Delhi Belly

I have not watched a Bollywood flick for over a year now and decided it was time to get caught up. I chose Delhi Belly and was very glad I did. It is a funny, risque and smart little movie  - not your garden variety Bollywood caper. Each character does their part really well in making this movie come together rather nicely. The dude with the Delhi Belly is not the protagonist but his condition directly contributes to many twists and turns in the plot. The fact that I laughed as many times as I did watching this movie, made me realize that the desi in me is alive and well ; not having been back to India in over eight years has not taken that away from me. DB would have enjoyed it too - but his desi-ness is much too worn out for him to get what I did out of it.

What is specially neat about the movie is how well it captures the essence of the Indian experience - we are a people and country that can span centuries and millinea within a day of our lives. There is this dilapidated house with toilet fixtures from the early part of the last century shared by three guys with unremunerative, non-mainstream jobs, the offices are swank and very twenty first century, the electronics on the more well-heeled characters are state of the art , the wardrobes are deeply influenced by the west but not entirely subordinate to it. To that extent we have the ironic tee-shirts with distinctly desi flavor and the zari trimmed vest on a scooped top. There is the kathak guru upstairs from the three guys instructing young girls on a dance form thousands of years old in a setting not unlike what it was back then - very little if anything has changed about their world. The landlord who seeks comfort in the arms of a prostitute visits them in an establishment that looks as old as the trade itself.

The female characters in the movie range between conservative to liberated and everything in between. They are not the one-dimensional romantic interests for the male roles - among other things it was good to see female sexuality being acknowledged without subterfuge.There is a place in India for all of this to co-exist, the multitude of characters and locales that shape our communities grow with the wild profusion of a tropical rain forest. It may not be pretty or well-ordered but it is certainly not sterile and lifeless. All of these contradictions come together to create the Indian and desi experience. I have missed the time travel that everyday life back home can be. Delhi Belly was the perfect Indian sampling platter for someone who has not been home in a while.

Real India

My cousin D has recently moved back to Bangalore after ten years here in the US. He came as a grad student and like many stayed on to live, work and make a home in this country. When we caught up recently, I found myself comparing his experience of Bangalore to mine (which is eight years old now). There is a certain timelessness about India which makes it easier on those who have been away for a while to adjust to the sweeping changes of the past decade. The recalcitrant domestic help, the teeth-pulling agony of trying to get some of the simplest chores done, the ubiquitous squalor and dust. D and his wife deal with those things just the way I had and the way our parents and grandparents had before us. 

Yet, if one has the money and the willingness to spend it freely, D tells me that is possible to create a protective cocoon that leaves everything unpalatable out. The question of "Real India" becomes a very subjective one at that point. Those inside their cocoon see a world entirely different from those who don't happen to have such protections. 

The cocooned life would begin inside an upscale gated community, the conduit to the outside world a chauffeured air-conditioned car that took one to work at an office park with accouterments that beat the best the West has to offer. They may choose to eat on the "cheap" at the company cafeteria or be driven up to a nice restaurant for lunch.They would shop at supermarkets and never need to set foot in a bazaar or a sabzi-mandi. They would never need to jostle the crowds to buy cheap street fashion being hawked on the pavements of the city. Instead they would go to an upscale store and pay the steep tag for comfort, convenience and brand.Work-life balance is not yet a social construct but that may change in time too.

D's generation for the most part began their careers in India and with the growth opportunities that came their way, ended up staying there and flourishing. They have traveled around the world and still prefer living in India to anywhere else. D and his family are a bit of an anomaly. For his friends, the cocooned life-style is the only one they know since they became independent. It is what they negotiated for themselves. The old fashioned ideas of their middle class parents mean nothing to them. Being frugal, cutting corners and squirreling away everything possible for the future are not things that this generation believes in. D is finding that hard to stomach as would I.Both he and I have not had the opportunity to grow into the changed India organically. We left early and carried with us the values from our parents that have really no place in modern India.

He realizes that he needs the cocoon to thrive and yet the cost of acquiring one seems too steep to him. When faced with a 2000 rupee tab a pub for a couple of pitchers of beer and appetizers, D finds himself converting that to dollars and asking himself if he would have spent that much in absolute terms or a fraction of his net US income. Often times, he finds that the cocooned lifestyle requires him to be much more generous with his paycheck and profligate with his savings than he has ever been. Until he is able to make that transition, his Indian experience remains completely unlike those in his social milieu.

Spectator Sport

It was the summer vacation my last year at high school and I was in spending a few weeks at my Grandmother’s in Kolkata. On the evening which this post is about, my aunt and I were at Gariahat shopping. A young man who looked like a college student had been following us around for a while and then it happened. I was “eve-teased”. I told my aunt right away and she asked “Are you sure he did that ? He looks like a boy from a good family” and I replied “Yes. I am absolutely certain”.

She suggested that we give him another opportunity to be sure that I was right in my assessment of the "incident" and give us the chance to catch him in the act if I was. A few minutes later, we had reason to accost him, beat him with our bare hands with my aunt was livid enough to go at him with her umbrella berating him as she did for being a common lecher while pretending to be a student. He kept repeating “I’m sorry. I won't do it again”. As far as I could tell, he did not appear particularly contrite but was definitely taken aback by this unexpected attack by two women in a public place.

Soon enough, in true to form Kolkata fashion an audience had gathered around us in a circle. Several men suggested that we let him go because it was his first mistake – I was not sure how they could have known that to be the case.Yet other men said that he had been punished enough and we should stop now. But for the most part people (men and women) asked us “What happened ?” (clearly all that my aunt was saying in her rage to the man and his reaction to her accusations was not conveying the message clearly enough to our audience).

Some went as far as to wonder “Are you sure he really did something ?” or ask " How bad was it ?" (suggesting that us two women had recently exited a lunatic asylum and had got it into our deranged brains to beat up a random guy walking down the street minding his own business. If the lack of our mental faculties  was so painfully evident, they should have called the authorities to strait-jacket both of us to prevent further destruction of life and property. Instead they stood around watching and asking these questions).

Not one man or woman said anything in our support - let alone demonstrate it in any useful way. Some stayed in the side lines and bemoaned the state of society where a young girl duly accompanied by an aunt was not safe from the undesired attentions of street side Romeos. They were the first to walk away from the scene anxious not to get involved in any of it. It was clear they held both my aunt and I in very dim view - just the kind of women that Bengali "bhadralok" should steer clear off. Imagine causing such a racket over a small thing like "eve-teasing".

After a while both my aunt and I stopped from sheer mental and physical exhaustion. Anger and the public mockery that my humiliation had turned us into was enough to want us both to vanish without a trace. The young man got up, collected his text books that had fallen out of his bag. He walked away and so did we. The audience left with as much haste as they would exit a movie theater when the closing credits start to roll. I would imagine it had been a "paisa vasool tamasha" (spectacle worth the money) for all of them - and it didn't cost them anything.

When we got home, my Grandma flew into a panic fueled rage when she heard what had happened. She gave my aunt a mouthful for setting a bad example and behaving “like that” in public. What’s a young girl going to learn ? Next time a man does something to her (clearly this would hardly be the last time - she seemed confident of that at least), she’s going to try and beat him up and only bad things can result from that. Is that my aunt wanted to see happen to me ? Did she not know that women from respectable families did not call unpleasant attention to themselves in public ? I hated to see my feisty aunt, my hero be treated so unfairly but it was just not the time to argue with Grandma.

We had to deal with her withering statements disapproving of our conduct for a good hour before she finally stopped. She agreed it was hard to not become furious under the circumstances but should we not worry about not stirring up even more trouble. What if the guy had decided to strike back – he was over six feet tall and well built – what would we do then ? What if he had followed us home an decided to extract a revenge even more horrible ? No matter what there would always be crowd around us inquiring into the details of the incident and do nothing. Had we considered any of that ? Had my aunt taken leave of her senses ?

She decreed that for the rest of my stay at Kolkata I was to be accompanied by an uncle (if not both) each time I needed to go out somewhere. I asked my Grandma if she wanted enlist their friends as well – I could go out boldly with a dozen men forming a phalanx around me. Should I still get “eve-teased”, I had a better chance of fighting back. She was not in the least amused.

I did not fail to notice that my uncles (both my aunt's brothers and her husband) did not compliment her on her courage. They look just as concerned as my Grandma. I was disappointed to see that. Is that they best they could do - say nothing at all ? It took my some years to understand their predicament. They could not realistically take on all the bad guys that we would meet in the world outside a la Superman. With their limited resources, the best they could do is to keep us out of harm's way

To that end, they accompanied us whenever possible, ran errands for us when it was not considered "safe" for us to do so. Refused to let their teen-aged daughters to go out wearing clothes that some pervert on the street may find provocative - the list was endless. These are the men in families just like mine who believe they are doing their best to keep the women out of harm's way. While they mean well, they also enable the crippling cycle of fear, diffidence and dependence among women and there is a steep price to pay for all of it. That was my life growing up in India - a life that I have in common with most Indian women I know.

That incident has some of the most remarkable parallels to my experience writing a post (including the comments and emails it provoked) some time back about the lack of freedom for women in India and my hesitation to return there from America specially with a young daughter.Some of the  commenters reminded me of the audience that had gathered around my aunt and I at Gariahat many years ago.

They were those that convinced that I was over-reacting and nothing had really happened - India was not nearly as terrible for women as I made it out to be. Some were passers by with no desire to take sides one way or the other - it happens in India and around the world - maybe it is a little worse in India. No big deal. Yet others acted like men often do in India - go into full-throttle denial of the issue itself so they can continue to feel like "real" men. They focus on assembling a battery of evidence to show how India is no worse than any other country instead of being positive agents of change.

However, those closest to the subject - Indian women remained largely silent or vaguely dismissive. Their own experiences did not match mine though I was probably right and somewhat justified in my concerns and opinion on the subject. There was a welcome difference too - in the on-line world some were able to take a position on their own and stick with it - it was refreshing to see some solidarity from the sisters for a change. What I remember most vividly about that evening is the general attitude of the women in the audience – there was no sense of sister-hood with me (the victim) or my aunt (my defender). They mostly wanted to know the scoop – like it was some great mystery that only I could reveal unto them.

The subliminal message being that I had done something to cause this to happen and had it been them, the same man would have not reacted nearly the same way had it been them. Something was inherently wrong with me - what else do you expect with a firebrand aunt like that - and I was merely suffering the consequences of my less than satisfactory upbringing. They were so glad not to be at the receiving end of unwanted attention that they had forgotten that it could be their turn the very next moment.

None of them paused to think why it is that a man suspected of picking a pocket could  even get killed at the hands of a mob without any questions being asked but when it came to a woman being molested, a trial by fire was needed to prove she was justified in making the claim of harassment. It did not bother them that men could minimize or even deny what they had to go through when they had no right or business doing so. It did not strike them as ironic that they were participating in this kangaroo court proceeding alongside men - that they were their gender's worst enemy.

I had felt that evening, that the eve-teaser was probably a better man than any other male in the audience. He took the public beating and the abuses my aunt hurled at him without protest and left without a whimper. As much public sympathy he had with the men in the audience, he could have well used it to his advantage and tried to turn the crowd against us. Other than my aunt, not one woman assembled there to watch the tamasha felt the indignation a woman should - to realize that was as heartbreaking as it was frightening. As far as I was concerned my aunt was the only woman who had a woman's heart and soul.

When I wrote that earlier post, I was disappointed to see very few female readers come up and voice their opinion on that post. If that knot of people around the three of us in Kolkata was a petri dish in which to observe Indian society in a test environment, so was the post. While a lot of time has passed between the two events, fundamentally very little has changed. In a sense I was alone with a circle of spectators once again.The tragedy of the Indian woman is not about the men out to exploit, abuse and manipulate her when they find her in a vulnerable position, but it is the lack of solidarity with other women. We are a people divided against ourselves in more ways than can be counted but the price of women being divided between themselves in the face of so much social atrocity is possibly the highest.

In this country, every American woman (black and white) in my acquaintance who has been a single mother herself or knows someone who has been one has gone out of her way to help me in any way they possibly can. I have yet to see an exception to this rule. These are the women that made my life in my single parent days relatively simple. My experience in India had been the exact opposite - my marital status turned me into a social pariah almost instantly. Yes, there were exceptions to this rule but not nearly enough in number to make it a comfortable social existense for one such as myself. For this reason alone, I had been able to work it out for J and I so far away from family - far more comfortably than I was had been able to in India.

My friend A, who has spent half his life in Europe and America and the other half in India, wrote this to me back in the days when I was dithering between staying back in India to raise J with the support of family in surroundings I was familiar with and taking the plunge into the unknown in this country :

"America is country of second chances, there is no stigma attached to failure (and I mean in a social sense). You will find it very liberating in your situation and it may be worth all the trouble. India is a great place to live - people are warm and friendly but only as long as you don't "fail". Once you do, the facade falls off and you see people for who they really are. From what I can tell from talking to you, you are in a state of shock at the difference. Don't be. Accept it as a chance to find out who your "real" friends are. When you come here, you may have no friends at all but you will get by with the help and kindness of strangers".

It was good advise and I am glad I took it.

A lot has been written about the position of women in India and the endless list of impediments on their way forward. Much can be accomplished merely through cultivating a sense of sisterhood - you would think the experiences they have in the public space would make this easy. Class, social and economic status mean absolutely nothing to the average "eve-teaser". Every one is just a female gender - for better or worse that should facilitate a stronger sense of kinship between women but surprisingly enough it does not. 


That aunt is close to sixty now and on most days completely wiped out after babysitting her three grand-kids. My daughter will be a teenager soon and had I been back in Kolkata, I may have needed to do for her what my aunt once did for me - that is a sobering realization.

Negotiating Traffic

I have never driven in India and don't plan on attempting to either. That said, I am in awe of drivers who can weave in and out of the maze that city traffic is and deliver passengers like myself to their destinations all in day's work. If they feel stressed - it is none too evident. An expat in Delhi (I have published an interview with Dave and Jenny before on this blog) writes about his experience negotiating traffic on behalf of his autorickshaw driver. The problem is all too familiar to us desis but the positive approach to solving it and the thought process is more than a little remarkable :

"I exited my auto and surveyed the situation. Possibilities materialized in my head. I mapped out moves like a game of chess—“If this car goes here, and that car goes there…”—and then I took action, standing in front of this car and pointing him that way, then standing in the hole he left until my auto driver could slip into it. Around me, other heads had appeared in the traffic, and the hole one of them created for their own car cascaded back to me. Using my gestures to move some cars and my body to block others, I worked us through the jam—me grinning, my driver grinning, other drivers staring, and still other drivers following behind my auto as he followed the path I blazed out of the jam."

The sense of joy and accomplishment is palpable. It is as if Abhimanyu had figured how to exit the Chakravyuha - sometimes even the impossible can happen. Now here is a man who has both the chops and attitude to make India his home. A lesser man would have fumed and steamed in the auto bemoaning the state of Delhi roads. Though one commenter tempers that enthusiasm with this observation :

Wow…this is very impressive Dave. Though understand, only a white boy can pull this off in Delhi. No disrespect meant. We both know that if an Indian tried that, he’d get run over within a minute.

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.

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.

Rent A CEO

Lately CEOs have become synonymous with over-compensation and insinuations of incompetence and worse. Reading this Silicon India article about renting CEOs for short durations made me pause for thought. This is the individual who is entrusted with the stewardship of the company and is responsible for its future and direction. How someone brought in for a six month stint can realistically deliver on all of that is hard to fathom.

If leadership at the top changes a couple of times each year, how does the rest of the organization possibly keep up ? Each individual will bring to bear their own management style and biases but by the time everyone else has settled into a good operating rhythm it becomes time to do things over - and in a different way. Even churn in middle management ranks can cause a havoc in the trenches. If indeed, a contract staff of CXOs are able to keep things humming along just fine and the organization on the whole does not miss a beat during transitions, it would bear testimony to their complete redundancy. The reason why this trend is catching on in explained thusly :

It is now becoming prevalent in India in senior and middle management level. At the top management level, it is not called temp staffing (or temping) but Interim Management. The money is fairly good and work is done on a milestone basis. It works for people who do not wish to be wedded to a company and are looking for flexibility," says E Balaji, CEO, Ma Foi Management Consultants.

Work one on a "milestone basis" indeed - how particularly convenient ! Sounds more like they want to make as much money as they can without responsibility or accountability and skip over to their next gig before shit hits the fan. This is scam artistry at its very best.

Books And Happiness

A few weeks ago, J helped me write short synopses of her five favorite books from last year for a post I did for Saffron Tree. I have blogged several times about my undiminished sense of wonderment in the American public library system. That is possibly the first thing I loved about this country and it continues to top the list.All the books I ever owned were hand me downs from relatives or friends who no longer wanted them or bought really cheap at second hand book-stores.

It was just not the done thing in my family to go off any buy books "randomly" as my mother would like to say. The first question she would ask if I wanted to buy one was "Will you read it a second time ?". If the answer was no, purchase was out of the question. While there was still such a thing as the USSR, every year there would be a Soviet book fair in my town and that was the time I could buy a few books. My parents allowed this "indulgence" mainly because they were so cheap. The thrill of bringing my books home to look them over, is unlike anything else I experienced in my childhood.

To this day, I put a lot of thought before actually buying a book but there is a huge assortment at home at any given time thanks to the bounty of the public library. Like me, J has come to depend almost on it entirely for her reading needs. The happy faces of the children crowded around an illustrated book in this article on the mission of Pratham Books made me count my blessings yet again - I tried to imagine the look on the faces of these kids if they too could have twenty or more books each of their choice and get to keep them for a couple of months only to get that many more new ones. Pratham is obviously doing an amazing job bringing books and therefore the joy of reading to children who otherwise may have been deprived of both.

Eko

Techcrunch has this wonderful article about Eko - an Indian startup that does one thing, does it with elegant simplicity ; most importantly uses technology and entrepreneurship to help rural Indians - the people who for the most part get left out on the darkest fringes of the digital divide. The author Sarah Lucy explains the concept behind Eko :

There are a few SMS-based bank applications in India, but Eko differs because the phone isn’t just another channel for the account—it is the account. You make payments and transfer money simply by dialing numbers. It’s so simple, you don’t even need to understand SMS to use it.

It’s an ingenious offering that doesn’t try to be everything to everyone. It aims squarely at the unbanked—some 60% of India’s huge population. For now, Eko is focusing on the 1,000 kilometer corridor between Delhi and Bihar. 

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!"  

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. 

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.

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.

Sita And Hearbreak

Finally got around to watching Sita Sings the Blues. Whether you are Hindu or not, familiar with any one of the many versions of Ramayan or not, you can connect with this film. Nina Paley makes the story of Sita and Rama (in that order) her own. She is not trying to interpret or retell the "original" story but rather projecting herself on Sita's character and discovering parallels between the end of her marriage and that of Ram and Sita.

The idea of introducing Annette Hanshaw's blues to hold the story together is a beautiful one. The sadness and pain of heartbreak is universal. Like one of the shadow puppet narrators in film says if a woman throws herself at a man who is clearly rejecting her, that is not unconditional love but her fault for not knowing the man is not worth the trouble. Yet, women have loved in the face of unfaithfulness, rejection, abuse and more. They have a hard time believing that their feelings are not reciprocated, that they have invested their love and emotions in the wrong place.

Sita's life could be interpreted by some as one of a woman who loved completely and unconditionally but the object of devotions was not a man who deserved what she had to offer. When a woman is dumped, irrespective of the specific circumstances ;leading up to this event, she views herself as grievously wronged and the pain is as Paley describes like a fire that can completely burn her life or fuel something new. Like Sita, she might want to return to the womb and start over. It is wonderful to see the story of Sita interpreted in way that is so accessible to everyone. True to her belief : My first concern is Art, and Art has no life if people can’t share it, Nina Paley has given new life to something with limited reach and appeal.

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.

Desis And Denial

Sometime ago, I had blogged about coaching centers in India and the reports of them having inside access to questions for the entrance exams to the top-ranking engineering schools in India. As expected, several Indian readers commented that I was making sweeping generalizations based on this one reported incident that I had linked to in my post. There have been other reports since besides reports of the inevitable brand dilution. The flaw is as systemic as it is old even if we don't want to believe it and look the other way.

At the risk of being accused of making yet another generalization, I will say that Desis are prone to being in the state of denial about far too much when it comes to India. Most recently this has been the economic meltdown and the notion that it will somehow leave India unscathed.This attitude is probably a proxy for patriotism that is not expressed in any other tangible way. In their minds, denial somehow equals non-existence and defending India against criticism (even when well-deserved) equals national pride. Maybe it has something do with what Dr Ambedkar said about our delusion of being a nation :

There is no nation of Indians in the real sense of the world, it is yet to be created. In believing we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into thousand of castes be a nation? The sooner we realise that we are not yet a nation, in a social and psychological sense of the world, the better for us.

Maybe we try to over-compensate by posturing national pride when in fact we can't even fully articulate what our nation is in "a social and psychological sense". At any rate, for every hundred thousand desis claiming that our college entrance exams are completely sacrosanct, that our education system is able to help our best and brightest get ahead, that our hobbling infrastructure will not put the brakes on even the most powerful growth engine, that crimes against women are an aberration and not the rule, that women have just as much freedom in India as they do in the developed world and indeed the upward trajectory of growth that is helping the a very small minority of the country's population is completely win-win ; there is one desi who is taking a good hard look at what is really going on, calling a spade a spade and what's more doing his or her bit to bring about meaningful change in an organic way.

They would be the ones who will gladly give up a promising corporate career home or abroad to improve the lot of the poor, neglected and disenfranchised in some remote backwater. In my mind, they are the real patriots and unfortunately we have woefully few of them. I must make haste to point out that I do not claim to be in the model desi minority that I have just described though I have been fortunate enough to be acquainted with a few who truly are.

There a far too many of the garden variety India Shinning Kool-Aid drinkers who will flip into denial-mode the moment someone shows them a blemish on this shining patina. They would love for all things that all ail India to be automagically set right. Until then, they could live in their picture-perfect walled off communities, waxing eloquent on the myriad of possibilities that India is and not have the dirt and grime in direct line of sight. I don't see find myself fitting in this demographic either.

Considered from a desi world view, denial seems to the next stage after resignation. When you believe there are no alternatives and that you have no control over things that determine the quality of your life and the future of your motherland, the best course of action might be to go into denial if only to ease the pain.

It is at this point that you read the news of women being molested in broad daylight everyday, of call-center workers being raped by their car drivers, of a five kilometer commute to work taking two hours each way or kids cheating their way into top-ranked schools and calls these incidents one-off and not representative of the state of India as a whole. You really believe this to be the case because the alternate hypothesis is too painful to bear or even consider possible - it shatters the very foundation of your existence.

Hand Movements

According to this article in Scientific American hand gestures are correlated to our ability to understand and learn new concepts. The comments on the article make for interesting reading as well. In my culture, gesturing has never been a big part of communication. It would generally be viewed as distracting rather than helpful. I have noticed though that when giving discourses holy men and women do use hand gestures - they are few but highly eloquent. Likewise with artists, performers, musicians and dancers - gestures are part of their language.

At the other end of the spectrum, it is common to see socio-economically depressed people given to elaborate gestures involving hand and body to get their point across - and I say this in the context of Indian society. I would imagine some of the negative connotation associated with gesturing too much while talking stems from here. Folks probably don't want to come across as uncultured, uneducated or impoverished. If the findings reported in the article are correct, I wonder what that would mean for those of us who are culturally conditioned to gesture little or not at all.

Keeping Libraries Alive

If there was one part of my immigrant experience I could choose to love best it would be the public libraries in America. The first time I walked into one, I felt like I was in Aladdin's cave and this was even before I had found out that I could check out upwards of twenty items including music and movies. My wonderment has not reduced over the years. I still count my blessings each time I visit a public library.

When I tell J about the thrill I experience l walking into the library, she looks perplexed. Though going to the library is among her favorite things to do, it is a natural element of her environment - no more remarkable that the air she breathes or the water she drinks. To her this is one among Mommy's many eccentricities - harmless but rather quaint.

She does not know that there is a different way of life too. One in which you slip your library card through a small window in a wall, select a book from a type-written catalog and wait for the the guy at the window to bring you back a dog-eared copy (if you are lucky) or come back another day to try your luck again. I read book-reviews voraciously knowing fully well that I would not be able to read the book itself in years if ever. My reading list filled a well-worn notebook - a catalog of my unfulfilled desire to know and learn what I could not.

That was my life growing up. So the bounty of the American public library is never lost on me - not for a minute. To read about the libraries around the US closing down or reducing staff and hours is specially sad. I can only hope that people in this country value the incomparable service public libraries provide enough to keep them funded through the hardest times. It is easy enough to take for granted what you have always had and not until it is irretrievably gone does the magnitude of the loss strike home. By then it is often too late. After all, we in the Indian subcontinent did not get to from Taxila and Nalanda to a hole in the wall library in a day.