Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small.

Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have.

A lot has changed since then. Professionally, I have found my niche and am happy with where am today and can be in the future. The idea of being a single mother transitioned from being a handicap to being a source of strength. The most recent change in has been my marriage to a wonderful man whom I will refer to as DB. As we build our new life together  and work on J getting comfortable with having a father in her life, I will need to take time and energy away from my favorite third place of over five years. I will continue to write here but not as frequently and I may also take a different very direction with my blog.

I hope all of you who read this blog will continue to check in every once in a while.

Imagining India

Reading Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India is like have dinner at a lavish Indian wedding. Each course is tempting, rich and flavorful but with so much to choose from, even a diner with keenest appetite is unable to justice to the complete repast. Such was my experience with Nilekani's book. He covers an unbelievable amount of ground in a three hundred something page book and attempts to tackle the hydra headed monster that the task of understanding India is. There is historical perspective, the concerns of the present and the ideas that will shape the future.

Nilekani's tone is pragmatic, empathetic and even keeled. He does not subscribe either to the India Shining rhetoric or any of the doomsday prophesying. In Nilekani's view, the truth lies somewhere in between those extreme world views and the purpose of Imagining India is to get the reader to think about the many variables and forces at play that will determine where that truth might end up being. Whether you are from India or spent most of your life there or are an outsider who is curious about that country, you would find a lot to learn and ponder over reading this book.

The extensive glossary is invaluable for readers who want to revisit topics they found particularly interesting. It can also serve as a jumping off point for additional reading. I read about this book a couple of years ago and it has been on my to-read list ever since. Two years is usually enough time for a book about anything to become irrelevant and obsolete these days. It is one of the reasons, I wait a while before I read anything that is hyped a great deal. It is to Nilekani's credit that his ideas are completely apropos even now. I would highly recommend Imagining India to anyone who wants to read an exceptionally well researched, articulate and thought-provoking book about India.

Getting Desis

Every once in a while an non-desi co-worker has asked me to corroborate something they had heard from another desi. The matter in question more often than not has to do with desi culture, Hinduism (which is frequently referred to as the Hindi religion whereas the language Hindi is called Hindu) and of course the perennial favorites - curry, bindi, caste system, dowry and arranged marriages.

In the early days, I would be bewildered when called upon to opine on matters that until that minute I had no opinion on. Depending on their source and the particular ax the desi in question had to grind, their information ranged from incomplete to incorrect to decidedly bizarre. So I would take it upon myself to set the record straight to the best of my ability and the reaction would  range between surprise and suspicion. For the most part, I was concerned about my professional credibility and did not want my views on say the meaning of Karma to imperil that because it was at complete odds with what this person had been told by another desi.

Over time, I have found a better way to deal with the situation. If the issue at hand is the best way to cook palak paneer (because the directions they were given by another desi resulted in an unmitigated disaster), I don't hesitate to share what I know. However, when it comes to more controversial issues like caste, right-wing politics or the dowry system, I try to refer them to a book on the subject preferably by a difficult to reader authors like Nirad Chaudhuri, Salman Rushdie or Gurucharan Das. I figure that should keep them occupied and confused for a while. I also have created canned responses to FAQs that have included the likes of:

Is Monsoon Wedding a good depiction of how Indians get married ?

What is the difference between the Hindi and the Hindu religion ?

How real is the depiction of poverty in Slumdog Millionaire ?

What are the main castes in India ?

What do you think of The Namesake ?

What can I eat in an Indian restaurant that is not curry ?

Do all Indian live in joint families ?

Are all Indian women demure and submissive ?

What is the religious significance of the the dot on the forehead ?

Is it true that you can tell a person's caste from their name ?

Recently, I got a couple of questions that were both fun and different from anything I have had to respond to before. This guy wanted a list of interesting cuss words in Hindi with their approximate English translations and a list of slick gangster movies from Bollywood. That tells me the man has evolved past the Curry, Slumdog and Namesake stage and is ready to "get" India and desis. If only, I would come across more of this variety.

Sour Grapes

When I read this TIME article on the trend of American expats giving up their US citizenship because of unfriendly tax laws, the first comment I saw happened to be from a desi sister, Manali Rohinesh. Once you get past the high rant quotient of her observations, the truthiness in some of it is undeniable. Since it is buried deep now, I am quoting it here in full :

This should be like a final wakeup call for all those Indians who have gone to the US after 1991 - i.e post liberalisation in India. I can't think of a stupider move made than a decision to go there just when your own country is at the cusp of growth and progress. This is a country where the middle class consumer power is on the rise. This is where entrepreneurs - when given the right impetus - are creating little pockets of prosperity while the US has Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, Merrill Lynch et all to thank for their joblessness. Where are all those ESOPs now and some Indians are dumb enough to keep wanting the American Dream, when they can just as easily have it all in India itself. A certain generation who has emigrated there despite having options here, do so, because they prefer to earn and pay their taxes there rather than do the same in the country of their birth. I honestly don't think they are patriotic in the least. They are the same people who will come down once in two years or so and check the progress of the roads and malls built in their absense and without their money and feel a kind of smug satisfaction that 'poor little India' has finally come up to their 'superior' Western standards of living. Well, to those of you who think this way - 'Thank you for your patronising attitude. People like me made it happen while you are paying taxes elsewhere. So, don't pat yourself on the back too much.' Such people make flying trips to see if India meets their high quality-of-life benchmark because sometimes just after 3-4 years of living abroad, they have forgotten how much fun and quirky it is to live in India - where they have lived a mere 20 years or so, assuming they went to the US after graduation. How much the mirage-like American Dream taints people is quite obvious but no one is being fooled....least of us, who can read such stories on Time and elsewhere.

Some desi expats in the US responded to this by saying she had no direct experience living in the US, suggesting therefore she lacked the qualifications to comment on the American experience. Applying their own standards,how their lack of connection to India qualifies them to contradict her is harder to fathom but I digress. At any rate, the NRI brethren observed there was more that went into the decision to make a home in this country than success and money. Satisfaction is research and academia were cited among examples. 

While there is some truth to that argument it's applicability is fairly limited. Rohinesh's observation about the overwhelming majority of desis who are not in research or academia is true as well.They often feel like they bet on the wrong horse and if indeed India exceeds their expectations along one or more axes, the grapes tend to taste slightly sour. That attitude could be viewed as unpatriotic by some.

As for me, reading her comment I feel duly chastised for making the "stupider" to none move by coming to this country post 1991 - the sister points this out in no uncertain terms. In my defense, it was a confluence of circumstances that caused that to happen. Professionally, I am definitely in the wrong place and the wrong time and envy my peers who have found their niche in India. While their compensation and benefit packages boggle the mind to say nothing of the career growth opportunities, I take comfort in the fact that I have for the most part a 40 hour week, a life outside work and am able to raise J comfortably and without needing any help. All of that would have been impossible in India - having tried that avenue for a year, I know the score painfully well. In the right circumstances, with the necessary support system, India is definitely the place to be for anyone in my line of work.

I love the attitude of the commenter and others like her who take obvious pride in India's achievements thus far - career opportunities and spending power has given this generation assertiveness and confidence that was not nearly as commonplace in the past. I struggle to understand why malls, roads, middle class consumerism and gated communities with western style amenities are always cited as examples of India's progress. Surely there are better measures than that. Is the goal to achieve parity, repeat the mistakes of the west and then find the right way for India ? It would be far more reassuring to see these young people talk about ways in which India is leapfrogging to a future that is post-American if you will. That would be a really smart thing to do.

Fourth Way

Unless you are a woman all of whose girlfriends are married, chances are that you often find yourself listening to someone who is going through relationship problems and wants to share their woes with you. Over the years, the common theme I have seen come from these outpourings is one of feeling extreme emotional vulnerability. This state of mind is particularly confusing to a woman who views herself as liberated, open-minded and a free agent doing as she pleases without being beholden to societal expectations of her gender.

Fifteen to twenty years ago in India, it was not commonplace for women to be in a physically intimate relationship before marriage. That has since changed. Those who moved west at the time were able to bring such change into their lives even earlier. "Empowerment" to live freely came to both only at different times in their lives.

Up to this point, it all sounds good. The girls no longer feel like their net worth in the marriage market is dependent entirely on the possession of an unruptured hymen. Sadly, other problems have taken their place. In the brave new world, desi women are willing and able to enter into a physically intimate relationship without having a wedding date calendared. However, to alleviate the feelings of guilt associated with being in such a state, they allow (indeed require) love to lead them there.

So when men turn out not to have any serious intent or are simply not prepared to take on the responsibility of marriage but want to continue in a friends plus benefits arrangement, women start to become progressively unhappy. They are no longer sure, if what they have going on is what they really want. The happiness of unbridled freedom is soured by a gnawing sense of doubt often tinged with hopelessness. Then there are all the complications that come into play with the man morphing suddenly into Mama's boy who allows his family to find him a bride and pretends the relationship did not even exist. Often, that's where a girlfriend such as yours truly is called and gets to be the much needed damp shoulder.

As much as I want to be helpful to my sisters in times of distress, I can't but help point out the fatal flaw in their ways. I don't say this from any kind of moral high ground at all. I have told several of them that they need to recalibrate a little and things will improve dramatically. If they feel the need for intimacy they can just have that and leave. There is simply no need to perpetuate a very temporal thing into an unnecessary relationship in order to feel less immoral about it. It is not enough to merely shed physical inhibition (which clearly they have done), it is far more important to rise above the cultural conditioning and shed the moral ones - a far more subtle and therefore insidious impediment to their desire to be free.

It's fair to tell a man that's what it's going to be - a short duration liaison with no end game and they can go their separate ways after that. It is important to end things definitively and not leave them unresolved and therefore the door open for emotional entanglement  - something I notice girls don't do so well. If someone looks like serious marriage material then this would clearly not be the way to proceed. One woman said "That's like using and throwing them". I agreed that may be a way of looking at it except when the rules of engagement are made clear from the start, the word "use" does not apply any more.

Being that men generally like women to be emotionally involved while in a "relationship", intimacy without that connection is often quite meaningless to them. Many will never agree to be part of such an arrangement. Having enjoyed the privilege of being the party that decides when and how to end things, it may be quite painful not being able to do so.

Alternately, I suggest they could go through the motions of being deeply in love with the man and keep themselves emotionally detached. So when the end comes, there will not be any broken pieces to be picked up. The man gets to have a well satiated ego and she is truly free. It seems to be a win-win situation (unless you count the inability to trust or become be the kind of person someone else cannot trust) even if based on deception.

If neither works then they have no choice but to become like me - a non-participating bystander watching the dating gaming shenanigans and providing acerbic though not necessarily astute commentary. It is fairly entertaining but provides little else besides. "Isn't there a fourth way ? Like two people starting as friends, being in committed relationship and then getting married" a woman asked me recently.

That is entirely in the realm of possible but the more I hear form my girlfriends about what they go through in the process of trying to find (and keep) love, the more the "fourth way" sounds like a modern day Cinderella story. The only difference being these women don't wait for their prince to show up with the glass slipper. They have taken matters into their own hands and are willing to kiss many frogs along the way to finding their man. Somewhere in that muddle of mixed metaphors of fairy tale references, the frogs end up remaining frogs, kisses notwithstanding and the other slipper goes missing along with the prince who was supposed to find them.

Remote Grading

Reading this article about American universities outsourcing the business of grading the work of students to call centers in India left me rather unsettled.When applied to education, the implications of outsourcing can be quite insidious - it is amazing that the students are not up in arms protesting. They are paying a huge sum of money for the privilege of being educated in an American university by the professors who physically teach them there. The expectation should be that they get what they are paying for – the professor’s time and attention.

The notion that a real TA can be swapped out with a virtual TA because the two are not that different is wrong in more ways than I can count. However, that is probably the first argument the proponents of this system will make.One might argue, a student could likewise outsource their “monotonous” assignments and free up time to gain real world experience (which is what their future livelihood will depend on) and reduce their student loan burden while they are at it. In this surreal (though not entirely far-fetched scenario), a virtual TA would be grading the work of a virtual student while the real professor and student are off doing “more important” work to advance their respective prospects in life. If this is not a travesty of the goals of instruction and education, I don’t know what is.

Given the established precedent in the outsourcing business, it is only a matter of time before virtual TA outfits up their game and start to provide higher end, value added service. Just like information technology body shops went from being data entry and back office process automation providers to actual product development over time, a virtual TA in due season will be ready to stand in for the professor. The logic may be that doing so frees up the "real" professor’s time to do valuable research while the drone job of teaching is left to industry "experts". Someone will no doubt come up with the altogether specious case for this arrangement being a win-win formula for everyone involved in it.

From an American student’s standpoint, it would make a lot more economic sense for them to get their education in Asia where their tuition dollars would go a lot further. There is no sense in paying an American tuition to have their work graded (and in due course have instruction provided) in Asia. As for the universities – if this is the way things are headed, there will be precious little to tell them apart form a corporation whose overriding purpose is to turn in a profit for its share holders.

Education is already far more commoditized than it should be and this is yet another step down that slippery slope. If the value of a formal education and everything it entails is devalued enough, an astute student may be persuaded to entirely bypass the system and the pedagogic instructional process. They can just as well be self-taught and take the appropriate assessments to ensure they meet or exceed standards. Depending on their performance, they can compete for degrees to be granted from an university of their choice - that would be a nice way to monetize the brand equity of the leading universities. I feel sorry for kids who will be ready for college ten to twenty years out because close to nothing will remain sarosacnt about the hallowed centers of higher learning by that time.

Peace With Spice Cake

I suffer from a chronic inability to follow any recipe and that becomes a problem if I want to bake. J knows to expect the worst when I take it upon myself to do so. If anything, J has come to realize that her mother can be very persistent and does not give up on something just because she has failed at it twenty times in a row.

Persistence and the capacity to spring back from failure, I guess are qualities that don't hurt anyone so it's a good thing for J to observe and hopefully emulate in other areas of life. Except in this case, J is left with the unsavory job of eating the charred cake, rock solid bread or cookies that don't resemble any kind of cookie she is acquainted with. That can be a steep price to pay to feed somebody's persistence habit though mulishness might be the more appropriate description of the condition.

Recently, I was able to turn out a decent spice cake minus a recipe - a first in my life. J's friends loved it and despite her initial reservations, so did J. A few weeks later, I tried variation on the theme of spice cake and did not bother to follow the steps that had led to the unexpected success the previous time. This one was a success too. J even said that my baking skills were improving. This past weekend, I tired yet another spice cake and for once did not feel the typical rush of trepidation when I opened the oven door after forty minutes. I shared a cake I had baked with a couple of co-workers and a friend. Only if you have failed as many times and as resoundingly as I have in your attempts to bake would you realize what an accomplishment that was.

Finally, I am friends with the spice cake. As long as I have to follow a recipe to cook something or worry about how it will end up tasting, I know it is a new and uncomfortable co-existense, the ingredients or the process and I have not come to understand each other well enough. Baking and I have upto now had a relationship fraught with stress and discord. It has taken Epicurious to resolve the conflicts we could not resolve on our own. I have always believed that following a recipe while cooking is the surest way to keep the relationship that way - remote, distant and unsteady. You never know where you stand with each other. Looks like spice cake and I are in a good, peaceful place together -  I might venture further afield now.

Open Government

Having spent the majority of my life in India, I am no stranger to the slow, lumbering and mostly ineffective machinery of government bureaucracy. With computers making their way into the system, there was some improvement but not nearly enough to make the experience of interacting with a government agency less painful than having root canal work done.

When I came to America, one of the first things I had to do was to get a SSN card followed shortly by a visit to the DMV for a drivers license. My experience as a customer, at both these agencies was not unlike what I might have expected in India. I realized that the challenges faced by the largest democracy in the world and those faced by the most evolved one were not so different after all - at least from the vantage point of a customer.

In his book Imagining India, Nandan Nilekani devotes a couple of chapters to changes electronification has brought to the hulking government machinery in urban and rural India. He sees the future of the country in large part, determined by the success of these efforts. In India, projects like the eChoupal and Question Box are impressive not only because of their simplicity and effectiveness but in their ability to pave the way for the future. They set a high bar for innovation and entrepreneurship - and the people completely deserve it.

Being a big fan of open source technology and empowering end users to create their own applications within the constraints of well articulated enterprise architecture, I was curious to see how that might translate for government agencies. Open Government Edited by Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma tries to answer how technology can be used by the American government so it works better for its citizens and increase their participation. A lot of the ideas in the book translate very easily to any democracy in the world.

In chapter one, Mathew Burton proposes starting a Peace Corps for programmers. A key factor in Burton's mind, for such an initiative to attract the best development talent would be to set a time limit after which they could return to their lives and careers outside the government. That and the freedom to fail and innovate while on the job would make a huge difference in the customer experience with government systems and contain cost.

Tim O'Reilly explains what Government 2.0 can be and the benefits of "implicit participation". He cites, the rise of Google Maps as the predomination application in that space due to Google's decision to make their API public which resulted in a wide variety of mash-ups. A very similar idea is the "holy cow machine" envisioned by Health and Human Services CTO Todd Park. This idea was prompted by an Atul Gawande article in  the New Yorker that showed how the highest cost of health-care in McAllen, Texas also had the worst outcomes. Todd wants to build a service that would allow every city to see the correlations between cost and outcomes in health-care.

Beth Simone Noveck makes a case for open and collaborative democracy. She advocates dividing a large policy problem into smaller parts and distributing it to be worked on by a community of volunteers. She cites as an example, the workforce that made Mozilla Firefox possible and continues to make it one of the most popular browsers. Taking the same approach to solve for policy issues would result in faster, better outcomes with the additional benefit of increased legitimacy than what the government enjoys.

Carlo Daffara and Jesus M.Gonzalez-Barhona explain the many benefits of using FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) in government but also discuss the pitfalls to be aware of. While it may provide independence form suppliers, ability to customize and make the internals of any application available for public scrutiny, there are many things that could go wrong as well. One important caveat they point out is the lack of previous cases to learn from or an established set of best practices for government applications.

And that is a very small sampling of the wonderfully thought provoking ideas and the wide range of perspectives in Open Government. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about how democracy and technology confluence today and where things are headed in the future.

Chance Remark

I met a group of former co-workers for lunch a few days ago. The group was diverse in many ways besides ethnicity and cultural background. We had among us those who were  young and still single, older and suddenly single, married for two decades and those who were in relationships that Facebook would categorize as "It's Complicated"

While we were waiting for our lunch, conversation turned to L's long time girlfriend who is yet to come into an engagement ring and has been prodding him to challenge the status quo. M made a comment mainly directed to L that stayed stuck in my head. "You should always choose your spouse with the greatest care. Any amount of time you need to make a decision is fair. After all, that is the only relationship in your life where you even have the ability to choose. You get the parents, family and siblings without your input or consent and its the same with your children. Your spouse is the only person you have the power to choose." M is married now but it took him a very long time to decide who he would choose to marry.

Clearly, his thoughts resonated with everyone around the table - and particularly with L who must have felt vindicated in his commitment phobia. Anyone who has dated for any length of time is all too familiar with hold-outs. These are the people who bring a lot to the table and have equally high (often deeply unrealistic) expectations from their partner. Like M, they want to choose with utmost care and deliberation. They refuse to rush or be rushed into a lifetime commitment against their will.

It does not matter if the process is emotionally (and sometimes even physically) debilitating. They will go on looking for this ideal partner for years and decades if so required - they refuse to end up with someone in an accident of fate.

That would explain the western world view of arranged marriages and the disenchantment with this system among the liberated and progressive minded in the east.Like their western counterparts, they have started to believe in the myth of being free agents when it comes to selecting a spouse. They honestly believe that their steadfast refusal to make a decision is an exercise of free will and it is critically important to have this ability if one wishes to choose wisely and well.

It seems to me that the more time anyone has spent discarding what and who does not work for them, the harder it is for them to exercise this supposed "free will" when time comes to make a choice. They have whittled down their options to just one - the last one standing by the process of elimination and not as a consequence of them being the chosen one.

This was obviously the wrong kind of crowd for me to say anything about the wonders of surrender and resignation, let alone suggest that if everything else in our life was pre-ordained or completely random, there is no logical reason for the spouse to be the solitary exception. We go through our lives with imperfect parents, siblings and kids that we did not get to choose and can suffer disproportionately due to the spouse that  we did get to select. Maybe there is something to be said for the lack of choice after all.
 

I held my peace and enjoyed the exceptional Caribbean Chicken Salad instead.

Effeminate Fashion

In the last decade, ethnic wear for desi men has undergone some pretty cataclysmic changes. The dull colors that dominated the kurta and sherwani section of their wardrobes have now given way to a Full Monty of rainbow hues in pastel and rich jewel tones.There is almost no color that a desi man will not wear. When you add the intricate embroidery and other embellishments that go with their ensembles, it is hard to tell a man's attire apart form a woman's.

I have always wondered if men feel differently about themselves when dressed in colors that were for the longest time associated with women and therefore embody femininity. Does it help or hurt their masculinity to go well past the traditional boundaries of their gender.

Each time I see a desi man thus attired, I feel slightly perplexed - maybe I am far too old school to be able to appreciate this particular aesthetic sensibility. I have had other Indian women express their puzzlement over this relatively recent trend as well. A lot of them would prefer their own men to stick with traditional "male colors" with a dash of modern day pizazz thrown in. They would much rather not have their men look like a kurta model from a fashion magazine minus the physique and chutzpah required to carry something so decidedly unmanly.

Just like a stunning woman looks beautiful even when dressed in men's clothing, a very handsome man can look perfectly masculine and attractive  while wearing a sequined lavender kurta paired with lime green pajamas. Clearly, it is a not a style option for everyone as it has become lately. When it does not work out (as is often the case) it is an eyesore and a source of embarrassment to the women related to the man in question. 

Read this interesting comment on the feminizing men's fashion  that talks about some of the peripheral effects as well. Contemporary fashion for desi men's is takes feminization to an extreme that western attire does not readily allow. The worst offender may be a hibiscus patterned shirt in red and yellow which can't hold a candle to one of those turquoise zardosi numbers paired with yards of silk or chiffon in the form of an ankle-length scarf. Such crimes in the name of men's fashion that can be committed only within the desi ouevre.

Dave Aur Jenny

Some weeks ago, I stumbled upon a blog by two non-desi New Yorkers living in Delhi,  writing about their Indian experience. What struck me most was the thoughtful yet upbeat tone of the posts. Here were a couple of foreigners, who had made Delhi their home and were ready to embrace that experience for all that it implied. From what a reader can tell, they are having a wonderful time.

It was very refreshing to read about India as viewed by western eyes without the gratuitous exotification that often goes with the territory. It is not every day that a desi gets to hear about India from "goras" who throw themselves wholeheartedly into the Indian experience. It is far more typical is to hear from observers who remain outsiders even if they live in India, providing a commentary that remains woefully two dimensional because they have not really "lived" the life they are writing about.

Dave and Jenny were kind enough to answer some questions I had for them.

Me : Are you able to be as indulgent as you are about even your no so pleasant experiences in India because you are visitors there and always have the option to return home ?

Dave says: “Any commitment is made easier with the knowledge that one has fallback options. If the economy exploded and our jobs did their best Harry Houdini impression, we could go home. The same thing went for our exploration of India: if we ate one too many gol goppas from the wrong guy, we knew we could always go flying back to Mommy.”

Me : This is a question for Jenny - Do you find Indian men treat you differently that they treat Indian women ?

Jenny says: “I found that both Indian men and women were a little more formal towards me than they were too each other. They didn’t tease me as much as they teased each other—but they were always quite friendly. So I guess I got all the good parts of it.”

Me : In your post about Dehi's safety you conclude with the question "Never mind what Delhi’s apocalyptic news media says. The real question is this: what’s keeping a city of poor, jealous, sexually-frustrated young men from unleashing their aggressions and turning Delhi into Gotham City?" While the math and the statistics may be right, is your impression that an unaccompanied Indian woman in Delhi is safer than she is in New York city ?

Jenny say: “In this regard, I think New York is safer for unaccompanied women, only because in New York there aren’t as many dark street corners. Even in the middle of the night, there’s always tons of people around—but in Delhi after 11, it’s a ghost town.”

Me : I have American friends who have lost their jobs because of outsourcing and find it difficult to get hired here because they are considered too old to "fit in" in most IT shops. Would you recommend a single white woman in her 50s to seek job opportunities in India assuming she has the appetite for the adventure ?

Dave says: “We recommend India to anyone! We had an amazing experience. As long as she realizes that a single white woman in her 50s is even RARER in the Delhi IT world than in the US IT world, she’ll be fine. But there’s no doubt that everyone will know who she is the first day she shows up for work.”

Me : Another question for Jenny - Have you ever felt that not having a male partner could be a handicap in Delhi ? Would your Indian experience be just the same without Dave accompanying you ?

Jenny says: “Without a man around, my experience would have been quite different, I have to admit. I would have found it much more difficult to enter into negotiations and I would have felt a lot more insecure. I sometimes attracted unwanted attention, and I felt more comfortable having Dave there to ward it off.”

Me : What about India would you miss the most when you leave for good ?

The food. Without a doubt. And the people, because we’ve never been in such a friendly city.

Me : In your post Gora Evasion you write "So when two Goras converge on a road, there are no pleasantries. No acknowledgments. If our eyes meet, it’s only by accident, and we both quickly look away." Interestingly enough, desis do exactly the same thing when they run into other desis in America. What is your theory for such evasion ?

I've written extensively about this in the upcoming book, but the basic theory is that people traveling abroad want to pretend that they're on a grand adventure. So we close our ideas to any evidence that other people came before us -- it makes us feel less special.

Me : What do to make of Bollywood and the desi fascination with it ?

We wish we understood it better. It's clear just how complex and nuanced the culture is when we see a movie -- we could live in India for another twenty years and still not understand everything.

Me : Of all the places that you have lived and visited in India, which one was the closest to what you had imagined India would be like and which one was the farthest ?

I think the Old City in Delhi comes closest to our expectations, in the sense that we knew we'd see something amazing every time we went. The biggest surprise was walking around Jodhpur, I think -- not the tourist areas but far into the outskirts. Everything was so beautiful and everyone was so friendly.

Me : Where have you found India's assimilation of western culture to be the most beneficial to the Indian people and where has it been an been a really bad misadventure ?

It's hard for us to say, because we don't have enough perspective to know what it was like before. And it makes us nervous to say anything, because we don't want to sound like a cultural imperialist. But we can say this: we love coffee, so the more CCDs that open up, the better the world will be. :)

Dave and Jenny have a book in the works which they call "part memoir and part guidebook: an in-depth exploration of the Delhi we lived, the lessons we learned, and the funny things that happened to us". You can get on their mailing list for "announcements, invitations to the launch party, and more!"  

Just Rice

Not to be unnecessarily difficult here, but reading this essay on rice by Jhumpa Lahiri in The New Yorker do beg the questions why and when. First the why - why is this description of preparing pulao so terribly significant when it does not transcend the prosaic to become something larger than a grain (or bowl) of rice.

Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield comes to mind as do some Odes to food by Pablo Neruda. Closer home (since Lahiri prefers to stick with all things Bengali), there is Sukanto Bhattacharya who wrote :"khudhar rajoye prithibi goddomoy, purnimar chand jeno jholshano ruti" translated very beautifully by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta as :

In the regime of hunger, the earth belongs to prose,
The full moon burns like a loaf of bread.

Now that is a way of looking at food a little differently. I recognize that Neruda, Hirshfield and Bhattacharya are poets and Lahiri is not but what a poet can do with verse, a competent writer should be able to do with prose. Basically what we have here is an intricate description of the process of preparing a desi rice dish by the author's father - which by the way is very similar to something Damayanti Basu Singh had written several years ago.

The essay by Buddhadev Basu which his daughter reproduces in translation is very much worth reading. Maybe that can serve as inspiration for Lahiri if she is absolutely determined to discuss the probasi banaglir handi-heshel ( non-resident Bengali's pots, pans and kitchen) in the most obsessive detail as has been her wont. There is a lot more work to be done to make such a piece of writing shine and become a thing of literary merit. Throwing a couple of Bengali words in for "texture" and "flavor" is not nearly enough.

Now for the when - when oh when is Lahiri going to say something that does not drip markeen probasi bangali (Bengali residing in America) like a over-soaked rosogolla. The drip is gooey, saccharine and yes very, very cringe worthy. Surely, she could employ her talents to turn out something more interesting than a really bland bowl of rice - and no, the raisins and almonds do not elevate it to anything more than that.

I asked my friend S who is a desi born and raised in NYC, what she thought made this kind of desi household minutiae unsupported by larger purpose so appealing. Her theory is that average American readers do not expect world class literature when they read the work of someone with an "ethnic sounding" name.  The best a desi could do is to satisfy their curioisty about what goes on inside a desi's home and mind. Lahiri and her ilk are enabling the vouyeristic in their western readers and it is the reason they are so marketable.

Toxic Parents

In this DNA article, Geetanjali Jhala covers a very important but rarely discussed facet of desi social life - that of adult children trying to cope with parents with whom they simply don't get along. Indeed, sometimes the coexistence is so stressful that it feels like a punishment  that has no end in sight. The protagonist in Jhala's article is a divorced woman in Mumbai who is unable to make a new relationship work out despite having every desire to do so. The real reason turns out to her difficult relationship with her father with whom she has moved in after her divorce.

Many people who seek help for dysfunctional behaviour find it hard to acknowledge that their parents may be the cause, and that the only remedy may be to move out or even cut themselves off completely."It's in the course of therapy that they realise the depth of their resentment towards their parents," says psychologist Varkha Chulani. "This is buried beneath layers of guilt, because we are culturally conditioned to believe that our parents are right; the moment a child questions his parents, he is looked upon as disrespectful, and is told to 'shut up'."

While dysfunctional parent-child relationships are universal, they hurt desis so much more because our of our cultural conditioning. We are expected to accept (indeed venerate) our parents just the way they are, look the other way even when they are clearly in the wrong and are actually hurting us through their misguided actions.To do otherwise would saddle us with more guilt than we have capacity to bear.

As long as the children are single, this arrangement works out even if very badly for the individual - at least no one else is getting hurt in the process. Once, there is a spouse and some kids in the mix, the toxicity affects the whole new family and often the situation spins completely out of control.

Even where the new family lives independently, the parents are never too far away (emotionally at least even if they are at some physical distance) and in as such, the parent-child relationship issues continues to thrive. While everyone struggles and hurts in this situation, rarely if ever is root cause discussed let alone remedied.

Thanks to the social stigma associated with it, desis are also not the most open-minded about mental health issues - they would much rather sweep such things under the carpet and pretend all is well instead of tackling the problem head on. It is good to see an article like this is a mainstream publication - hopefully many more will follow and heighten the much needed awareness around the issue.

Dr Devdut Pattanaik

A lot has been written by children of FOB parents about their coming of age in the west while being brown and sometimes Hindu. Unfortunately, I have found little if any practical use for it. Much of this genre of writing is about the consequences of omissions, mistakes, short-sightedness and such on the part of the FOB parent. While it is great to know what not to do for and to our children born in the west, what we really need is help to get it right.

For me, that help came in the way of a website I ran into some time ago. It belongs to Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik who among other things is Chief Belief Officer for the Future Group. Browsing through the articles on his website, I found the thought process and style of writing that would resonate with any young person who is curious about Hinduism irrespective of where they are born or raised. For a parent, there is a lot to learn too - understanding the underpinnings of Hindu mythology and more importantly how to introduce children to it.

Dr. Pattanaik was kind enough to answer some questions that I believe are relevant to parents like myself.

1.    What is the best way to introduce Hinduism to young children who are an ethnic and religious minority in the country where they are born and being raised?

I think the children must be told that different people look at the world differently. This is the most critical thought that a child must be given. A cat looks at water differently from a fish. A horse looks at grass differently from a lion. So differently people see the world differently.

Once this idea is established children must then be told that every person thinks their view is the only and correct view. But it is not so. We must allow others to have their views. That is love. And others must allow us to have our views. That is love too. Without this foundation, it will be difficult to help children deal with the pressures of being a minority.

2. What are some of the things a parent can do to get their child curious about their religion and culture without actually forcing them into learn about it ?

By making the rituals fun. Rituals are about doing things. Rituals are choreographed to connect with us symbolically. Making rangoli can be fun. Cooking prasad can be fun. Doing puja – bathing the image, dressing it up, feeding it, singing songs to it – can be fun. The child will notice that the fun is associated with a deep reverence. Then he will question. Often this the point where parents turn rituals into ‘holy cows’ and lose the opportunity to help their children gain an understanding of their cultural world.

Parents, most often because of their own lack of knowledge, turn the sacred into scary. The child will sense whether the parent truly respects the rituals and finds them empowering or if he doing it merely to reinforce his threatened identity. Often no one knows the reason why a ritual is performed and that is ok. Parents have to admit that they don’t know the reason and they are doing what their parents did and following tradition. Its ok not to know. And it is not necessary to understand everything in the world. Sometimes understanding comes over time. I notice many people have this urgency to know the meaning of rituals immediately. The search for meaning is either frustrating or leads to some rather bizarre conclusions. 

3.When it comes to Hindu mythology, there are either over-simplified books (geared towards kids) and there are the scholarly tomes. Neither is a good fit for a curious young person who needs something in between they can read independently. What kind of books would you recommend for them ?

My books!  I became a writer because I saw this gap. Often the answers are not what the parents expect. The problem is that authors are burdened by wanting to make Hinduism look nice. The measuring scale is that of other religions. As a result writing becomes apologetic and defensive. People are trying but often I find writers have a poor understanding of the subject and so are unable to appreciate the complexities and so end up with awkward prose.

Try explaining the idea of Krishna surrounded by hundreds of milkmaids doing Raas Lila to a child. Are those girls, Krishna’s friends? So is it ok for a boy to have many girlfriends? Are those girls his wives? So is it polygamy? Rather than answer such blunt uncomfortable questions, some writers escape into metaphysics – using words like Paramatma and Jivatma which, unless you are a believer, sounds like gobbledygook.  At one level they are true, but like all symbols, there is no one answer. There are layers of answers. Many answers one finds are usually not what parents expect or find appropriate, because these stories are catering not just to children but adults.

To simplify them without being simplistic (and sometimes stupid) requires a lot of effort. The story is trying to show the idea of love that is unfettered by law and custom; thus the milkmaids are in no way related to Krishna. Now this idea can be quite scary to a parent. One has to go in stages. Simplistic answer initially then more complex ones. There is no one standard answer. There are many answers, each one suiting one’s age, one’s temperament, one’s emotional and intellectual maturity. This is Hindu pluralism. 

4. Do you think children actually benefit from hearing or reading a watered-down versions of Ramayan and Mahabharat where the complexity of the characters and their motivations is all but lost ?

As people mature, stories evolve. The story told to a three year old is different from that which is told to a thirteen year old. We must keep telling children there is more. Provoke them to be curious. Include them in conversations about the characters. Say the mother and father discuss how Karna was killed. The child can overhear the various arguments. There is no right answer so one must allow the arguments to stand strongly without tilting one way or another. The child by overhearing this, again and again, will be able to appreciate the complexity of life – as Hinduism seeks to portray. 

5. What would enable a child make the connections between religion, mythology and day to day life in the modern world ?

I think by making religion and mythology part of day to day life. So lets say we are discussing the war in Afghanistan. This can be associated easily with the Ramayana. Just as Ravan had no right to kidnap another man’s wife, the terrorists had no right to destroy the World Trade Centre. Of course, as the child grows up, the arguments can get more sophisticated. Why do we assume that the Americans are Ram? Maybe the terrorists see themselves as Ram, maybe the attack was the burning of Lanka. This will lead to discussions and debates. In these discussions and debates, pros and cons, the Argumentative Indian is born – one who is able to see things from multiple points of view before taking a decision. 

6. How can learning about Hindu mythology the right way enable a young person to develop a deeper appreciation for the universality of the main concerns in all religions?

Yes and no. All religions have common features. But they also have uncommon features. Many people overlook the latter and this leads to conflict. For example, Hindus do not have the notion of Original Sin or Prophet. But like all religions, Hinduism is deeply concerned about what is appropriate social conduct (dharma) and happiness.

7. Do you have any recommendations for daily reading that may help a young person to navigate with greater confidence through their life - specially when the world outside is very dissimilar to the world inside their homes ?

Step 1 – Read the Amar Chitra Katha. Step 2 – Discuss the stories and don’t let the comic be the end. Discussion is the key. Stories are to be told, not read. Step 3 – don’t reach a conclusion, don’t justify, don’t apologize, don’t defend …..just try and understand why the story was told by our ancestors. 

8. Finally, if  a parent's goal is to enable their Hindu child to be an open-minded, well-adjusted global citizen who is deeply aware of their own religion but is able and willing to embrace learning from others as well, what must such a parent not do ?

Have confidence in Hinduism. This means that one does not have to put down other religions just to feel true to one’s own religion. Personally, I find the ‘cult of outrage’ that is spreading like an epidemic a problem. Everyone gets outraged when they feel their religion is being mocked or threatened. Instead of outrage, we need more understanding, love, inclusion and forgiveness. We must remind ourselves that while Ram kills Ravan, for a crime, he also acknowledges Ravan as a great scholar and teacher. Thus a holistic view is taken – parts that are condemned are condemned but not the whole. 

3 Idiots

Watching 3 Idiots was a bitter-sweet experience which is probably an unusual reaction to a movie that tries for the most part to tickle your funny bone. It took me back to my own engineering college days in India, the experience of having let off steam after cooking for more than two years the ultimate pressure cooker that is the process of preparing for the entrance tests to get into one of these colleges.

A lot of kids (myself included) checked out of system completely - we bided our time until graduation and tried to get by applying ourselves as little as possible. After all the work it took to get in there, the education we were being offered was underwhelming to say the least. Many of us were not even interested in becoming engineers but had been goaded there by a combination of societal and parental pressures and had no idea what to do next. In the best case, we would go through the motions on auto-pilot, keeping our heads above the water and find ourselves gainfully employed at twenty two. In a sense, the whole business of competing for and getting into engineering college had killed our capacity to dream bigger more bolder dreams.

So many memories come back watching this movie - the hazing rituals, the nicknames that people acquire that have the ability to capture their essence of who they are in a word or a phrase, a learning focused on cram and recall instead of independent, creative thinking and then the psychotic professors. 3 Idiots covers much of that familiar ground.The bare bones story-line is entirely credible though you have to make the necessary discounts for the bravura Bollywood flourishes. It is also advisable not get too finicky about minor details such as why a man in his 40s is chosen to play the part of a teenager or if a vaccum cleaner can in a pinch become part of a midwife's emergency toolkit - such persnicketiness is not the ideal way to savor a Bollywood flick.

I was reminded of the suicides on our campus while I was a student there. The first time it happened, our class went into a state of shock, our seniors had seen it before and took it much more stoically. By the time of the final semester, we were to the point, where we counted ourselves lucky if the kid who had decided to end their life was not someone we were close to.

Back in the day, I have worried about hyper-competitive room-mates whose lives (literally and figuratively) rode on their performance in exams, campus interviews, GREs, GMATs, CATs and such. Then there were the great white hopes from impoverished families who had the dreams and aspirations of several generations riding on them - potrayed in the movie by the character of Raju Rastogi. If you have known one of them, you come to have a much keener appreciation for D.H Lawrence's Rocking Horse Winner.

The movie also brought back many happy memories - the anti-establishment kids we goaded and dared to needle professors we all hated, the brutally funny things we said about each other and about those who "taught" us, friendships that turned out to be life-changing and  romances that did or did not end up in fairy tale marriages. The final meeting between Chatur (the flatulent nerd with the personality of a sun-tanning gecko) and Rancho (sensitive alpha-geek with a burning desire to learn and far above the fray to need to compete - the kind of kid you never forget) is so reminiscent of the one-upmanship games that get played on Facebook walls and mailing list updates.

A lot of my former classmates still carry yardsticks from undergrad days to measure the worth of their peers. There is more than a little schadenfreude to see the class topper married to a senior who everyone knew was gay - the girl was so busy studying, she never got or read the memo. There is also awe and envy about kids on the fringe - the ones who failed to distinguish themselves in any way whatsoever - were no more than scenery on campus for four years - the "idiots" by this movie's definition,  but are now extremely successful.

Then there is the big, fat layer of mediocrity where many of us find ourselves today. Some are comfortable because they expected no better and then there are those who cannot imagine how they ended up where they are - they were destined for much better given their ranks, grades and other quantitative measures of success. To that end, the relentless point proving and point scoring - I am less mediocre than you, I make more than you, my house is bigger than yours, my cars are fancier than yours, I travel further and more often than you do, I look younger than you do, I am happier than you, my children and my spouse are better than yours.

In a movie, you can have that all end at one reunion after ten years in Ladakh - the winner gets the last laugh and the loser leaves chastised. In real life, it never really ends and it ceases to be funny after a while. Back to the 3 Idiots - would definitely recommend watching it. Aamir Khan (age notwithstanding) gives a superb performance and the rest of the crew is not half bad either.

Happily Unmarried

When a couple of  talented desi guys come together and dream up an idea that is uniquely and authentically Indian, pair it with a great design sensibility, you have have something like Happily Unmarried. I follow the start-up activity in India and long to see desi ingenuity meet design and  technology in ways that have a distinctly Indian flavor.

All too often, the ideas I run across are borrowed from the West, with some vernacular thrown in to desi-fy it so to speak. Then ten other companies riff on the same cloned theme with minor variations. In the end, none of them stand apart from a crowd and or have any kind of Indian signature. Happily Unmarried is  very happy departure from the formula around a concept that is not "inspired" or "cloned" and could only come from India.

Recently, I had a chance to chat with Rajat Tuli, one of the duo behind Happily Unmarried.

Me :  What was the moment of Zen that prompted you guys to come up with Happily Unmarried ?
Rajat : It was more an idea which evolved over time, based on our own experiences we realized that in our family oriented country there is nothing which targets the young.This made us quit our dull jobs and start to identify things which we could sell to people like us.And we are still evolving, getting into more categories.Oh its a lot of fun. 

Me : Is your store and idea too cool for the aam junta or does everyone get it easily ?
Rajat : Sometimes it is a little tough to explain to people what happily unmarried really means( try doing it in Hindi)but that apart the products are all well designed, they have an Indian sensibility most importantly they are things you use everyday. So the web is increasing. Initially we were only in the big metros but now we are even selling in Agra, Jammu, Coimbatore and other cities which one thinks are outside the cool zone. 

Me:  What are your social media outreach efforts like ?
Rajat : We have not done anything to promote the brand, thankfully the products keep getting picked up by magazines, we have been featured a few times on television but our best publicity is through word of mouth.There is also a sizable presence on Facebook now.

Me : How do you come up with the design ideas for your very unique products ?
Rajat : We actually identify products of mass consumption and then we try to inject in them a dose of irreverence and fun, there is a team of designers and a lot of effort goes into each product. 

Me : Does buying the Happily Unmarried brand supposed to say something about the buyer ?
Rajat : Yes, that she has a sense of humour,has a good taste,is going to make her Boy friend/husband/ dad very happy.

Me: If you could choose three tags to describe what your brand is all about what would they be ?
Rajat : Fun,Indian,Quirky

Me : What are the next big plans for Happily Unmarried ?
Rajat : Many, but the one I can speak about is a pub.The first HU bar and kitchen is being build even as I write this. Everything from the chair to the napkin is being designed by us.

Me : Would you consider taking on a serious social issue in India and put your creative spin on it to create a product that becomes a conversation piece ?
Rajat : Yes, we do sometimes. But since our tag line and with a name like Happily Unmarried we are morally bound to not be committed to a product, idea or cause for long.

Me : Did you face any unique challenges getting your business going ?
Rajat : Yes, lots when we started we would tell people we want to design funny products with Indian sensibilities, people said we would run out of ideas after 10. We have over a 100 now and ideas for may be 200 more. Ofcourse there were also minor issues like having no money to start the business with etc etc 

Me : Are the morality police (Ram Sena et al) keeping close tabs on you ?
Rajat : No, they have no reason to and even if they do we do not care.

Innovation In India

This NYT story by Vikas Bajaj on anxiety over the slow pace of innovation in India covers all the usual suspects - bureaucracy, corruption, years of stifling central planning, restrictive import tariffs, emphasis rote learning when it comes to eduction and general risk aversion. With all of that innovation is reduced to mere "jugaad" - the formal term is probably "denial driven innovation".

One contributing factor the author neglects to mention is that desis are blessed with high degree of tolerance and the natural ability to accept status quo as karma for the most part. We are not a people given to shaking things up as a matter of course, indeed a lot of us have never had a pressing need to do so.

Innovation and entrepreneurship in India is probably the highest among those communities who experienced upheaval at the time of India gaining Independence. They came in through the western border and fanned around, rooting where conditions were most hospitable. Many left Indian shores to seek their fortunes abroad. These communities  continue to be among the wealthiest and possessed of the greatest spirit of enterprise.

Perhaps they always had the wherewithal to do all of the things they did but adversity became the impetus that pushed them to an entirely different level of resourcefulness. On the east of the border, where families were uprooted from Bangladesh and headed to Kolkata and its vicinities, the story unfolded quite differently for a variety of reasons but that is a whole different topic of discussion.

For the vast majority of educated, middle class Indians, the would be innovators of this century, there has been little need to stick out their necks and take big risks or try something drastically because their survival depended on it. As resources shrink rapidly, the burgeoning population will be forced out of its comfort zone whether they like it or not. To that end, the reliance of a variety of "jugaad" and engagement in multifarious "dhanda" will increasingly become a way of life. It is the knee jerk response ( and not always a harmful one) to the need to do more with less.

Innovation (disruptive and otherwise) will likely happen as a subsequent phase in this process of evolution. It would be unreasonable to expect a Silicon Valley style startup incubation ecosystem in Bangalore but that does not mean innovation will not happen in India - it will just be of a very different flavor and like the taste of "curry" it would take some getting used to specially for those in the Western world. Many examples of such enterprise abound already.

It is just as Iqbal Quadir puts it while discussing the use of mobile phones to transfer money in India and Philippines :

Thus, when technologies—no matter where or why they were invented—are applied to diverse contexts, they provide a foundation for previously undreamed-of permutations and combinations. 

The numbers turn phenomenally large when one talks about India. We have more than our fair share of problems but in each of them, the enterprise-minded would see opportunity when permuted and combined with technology.

Between The Assassinations

Having loved Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, it was a great deal of anticipation that I started reading Between The Assassinations. I am sad to report that my disappointment is complete. Each story is hard to read, the characters are two dimensional. Denouements simply don't happen and when they do the reader does not sense closure. The book reads like a writer's notebook of character sketches and work in progress story ideas - not a bad thing in itself as long as expectations are managed correctly. Billed as outtakes of White Tiger, this would have been very interesting but the reader is set up to expect a brand new book with a come-hither title no less.

I labored from one story to the next hoping to see some of the White Tiger magic once again but sadly that does not happen. I have recommended the White Tiger to both my Indian friends who are not big fiction readers and non-Indian ones who are (or not) but are looking to read something authentically Indian. Both kinds of folks have loved the book for its gritty charm - quite unlike some of my other recommendations (specially to non-desis) like Anita Desai, R.K Narayan or Raja Rao.

Adiga tries grit (relentlessly I might add) once again in Between The Assassinations but it does not end up having nearly the same effect. I was worn out by the all too predictable plots, the done to death cliches of social and religious tensions and the general lack of spark about the writing itself. The title seemed to suggest that Adiga will take a stab at tracing the change to the social, economic and political climate between the two assassinations (Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi) through a set of short stories. That simply is not true. Talk about truth in marketing.

I am not willing to give up on Adiga quite yet - he has too much raw talent for that. In contemporary writing about India and Indians by desis, dominated by cringe inducing faux exocitism , Adiga had come in like a whiff of fresh air with White Tiger. We need him to write more, explore India and the Indian psyche in ways that he has not done yet. I would however scale back my expectations on his next book and hope he will manage to equal or better the White Tiger.

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there.

For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt to be treated as person first and woman after that.

I would hate for J's world-view to be shaped by a society that puts her gender before her and have that influence the most significant decisions in her life. I don't see the point of living inside the sanitized confines of a gated community so one does not have to deal with any of the "unpleasantness". That life would be a poor proxy of the Indian experience - J could end up being even more confused about her identity than she will be growing up in America.

L was not sure that my concerns were particularly valid in present day India and I was quick to chalk that up to India Shining Kool-Aid drinking. According to L, the current societal view of the gender allows for more nuance than the Sita or Slut that I was familiar with from my time and it was hardly fair to pass judgment without experiencing the transformation for myself.

Apparently, everything that was true from six or seven years ago (the last time I lived and worked in India) is null and void now. As much as I would like to believe that, I have seem little evidence of this seismic shift that L talks about, in print and on-line media and lesser still in the attitudes of the brethren who have arrived here very recently.

To have to believe that the magic will be evident upon setting foot in India is a giant leap of faith I find really hard to make. That said, it does not help to read about harassment of women in India who are in research and academia being more norm than exception.

If that is the fate of researchers and academics, chances are that the average woman will fare only much worse. When I read the comments by women on this post on their own experiences of harassment, I feel even less hopeful about what the future holds for women in India.

Terror In Mumbai

Watching Dan Reed's documentary Terror In Mumbai is a deeply disturbing experience for anyone who has a home in India. The unique "360 degree" view of terrorism that this movie affords is very instructive for global audiences - both who have encountered similar attacks in their own countries and those who have been spared thus far. Unless people and governments understand the terrorist psyche, they would never be able to put up a credible defense against it.

As an Indian, what I found most horrifying was the absolute dysfunctionality of the Mumbai police and the government apparatus as a whole. To the rest of India (of which I am a part), Mumbai epitomizes what is best about the country. We have been led to believe that this city and its denizens are a completely different breed - unlike anything you have seen in the rest of the country, that they have a system that actually works, when put to the test they are able to rise to the occasion. In many ways, Mumbai is what the rest of India aspires to be.

It is therefore, impossible to describe the sense of disbelief I experienced watching ten men hold all of Mumbai hostage, the police force running away from where innocents were being slaughtered instead of protecting them, their antiquated firearms and their obvious lack of preparedness, fitness or training for the task at hand. If this is the state of affairs in Mumbai, you don't even want to imagine how such an attack might have played out any other city in India and that is a chilling realization for Indians both home and abroad.

The leader of this attack lets us know that the events on November 26th 2008 in Mumbai are a trailer to the real movie. If the Indian government is not able to up its game very, very significantly, not a lot of Indians may be around to watch the movie if and when that happens. This is the country we call home - logically, emotionally or both. What Reed shows us happening in that "home" in a time of crisis, flies completely in the face its definition - : a familiar or usual setting : congenial environment.

This movie is reminder of the absolute vulnerability of the average person who is not able to count on anything beyond their own wits, the help of their loved ones and kindness of strangers when they become victims of a terrorist attack. That the people of Mumbai have bounced and go about their lives as if it were business as usual is a testament to their indomitable spirit. The rest of us Indians have the choice of living in fear every day (which is probably the logical thing to do) or do what the Mumbaikars have done and hope we are not put to such a test in our own backyard and fare even worse than Mumbai did.