...is everywhere. The downtown area of my town is busy as ever, but behind the bustle, stores had been vanishing quietly, something that had escaped my notice. The main row of buildings is as crowded as ever, but in the rear, only shells of stores remain. Small businesses have vanished, the instruments of their trade - manicure and pedicure stations, empty, velvet jewelry holders in a window - remain like dusty skeletons. Some tell me that the bigger players too are in trouble but are holding on. We shall see.
Yesterday, I stopped by the post office. It was a quick errand and, like a fool, I left my handbag on the front seat of my car outside. As I returned, a passerby - tall, lean, furrowed brow - peered in at it, with unusually longing eyes. I cursed my stupidity. Those accumulated survival skills, developed while growing up in India and then honed to razor sharp edge by 7 years of living in Chicago, have been softened and blurred by eight years of surburban life. I need to revive those instincts.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Best Way...
...to witness an historic presidential inauguration is in a warm sun-splashed family room sitting beside loving husband/partner/friend while eating a celebratory Inauguration brunch of fried eggs and sausages washed down with Darjeeling tea (OK, OK, you can have coffee if you absolutely must).
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Getting to Know the Neighbors
"It's hard to appreciate the beauty of a place when you doubt its very validity."
------Nadeem Aslam, The Wasted Vigil (New York and London: Random House, 2008), 242.
I'm currently reading a bunch of Pakistani authors. I finished reading Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist early last year, followed it up with Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes (a biting satire that builds its plot around the 1988 death of the dictator General Zia ul-Haq), and rounded it off with Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil (OK, the last is about Afghanistan but Pakistan is ever-present in the narrative).
All three of the novels I read are attractive for different reasons. Their authors are ironic but (thankfully) not arch. They all explore the most pressing issues of the time - religious fanaticism, terrorism and the cult of the military in Pakistan. If I had to choose a favorite, I would (reluctantly, for they are all good) pick Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil. His portrayal of Afghanistan and Pakistan is profoundly disturbing (the stoning to death of women, the amputation of hands as punishment, the gruesome game of buzkashi with a Russian soldier) but his prose is elegant and haunting despite its density. I am looking forward to reading his other novel, Maps for Lost Lovers.
Growing up in India, I never knew any Pakistanis. Oh, I thought of them often but not in a very admiring way. In any case, as the daughter of an army officer a social relationship with a Pakistani, unless officially sanctioned, would have been tantamount to treason. Things did not change even when I left the shelter of my parents' home. There were no Pakistani exchange students at Lady Shri Ram College or at JNU. The only good to come out of Pakistan was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or so we believed. Later, when I moved to the United States for graduate studies, there were Pakistani students but we moved in different orbits, oblivious of each other.
This lack of socializing between Indians and Pakistanis even on the more neutral turf of American campuses can only partly be attributed to religious differences. The main obstacle to getting to know more Pakistanis was a straightforward class difference. The vast majority of Indians coming to the United States are from very middle class families. This is not middle class in the two-cars-and-three-color-televisions American sense. The Indian middle class is the old fashioned frugal, heavy-on-education-light-on-designer-clothes-and-sports-cars kind of middle class. Many (although not all) Pakistani students in the United States are from the upper middle or upper classes (as is the protagonist of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, for example). They tend to socialize with the frat pack and the beautiful people (as does the main character in The Reluctant Fundamentalist), unlike the geeky, poverty stricken Indian students, counting out their pennies at Walgreen's and wondering if they can get enough money together to buy a used Toyota Camry.
So, to cut a long story short, I knew no Pakistanis socially even on the campus of my American university where there were more Pakistanis than in all the schools and neighborhoods of India. I still don't know any Pakistanis here in Fairfield County, Connecticut, although I know there are many who live here. I am now getting to know my neighbors through literature. Here too, it seems one step removed. I don't read the Urdu script, the language of Pakistan and the medium through which much of its culture is transmitted. But, through these three novels written in English, I have some sort of a window into the world of its people. I still can't claim that I am enamored of Pakistan's militarized politics or its very unapologetically feudal social structure (this is not to say that India is the beacon of egalitarianism but feudalism is at least questioned politically, if not socially). But now I have a better appreciation of the talent of Pakistan's people and the nation's ability to endure and to create good literature, comedy and satire, even in the midst of a rising tide of fundamentalism and political turbulence.
------Nadeem Aslam, The Wasted Vigil (New York and London: Random House, 2008), 242.
I'm currently reading a bunch of Pakistani authors. I finished reading Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist early last year, followed it up with Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes (a biting satire that builds its plot around the 1988 death of the dictator General Zia ul-Haq), and rounded it off with Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil (OK, the last is about Afghanistan but Pakistan is ever-present in the narrative).
All three of the novels I read are attractive for different reasons. Their authors are ironic but (thankfully) not arch. They all explore the most pressing issues of the time - religious fanaticism, terrorism and the cult of the military in Pakistan. If I had to choose a favorite, I would (reluctantly, for they are all good) pick Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil. His portrayal of Afghanistan and Pakistan is profoundly disturbing (the stoning to death of women, the amputation of hands as punishment, the gruesome game of buzkashi with a Russian soldier) but his prose is elegant and haunting despite its density. I am looking forward to reading his other novel, Maps for Lost Lovers.
Growing up in India, I never knew any Pakistanis. Oh, I thought of them often but not in a very admiring way. In any case, as the daughter of an army officer a social relationship with a Pakistani, unless officially sanctioned, would have been tantamount to treason. Things did not change even when I left the shelter of my parents' home. There were no Pakistani exchange students at Lady Shri Ram College or at JNU. The only good to come out of Pakistan was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or so we believed. Later, when I moved to the United States for graduate studies, there were Pakistani students but we moved in different orbits, oblivious of each other.
This lack of socializing between Indians and Pakistanis even on the more neutral turf of American campuses can only partly be attributed to religious differences. The main obstacle to getting to know more Pakistanis was a straightforward class difference. The vast majority of Indians coming to the United States are from very middle class families. This is not middle class in the two-cars-and-three-color-televisions American sense. The Indian middle class is the old fashioned frugal, heavy-on-education-light-on-designer-clothes-and-sports-cars kind of middle class. Many (although not all) Pakistani students in the United States are from the upper middle or upper classes (as is the protagonist of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, for example). They tend to socialize with the frat pack and the beautiful people (as does the main character in The Reluctant Fundamentalist), unlike the geeky, poverty stricken Indian students, counting out their pennies at Walgreen's and wondering if they can get enough money together to buy a used Toyota Camry.
So, to cut a long story short, I knew no Pakistanis socially even on the campus of my American university where there were more Pakistanis than in all the schools and neighborhoods of India. I still don't know any Pakistanis here in Fairfield County, Connecticut, although I know there are many who live here. I am now getting to know my neighbors through literature. Here too, it seems one step removed. I don't read the Urdu script, the language of Pakistan and the medium through which much of its culture is transmitted. But, through these three novels written in English, I have some sort of a window into the world of its people. I still can't claim that I am enamored of Pakistan's militarized politics or its very unapologetically feudal social structure (this is not to say that India is the beacon of egalitarianism but feudalism is at least questioned politically, if not socially). But now I have a better appreciation of the talent of Pakistan's people and the nation's ability to endure and to create good literature, comedy and satire, even in the midst of a rising tide of fundamentalism and political turbulence.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
New Year's Resolution
This year I will read Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy right through to the very end. I've been trying to read it for three years and always give up - mainly because I run out of library renewals. Hmmm...perhaps my resolution should be to buy the book?
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, November 28, 2008
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)
Karur poush maash
Karur shorbonaash
(Some celebrate bountiful harvests, others face annihilation)
Monday, November 24, 2008
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...
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...
Saturday, November 15, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, November 07, 2008
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.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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.
Friday, October 24, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
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.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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.
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."
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."
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