My 'India' Film - Inside the Mind of a Filmmaker

India is the flavor of the month. So I've got to make a film about it. And so now I, part of a new generation of Hollywood directors, am making my way to South Asia to make films “about India”. No, I don’t know any Indian filmmakers, have never watched Indian films, and really couldn’t name any Indian actors. But that doesn’t matter at all. You see, my film's really not going to be about India at all and most definitely not about Indians. They will just be somewhere in the background looking colorful and dancing Bollywood dances. Ultimately, my ‘India’ film will be a western film about western themes – you know, individualism and liberty and raw sex, and just coincidentally the setting will be in India. Because, you see India is the flavor of the month, and everyone just has to have made at least one film in India.

Update: Apologies are in order. I re-read the article to which I linked and now I'm sorry that I criticized the filmmaker. It seems to me that the reporter basically asked all sorts of leading questions about her interest in India, etc. and her responses were basically polite "yes, I'd like to do that" kind of replies. But like Danny Boyle, chances are the film will probably follow the format outlined above. And then, it will be the Slumdog Millionaire experience redux. Awards and hoopla in the west, and a deflating non-event in India. I can already see the director scratching her head and wondering, "Why the heck didn't Indians in India like my film?"

Easter

It's a perfect spring day here. Brilliant sunshine, mild temperatures, crocuses and daffodils out in full strength (not mine, thanks to the deer, another post about that). And it's Easter Sunday. We are going to have a nice Easter brunch, eggs, bacon, hash browns, and the works. And since we don't go to church, it's going to be a restful day for the most part, I hope.

As it's K.'s "holiday" (sort of), he has to organize the festivities. We went to an Easter egg hunt yesterday and the kids had a blast, running around picking up their candy, their faces alive with excitement and happiness. Then a quick dinner at Senor Salsa in Fairfield and the day concluded most satisfactorily.

I am more attached to my Indian/Hindu traditions than is K. to his own religious ones. So on Durga Puja and Diwali, I do include the religious aspects of my culture. But more and more, keeping our respective traditions alive involves food. So Thanksgiving and Christmas are about preparing huge meals together and eating them with each other and with friends (besides the gifts for Christmas). The turkey, the mashed potatoes, the sweet potatoes, the tian, the pasta salad, etc. Diwali is all vegetarian, saag paneer, alu-gobi, dal makhani, baingan sabzi, and other yummy Indian stuff.

And now Easter too is about eating. But I like this tradition. We celebrate these occasions as a time for us all to come together as a family, as a group of friends, and be happy in each other's company. A full table brings us all around it to joke and laugh and chat (and for me to have some prosecco). And if this is what my children can take away from the meaning of holidays, Christian, Hindu or whatever, then I will have considered my job well done. Recently, I stumbled across some ultra-religious blogs - Christian, Muslim, Hindu - and I am just saddened at the meaning given to faith in those writings - the "this is the only truth" meaning, the "everyone else is damned" message, the "I'm so superior" attitude. I keep telling my kids that ethics and moral values are not related to piety. I can teach my kids perfectly well the difference between right and wrong, without dragging them to temple or church or mosque. And I also warn them repeatedly to never marry a religious fanatic (you can never start too early with the warnings!). And the best way to reinforce positive values is around a dining table full of good food cooked lovingly by one's mother and father, and joined by good friends. This I truly believe.

The Mobs that Never Came

Thinking of the relative calm and order during the disorderly time last week, when the storm laid low the western sections of Fairfield County, I decided to probe more deeply into the causes of the relative discipline and stoicism on display in these parts. Since these parts are what I call home for the forseeable future, I would like to, er, compare and contrast, analyze, etc.

Hurricane Katrina laid waste to Louisiana and Mississippi. New Orleans is in ruins, and the total breakdown there meant that people were pretty much on their own, which meant that there was widescale looting and rampaging through stores by members of the general public. The January earthquake in Haiti was also followed by lawlessness, looting and rioting. Last month's earthquake in Chile also triggered some sporadic looting of shops in Concepcion and Santiago (although nowhere near what the media reporting would have us believe).

I'd like to think that we are a special people here in Fairfield County, the We Don't Behave Like That kind of people. And yes, all of us who were affected behaved exceptionally well. Those without power and hot water ate at diners and restaurants, built fires and went without showers. Those who had power took in whole families for three days at a time, with no complaint. We all took a break from life and just chilled (well, some perhaps a little too literally for comfort). But might not our good behavior here have also to do with the fact that a) the storm did not affect all of Connecticut, so reinforcements could come in quickly but just as importantly b) we simply never imagined that the powers-that-be would NOT respond to our plight. They had to respond, this is Fairfield County!

Perhaps, that is the difference between us here in Fairfield County and the others in New Orleans, Port-au-Prince and Santiago. We don't loot and riot because the government comes in quickly to aid us in times of trouble, and we expect it to do so. The folks in the other places have no such grand expectations from the authorities. They know quite well that during a catastrophe, they will be abandoned. Rioting, looting, mayhem are not just a result of a breakdown, they are symptoms of a basic lack of faith in government because during normal times, the institutions of authority bypass those in the ghettoes and the shanties. When the punitive powers of the state - the police, the national guard, etc. - recede during earthquakes and hurricanes, the general feeling is that it's every person for himself or herself. Nobody's coming with repair crews and hot food, or at least not soon. It's the jungle and the best-armed will rule, even if briefly. To sum it up even more clearly - it is finally about class and access to power. I would have said that it's about race too but in this country race and class (especially in Louisiana and Mississippi) are so intertwined, that it doesn't need to be said.

The Storm

The Storm of 2010. What else do they call it? The worst weather-related disaster here in fifty years? The worst in 25 years? Well, basically, the worst in a long time. And we lived through it! People throughout lower Fairfield County lost power for several days. Hotels were sold out for miles around. Some people went away to New York (where things could not have been much better, especially in Westchester County) or to New Jersey to stay with friends and family. Many people had to toss out the contents of their fridges and freezers, a kind of Mother Nature-enforced deep cleaning, I guess.

At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish in the face of so much physical destruction and so much disruption to people's lives, may I just say that Fairfield County denizens were amazing! There was no breakdown of law and order. Nobody looted shops and warehouses. Firefighters did what they had to do, electrical workers worked long hours, and it helped that even the most frustrated people who had no power for days did not have meltdowns, at least not in public. Community spirit showed itself in the quiet opening of doors to friends and neighbors. Larger meals were cooked, more showers were taken in many households, and life went on despite the stress and the strain of being homeless, so to speak. Restaurants and hotels did fabulous business, of course, and the libraries were the gathering ground of hundreds. On Monday, I couldn't even park in the library's lot because there were so many people there.

How did we fare? Well, we were very fortunate, because we only lost power for one hour on Monday. We did have friends staying with us, which was fine because we drank wine and tea and ate cookies and pie. And the children just loved the extended sleepover-cum-playdate. We do have a pine tree in the neighbor's yard that is leaning over into our property, but the power's still on and one of these days, CL&P will take care of the tree. I'm not complaining.

Religion and Bollywood

There has been some commentary recently about Bollywood's take on Islamic terrorism. It did in fact occur to me too, that of all the major film industries in the world, it has been Bollywood, in all its overblown, screechy melodrama, that has had the guts to take on the most vexing question of our times - Islamic terrorism and Islamic identity post 9-11. Films like A Wednesday dealt with the problem of domestic terrorism in India and one man's (Naseeruddin Shah) quest to end it in the manner he knew best. More recently, at least three films have tackled the status of Muslims in post-9/11 America: New York, Kurbaan, and My Name is Khan.



I have seen (and liked, although I cannot endorse its solution) A Wednesday. Fast-paced drama and action with a central theme that lifts it way above the usual cop thriller genre. The manner in which the harmless, middle-class Naseeruddin Shah transforms himself into a ruthless killer (without firing a shot himself) was just amazing. I confess to not having watched the others, mainly because I dread the treatment of a serious issue such as Muslim profiling in a mainstream Bollywood fashion. I suppose I will rent and watch these films at some point, but I feel that all these movies will suffer from the same weakness - a director's temptation to take full advantage of a location shoot to throw in all kinds of things irrelevant to the main theme. Eyewitness reports for My Name is Khan confirm that, along with the central character's religious identity, the film also throws in Asperger's Syndrome, Hurricane Katrina and racial problems in the south. Can one film possibly be so many things to so many people?


But overall, what is interesting is that Bollywood films are trying to present these issues for discussion, in a manner in which Hollywood and western film industries are unable to do, except via exasperating acts of provocation like the Dutch filmaker, Geert Wilder's Fitna.

In India, in general, there is a meaningful discussion of Muslim identity in the news. What I found refreshing about the program on NDTV was that the panel included a range of Muslim opinion, including Bollywood stars like Shahrukh Khan and Soha Ali Khan but also verging-on-Taliban-type Dr. Zakir Naik. Perhaps, this is because there are so many Indian Muslims that one has to take their views into account, not just marginalize them.

Perhaps, the most interesting part of the program was the audience participation. There was a young Muslim woman in hijab who stated that she would try to "counsel" any potential hijab-less friend about the "correct" way. Another woman got up and said that if any young girl in her neighborhood suddenly started wearing a hijab, she would be "worried" about her. That, in my opinion, is at the heart of the differences between orthodox Muslims and others. The orthodox don't just consider that they are following their own path to God and please could the rest of us just leave them alone to do it. They do actually consider the unveiled and the unorthodox as "bad" or "misguided". Meanwhile, the unveiled and unorthodox consider the taking on of restrictive clothing and visible markers of identity (such as beards) as "abnormal" and "worrisome." Personally, I would side with the liberals and the progressives on this matter. I would never restrict the right of a woman to veil herself or that of a man to grow a beard and to wear a skull cap (as has done Nicolas Sarkozy of France). But, I am not sure whether the orthodox of any faith would respect my right to wear what I want and practise my faith freely, if they were in a position to influence public policy. That is the real difference between us.

Of Writing and Criticism

I’ve noticed on some expat blogs I read (occasionally), a posting or two that deals with comments and criticism. The blog authors are often of the view that the blog is their personal journal, opinions, reflections. Several have said that the blog is the equivalent of a personal diary, the random jottings-down of whatever floated into the authors’ minds on random occasions. If they don’t like what they read, blog authors argue, the readers are free to move on, stuff it, etc. In other words, people should not be getting personal in their criticism and comments on blogs because blogs are the personal opinions of their authors.

I disagree with these blog authors’ assumptions. A blog is not a personal journal. I don’t remember ever letting other people read my personal journal (last maintained in my early twenties in a small black calendar-type book). A blog is a personal account in a public space and therefore is looking for an audience. In the very act of looking for someone to read your blog, you have already made yourself a target of your public’s opinion. To complain afterward that the blog is a personal journal is simply trying to have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t want others to read and then to respond with only praise. Like a spoilt movie star railing against the critics. After all, dear blog authors, if you’re so proud of the brutal honesty of your opinions, then why would you think that your readers don’t have equally brutally honest responses to your expressed opinions? Of course, every blog author has the right to delete or block obscenities, name-calling, spam, and other garbage. But readers’ responses to one’s observations are very valid, and should be welcomed. Even if you don’t agree with their opinion about your opinion.

And if you really do believe that your blog is a personal diary, then (dear expat ladies in particular) please don’t list it in public fora like www.expat-blog.com or http://expatwomen.com . And if you’re really interested in keeping your observations restricted to only positively friendly readers, do make your blog invitation-only, would you?

Hypocrisy

It is really ironic that western nations are bearing down on the Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, demanding that he crack down on corruption, when western leaders are unable to do anything at all about the immense web of corruption that has almost brought the western financial system to its knees.

This is cognitive dissonance at its best. There is a great deal of public anger building about outrageous banker bonuses at previously bailed out companies, but there is precious little that any western government can do to sling a few sorry, pin-striped behinds into jail as a warning to other transgressors. In the meantime, increasing numbers of people are out of jobs, school budgets are being cut left, right and center, and within the next year, many people may have to choose between food and home heating as energy prices are expected to rise. Not to mention, those pesky tea partiers are likely to party even harder this summer.

Given this dismal state of affairs at home, all the lecturing and hectoring of the (no-doubt) corrupt Afghans fail to leave any observer impressed. It especially fails to impress the observer with a keen sense of observation and irony. You see, dear formerly great wielders of global authority, information is now available to anyone with an internet connection and a Web browser. The old game of "do as I say, not as I do" is less and less of an option when a) you're broke and b) you are unable to clean out your own pig sty first.

There is a way, however, to get the Afghan government to conform to one's (abstract, theoretical) moral standards of fiscal integrity - threaten to leave, taking all the troops with one. The military option is really the only real leverage that donor nations have. Just don't invoke "values", "integrity" and "efficiency" as leverage against Afghan official corruption - doing so will only result in resounding and mocking laughter all around. Better still, let's get this fiscal mess sorted out here first, then we will all be in a position to lecture again.

New Year, Old Age

Happy New Year! It's been a while since I posted, as there has been a lot of stuff going on. For one thing, I finished the first draft of my first novel in December. It's a work of historical fiction set in British India during the Second World War. If I find an editor, then I guess that will be the end of my days of semi-anonymous blogging (semi-anonymous because, as I've said before, those who know me know that I blog here). For another thing, K. is trying to start a new venture. I can't talk about it until it is all up and running, all I can tell you is that it has to do with green energy and home heating and cooling. If you're interested in knowing more, leave me your email address in the comments section and I will direct you to his blog. In any case, looks like my days of gentle anonymity are coming to an end. Oh well.

But, I did start thinking about the big picture when K. started darting around, setting up meetings, teleconferencing, etc. This rushing about brought back memories of the America of 18 years ago, all possibility and action; it was an echo of a former moment. But I notice that these days all K.'s meetings are with people who are at least in their late forties or fifties, their graying hair and creased faces in stark contrast to the revolutionary new product that K. is trying to introduce here in southern Connecticut. And as I looked at them, I wondered: where is the young blood, the twenty- and thirty-somethings, the Young Turks? Are they all in California or have they decamped to yet further reaches of the globe?

Over the last few years, I have often returned from the mad whirl that is life in India and have felt strangely....still. Life in southwestern Connecticut feels, oddly enough, slower than the frantic pace of life in Delhi, Kolkatta, Jaipur. I last visited Paris in 2003 and there too I felt that I was viewing an extremely beautiful, but rather middle-aged grande dame, whose feet ached after 8:00 PM. Turns out that not only were my impressions accurate but they are backed up by statistics. Not only is Connecticut graying and slowing down, but Paris, too, is becoming less tolerant of youthful bonhomie. Oh, mon dieu!

So what will happen to the energy and drive that so epitomized America in the previous century, the dynamism and optimism that restored western Europe to good health and prosperity (not that the British and the French are grateful for that - they hold their noses and accept American money and act as if they are doing the US a great favor by doing so, there's a lesson for wanna-be good Samaritans there)? Will it peter out and grind down to a halt?

I don't think so. The one good thing that the United States still has going for it is its still growing population. Unlike Europe and Japan, with their rather homogenous cultures, immigration has helped keep American population relatively stable and relatively diverse. Despite the cussed arrogance of some of its business leaders, the crass opportunism of some its politicians and the collective madness of some of its people, this is still a country of fundamentally decent people. I say this as an immigrant who is fully aware of the institutional racism and popular prejudices that exist in the land. This is not a pollyanna-ish judgement - I have no intention of casting myself in the role of Voltaire's Candide or playing a real-life female Forrest Gump. All I have to say is that the naivete that Europeans sneer at and parasite nations take advantage of, is not innocence so much as decency.

Of course, there are still hurdles to cross. This country has gorged itself on borrowed money and that addiction has to be overcome. I have several volumes to write on the chief fault that Americans possess en masse - a singular lack of thrift. But now, c'est fini, it's all kaput. There is no more cheap money to finance vacations, houses or cars. Wealth and prosperity has to come the old-fashioned way - by working, earning, saving, saving, saving. It will happen, I think. For when there is no other way out, people will do what needs to be done to recover from the disastrous financial policies of the last thirty-odd years. And as I watch my young children run and play and laugh, I still have hope for this country's future. And as I watch my dynamic husband set up his new venture, I see the flame of American entrepreneurship flicker into life once again....

The Audacity of Hope

...is what a caller into Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC today, termed the decision by the Nobel Prize Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barak Obama. Personally, I think the decision is premature and may even hamper the President's efforts to implement some very difficult decisions. For example, I do not think that President Obama can possibly be expected to resolve the Afghan situation without enlarging the military effort. That's hardly peaceful, as future critics of the Nobel Committee's decisions will justifiably point out, but right now peacemongering will not gain anyone the upper hand militarily on the bad guys. Otherwise, it will be back to public executions at Kabul's stadium. Poor President Obama. From gung-ho politician he has been kicked upstairs, unwilling, horrified, bemused, into the statesman-saint club of unpopular (but incredibly decent) presidents and vice-presidents.

Diary of a Brown Suburban Wife - Where is it?

Globalization has led many people to leave the lands of their birth and settle in other lands - of opportunity, adventure, etc. Predictably, this transmigration has led to that other global phenomenon - the inter cultural and interracial marriage. Yours truly is one such statistic. Enter the Internet and blogging and there is now a wider audience that has a collective window into such marriages as they unfold and develop.

Since I come from India, my interest in Indian bloggers has kept pace with the expansion of that pool. I have noticed that there are many women of western origin (mostly, but not always, white) who blog fairly extensively about their intercultural partnerships. Some of these women live in India, some live in the west with their Indian spouses. But certainly these women feel that their marriages are blog-worthy material, with the pushes and pulls of in-laws and cultural expectations, etc. I think there should be a separate category of blogs, anyway, for Indian in-laws, given the intricate dynamics of that relationship (I can't even imagine the confusion that the entry of a foreign daughter-in-law must create in the network of desi in-law relationships).

Given that there are a fair number of Indian women who are also in intercultural marriages, why is it that so few blog about their experiences? It's not as if we don't have the same learning curves, similar experiences about differences in food, lifestyles, family expectations, etc. So where is the diary of the brown American housewife? Or the desiAmerican? Why is the minutiae of the mixed marriage not considered blogworthy by the desi participant in the partnership?

Not having polled anybody, my answer can only be tentative and personal. I don't blog about my marriage because - intercultural or not - it is mine, personal, private. Whatever K. and I go through, whatever I think of the objective setting of my marriage (and believe me, a mixed marriage in Fairfield County is infinitely easier than one located in rural Kansas), all those things have to play themselves out off-line. And while my blog risks being bland at times, given the self-imposed restrictions on subject matters, it does not touch on my personal life except to provide context for something, my outlook in life, my politics, etc. This does not mean that I don't thorougly enjoy the blogs by the women writing about their desi experience. I do read them, sometimes sympathize, sometimes laugh, sometimes shake my head.

Desi bloggers out there, those of you in mixed marriages, what are your reasons for blogging or not blogging about your relationship?

Happy Birthday, India

Aug 15 - India's 62nd Independence Day, the 63rd year of independence begins. I no longer live there but I do think of the country often as my parents and close friends still live there. Contrary to what one would think, most of my generation did not leave India and the majority of my school and college friends still live there (they do travel extensively, though).

I am so glad, though, that I came here in the 1990s and not before. When I came to the United States, my identity as Indian had already been solidified. The India I grew up in was a simple place of often brutal contrasts, but I felt no embarrassment about it as Tunku Varadarajan may have done (I don't know his bio, so I don't know if he was raised in India or overseas). This was because my generation of Indians felt *Indian*, not reluctant members of an uneasy coalition of different ethnicities and religions, as perhaps the earlier emigrants did. Some of this sense of comfortableness may have come about through the inevitable process of nation-building but I like to think that at least part of this new self-confidence came from a thorough overhaul of the education system.

When I try to dredge up the memories of my school years and of the subjects I liked (English, History), I remember a vague disjuncture in the curriculum right around the age of 7. There are memories of something called Radiant Reader, with glossy pages and colors, full of stories about devotion and pluckiness in a land far away called England. There was the story of Greyfriars Bobby, the dog who stood guard over his dead master's grave until his own death. And then there was Grace Darling, the heroine of the Longstone Lighthouse who risked her own life in a maritime rescue in 1838. There was also George Macdonald's poem, "Baby". All nice, unobjectionable texts, but limited in both their geography and their themes. And very Victorian.

Fast forward to Class X (tenth grade to my American readers). The national curriculum had been overhauled and to my delight, I was reading extracts from the South African author Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country (available at Google Books) and short stories by H. H. Munro "Saki" who took apart Edwardian society as well as poems by the Indian Nissim Ezekiel and the American Odgen Nash. The pages of the books had deteriorated from glossy to full-blown socialist shabby. But I can never say that I found the subject matter boring, at least not in the CBSE English syllabus. Similarly in the Hindi curriculum, the new syllabus taught us a range of Hindi literature - the verses of the mystic poets Meerabai and Kabir and Surdas (which of us has not made jokes about "Meera key pad", punning on "pad" which in different contexts means either "verse" or "fart"), the poetry of the modernists like Harivansh Rai Bacchan and the prose of romantics like Mahadevi Verma.

Exposure at an early age to a wide variety of literary styles and approaches helped shape me and those of my friends who shared my interests into confident *Indians*, neither western wannabes nor chest-thumping traditionalists. We just were...Indian. And because we carried this serenity to our new lives in the west, I like to think that we adjusted well here too. We are neither compliant "model minorities" nor defiantly segregationist (well, most of us, anyway). We love the west and love the east, without being rootless in any context. We are the new globalists, anchored and optimistic without being pollyanna-ish about the country we left behind, nor disdaining where we are right now.

Recently, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has put many of its textbooks online. I am delighted to see that Indian students of CBSE curriculum are still being exposed to some interesting literature from around the world. How many American students have read poems by the Australian Robin Klein or extracts from the Scottish naturalist Gavin Maxwell and his otter, Mijbil, or even poems by the American John Berryman? Truth be told, I did not know John Berryman or Robin Klein till I read recently the Class X NCERT English textbook online. Even if most of the students reading these texts take up engineering or science later, the few who wish to remain in the humanities have, through these sort of readers, a solid grounding in literature both varied, interesing and challenging.

So happy Independence Day, India. 1947 was not only a day of political freedom but it was also the first day in the process of crafting a new Indian.

Electronic Distractions

Facebook has definitely cut into my e-time (i.e. time left over after daily life, etc. for internet browsing, bloghopping, emailing, blogging, etc.). Blogging now suddenly feels middle-aged, as opposed to Facebook where large numbers of pathetic, loser middle-aged facebookers try desperately to reach out to old girlfriends, etc, and to flirt clumsily in ridiculous efforts to capture lost opportunities.



Still, blogging retains a place in my e-life. For example, I can discuss in depth here - and only here - things that I think have been central to the formation of me-as-a-person. Bringing it up in conversation would make people smile politely, make them say "that's interesting" and then have them move on to other topics like the price of cabbages or the latest piece of gossip.



I haven't tried Twitter yet. Part of me thinks - what's with all that tweeting? The other part thinks - why, that's so cool! It would be ideal for all the trivial things that catch my attention and that aren't worth the time blogging about, or facebooking. Things like this, that prove just how much I procrastinate. Twitter could become my e-procrastination log. I'm thinking about it....

The Right Thing to Do

David Letterman was right to apologize to Sarah Palin for the crude joke he cracked about her daughter. I don't care if Gov. Palin makes an exhibition of her family, I don't care if her daughter makes an exhibition of herself, I don't care if Sarah Palin as never apologized for the bile she spewed throughout the election campaign. There is no excuse for making young children (and an 18-year old is barely an adult) the target of lewd jokes. Come on, Letterman, there's lots of other material out there.

Pakistan On Edge

Far more than the hysterical hand-wringing of the western press on the future of Pakistan, I trust the judgement of this Pakistani scientist. It is reasoned, calm, cool, unflinchingly critical of the criminal elite of the Pakistan, and has a more realistic assessment of the short-term future of the Pakistani state. I am not one of those who is much enamored of the mess that is Pakistan, but I am relieved to find someone who can both articulate the problems of that country and can outline political scenarios that don't involve missing nuclear weapons and marauding jihadis swooping down from the hills into Lahore and Amritsar.

"You Sound Like a Girl" ----Grrrl!

I crack down on anyone who makes sexist remarks around me (unless they are senior citizens - you know, old dog, new tricks, etc.). But as my son gets older, I am finding it harder and harder to counter the kind of casual sexism that prevails in age groups as young as eight- or nine-year old boys. On a playdate, recently, as I did the mommy thing and popped corn and cut strawberries, I suddenly heard this cry, "You sound like a girl!" Aaargh! I almost dropped the knife and rushed out to reprimand the boys. What is wrong with sounding like a girl, eh? Don't your mothers and sisters sound like girls? Then, instead, I decided to talk to them while they ate their snacks, but as they played, the other mother came by and in the general conversation, the little episode was forgotten. And I know that somewhere in my son's brain there has been planted the lesson that girl=bad, inferior, laughable, silly. I need to be a more vigilant mommy.

Take That, Creepy Dinner Guest

In November, came the Barack wave. And now the progressive, and hopefully practical (for how effective can progressivism be without practicality?), center-left is back in India and in the USA. And we can breathe again, I hope.

About 14-15 years ago, the son of one of my father's colleagues contacted me in Chicago - you know, the Indian network - and invited me to dinner at his uncle's house in suburban Oakbrook. His uncle and aunt were wealthy physicians, very nice and hospitable people, and I attended a dinner party at their wonderful, elegant house. Great food, great drinks, a bunch of local Indians and one visting creep from Delhi.

Said creep was in the United States, visiting family (all of them solid supporters of the Hindutva parties), and was working the dinner party, talking tough about Muslims and "culture" and the need to stand tall and proud with one's "Hindu-ness", etc. And this when the shame of December 1992 was still a fresh wound. Of course, he was scoping the joint for potential big donors to his party. And of course, I, being younger and more ardent than my middle-aged hosts, argued with him then and there, to show him that not every one at the party was so easy to brainwash (actually, I don't think anyone there was getting brainwashed, they were just being polite to the visitor from desh).

The next ten years were highly frustating ones for people like me, your average liberal, constitutional democrat (with a small 'l' and a small 'd'), as creeps sprang up like mushrooms in the manure that was the Indian polity. It was as if the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and then of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 had so shaken up politics in India that things fell apart and the center could not hold. Looking back, I think I know how 1960s-era Americans felt, when assassinations roiled their world and eliminated public figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The world suddenly seemed endlessly unstable and unpredictable. Only the brazen, the thick-skinned and the absolutely thuggish, could survive and thrive in the 1990s and early 2000s. The good ones kept their heads down and tried to keep going, one foot in front of the other.

It didn't help that during the 1990s America saw the rise of similar manure-y politics as in India (oh, Ken Starr, in how many ways do I despise thy sanctimonious ways?). My friends and I spent our time gnashing our teeth, shaking our heads, arguing with individual rightwing creeps at individual parties, and trying to make feeble jokes at the expense of our Hindutva or Christian fanatic or Muslim fundoo opponents. And we also got good at weathering new shocks, whether from Gujarat or from Baghdad.

But now, our days of mourning are over. Take that, creepy dinner guest and go down to your dark, manure-filled hole with all the other mushrooms.

No More Jobs for the Boys

Oh no! I guess this means that there are going to be fewer jobs for the Minute Men. Recession sucks, doesn't it?

Japanese Maple Watch-Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! May you have a beautiful day full of flowers and sunshine and your favorite drink and may your child/ren always be within hugging distance (I know, Maa, I know that it's not so for you, but I do send hugs your way telepathically).

Who Wants to be a Toff?

Just finished reading Sarah Lyall's book, The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British. Overall, what stayed with me were the characteristics she outlines of the British upper class, a status that everybody else in Britain aspires to reach, including the "aspirational middle class" so despised by the toffs. Here is what I understood: in order to be a member of the aristocratic upper class in Britain, one has to eat some very bad food and drink a lot of very good alcohol (no doubt to wash down the execrable food). Lyall writes about going for a picnic with an aristocrat of long lineage who served his guests canned soup, bad ham and white bread sandwiches, swilled down with good wine. Given these criteria, here is a list of peoples and nations who will never be upper class Englishmen or Englishwomen, and some who might be eligible:

1. Indians. No way, will the people who eat fragrant biryanis, pulaos, chutneys, dosas, sambhar, curries, spiced dals and fresh yogurt, ever belong to the world of mediocre food. Besides, Indian alcohol sucks. Except for Old Monk rum, when hidden inside a chilled glass of Coca Cola.
2. The French. They are disqualified on two counts. First, the wines of France are ambrosial. Second, why would any Frenchman or Frenchwoman in his or her right mind ever give up Confit de Canard, Coquilles Saint-Jacques and Pommes Duchesse in order to eat Wonderbread and canned soup? No, no, the food and the drink is too good to qualify them for the English aristocracy.
3. Italians, Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese. See last sentence in previous paragraph.
4. South Americans. The alcohol probably sucks (I don't know, have only drunk Chilean wines which are pretty good) but the food is great. So sorry, amigos and amigas, you can't join the bad food club of the English upper classes.
5. Chinese, East Asians in general. Again, no alcohol, but the food - oh my God! So, no entry to them either.
6. Americans. Inspite of the best efforts of McDonald's and Burger King, a people that can invent things like Buffalo Chicken wings and gumbo, and peach cobbler and smothered pork chops, are barred from the English upper classes. Well, maybe the North East with their love of boiled dinners might qualify, except that their clam chowder might prevent them from enjoying full membership benefits.

So what does that leave us? I'm going to offend a lot of people here and offer up for full membership of the English aristocracy, based on the criteria of bad food and lots of alcohol - the Germans.* Any others who might qualify?

*I say this with great sadness. The nation of bratwurst and frankfurters, the land of bad food, how could that be?! Well, it was the boiled cabbage that decided it, for me.