (I saw at least one accident on the Post Road), people were up and about and trying to buy last minute stuff. People like yours truly, who in a miscalculated strategic move, had taken upon themselves the task of the annual gift-buying entrerpise.


I doubt people my age listen to Mahalia Jackson regularly anymore, even here in America. But she was such a part of my childhood that it brings tears to my eyes when I catch her voice here and there, bringing back memories of "Little David, Play on your Harp" echoing through our stone walled bungalow in Dehra Dun. How did that happen? How did Mahalia Jackson become such a part of my very Indian upbringing? How did Paul Robeson enter my consciousness? How did I learn to sing along with Yves Montand at a time when I did not even speak French? And how did all of these singers from lands then unknown to me come to occupy a place in my pantheon of musical deities along with D. V. Paluskar, Bismillah Khan, M. S. Subbulaksmi and the diva Kishori Amonkar?


For this, I have to acknowledge the very specific case of my immediate family environment. My parents were a middle-class army couple. But they - and I - occupied an uneasy position between two very different strata in Indian society. On the one hand, there was the uber-westernized elite of immediate postcolonial India, consisting of those who rejected everything Indian even more vehemently than their former bosses the British. This was the world of very smart cocktail parties and very fatuous small talk, with plenty of cigarettes being waved around and enough shallowness to drown a nation. After a hard day of work in a corporate office, one's free time was spent downing gimlet's and whisky-soda's and remembering the good old days when the riff-raff knew their place. This was the world into which my parents had entree due to their educational backgrounds (the good schools of their generation were few and everyone attended pretty much the same places) and family connections and I am still dazzled when my parents break into the foxtrot on the dance floor (in my youth ballroom dancing was no longer a required - or desired - social skill). But this was not a world in which they really belonged, they being entirely too "military" for the upper class pretensions one had to have in order to have any claims to this social segment.


On the other side of our social horizon there was the very traditional, modest Indian middle class whose members lived very humble lives, listened only to Indian music and ate very traditional food. The women wore their saris modestly, the men were gentle and scholarly in their worn bush shirts, the matrons were fat and comfortable, and the food was wonderful and cooked daily by the women of the house with some assistance from part time help. This was the world of my relatives and many family friends where abounded the music of Rabindranath Tagore during impromptu musical evenings and lots of adda during visits to the old hometown of Kolkatta. The worlds of the westernized corporate elite and the ordinary middle classes never crossed. In fact, the denizens of each world would have been surprised by the other's presence and uncomfortable in each other's company. My parents and I moved between both, fitting fully and comfortably only into the alternate universe that was the life of the army. I was required to be proficient in English and Hindi for the outside world, and in Bengali for communication within the family.



What set us as a family apart from all these worlds (including the army) was our taste in music. My parents were not - and are not - trendy. They were quite definitely stodgy, leaning towards the archaic, in their choice of listening material. While my sophisticated friends' parents played Ella Fitzgerald's "Mack the Knife" or Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", my parents dug deeper into western culture and came up with Paul Robeson and Mahalia Jackson. Robeson's and Jackson's talents rose above the limitations of a scratchy, hissy 78 RPM record and introduced me to the music of a country I would only see many years later. On the Indian side, I was never allowed to listen to modern Hindi film music, it being deemed too vulgar and shallow (my rebellion was to embrace Bollywood with a vengeance when I reached teenage). Instead, the radio was put on at 6:00 AM every morning so that we could begin our day with the purifying notes of All India Radio's classical Indian music programming. With my westernized friends, I was unable to enjoy the sweet sounds of Pandit Jasraj singing Raag Basant, the velvet of his voice, the masterful control of his medium. They wouldn't have known who he was, and if they had, would have sneered at his "conservatism". To my traditional Indian relatives and friends I was unable to explain that there was a world outside of Hindustani classical music and Vividh Bharati. While they would have been respectful of Mahalia Jackson and Paul Robeson's music, they would not have known how to fit western music into their lives. I was left humming "Old Man River" and "Bistirno Duparey" by myself.

All of this would have been bewildering mishmash to my children if I had tried to explain it in words. But thanks to Youtube, I can show them and have them hear the sounds of the in-between cultural world that was their mother's childhood. Looking back, it was a cultural education that equipped me to understand the best of both East and West. I hope I can pass on that tradition to my children. So thank you for the music, Youtube, and I hope there are many more years ahead for you.

Snow, Ice and Himalayan Memories

It's not yet 5:00 PM and the day has already fled into a dark and smudgy night. There were some ice sprinkles in the rain that dripped down this morning. More will follow tomorrow, apparently. On days like these, I first give thanks that I don't live in northern New England and then I reflect on my poor pioneer spirit. Would I have lasted two hundred years ago when there was no modern plumbing or central heating? I suspect that had I arrived in the New World before the modern age, I would have traveled no further north than southern Florida.

It's not as though I haven't been tested. My army childhood involved a couple of brutal winters in the Himalayas where my father was once posted. A small town near the Indo-Bhutan border, the station had just been converted from a field area (no families, forward area) to a "hard peace" station (i.e. families could stay but housing was very iffy). The first six months or so we lived in two rooms and a patch of verandah, the next few months we lived off-base in the "civilian" part of town, in the house of a retired war-hero general. This house overlooked the residence of Kazi Lhendup Dorjee whose wife the Kazini Eliza Maria, a colorful European adventuress, guarded her property with the zeal of a hundred guards. God help any child whose ball bounced off the terrace into the manicured gardens of the Kazi's house. As we shivered and shook our way through the Himalayan winters, the Kazini and her booming voice provided a little noise and color in our unheated lives.
Now the chilblains of my childhood are forgotten, but I am still ambivalent about winter. As I am now settled here in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and not likely to move in a long time, I can safely say that I like it best when I am sitting in a warm room with a hot cup of my favorite tea, looking out at the bleak weather. The tea - Darjeeling, the taste for which is one thing I did bring away with me to the warmer plains of the south. And the one taste that has endured a move across the seven seas.

Values Worth Defending

The murderous thugs who attacked Mumbai last week are a cr**py advertisement for the values for which they claim to be fighting. Now there's a way of life I really want to embrace - one that says it's alright to fire on babies and unarmed women and men, just going about their daily lives. And daily life in big Indian cities is so hard to begin with. I cannot even begin to imagine the utter sinkhole of despair that must be the lot of the average person shot up at Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus who was doing nothing more provocative than waiting for a train home after a long shift of work.

Another group of people, from similar age groups as the murderers, provided an alternative model for how all people - old and young - should behave toward each other. Many in this latter group, the staff at the Taj Mahal hotel and the Oberoi hotel, beat constables of the Mumbai police and firefighters of the Mumbai Fire Department, also gave their lives in the defence of their values. And these values - decency, courage, compassion - are certainly worth fighting for, unlike the dead and stinking ideology that motivated their attackers.

Giving Thanks

I could not blog yesterday, and not just because it was busy with the usual Thanksgiving Day busy-ness. All day, I felt restless and disturbed and had a lump in my throat, watching the news coming out of Mumbai. The last time I felt this way was on Sept. 11, 2001. As I chopped onions and stirred and sauteed, my thoughts were with those whose lives had been shrouded in darkness by the grim deeds of young, babyfaced, ruthless killers. The turkey was delicious and so were the pies, but even as I raised my glass and gave thanks for family, friends and loved ones, that old Bengali saying ran through my mind:

Karur poush maash

Karur shorbonaash

(Some celebrate bountiful harvests, others face annihilation)

Waiting For the Other Shoe...

The talk in my friends and family circle is - well, all about the economic downturn. My friends and I represent a range of middle class-ness in terms of socio-economics. Some of my friends are modestly-salaried academics with a great deal of creative freedom and just enough money for their needs, others are hedge fund managers with lots of money but no real freedom to wander, except over to their desks to ponder the data on Bloomberg. K. and I fall somewhere in the middle of this range.

When we go out or have people over, the conversation invariably veers to the dismal state of the economy. Most of our friends in the corporate sector are, understandably, extremely worried about their jobs. As yet (knock on wood) nobody is unemployed. But everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I don't see any discernible impact on the downtown stores of our little town. Are people spending less? Not if you see the women I see, dropping $98 on silk tank tops and dragging their sulky teenage daughters around into upscale shoe stores. I am spending less, but there is no noticeable difference in my lifestyle. Having very young children, we rarely went out anyway (when I go out for dinner, I want to spend more than fifteen minutes gobbling down my meal to the refrain of "go home, wanna go home" and since that won't be likely for another three years at least, I prefer to eat at home). I work part-time and K. is self-employed so we had no work-related social life anyway (on the plus side, we also don't have the added anxiety of being laid off).

But we are nervous too. The nameless dread of waiting...

Bollywood in Bridgeport

It is a sign of our times that what was unthinkable only five years ago is now a possibility. I can watch absolutely trashy, thoroughly enjoyable, utterly escapist Bollywood films at the Showcase Cinemas in Bridgeport. I have watched several films there in the company of friends. Most recently, I watched "Singh is King" with my son. As the film is pitched to the emotional and intellectual maturity of a ten year old, he thoroughly enjoyed it. The feature played to an absolutely empty theater except for us.

This weekend, there is a film festival running at the Westport Town Hall. The website for this festival is www.sulekha.com/gopio-ctfilmfestival . I went alone last night to watch "Loins of Punjab." It is hilarious, with some contrived bits, but for the most part really good fun.

Hmmm...I can watch very good or excruciatingly bad Indian films right here in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I don't need to make the trek into New York City for my dose of masala anymore.

The Blaming of the Shrew

Now that Hillary Clinton and Teresa Heinz Kerry are out of the reckoning, I suppose we must have a new witch in town. Is it too much to just accept the electoral defeat for what it was - a decisive rejection of a tired old agenda of fear mixed with hatred? Failure is never an orphan, despite the saying. It always has a "mother". It is, however, always fatherless.

Reflections on an Election

I wish I could feel as Wordsworth did:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! - Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

Instead, I find myself...relieved. As though I had been carrying a big boulder on my back these past few years. And now that burden has gone.

November Resolutions

Resolution No. 1: This will be the last U.S. presidential election I will spend as an observer. Next time, I will be in the line with K., waiting for my turn to cast my ballot.

Resolution No. 2: I will cease and desist from raiding my children's Halloween candy trove. Starting as soon as I finish today's loot: 1 M&M bag, 1 small Snickers bar, 1 small Kit-Kat.

The Name of it is "Autumn"

The skies are blustery grey, and the trees toss their red, orange and golden heads at the oncoming clouds; a single ray of sunlight bursts through the leaves suddenly and makes the Merrit Parkway a tunnel of luminous color. At times like this, I wonder if there could be a luckier person than I am, living my daily life against the incandescent colors of a New England fall. I hope I never get that used to it that I stop noticing. And alright, New Hampshire and Vermont, I grant that your foliage may be more breathtaking right now, but I don't live there.

Elections and the Femme Fatale

Do Sarah Palin's political advisors have any idea just how sexist many of her supporters are? I am amazed that as accusations of sexism float around the whole issue of Wardrobe Gate, just how little criticism is directed at the absolute - insert the plural male equivalent of "bimbo" here - who flock to her rallies and make a mockery of the woman they want to have become a top member of the next U.S. administration. No, I don't think "babe" is a respectful way of addressing your leader.

It's not only liberal feminists who need to raise an outcry here (they've already done so), the protest needs to start with some critical reflection by the Republican National Committee and by everyone whose d**khead son/husband/brother patronizes the Las Vegas Men's Club that recently hosted a Sarah Palin-themed strippers' competition. Do they think this is an act of admiration, some sort of loving gesture by a local fan club? There are people from her own base who are supporting this unbelievably belittling event, these are the people who are reducing her to an object, not some blue-stocking East Coast, latte-drinking, elite circle of New York Times readers. I am not providing links to this horrendous event or naming names. You can google those for yourself if you want to follow up the story.

My American Burqa

My American burqa - my hijab and niqaab - comes in many cuts and colors. It is mainly mass-produced and comes in many different kinds of material. It is sometimes elegant, sometimes demure, never too revealing, and utterly, utterly conformist. Above all, it does what all good burqa's should do. It renders me invisible (mostly). My American burqa can be found here and here. On rare occasions, I go here to find a suitable party burqa. When I first came to this country as a twenty-something, I wore a younger version of the American burqa. That can be found here. The younger version can, depending on the cunning of the Chinese tailor in the burqa factory, be snug and form fitting, but that snugness too is always conformist, never revolutionary.

When I first arrived in this country, I stood out and not just because I didn't know what on earth to do with vending machines (I slunk around, watching practiced veterans punching buttons, retrieving their drinks and candy before I worked up the courage to use them). Besides my incompetence with machines, my clothes always gave me away even before I opened my mouth, and this even though I stopped wearing my much-beloved salwar kameezes (surely, the most comfortable clothes for women ever). My jeans were too baggy, my sweaters too bulky, my hairstyle too - too Delhi, my shoes too inappropriate for the dress. Still, I resisted donning the American burqa for a long time.

Why? Well, some of the American burqas were made of the material that in India we derided clueless, hippie, western tourists for wearing. I swore I would never wear the thin, flimsy cotton tops, the cheap cotton skirts that are so prized here by trendy stores and sold as top-of-the-line summer wear. For the hippies in India, the looseness, the flimsiness, the gauzy fabrics probably evoked carefree whimsy, an abandonment of the structure and rigidity of their suburban homes in the west. For us, they screamed - export rejects from Janpath! Only college students wore those. Young women with aspirations to ethnic chic wore handwoven fabrics from FabIndia (do they still do that, I wonder?). For western wear we depended on the benevolence of visiting relatives from abroad or else we hit the sales at South Extension and Greater Kailash markets and swallowed as we handed over our middle class money to sniffy, sullen sales clerks who snatched the money from our hands and looked over our heads as they handed us our shopping bags.

But slowly I learned to adapt to my new surroundings. I made some mistakes initally. For example, I bought a burqa in yellow silk that had embroidered on it small monkeys drinking champagne, their brown tails curled perkily over their little brown heads. Looked cute but it belonged to some yacht-owning New England preppy girl, not to me. That burqa still hangs unworn in my closet (actually, it just struck me as I wrote that given George Allen's "macaca" remark, maybe I should wear this burqa proudly). I also realized over time that although blue denim burqas are now acceptable party wear, they are not for all parties and definitely not for Christmas parties. In general though, my American burqas are more tailored now, and are the right cut. In the summers, the cheap cotton doesn't feel so bad, and what the heck, the other women are also wearing the same thing. In my American burqa, I can go up and down Fairfield County, Connecticut, without attracting a second glance.

However, in New York City...well, that's another story. I need a New York City burqa so that I don't stand out there as a visiting suburban housewife.

In New York City

One New York traffic cop to another: You voted for Bush last time, you jerk.
2nd Cop (mournfully): Yeah man, and he's destroyed us all.
(Nervous laughter from people waiting for a cab in the taxi line)
It's not a good sign for a political party when lower-level government servants turn against it. It is especially not good when policemen begin to deride a sitting president.

At MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art, to my Indian readers), my eight-year old S. looks at the Vincent Van Gogh art exhibit (running through Jan. 5 2009) and pronounces his judgement: "Very dark." Well, the title of the exhibit is "Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night." About Van Gogh's portrait of the poet Eugene Boch, his judgment was "That's Abraham Lincoln!" Little M. tugs at my hand and says "I want a muffin."

Hmmph! I think cultural education will have to wait a few more years.

I Am Not Looking for an Indian Life Partner in Connecticut!!

Two of the most aggravating websites have recently wormed their way into my life - bharatmatrimony.com and shaadi.com (please do NOT click on them).Perhaps because I surf so many Indian websites, these two horrible sites embedded their cookies deep into the inner reaches of my computer. Now whenever I surf any website - even the most corn-fed uber-American ones - I am presented with advertisements assuring me that I will find my perfect Indian partner in Connecticut. How do I uninstall these monsters from my computer? I am happily married already and have no interest in finding partners - Indians or non- - in Connecticut or anywhere else.

Some Assistance for Main Street, Please?

One of the young men doing electrical work in the house wanted to make us an offer on our two unused oil tanks. We had to send him away disappointed as the tanks are empty. Thanks to K. we have moved off oil and are relying now on a combination of solar/geothermal/propane. This combination has its problems but at least we are off the uncertainties of heating oil. Winter is coming and the price of heating oil is the great unknown in Fairfield County where the vast majority use heating oil for warmth. We really could use a far-reaching comprehensive administrative review of this problem. In a cold climate, a heated house is not optional, it's a basic requirement for survival in the winter. People might go without food, but not without heat.

Will anybody bail out Main Street anytime soon? I doubt assistance will come in the short term future, but even Americans - a famously patient people when it comes to governmental flaws (and yes, yes, I know they had a Revolution but that was then...) - are going to start protesting. I find it very disturbing to read the news about the growing numbers of slums (alright, dignify them by calling them "tent cities" but they are still slums) in some parts of the country. It is not a good sign.

Religion and Madness

I know there is so much going on here - the whole Sarah Palin thing, the crash of financial giants that has become almost an everyday occurrence. But I am going to write today on another kind of madness that seems to get people all riled up - the perceived intrusion of new religions on "their" turf.

Perhaps because I have the eye of an outsider here (despite years of living here and being very fond of the country and the people), I am more sensitive to the way that outsiders are perceived and treated everywhere. Call it the immigrant syndrome. Anyway, in just the last two days, the Washington Post's section on religion has reported that Hindus are persecuting Christians in India, Christians are harassing Muslims in Italy, the construction of a Hindu temple in suburban Washington D.C. is causing strained relations with the community, and that anti-Semitism is on the rise among Europeans .

I am less than convinced that any one religion holds the entire truth in its meager pouch. Events around the world have left me more convinced than ever that while religious traditions inspire much beauty (I can write pages and pages on the beauty inspired by religious devotional traditions), the practitoners of religion can do more harm to the reputations of their own faiths than any so-called "outsider religions."

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Two years ago, K. started his Edible Forest Gardens project. Oh my God, the poor man worked like crazy after work hours and before! He got up early to whack at undergrowth, rushed out the minute the markets closed and lingered till after dusk digging up rocks the size of small boulders (this is New England after all, home of the stone wall, where do you think all that stone came from?). I had very little to contribute beyond moral support and hot, cooked meals.


What's been the result after two years of unrelenting toil on his part, clearing bushes, digging beds, planting fruit trees and berry bushes, strawberry ground cover, winter gold and winter green? All without any help, mind. Well, for one thing, we have the usual summer problem of all gardeners: zucchinis coming out of our ears. It's almost to the point where I can't stand to look at them in their smug, self-satisfied green plumpness, presenting themselves to be grated into dal, made into soup, sauteed with olive oil, baked with pasta. Aarrrgh!

Second, it goes without saying that creating an edible garden means that there is going to be some serious pilferage. We have lost the tops of our Jerusalem Artichokes to deer. The plants have grown strong and tall but not one has sprouted a flowerbud. The dwarf sunflower -all one of it - was stunning, but has been pecked pretty well by birds, making a big dent in the sunflower seeds bounty K. was hoping to collect. Rabbits have munched on tomato plants, birds have feasted on blueberries and raspberries and are now working on pecking at the tomatoes.

Elmer Fudd, I get you man! Totally, totally.

And just like Fudd, I am also helpless against the onslaught of unwanted visitors to our edible forest gardens.

Away in the Midwest

Haven't blogged in a while because of family vacations, etc. We went to Minneapolis after a gap of two years, the kids and I. No, I never lived in Minneapolis but visited there very often from Chicago, on account of my brother. The Twin Cities are both lovely and...midwestern. Having lived away from the midwest for eight years (we moved to Fairfield County from Chicago), I saw and compared my new and old habitats with fresh eyes.

OK, so most people already know about the Arctic winters, but then you know that Minnesota is where the lower taiga meets the prairies. So you have to expect the howling winds and the thigh-deep snow, etc. Going from the Northeast, it is striking how different the vegetation is. I had forgotten, cliched though it is, the big midwestern skies. Not as big as Wyoming and South Dakota, true, but still huge compared to the smaller heavens of Connecticut. When a tiny kestrel dived down to catch his prey, it was quite spectacular because there was nothing to block our views down to the ground.

Driving west, even just a little outside the twin cities, the roads are bordered by tall, waving prairie grasses. And the highways are huge. My eye is not used to having such a wide range to scan while driving. Again, very different from the wooded, petite dimensions of the Merritt Parkway or Route 7. Given that the highways are so large compared to here, you would think that driving would be a breeze. In fact, it is alarmingly not so. Bumper-to-bumper traffic is the norm in the Twin Cities during rush hour. And even more alarmingly, Minnesotans are allowed to hold their phones while driving and drift in and out of lanes with cheerful abandon.

The number one reason I might not move back to the Midwest: no, it's not the winter, that's reason number two. No, the top reason for giving the midwest a miss is because I am not used anymore to driving long distances for day to day stuff. E.g. my sister-in-law thought nothing of driving ten miles to get to Trader Joe's. We had a great time with the kids doing the rides in the Mall of America, but one has to drive a lot to get to routine fun places. Most days here in Fairfield County - outside of work, that is - I rarely drive more than three to five miles. As for the winter, it's true, it's not for the fainthearted. And as I am getting older, the prospect of shoveling yards - not feet - of snow off my driveway is less and less appealing.

The Illusion of Wealth

So what happens when the economy takes a downturn? On the downward curve, apparently, the economy reveals a lot about people, their attitudes to money and their lifestyles. Recently, both the New York Times and the Washington Post have run stories, featuring people and how they got into debt and how they cope [again, you may need to create free accounts to read the articles I refer to]. Overall, the stories highlight the differences between two opposing schools of thought: one side believes that the current crisis of personal insolvency resulted because of predatory lending practices by banks and financial institutions, who were greedy to make big bucks of endless fees and interest payments. The opposing camp holds that stories of personal debt reveal a lack of personal ethics. In other words, that you get into debt because you are morally lacking in essential qualities such as self-control, responsibility and so on.

The July 20 edition of the New York Times featured an article about Diane McLeod in suburban Philadelphia and her descent into unmanageable, all-consuming debt. The story is a familiar one - a woman's struggle to keep her head above water as she struggles through divorce, medical woes and job losses, while lack of fiscal self-discipline makes a bad situation worse. The reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, has quite a detailed outline of how exactly various predatory lending practices came together to pull McLeod into a quagmire of debt that ultimately ended with debt collectors hounding her and her house being foreclosed. Not to mention that her relationship with her son is in tatters as he washed his hands off the whole mess, moving in with his girlfriend (the article mentions this only in passing, but the dissolution of family bonds is quite awful, in my opinion).

The discussion in the comments section is also worth reading for the opposite view (I set the NYT comments from newest to oldest so the lower numbers are the newest comments): that debt symbolizes a lack of fundamental values such as responsibility. Many readers felt that while it is true that banks and lenders were unethical, they were only doing what businesses do: try to sell their product. Many felt that McLeod's situation is primarily of her own making. Some ask whether someone who was in such a financially precarious situation deserved to shop QVC (the shopping channel, for my Indian readers) or indulge in expensive bad habits such as smoking. One reader pointed out that:

Yes, lenders made stupid loans and offered terms that were usurious, but people can say no. Its now become the entitlement that everyone has cable tv, cell phones, video games, flat panel televisions, etc.

Here and there, some commenters (like No. 48) pointed out that what really broke McLeod was not the purchase of handbags and knickknacks (although they helped to raise the total bill), but huge medical bills from surgery and hospitalization. In other words, the rising costs of everything didn't help her situation at all. But in general, there was little sympathy for Diane McLeod and her plight. As No. 105 put it:

Are we supposed to think that these banks are giving out loans just to feel good about themselves? Of course they're going to try and maximize profits. It is the sole responsibility of those such as Ms. McLeod to make the informed decision of whether or not to take out a loan in the first place.

Here is my take on the issue:

1. Yes, Diane McLeod needs financial self-discipline. Of that, there is no doubt. Perhaps she should take some tips from Big Mama, or get counselling from local religious organizations, although stories like those also get annoying with their thriftier-than-thou attitudes.


2. But there is also no doubt that the system is geared towards the creation of debt for the profit of corporations. Let me illustrate this with a personal anecdote, for what it is worth. Some years ago, someone I knew who worked in the credit card industry told me that in order to maintain my credit profile, I should leave a small amount due on my cards from time to time. Not always, just from time to time. If I paid off my credit card every month, that signalled the credit card company that I was struggling financially and therefore was a bad credit risk (I don't know if this is true, just what I heard). Having just emerged from years of grinding poverty as a student, I did not think much of this plan. It just didn't make much economic sense to me. Now, that I am reading more on the topic I realize that for credit card companies, that made perfect business sense because the nature of their business had changed over the years. By the late 1990s, they were no longer in the business of making money by collecting on loans, but rather they made money through fees, penalties, and by selling off the loans to second, third, multiple parties. The loan itself had become the money-generator. This inverted pyramid - the debtor the point of the upside down pyramid - was bound to collapse as soon as the debtor could no longer pay his or her dues. I guess that time has come - when the debtor is unable to meet his or her obligations.
3. Turmoil is sure to follow. But how extensive will the upheaval be and how long will it last? I don't know. More thoughts later.

More About Wall Street and Main Street

Did I say that James Kunstler's outlook is pessimistic? I hope you get elegant understatement. I meant to say that he is positively apocalyptic in his outlook. So to balance out those doomsday pronouncements, I also read more measured analyses. For example, there is Robert Salomon, professor of business at the Stern School of Business at New York University. His blog posts also parse the details of the dreadful news that seems to pour out every day from Wall Street, Washington, D.C., London and Los Angeles. Like Kunstler, Salomon is downbeat but the academic calm helps to put things into perspective and doesn't send me rushing around the house in a panic-stricken tizzy, wondering if I should stock up water and firewood.

In fact, sifting through financial commentary on the internet has been amazing self-education. I have found some real gems of postings and articles in unlikely places that have helped me, a non-specialist, to understand both the bigger picture and the details of the current downturn. E.g., from the rather apocalyptic sounding website, dollarcollapse, I linked to this really well-written article in Harper's magazine that helped me understand some of what is going on. According to Eric Janszen, the American economy has shifted from a boom-bust cycle, a traditional business cycle model, to a bubble model. It is quite fascinating but I wonder, could it be true? Could the American economy have been transformed into a giant Ponzi scheme where the loser is the last sucker left holding the (now empty) bag? I need to discuss this with more economics-educated friends.

In the meantime, as I run errands in the various little downtowns of the various little towns in Fairfield County (OK, just two or three neighboring towns), I see nothing really amiss. People are still shopping, ordering salads for their lunches, eating ice cream. There are no mobs breaking down the banks or breaking into stores. In fact, calmness prevails everywhere. I hope the adjustment - and of that I am sure, a major adjustment is coming - will be like this. Calm, gradual transition to a newer, less costly system. The alternative is too awful to think about.

Doom, Gloom, and Then Some

I found the financial analysis blogs that I'm reading in the usual way - following someone's comment from another blog, browsing the internet, who knows where. But I'm discovering something new everyday as I follow the economic news. The only problem with deeper analysis for me is that I am completely math-challenged. As part of a generation of Indians who were given the choice of "Arts (Humanities)", "Science" or "Commerce", I was boxed in after Class X (tenth grade for my American readers) into the most math-deficient club of them all - "Arts". So, dear readers, I am unable to verify the accuracy or even the authenticity of any graphs, linear equations or statistics that the following websites/blogs display (but I beseech you to explain any errors if you find them, I would really, really appreciate it). And, washing my hands even further off any responsibility, these blogs should not be considered investment advice, OK? And remember K.'s warning that some of these blogs should be taken with a pinch of salt. They are, after all, opinion.

The most straightforwardly pessimistic analysis of recent financial and economic trends is by James Kunstler. I cannot type the name of his blog here for fear that my mother might be reading my blog, but you can go over to Kunstler's blog and see for yourself what he has to say. In today's post, he has a particularly bleak assessment of the American economy. Whatever happens, he says, whatever action the United States government takes or does not take, this country is going down, down, down.

Is it? I don't know. But he lays out his position for pessimism very clearly. What is Kunstler's solution? It is a return to traditional American values of hard work, thrift and enterprise. These values, he says, have been corrupted by thirty years of financial corruption as banks threw easy credit at undeserving borrowers who in turn led lives of extravagant indulgence that neither their grandparents and parents had never known. Here is what Kunstler writes:

"Painful as it is, Americans had better get a new "Dream" and fast. It better be a dream basedon the way the universe actually works, which is to say an operating procedure run on earnest effort and truthfulness rather than merely trying to get something for nothing andwishing on stars."

Meltdown

So I am in the front row seat watching the financial meltdown going on in the United States. I know that times are tough in other parts of the world too, but Fairfield County, CT is so full of people who work in finance either locally or in New York City that it's hard to ignore the fact that the economic ship is being buffetted by the biggest storm in half a century.

There are plenty of anecdotes of people stressed because of poorly-performing business but superficially, things are normal,despite the rising prices of food and gas. Kids are going to summer camp or to visit relatives, mothers are carpooling and then running errands, the mailman still looks pretty cheerful as he drops of the mail. The shops downtown seem to be full of browsing customers, and the businesses seem to be gearing up for the season of summer sales. All my neighbors seem to have their jobs (for which I am very glad). So who knows? Is the unease then only mine? Perhaps I have been reading too many blogs of the doom and gloom kind? Only time will tell which way things will go in Fairfield County.

To expand more on the doom and gloom bit: I am enjoying discovering new blogs everyday that deal with this matter. [Note: I said that I am "enjoying discovering" not "enjoying" other people's misery.] All these years, my knowledge of finance was limited to simple math: x amount of income, keep expenditure less than income, difference goes into savings. I let K. handle investments that called for anything more complicated than this simple formula. But now thanks to the prophets of doom everywhere in the blogosphere, I find that Wall Street, retail banks and mortgage companies have done some extremely complicated investing all of which is set to implode unless someone richer bails them out. Problem is, no one has $10 trillion just lying around, not even all the American taxpayers put together.

I'll link to some of these blogs in my next post. I should add that K., who is more financially savvy than I am, says that some of these bloggers should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it would be good to at least know the range of arguments out there as this economic crisis unfolds.

More thoughts on Racism in India

I have been thinking more about the racism that many of us Indians demonstrate to those who look different than us such as Africans, Chinese, etc. The most vivid display of bigotry is from those who consider themselves "mainstream" Indians towards those who are considered "outsider" Indians. I am talking of the often shocking treatment that people from the North-east of India - from the Seven Sisters states (Mizoram, Arunachal, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur and Assam) - have to endure at the hands of Indians elsewhere.

This problem always existed but thanks to the internet, these badly-treated Indians have been making their voices heard loud and clear. The news, people, is not pretty or palatable. Read for example, the blog post by Kima who writes from Mumbai, and think about how much prejudice these people face from landlords, taxi drivers, and even the police. Men from the northeast are viewed as drug addicts and drunkards, women from these states are viewed as morally loose just because they dress in western clothes and like to party into the night and don't fit the stereotypical "good girl" mould of Indian society. I feel ashamed that fellow Indians have to endure such humiliation.

[Update: Kima blogs out of Mumbai, not Bangalore as I had mistakenly assumed. But his posts about racism towards Northeastern Indians are still wrenching to read, especially because he writes about it in a matter-of-fact way with no self-pity. Read for example, his post specifically about the treatment of Indians from the Northeast.]

In his June 21 op-ed piece for The Telegraph from Kolkatta, the historian Ramachandra Guha - a Bangalore resident - provides a historical context for the stepmotherly treatment that Indian politicians and the Indian people have dealt to their fellow nationals. And yes, I insist, we have to remember that these are our own people who are being shabbily treated. Not that one should treat foreigners with less consideration, but it's saying something when even fellow nationals are so badly mauled by the prevailing culture. Small wonder that there are so many seccessionist problems in the northeast region of India. Who would want to put up with such shabby treatment?

Of Janissaries and Patriotism

In my wanderings through the world of expat bloggers from India, I came across some really unusual ones. These were blogs by State Department officials of Indian descent, i.e. children of immigrant Indian parents who now work as Foreign Service Officers. The State Department had posted them to India, either because of a request or because it was useful to have "ethnic"-looking people on the ground, whatever.

I don't want to link to these blogs because I disagree with many of the assumptions of the writers (and you know what I've said about being a critic who hides behind anonymity). But their entries did get me thinking about bigger questions about loyalty and patriotism. At first, these blogs made me wonder about the sentiments of these second-generation Indian Americans. Do they feel like the Janissaries of the old Ottoman Empire did? You know, the non-Turkish men who were taken as boys to Istanbul, the Imperial capital, reared in the ways of the Imperial elite, then sent off to rule in the name of the Sultan. Sometimes the Janissaries were sent back to the European provinces of their origin. Here, they often proved to be even more fanatically loyal to the idea of the Turkish Sultanate than the average Turk, often more cruel towards and contemptuous of their ethnic people than were the Turks.

Of course, the analogy is not totally accurate between the seventeenth-century devsirme (basically, Ottoman-sanctioned kidnapping) and the Indian-American foreign service experience of the present. After all, nobody forced the parents of these young people to emigrate to the United States (just as nobody held a gun to my head either all those years back when I went to get my student visa). But the sentiment of wanting to belong to their new culture must have been just as intense for these State Department officials as it was for the Janissaries of past centuries who were non-Turks growing up among hostile Turks, their only protector the Sultan himself. In the '70s and '80s, when these Indian-Americans were kids growing up in the 'burbs, when other kids were teasing them for their unfamiliar, unpronounceable names, the status of outsider must have been really hard to bear, (which explains why so many reject their parents' food, friends and families, and why some even change religion). Perhaps this then is the ultimate act of assimilation, serving your host country through government service.

But wait a minute! Before I condemn these people as subordinate imperialists ( or more accurately - "running dogs of imperialism" - ah, that phrase brings back memories of JNU), I remember I had a similar conversation eight years ago in Kolkatta. Participants were a senior family member, a friend from Europe who then lived in London, and two of us, younger family members. At some point during the evening, the conversation turned to living abroad and then to loyalty and citizenship. The younger family member, a non-resident Indian and the European friend were arguing that it was impossible for either one of them to renounce affection and loyalty to their native countries. The older family member, an old-fashioned army wife, was equally adamant that the day one changed one's citizenship, one's loyalties too must change.

"But you can't just switch loyalty on and off like that," the three of us younger people said.

"You can't be the citizen of a country and be working for the interests of another," said the retired army wife. "If you change your citizenship," she told us NRI family members, "you should be loyal to the United States and work for its interests only."

"Even if it goes to war with India?" we expostulated.

"You can't hold the passport of one country and have your loyalty to another country," the army wife repeated. To her, that was that.

"Impossible!" said U., the European friend. "I would hate it if Britain bombed my country. I would never be able to feel that Britain was in the right."

"Well, when you change your citizenship, your loyalties have to change," said the older family member, the army wife. "That's what citizenship means."

And, in a sense, she is right. Loyalty is not only a function of subjects wanting to blend into their ruler's system in order to gain acceptance. There is also a loyalty that comes with the acceptance of citizenship, loyalty that may or may not be expressed through national service either in the military or in the foreign service.

I may have some of the clearheaded virtues that come with an army upbringing. But, alas, I lack that simple commitment to patriotism, to the logic of citizenship and service that comes naturally to army officers and their wives, or to foreign service officers.

Sexism and Racism: An International Tour

[Note: You may need to create accounts for some of the news websites I've linked to on this post. They are all free accounts, as far as I can tell.]

The whole issue of cheerleaders in the Indian Premier League cricket tournament has brought up both the hypocrisy and the racism widespread in Indian society as well as some amazingly breathless reporting - from clueless western observers - about the entry of "American-style freedom". On the one hand, there is the complete objectification of the skimpily-dressed foreign women. This just reinforces the stereotype of the "immoral, easy" western women who will drop any amount of clothing for money. On the other hand, it provides the occasion for the self-righteous culture police to come out in strength, denouncing the corruption of Indian culture.


I say ban cheerleading in cricket not because it is corrupting of Indian culture (Hindi films have that covered) , not just because it is irrelevant to the sport (it is a ghastly sexist sideshow - go join a women's cricket team, ladies, instead of trying to be "me, too" participants on the side). Ban the damn thing because it also spreads an alarmingly distorted image of western women who are subject to extreme sexual harassment, being both visibly different-looking and often - at least in the Indian case - associated with the dubious lifestyles and shoddy parenting skills of those on the hippie trail. Cheerleading only adds to the woes of the vast majority of ordinary western women trying to visit India or live in the country as expats. I realize that by following this line of thinking I am falling into some dubious analytical company here, that anyone will tell you that in India it does not matter what you wear, that you can be covered from head to toe and still get groped and whistled at. But these cheerleaders are overwhelmingly foreign, either American or Eastern European. Hence they will be associated with cheerleading and its degrading objectification of women.

But the other seamy side to Indian national character that this whole cheerleading saga has uncovered is the horrendously racist one - it's not bad enough being sexist, no sir, we are racist too. See, we think western women are sleazy sluts, but if they are going to come here kicking up their legs in their bikini tops and short shorts, then we don't want...er, the dark ones...you know...

So hoping to find some comfort, I turned to closer pastures. But nah, no comfort here, just more misogyny, sexism and racism. As the national election cycle wends it way down to November, the traveling circus of sexism-cum-racism continues to trail its disgusting path across the United States. Hillary Clinton is subjected to the most degrading language I have seen recently in political discourse (one thing to note - that even with India's poor track record against women, no sane Indian man would be caught dead telling any leading woman politician to "stop running for office and go make me a sandwich.").

And when it comes to Obama, some of the most deep-rooted scary racism comes to the surface. You know, the kind of stuff that you thought ended along with public lynchings in the 1950s. But no, the good old days still live on in sunny suburbs and peaceful farming towns. It's scary to think that in little towns across America, there are people who have no problems telling Obama campaigners that their candidate should be strung up from the nearest tree. They are probably pious church-goers too.

There have always been anecdotal evidence of this lurking racism and misogyny. But given the long-drawn nature of the Clinton vs. Obama primary duel, it was inevitable that both would rise to the surface, showing us that the battles that we thought ended with the 1960s are not over, not just yet. Perhaps they will always be around so we will always have to be vigilant.

Growing Unease

You know that things are looking seriously bad when American observers start advising Americans to hoard food. This is the
country of the footlong sandwich
and the one-pound hamburger with fries and pickles on the side, the land of limitless options and limitless spending, the land of milk and honey where milk used to cost less than $2 per gallon and people rarely spent more than 8 per cent of their monthly income on food. So hoarding for any short term crisis seems so...oh dear, so Third World! But if rice and wheat prices keep moving the way they do, then perhaps that's what people here will have to start doing, loading up the pantry, that is. The era of food complacency is over.

I feel really bad because I know the drill of the economy of shortages - use less of everything, buy things only when you need to, reuse everything as far as possible. But to most people here, those routines are so alien that they will have a hard time adjusting, or maybe the much vaunted American adaptibility will rear its head again. Who knows?

More about the Expat Experience

The most interesting expat blogs come out of the experiences of those who are trying to push themselves out of their comfort zone, even if just a little bit. That is why I like the blogs of those women and men who are trying to get beyond just living in other places because that's where the job is. One of the other expat women in India whose blog I enjoy is Scribbly Katia who combines her daily life in India as mom and wife with that of a writer and an observer of cultures crossing and clashing. Recently, she has an interesting post about children and color perception and socialized biases towards whiteness.

I will probably find other great expat blogs as I browse the internet (already an occupation that takes up at least a couple of hours of my day). These days I am also following the worldwide food crisis that the mass media only started to pick up on towards the middle of last year. The trends are ominous as more and more acreage is given over to growing corn for ethanol, which shrinks the amount of wheat and rice available for the world's population. Droughts and crop failures have added to the crisis. Read about it here, here and here (To read the articles from the New York Times, you may need to create an account). The crisis in the world's financial markets is also driving speculative capital into farmland, making agricultural property prices rise rapidly.

Prices are rising rapidly in the United States too. And this will have an especially hard impact on a people who are used to spending only 15 percent of their income on food. In poorer parts of the world, where people spend anything from 60-80 per cent of their income on food, things will get significantly worse in the short term.

More Blogs from India

Continuing where I left off last time (why do I never get to do two consecutive days of blogging? Ask a certain three year old), another expat blog I visit fairly regularly is that of Esben Agersnap's. A young Danish intern (don't know how much longer he has to go), Esben blogs out of Delhi. He takes the most fabulous pictures of his travels in India and in Europe and often makes me wish that I were in my early twenties again, with all the spirit of adventure of that age.

There is another quite unusual bunch of older American (I think) women living near Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh. Joy blogs about their life among the Tibetan population of that region and her adventures in the Himalayas and - oh, knitting. Since I recently took to knitting, I find her posts on this subject quite interesting as well as informative.

Favorite Expat Blogs (Contd.)

Well, after tackling bouts of flu, ear infections and sinus infections (mine and the children's), I am back again after a long break. To pick up the thread of my favorite expat blogs from India, here are another few that I enjoy reading daily. They are in no particular order or ranking, just a sampling of my daily reading that keeps me connected to other perspectives. Sadly, there are few blogs from my hometown, Kolkatta, so I won't put those here. Anyway, here goes.

Cynthia Haller is a twenty-something Swiss woman married to a north Indian man and they both make their home in Bangalore, Karnataka, in south India. I found Cynthia via ivillage, a website to which one of my friends directed me saying that it was "fun, light reading." Anyway, that's where I first encountered Cynthia who is very active in the online message boards section. She writes of her life in Bangalore, the trials and tribulations of being a white woman in the city, her personal sorrows of being accepted/rejected by neighbors and in-laws, being ripped off by price-gouging autorickshaw drivers, missing cheeses (poor thing, if I were Swiss relocated to India, cheese would be the biggest hole in my life - sorry, hee-hee, couldn't resist that!). Cynthia's observations are always insightful and I find her judgement accurate and persuasive. Perhaps it is because she is "one of us" now that her criticisms and her praise are both accepted and acceptable because one gets the sense that both her negative and her positive impressions come out of a sense of love for India and its peculiarities. Besides, she is living what most people would consider a "normal" Indian life as opposed to an inflated expatriate lifestyle (not that there's anything wrong with that except that all those expatriate observations come out of living in a bubble and are not generalizable). Anyway, Cynthia's observations of life in Bangalore strike me as authentic. And I loved reading her post about Diwali (scroll down to the November 2007 posts) with her in-law's in Lucknow. My mother is not so ritual-oriented so of course as a reaction, I have to love every form of ritual I see. And that was just priceless. Thanks, Cynthia.

Expat Bloggers

Ever since my friend A. moved her family from New York to Mumbai, I have discovered the world of expat bloggers. There's a large number of resident non-Indians blogging about the good, the bad, the ugly about their new lives in a new country. By and large, the women bloggers from India fall into two categories: expat wives following their husbands on the international job trail and expat workers following the global economy (this includes returning Indians).

Of the two, I infinitely prefer the latter as their insights and their experiences are more layered and complex. The former seem to be mainly bored housewives sitting around and griping about their host country. There is one in particular who is truly racist and bigoted (given my resolution to not critique anonymously I cannot, alas, name her or which city she blogs from so you'll just have to take my word for it). Being a bigoted religious fundamentalist, she places Hindu religious beliefs in quotes, and makes fun of her rather simple host population which seems to consist of her dozen-odd domestic staff - perhaps mockery as a social skill is de rigueur in expat social circles? Pick someone your own social size, lady, and that might be more of a real insight for your readers. And oh, if those are the kind of values your religion teaches you, it's no surprise that you're not finding many converts.

But there are many whose expat life has been a long journey of discovery. India is a hard country in which to live alone, as all social life is constructed around family or long-time friendships. Even the limited night life of the big metros involves going out with friends; people are not really looking to meet a stranger. Unless one marries into an Indian family or forms a close friendship with an Indian, it is usually very hard to break into society. So, given these formidable barriers to social encounters with Indians, those expat bloggers from India deserve a cheers who have tried to overcome the obstacle of their foreign-ness, the minor and major hardships of daily life, and have retained a generous spirit open to adventure despite the mauling they receive from roadside Romeos and the footdragging they encounter at post offices. Some are visitors, some are married to Indians.

Here is the first of my favorites:
Pretty Blue Salwar is a twenty-something theater grad student who spent a semester in India, teaching theater and directing Shakespeare in Telugu. Like many westerners in India, she was laid low by viruses and bacteria, ripped off by touts, mauled by slimy hotel managers, etc. She now blogs about her life back in the States. Here's to a great career, Blue, you truly deserve it.

More later.

The Reluctant Pollyanna

The hard thing about being anonymous is that I can't leave critical comments on other people's blogs. If it's just an observation or if it's something positive then yes, anonymity is just fine and that's what I do. But when it's a critical opinion to offer, then I feel that you have to at least give yourself a handle or better yet, just log in as yourself. In the past, I used to post criticism anonymously or under my initials but have come around to the belief that criticism needs an identity otherwise there is no dialogue, it's just seeking shelter in anonymity.

On the other hand, I am reluctant to shed my anonymity, although any of my friends or acquaintances reading this blog can quite easily figure out who I am. I don't know why I want to retain this anonymity. It's restrictive, given my parameters - no potshots at family, friends or random acquaintances. Leaving out work means that I can only comment on very narrowly personal interests. So going public is attractive, but I still hesitate.

K. also has a blog, a very erudite blog on our attempts to get off oil in our personal lives and our successes and failures in this experiment. His entries read like a mini-science journal full of stats and charts and pictures and links to various very serious scientific websites. My observations on the other hand are not about my interests, but about random things that happen to catch my attention or that put me in a pensive mood. In other words, this is a hopelessly self-indulgent bourgeois blog that has no educational value at all, except as a way of keeping a historical record of my thoughts so that perhaps my grandchildren can read it. In many ways, this blog has shown me just how mundane my life outside work really is. Work keeps my brain alive, post-work is all humdrum routine.

So is my anonymity a sign of shame, that I am so appalled that I cannot own up to the possession of this bland as vanilla life? That's not quite true either. Who could not be charmed by Fairfield County, Connecticut, close enough to the hustle of New York City but far away enough? Stuffy and yet liberal enough for me right now even though I long for better Mexican restaurants. In many ways, my life outside work is so full of sudden delights - the swirling fall of golden maple leaves in gusty October winds, the vision of my nonagenarian neighbor taking her careful walk and reminding me of the stability inherent in our neighborhood (so different from the transient population of our Chicago street), the pushing of strollers by playground-bound mothers, the chuckling of my children as they push their toys around the backyard - that I can only dimly wish for another kind of lifestyle.

Whatever my motives - unexamined too closely by myself - I have decided that for now, I would rather preserve my place in the shadows of blogdom and not in the limelight - I repeat, for now. The practical implications for this blog is that for better or for worse, I can only provide links to blogs that I like, not excoriate directly the ones that I despise - and although there are many among the latter, they shall remain only alluded to, not engaged with in public.