Pebble in the Sky

On not fighting the seven signs of ageing

2010-02-01T03:09:00.000-08:00

A few art classes ago, we did self-portraits. First, we drew ourselves from memory, then from a mirror. It was quite a revelation, in more ways than one. In some ways, I saw myself in the most honest way--I saw those fine lines of the past few years, saw the laugh line I've had since I was a kid. Noted the little discolourations.

Other people corrected my drawing. You drew your nose too big, they said. What, no, I have a big nose. I'm trying to be honest with myself here, and this is my nose--big. No, they said, look at yourself again, it's not that big, just a little bumpy. Hmm. The lips I drew were very pretty and I was a bit ashamed that I might be drawing what I wanted rather than what I had. I started correcting it and was told to stop and not spoil the drawing. I drew a prominent chin, my family chin, the one they said showed determination. Um, not that prominent a chin, they said. Really?

So it was a great exercise, not just in honesty, but in realising what influences other people have on your self-perception. You have a big nose, they tell you, and you imagine it bigger than it actually is. You have rather small eyes, they say, and you see everyone else's as bigger.

But, in that place of peace that only art can bring me, I felt neutral about everything. About my face, my looks, about what I might look like when I'm older.

The next morning, my vanity returned and I thought about the fact that, in a handful of years, I could look very different. Older. My skin would sag, I'd have noticeable wrinkles. It wasn't a pleasant thought, but it brought memories of my grandmother.

My mother's mother was in her 70s when I got to know her. I was in my early teens. She was hardly your storybook grandmother--she had a reputation for being complicated, feisty and manipulative. But she had mellowed by then and, with me, she was as close to nice as she would ever be. Our relationship lacked love, but we had a mutual understanding and something close to admiration.

My grandmother was not beautiful but there were things about her that were. Her crow's feet were one thing I always wished for. It made her eyes look pretty, as thought they'd been elongated with kohl. I wanted them badly. Most of all, I liked sitting next to her and holding her hands. She had the softest, most-lined palms I'd ever seen--I found the contrast fascinating. And the back of her hand. It was thin-skinned, and her veins stood out, green, fat and rounded. If you pressed down on them, they moved to one side. I remember us both laughing at that. Her face had been rather masculine and long when she was young, but not having known her then, my memory of her face is a lovely one, made softer and more beautiful by her sagging cheeks.

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It took me a long time to realise that all my memories of my grandmother's beauty had to do with her age.

I don't know when my face will start to change but I hope I have the courage to look forward to ageing. I don't want to grow older fighting against myself. I hope I can keep returning to the innocence, the truth of that time with my grandmother, and to the peace of that art class.

I'm no saint (as vain as they come sometimes), so it won't be easy. The only thing I know for sure is that I'll be happy when I get crow's feet.

Means and ends, tasks and symbolism

2009-01-13T01:38:00.000-08:00

(Reviving this blog!)

Two ideas have been rattling around in my head.

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The first is about means and ends--the old question of whether the nobility of the end excuses the means to achieve it. For example, should you sacrifice a few for the sake of many, as in a usual hostage situation? Is attacking a country excusable if it is to save another?

The other day, I saw Oprah interview Marion Jones, the disgraced athlete. In the interview, Marion seemed to suggest that she could have won the Sydney Olympic medals even without the drugs. Even if this was a possibility, it is so completely irrelevant. So what if the drug had had zero effect on her? So what if she was, in fact, the best at the time?

So many of our poor traditions are excused by citing the end goal. We want women to be safe and not treated as sexual objects, so we restrict their movements, their dress, their freedom. We want people to be charitable, so we invent religions based on fear.

My take is that the means-do-not-matter attitude stifles thought and creativity. It does not encourage us to think of other ways to do things. It can also be very dangerous because it distracts you from the heart of a problem.
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The second, closely-related idea is that of symbolism. I have ideas I'm passionate about (individual freedom, atheism, feminism) but everyday, I'm confronted with little, harmless tasks, that, on deeper scrutiny, contradict those ideas.

I was invited, as part of a marriage, to a Sumangali Prarthanai. This is a traditional prayer/ritual meant to "honour" certain female ancestors who were sumangalis i.e, they died before their husbands. It is a ritual deeply rooted in Hinduism's poor treatment of widows. And yet, it is masked as some kind of female celebration. There was, of course, no harm in taking part in this ritual. After all, I would not want anyone to lose their wife or husband prematurely. And yet, the symbolism of the ritual disturbed me so much I wiggled out of attending it.

It was later pointed out to me that this is one of those rare South Indian rituals where the women are served a feast and they get to eat before the men. Should I just have rejoiced in that small victory?

My family tells me I've become more radical of late, that I'm protesting too much against small traditions that are ultimately harmless. And yet, I cannot but see the bigger symbols everywhere. And, if I do these small things, I feel like a hypocrite--someone who espouses one philosophy and practises another.

There are areas of life where this feeling is easy to brush off. I read about fair trade and understand it, and yet, being an economical person at heart, I continue to shop at Kmart. I am a rational person who values reason and yet I find myself succumbing to the sheer stupidity of high-heeled shoes.
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And then, a couple of months ago, I read a biography of Rajaji. The otherwise dull book covered his relationship with Gandhi in great detail. It was then that I realised that most of Gandhi's eccentricities--such as his obsessions with hygiene, self-control, spinning, etc--could be put down to his desire to live life with great deliberation.

His great achievement seems to have been mastery of both the big-picture (the end goal, the symbolism of life) and the details (the means, the little harmless tasks). Every step he took was the result of deep thought. And yet, no matter however frivolous it seemed, it was leading to a larger purpose.

It's probably the hardest way of living life. And Gandhi is an extraordinary person just for attempting this.

A change of perspective

2008-05-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

I discovered Stuff White People Like a few months ago. I think it's hilarious!

It would be a pretty good guide for Indians who are often a bit amused and puzzled by some Western habits, especially those of the yuppie liberal crowd who are not well-represented in the mainstream movies, serials and books--the ones that hit foreign shores anyway.

The genius of Stuff White People Like is in the dramatic shift in perspective. Western culture has become the default culture of the world, the default reference point. What the blog does is to look at the West like the West looks at other cultures--in a manner relative to itself, in a way that seizes on every difference as "exotic". I'm loving it!

I think that's one reason why none of the clone blogs ( Stuff Desis Like, Stuff Queer People Like, Stuff Asian People Like, etc.) work. Even if they had the lovely sense of humour that SWPL has, they still don't have the irony of that perspective-shift.
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A good example of the West becoming a default reference point is travel literature. Many of the voices in travel literature have been Western because, well, I guess because they have had the money and leisure to travel and write about it. This, of course, is changing now.

I'd like to see some day, travel books written by people of different backgrounds. For example, a friend of R's went to China recently and came back with a description that went like this--traffic, pollution, exotic food and shiny malls. In short, a description that could apply to every other Asian city. Someone from an Asian country would (hopefully) be able to look beyond these and tell us what really makes it special.

The Indian theory of traffic

2008-05-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

In India, traffic is like religion.

You need to have blind faith. You need to trust that when you make a right turn from a small avenue into a large, busy road, that there will be space for you to fit in.
The red, orange and green signals are the symbols of the faith. In olden times, these colours had meanings, but no one remembers them anymore. However, everyone respects these sacred relics and lets them exist on the roads.
The traffic policeman is the guru; the vendors and window-cleaners are the priests. The guru shows you the path to salvation; the priests help make this journey comfortable.
On your road, you will encounter many obstacles. These are meant to test you. Do not despise the unmarked speed bump--it will make you a better driver. That lorry veering towards you is a test. Are you strong enough to drive straight and make him swerve out of the way?

The age of misinformation

2008-05-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

From The Guardian, a wonderful article about health scares.

But despite their repetitive, contradictory and medically tenuous nature, people pay attention to these lists of absurd things that are supposedly bad for you; they even act upon them - randomly banning bra underwiring or broccoli from their lives - while remaining resistant to constant, consistent and proven advice to eat, drink and smoke less and exercise more. Why?

Sometimes, I am led to think that the age we live in is one of not just information, but misinformation.

The other day, I got a call on my cellphone. It was being charged at the time. No sooner had I taken the call, than my sister gesticulated to me wildly, asking me to cut the call. Apparently, someone had been telling her that, if you took a call on a cellphone while it was connected to an electrical outlet, you'd get electrocuted. An email forward her husband had received talked of many such incidents. I felt as though I was going back in time, to the years when electricity was first introduced. Of course, this "fact" turned out to be false.

Similarly, myths about using microwaves are widespread in India. "Even my doctor recommended that I not use a microwave for the childrens' food.", said a friend. I told her that her doctor was not speaking as a doctor, but as a lay person who believed unfounded rumours. What can you do when even people of science behave so irresponsibly?

The other great scourge of our times is the shift towards alternative medicine, again on grounds that it is more natural and has less side-effects. While some herbal medicines may have benefits, you cannot escape the fact that it is only general, science-based medicine that is thoroughly tested and proven.

To take just one example, I was once advised by an ayurvedic doctor to use breast-milk to treat a mysterious eye inflammation. The suggestion seemed ridiculous to my mother and me, even though, we did, at that time, have a slight belief in Ayurvedic medicine. Had I followed her advice, I would have surely contracted an infection.

Just because a medicine has existed for thousands of years does not automatically mean that it is effective. In actual fact, old systems of medicine are poor contenders precisely because they are old--they have not kept pace with changes in diseases or with advances in our understanding of the body. Students of biology would be shocked by the pseudoscience that, say, homeopathy (the worst of these offenders) is based on.

Why are so many people so gullible and so accepting? The Guardian article provides some clues:

Ben Goldacre, who, as well as being a doctor, writes this newspaper's Bad Science column, says the lure of the health scare story for the media lies in that fact that during the "golden age of medicine, miracle cures and sinister hidden scares really were being discovered". Now, "we move ahead by small incremental understandings of large numbers of modest risk factors, but journalists haven't found a way to write about that, so every fractional research finding has to be crowbarred into the 'miracle-cure-hidden-scare' template."

Also:

Kieran McCafferty, a renal doctor working in central London, says that people want a scapegoat. "They don't want to exercise, because they're lazy, but they want to say, 'But I stopped using deodorant!', which is like giving up chewing gum for Lent."

Staying in their place

2008-05-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

We have known Kuppamma and her family for many years. She and her husband worked at my dad's company guest house. When her husband died, my dad helped her stay on there as a cook (a contract she might've lost otherwise) and she has always remembered that. She also works at my sister's house as a maid and cook.

Kuppamma's story itself is interesting and shows how, in India, the poor have a fairly liberal lifestyle (eerily like the rich) . Kupamma is Hindu and s three children by her first husband, whom she split up with. Her second husband (the one who worked in the guesthouse) was a Christian and he sent off the children to grow up in a Christian "home". After this husband died, Kuppamma has brought her children back and reverted to her Hindu ways. However, the Christian influence there was quite strong, so one of her children, Sita has decided that she will stay a Christian. She even has a Christian name--Stella. Sita/Stella goes to church on Sundays and refuses to have anything to do with Hindu rituals.

Over the years, Kuppamma has become quite independent. She has a rental house, she owns a moped.

Kuppamma and her two daughters--Rekha and Sita/Stella--visited my parents last week. Rekha is married and wanted to show us her new baby. Sita, who is quite the star of the family, has just joined a Tamizh B.Com course at the Open University-- she's the first in the extended family to study up to high school. She also sings in the church choir, does embroidery and writes poetry. Anyway, Sita was coming along to show us her course syllabus and to thank my dad for some money he'd given towards her enrollment fees.

In some ways, Kuppamma is more than just a maid to us. When she comes, she brings a batch of her homemade sweets. She has attended most of our family functions and my parents have attended Rekha's wedding. When she and her family visited last week, it was not very different from a relative's visit. My mother gave them tea and snacks. Rekha said she'd prefer coffee, so my mother made coffee. The baby was passed around and cuddled. We all looked at Sita's B.Com syllabus and gave her advice on her career.

This seemed, on one level, a perfect picture of classless interaction.

And yet....

Kupamma and her daughters only sat on the ground. My parents did not ask them to sit on the chairs; they did not attempt to do so either.

After they had eaten, the two girls and Kuppamma busied themselves in the kitchen. Kuppamma cooked something for dinner. This was quite a normal scene to me, since she's a great cook and she works at my sisters'. What disturbed me was the fact that the two girls also sat down to wash and put away the dishes. Rekha has worked on and off as a maid, so perhaps it was alright. I wondered how Sita, who seems rightly proud of herself, felt about it.

There was something very natural about the way they moved, in the space of a few hours, from being our guests to doing work for us, chattering and gossipping with us all the while.

It was this natural-ness that disturbed me. That they thought it was important to stay in their place. That it was natural for my parents to not challenge their notions. That, on both sides, there was no awareness that there was any problem...

Movie review: Mozhi

2008-04-18T23:19:00.001-07:00

Spending the last few weeks in Madras has meant that I've more than made up for all the Tamil movies I've missed over the years. Of course, you can catch every Indian movie while in Melbourne by buying a dodgy DVD from your friendly neighbourhood Indian shop. But then, I'm the kind who waits for movies to come to me rather than running after them. (The only exception I make is for the movies that run at The Astor, more about which later)

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I'd heard a lot about Mozhi over the years . It always seemed to me, even before watching it, that it was one of those films meant to convince the average movie-goer that he too was capable of watching a serious, not-clearly-commercial movie. Quite like how the The Da Vinci Code works--I think it's been a success because it sells itself as the clever, iconoclastic book for the pulp fiction reader who has so far been content with less. My convictions were strengthened when I watched the movie. Time-pass movie, probably. Path-breaking or intellectual, only in contrast to say, something like Chandramukhi.

Story-wise
Mozhi's theme is the conflict between the worlds of music (hero Prithviraj's world) and what we hearing - would think of as silence (heroine Jyothika's world). Prithviraj and his friend (Prakash Raj) are musicians, Jyothika and her friend Swarnamalya work in a school for deaf children. Prithviraj is by turn intrigued and captivated by Jyothika, while she seems to consider him as just another friend. The movie goes through the cycle of their love affair: friendship, wooing, rejection, showdown and happily-ever-after. Predictably, their friends also fall in love-- in what must be one of Prakash Raj's most unconvincing acting sequences. Really. He's such a normal, fun guy in the movie that it's quite a shock when, out of the blue, he looks at Swarnamalya one day and literally hears bells ring and lights go on. Yikes.

The part of the movie that I really liked focusses on life in the apartment block where the two guys and Jyothika live. It reminded me of Anjali, where the apartment is more than just background. There's quite a bit of time devoted to the many people and relationships there. There is the obnoxious and hostile landlord, a smitten girl, and so on. One particularly charming friendship is the one that springs up between Prithviraj and an elderly man given to delusions . It's been a while since people with mental-illness were depicted so thoughtfully on the Indian screen.*

Review-wise
Mozhi is interesting in parts. For the first time, we see a character whose disability is only one part of their personality. I really liked that Jyothika's character is headstrong, opinionated, pig-headed and selfish. :) So far from the usual aiyyo-pavaam characterisations of the disabled. There are, however, many flaws in the characterisation. Towards the end of the movie, we see Jyothika reject Prithviraj because she is troubled by the idea of having a child like herself. Why would someone so feisty and with it delve into such self-pity? Jyothika's poor acting skills (what I call her 5-expression menu!) only worsen this flawed protrayal.

As for the other actors (Prithviraj, Prakash Raj and Swarnamalya), their characters appear bland and the movie largely fails because of this blandness. Prithviraj is as poor an actor as Jyothika. Prakash Raj is a wonderful actor and Swarnamalya has a certain natural ability but there's only so much they can do for Mozhi.

In a bid to create a friendly vibe and make a clean film, the creators have gone a bit overboard and produced a rambling, unexciting ode to pleasantness.
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* This is such an unusual occurence that I could even excuse that last scene of this relationship when Prithviraj shouts the truth at his elderly friend and brings him to his senses. Has anyone in Tamil cinema ever had a psychiatrist review the screenplay?

Spot the NRI

2008-04-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

My formative years were spent outside India, in Bahrain, and now, I've been in Melbourne for close to 5 years.

Ironically, despite my stints abroad, I've always resisted the idea of being seen an NRI (Non-Resident Indian, usually applied to any Indian who lives abroad). When we were in college, being at that stupid age where stereotypes rule, we made lots of fun of NRIs and how they dressed and behaved.

The typical America-returned NRI of the 90s was very easy to spot:

NRIs wore white sports shoes with everything. Or, at the very least, wore conscipicously-different, usually inappropriate shoes.
They carried a Bisleri bottle (Bisleri was the only bottled water brand in India at that time) and rudely refused to drink the water served at people's homes. If you went to a restaurant, they paid 15 bucks for bottled water!
The men were partial to shorts and t-shirts, the latter with the name of some US state/city/football team. These were tightly belted with a belt bag. Such clothes were worn even to markets and temples.
They bought very expensive souvenirs and Indian garments.
NRIs carried video-cameras or other electronic paraphernalia such as walkmans or, strangely, electric combs (the last were quite the rage during weddings!).
Any gift they brought back was interesting, whether it was a keychain that called back when you whistled to it or something swankier like a clock radio.

Well, in India of 2008, it is no longer easy to spot the NRI. The NRI has changed a fair bit. However, it is the local Indian who has changed more:

The desire and ability to consume means that the Indians I meet spend a lot of money on clothes and shoes. Sure makes me reflect on my buys from Kmart and Spendless Shoes!
There's no longer any need to ask for bottled water because everyone in middle-class India buys it--in cans and drums.
Shorts seem to have become for Indian men in 2008 what the nightie was for Indian women in the 90s. Like the nightie, it's made a happy transition from being something you wear at home to something you wear outside. I now see people wearing shorts everywhere, from the supermarket to the bazaar. (Thankfully, the belt bag went out with the 90s!)
Exotic Indian stuff is in with a vengeance. It's not only the foreigners and NRIs who throng the souvenir shops, it's your average Mylapore mami.
The ubiquity of the cellphone in India has been written about quite a lot and it's not an exaggeration. With the explosion of FM radio stations, it's also quite common to see people wearing headphones of one kind or the other.
"You get everything here now" is what my aunties and uncles say. That doesn't mean I've stopped buying presents for the journey back home, but nowadays I have to be more careful with what I buy. You can't just buy koala keychains anymore because they retail for Rs.30/- at your nearest Archies shop.

Art and its admirers

2008-04-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Via the ever-vibrant Sepia Mutiny comes the Washington Post article that won the 2008 Pulitzer for feature writing. It's an engrossing account of what happens when you encounter high art (in this case, music) out of context. Here's Abhi's take on the article:

All of us hope that beauty will transcend. Shoot, sometimes I will write something at 3 a.m. in the hopes that just one person will get it . If transcendence isn’t a probable outcome somewhere, then all our lives are somehow cheapened and we all know it. We count on others to make up for our mundane.

If you've read Blink, a book by Malcolm Gladwell, you'll probably have some answers to the questions raised in the original article.

Migraine: Myths and Reality

2008-03-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent link for migraine sufferers: http://www.migraines.org/myth/mythreal.htm

My mother suffered from migraine for many years. I remember clearly the days that she'd need to lie down in a dark room for more than a day. My mother is a very active person, so it was even more disturbing to see her debilitating nausea and pain.

I started getting migraines about 6 years ago. It was strange that neither my mother or I made the connection between my day-long headaches and migraine. The frequency and intensity of my migraines varied considerably over the years. In one of the worst phases, I had migraines almost every other weekend. These were day-long affairs characterised by hyper-sensitivity to everything--sound, odour, light and touch. Hypersensitivity is fascinating in a strange way. When I have a migraine, I only have to think of a perfume and I can feel it's terrible effect.

I am now on migraine medication and have anyway got rid of those day-long migraines. I also seem to have less nausea and other effects when I do get one. Here are some things that have helped me:

Migraine-sufferers are very sensitive to changes in pressure and temperature. For me, long hours with an airconditioner or heater mean a migraine. It's slightly better if I leave out a bowl of water next to the heater.
There are tricks to getting over nausea. I eat something immediately after I get up. Usually a cup of coffee (thanks, R!) and a biscuit. After I figured this out on my own, someone told me this was a common remedy for morning sickness as well.
During a migraine, I find one thing I can have is rasam, which is a thin, peppery Indian soup.
A surefire trigger for me used to be perfume. Over the years, I seem to have got over this by a kind of controlled exposure. I have two deodorants at home: an odourless one and a normal one. I try and use the normal one whenever I feel less prone to a migraine. I also use two light perfumes now and then.
On the subject of odour-sensitivity, I find it impossible during a migraine to not have some odour disturbing me. It's like everything acquires a smell, whether it's the detergent smell of cloth or the smell of wood in every piece of furniture. This can get very annoying, so I try and mask these with the one smell that seems soothing during a migraine. In my case, it's eucalyptus oil/menthol.
The link I've posted states emphatically that caffeine is not a trigger. However, I found it helpful to regulate the amount of coffee I drink and the times of the day that I drink it. I try not to drink more or less coffee than usual.
Perhaps the most unusual remedy I use is walking. I don't think I could do it in hot weather but, in the generally chill weather of Melbourne, some fresh air and walking does me a world of good.
I'm still figuring this out but my eyes seem to look a little duller and reddish the day before my migraine. A few people at work have pointed this out to me, but I still can't spot it myself. If I'm right, the sensation I feel is one of fatigue and blurriness, as though I've been through a dust storm in a very bright place.

Making the real difference

2008-03-29T03:30:00.000-07:00

Re Earth hour, isn't it a bit strange to do this in a city where thousands face power-cuts everyday? It happens where I am now, we had a power-cut for about two hours yesterday. What about entire communities that are still waiting for electricity to reach them? It might be novel for the West to contemplate an hour without the conveniences of electricity, but here in India, it's reality.

If there's anything worse hype, it's tokenism. Like morality through ritual, it allows people to think they have achieved something by merely saluting the symbol. A bit like charity concerts in my opinion.

Much better to invest such energy into informing people about what they should really be doing. There is so little information out there. Are cloth diapers better than disposable ones? The answers are contradictory. When you're caught without a bag at the store, is it more environmentally-friendly to buy a cloth bag or use the plastic one? Is it OK to use plastic bags for garbage?

And, the biggest one of them all, what the hell are the "chemicals" we're supposed to be avoiding?

Experiences with caste: As my community saw it

2008-03-24T05:34:00.001-07:00

I've just spent some time reading a few articles and blogs written from the perspective of Dalits. I think it is necessary for me to explore what I have experienced of caste while I understand the issues involved. I must say in advance this is simply a personal reading and not an opinion piece.

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I first became aware of my family's caste (Brahmin, if you need to know) when we moved back to India after a short period in the Gulf (as we in India called any city in the Middle-East). I was about 12 and had just joined a school in Chennai.

My Tamil was a bit accented (so was my English, for that matter) so I think it wasn't enough to give away where I came from. I was asked what my caste was and I was dumbfounded, so I went home, asked my mother and duly relayed the information. The penny seemed to drop for some of my classmates. There were some amused glances, some teasing of what they could now see as my Brahmin Tamil. Language was to remain a marker of my caste and, in my rather diverse school, a way to put down others. (I only noticed the putting down of Brahmin Tamil; maybe I was just too self-centred.) Still, this and other factors like religion and money did not come between friendships.

I never stayed on long enough in that school or in Chennai to pick up, as my friends did, what Brahmins will call non-Brahmin Tamil. Many of my Chennai friends can switch between the two with ease, depending on the company.

At other times, caste was a way of claiming identity, almost like the village you came from. At weddings, sub-castes were queried and stereotypes assigned (Vadama brahmins did this, Vathima brahmins did the other). Sometimes, at religious events, rituals differed depending on your caste. I found about two basic divisions amongst Tamil Brahmins: Iyer and Iyengar. Pretty film-stars tended to be Iyengar, Iyers were a bit less posh. Iyengars had different, non-standard names for dishes. They were more pious, so you had to make sure the Iyengar grandmother next door had no issue with an Iyer entering her kitchen.

The real awareness of caste came when it was time for many of my cousins to join college. Many of them came from families that struggled for money, and I was privy to the resentment they felt against the reservation system (a Wikipedia article is here, another perspective here), especially the lack of means-testing. Impossibly high marks such as 98.5% would not get my cousins into an engineering college, whereas for someone from a disadvantaged caste, a far less percentage would get them in. I remember my (outspoken, non-politically correct) dentist telling me that I should try and marry someone from a "backward" caste and then continue my education. The other advice was to go abroad quickly.

Another experience with caste came from the things my dad spoke of. He worked in a large public sector company where competition for promotions was fierce and required an exceptional record. The stringent requirements were waived for people from the backward caste and he thought it inexcusable, given that they were all at the same level economically and power-wise.

To summarise, my family believed that they were being made to suffer for the wrongs of their ancestors. They saw it then as a kind of counter-discrimination, not just at the practical level of education and jobs, but at a greater level of power and voice.

At school though, in sharp contrast, we were taught a more sanitised version of the caste system. It's good intentions -- division of labour -- were hailed. Never mind that few of us understood why division of labour was a good thing. There was also a lot of rhetoric about the eradication of the system, as there was about all the things that turned out to not quite true later on--secularism, tolerance, unity in diversity...

What turns me away from religion

2008-03-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

The reasons that started off my atheist journey are nothing original. I've always had a natural inclination towards skepticism and my reading of science has, to paraphrase Rushdie, shown me that I don't need a God to explain the world I live in. But here is a potted summary of the things that have cemented my atheism.

False hope: In what seems to be an incredibly tough time for my family, the false hope that religion provides them just kills me. I am annoyed with the pointless rituals that my dad has been told to perform at 6.00 am on a Thursday, in a period of his life where he could use even a few extra minutes of rest.
Fear: I am angry with astrologers who pick months and dates that will be good or bad. I am angry with suggestions that it is a "bad time" for a person and that their fate is pre-ordained. I am even more angry that giving them money can fix these ordainments.
I also hate the fear of death that religion brings on, while claiming to soothe it. When my grandmother died, the priest told us about her soul's journey through purgatory. His descriptions were graphic and I thought about it for days. My younger cousins did not need to hear that.
Notions of sanctity: At a practical level, there is nothing I abhor more than the rules around sanctity, and the solemnity of religious functions.
Morality through rituals: The few bad people I've met considered themselves to be rather good because they were also religious. Religion gives them the licence to believe that all they need to is visit their place of worship regularly, perform their rituals and ask for forgiveness.

The offensive atheist

2008-03-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

There was nothing in my upbringing that influenced me away from religion; my parents, while not being dogmatic or orthodox , are pious, and reverential towards God. But I always knew, even from a young age, that I was an atheist.

It was easy enough to disregard what we followed as religion--the rules and the sanctity annoyed and frightened me. It was not easy to give up God though, largely because I was scared of life and saw God as an escape route. So, all my life, I've dropped in and out of atheism, agnosticism and, for a while, spirituality .

This year has been a turning point though. Everything about atheism makes sense now to me; also, I am a bit more courageous, a bit less worried about the implications of my decision. What a relief to be free!

The trouble is that, in India, the very fact of my atheism seems to offend people. I tried to break it to my parents by leaving around the Richard Dawkins book I'm reading (The God Delusion). I tried to summarise the book for them. It's not like they don't know about my lack of belief. My father was amused, as though I were still an immature teenager twaddling on about Ayn Rand. My mother, though was disappointed and walked away, not wanting to hear me.

I had a similar reaction a few years ago at my Indian workplace when I described myself as atheist. The group conversation kind of stopped, except for this young kid who was shocked, and said "Really, really? You're an atheist? But why?". I was still confused then, so I toned it down to agnosticism, which seemed to relieve him a bit.

So, when I mentioned to a religious friend last week that I'm done with believing in God, I prefaced it by saying, "I hope this does not offend you."

Why does my being an atheist offend others? Is it all in my head? Do I need to do it only unobtrusively--as I have, by changing my social networking profile? Or can I talk about it with the same ease with which others talk about their belief-systems?

Indians and racism

2008-02-04T01:12:00.000-08:00

Cricinfo has a rather simplistic take on the issue. Soumya Bhattacharya:

discusses insults with a friend and concludes that, across the world, "a racist slur would be the most unacceptable one of all".
thinks that India is a racist country and that Indians are in denial of the fact.
concludes that cultural differences are no excuse and that we need to grow up and realise that "abusive language is less of an offence internationally than a racist taunt".

Yes. Your average sportsperson needs to learn, not that insults are unsporting and immature in the first place, but that there is a scale. Some are worse than others in some countries. Pick and choose, Soumya seems to say. Don't say anything that will offend the Western world. You can, however, stoop to what they consider acceptable?
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But point #2 is what I really want to discuss. Are Indians racist?

If they are, you'd need more evidence than the fair skin issue. The fair skin preference is a problematic example because it has many roots, the most common of which is an idea of beauty--not dissimilar to those in other cultures.

No, if Indians come across as racist, the evidence lies firstly in our cultural superiority complex. The Pew Global Attitudes survey found that 93 percent of Indians believe their culture to be superior to others' (see here). However, make no mistake, this is always coupled with our admiration of financial and political power.

We look down upon Caucasian culture but, since Caucasians hold so much power, we can't always express it clearly. It's easier for us to feel superior to, say, poor Asian countries or struggling African ones, and express these thoughts with no compunctions. If you are an Indian living abroad, you might have come across this constant putting down of other minorities, this constant looking down upon others.

It's a scorecard weighted by culture and power. And a lazy mind will subconsciously use race as an indicator of power. Which is why I think the Indian crowds singled out Symonds. They saw him as the weak link in a team that's otherwise hard to bring down through sledging. They saw themselves as being inferior to the others in the team, and superior to him.

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So are Indians racist? I, for one, certainly think so. I think we only partly understand our own attitudes towards others.

For a long time, we have seen racism as something done to us. The average Indian is indignant when accused of racism because there have been none of the hard lessons that the West has had. There has been little controversy in India when it comes to race. We have no baggage, and therefore, appalingly, no guilt for our actions.

If nothing else, this incident will help us understand more about ourselves.

Review: Half a Life (V.S.Naipaul)

2008-01-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

I never thought I'd have the audacity to review a V.S.Naipaul book. I am a huge fan of his writing--his language is crystal clear and his insights into people and culture are very important for the world. There is much written about his alleged rudeness, but I've never understood the fuss. I want to read his books, not hang out with him.

In light of my admiration for his work, I feel a bit strange reviewing Half a Life. This is only the second fiction book of his that I've read. The first was A House for Mr.Biswas, which is a comforting yet heartbreakingly truthful book, the kind you wished would never end.

Half a Life is not like that. It's compelling in the way that you want to find out if the end will bring anything more interesting. It's unputdownable in the way that you keep wishing you get over and done with it. Naipaul's writing style has always been simple and clear; in this book it is controlled to the point of reading like a primary school textbook or a parody of Hemingway. This effect is just compounded by it's first-person stories-within-stories device. All this would not matter if the story had something to go on. If the book is a metaphor of some kind, it was completely lost on me. To me, it is the lazily-described life of an strange protagonist, with the half-caste motif being nothing but a pretence at depth.

The book does start off well enough, with a story about Willie's grandfather. The Indian setup he describes feels both real and unreal, but the bit about Somerset Maugham is intriguing and clever. I also liked how Willie's father, like a typical idealist, wishes to achieve some kind of Gandhi-inspired greatness, and ends up settling for an easy route (marriage to a woman from a lower caste). How typically Indian to pursue the letter and not the spirit of the idea! This part of the story proceeds beautifully. Especially well-portrayed is the inevitability, in the India of that time, of a man marrying the woman he went out for coffee with.

When we get to Willie's birth and childhood though, the story starts to falter. The attitude of Willie towards his father and mother is left unexplained, as if it were something we should just know and accept. There is some beauty to Willie's early attempts at writing stories, but this is something that's to be thrown away later in the book. And so, in the scheme of things, it gives us nothing. The story surfaces for air again with Willie's first experiences in England. The immigrant experience has been written about in countless ways, so it's nice to see Naipaul's rendering of it, neglecting the obvious and focussing on Willie's experiments with sexuality and sophistication.

Most disappointing, however, is how the book ends. Just like that. With a measured story about Willie's married life in Africa against the backdrop of revolution. This part has nothing like the Willie we have seen so far, so his adventures here are a bit perplexing. No wrapping up of the literary loose ends, no last part to ponder over, so in the end, we have no idea about how the story might progress in real life--maybe we wouldn't have cared anyway.

I found the book interesting in parts and completely dull in others. The inconsistency is baffling. There are small nuggets of truth scattered carelessly through the book. At other points, it's like we're just marking time. The characters appear and disappear, some are portrayed well but most (like Ana, Willie's wife) are two-dimensional. There is an attempt at telling the story like it were a fable, where conversations are compressed into little paragraphs and everyone speaks their lines without the burden of emotion. But this is no fable; it lacks conviction in itself and has nothing important to say.

Paul Theroux is hardly an unbiased reviewer of Naipaul's books, but for once I echo his thoughts in The Guardian:

"Without Naipaul's name on it, Half a Life would be turned down in a flash. "

Something to wash it down with

2008-01-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

Since last year, I've been on a fitness regime, healthy eating and all. (Of course, those who know me will know that my idea of regime is a loose ambition to be fulfilled whenever possible, but that's beside the point!)

The biggest change I've made is with my diet. I now eat just enough, not more, not less. I've also stopped drinking soft drinks when I eat out. This had anyway been a rather new habit for me, something I picked up after moving here.

Back in India, as a mild-mannered South Indian, the only time I had a drink with my food was when we had pizza ("Bottomless Coke" was always part of the package at a pizza place). But that was when I started to work, and had money of my own to spend. When I was much younger, and restaurant meals were a luxury, soft drinks and juice were seen as an indulgence, similar to starters and dessert. The correct time for soft drinks and juices was between meals, as a way to quench your thirst. Like it was in college, where the Gandhi Bazaar juice stalls in Bangalore (like the one pictured here) were inundated with us college students. We were also the generation of Frooti and Fountain Pepsi, again drunk as snacks and not as accompaniments to meals.

Most of time, in India, all you drink with your food is water. And that, usually after the food (sipping water in between was forbidden at home because it stopped you from finishing your food). When I moved to Australia though, I noticed that everyone had some kind of drink with their food. I soon found myself the only one without a drink at the table; this was especially noticeable when we had something to toast. I don't usually drink alcohol so I started to have lemonade (meaning the usual citrus soft drink), iced tea or juice. All this, I realised after my calorie-counting exercise, was adding to my intake.

I sort of understand the urge to drink something during a sit-down meal, but the locals seem to need a drink even for take-away meals. Kids here drink so much juice it astounds me--I was 15 before I could finish a carton of Frooti! I now remember reading very old English novels where the picnic on the meadows always included something to "wash it down with". I wonder why we've never had this habit in India--after all, it's a much hotter climate. Perhaps it has to do with the kind of food? From what I know of Indian food, there's nearly always a soupy dish of some kind or atleast a gravy-based curry. In Tamil Nadu, we finish our meals with yoghurt or a glass of buttermilk. Maybe Western food is relatively dry?

Let Diana be (I'm sick of hearing about her)

2007-10-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

Another year, another story about Diana. I could hardly stand all the hype about Diana when she was alive, and now, 1o years later, they're still talking about her death. Part of the problem with all this myth-making is that I believe that Diana should not be hailed as a role-model of any kind. More troubled lives have been endured by the less fortunate, more charity undertaken by those who did not have much to give.

It is unfortunate that the cult of celebrity makes heroes of the unlikely, even more unfortunate that it will continue to exploit them after their death.

Migration, integration

2007-10-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

From The Age: Fury over Kevin Andrews' views on Sudanese immigrants has boiled over

Two thoughts:

To be a migrant who looks different from the locals means that you are more easily identified as a foreigner and also remembered for anything unusual you might do. It's easy to spot your groups, to find your ghettos. Who knew, for example, that the British form the largest number of migrants in Australia?
Integration is a terrible word. Much has been said about how migrants should "integrate" into Australian society. Only if it were that easy. When I arrived here, I had family and friends to help me. I also found a job quickly. Without these two things, it might have taken me a long time to settle down here.

The immigration department sifts even legitimate, skilled migrants through a fine sieve. But when you arrive here, you just arrive. There's no one to show you how things work or where to start or which comes first ((bank account? medicare card? Centrelink?). I had the internet at my disposal to research many things, but not many are able to use such a resource...certainly not those fleeing from their homeland.

Integration needs to be both ways, if we are to get things right. We need more migrant counselling centres, for sure. But we also need to be more involved with migrants ourselves. We can't just sit back and demand "integration".

And while we're at it, can someone please get TV programmes like Today Tonight and A Current Affair to stop demonising migrants from other races. Oh wait, maybe we should start with the politicians first...

The old (and unnecessary) culture debate

2007-10-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

Indians who are forever debating culture here and in "the West" would do well to read Life in India, US. Despite being a personal opinion piece, it is rather balanced and I do wish there were more Indians like Sudheer Marisetti.

The article he is responding to is Do we need green card? Indians will find this article very typical. It is the usual rant about Indian culture being better than Western culture.

I find this kind of attitude extremely disturbing. Firstly, there is no need to compare what are two very complex cultures and declare one the winner. It hints, more than anything, at the diffidence of the person making the comparison. Secondly, it shows that we are not being honest with ourselves.

Sometimes, I think it is a reaction to the shining prosperity of the West, the prosperity that strikes you immediately you arrive in a Western city,. You react by feeling that India is inferior and you scramble to its defence. Everything is clean, the city is odourless, so you accuse the city of being clinical and characterless. People mind their own business here, so you brand them unfriendly. A combination of efficiency and automation means that everything just works, so you accuse them of not being able to survive in harsh conditions (a mistake Mr. Sudheer also makes).

I understand to some extent why someone who lived in India would think this way. After all, the media only feeds us certain images of Western culture. But for an Indian who has lived abroad to think this way is to bury their head in the sand. They would do well to study something like Hofstede's Framework for Assessing Culture, which explains well the basis for the many superficial cultural differences we encounter.

But, more than anything, they would do well to keep an open mind.

Movie review: Playtime

2007-10-02T06:42:00.001-07:00

What can you say about a movie that has a cast of many but no discernible plot, a movie where the action is not important but the background is? Well, if it's Jacques Tati's Playtime, you would say that it's brilliant and funny.

Playtime is set in Paris, but don't go imagining bohemian boulevards or romantic cafes. It is the Paris of Ayn Rand: towers of glass and steel, living spaces made of planes and angles, and most of all, the glimmer of technology. The scenery looms large in the film, so much so that you see everything in a long, wide sweep of the camera. No close-ups, please!

The movie has no particular protagonist, but we do follow around Monsieur Hulot as he tries to navigate his way through the literal and symbolic maze that progress has wrought. He has an appointment with the Important Man, who works in A Modern Office in The City. This is an office where the guy at the reception has to dial a series of complex codes in order to page someone. This is the office where you could place a call, have it answered on the other side of your cubicle, and never find out.

To Hulot, the Important Man is like a mirage. He keeps seeing him but he can't find him. The modern office is like the mirror house in a circus. So, instead of meeting him, Hulot bumbles his way into a trade exhibition. There, he encounters the other main character in the movie, a young American girl, part of a group of American tourists (poor stereotyped creatures!). The movie then meanders through the rest of their day, occasionally stopping to watch the sights of this modern Paris---and the sights, it seems, are no different from those in, say, New York or Tokyo or London. A particularly brilliant scene, set in a travel agency, features posters of all the major cities of the world. The thing is, all the posters are the same. They all feature a standard-issue skyscraper. Yes, all the cities of the world are The City.

There are hundreds of such great little moments in the movie. Watch out for the cars on the roundabout, endlessly circling and never exiting. Split your sides laughing when you peep through the glazed windows of A Modern Apartment Building.

The movie ends with the opening (and closing) of a grand new restaurant. This part of the movie is furiously entertaining, and serves as a strange contrast to the measured pace of the beginning. It has all the elements of slapstick, but the consciousness of the humour makes it rise above the ordinary. There's a wonderful scene at the end of this part that seems to hint at the triumph of the spirit over materialism.

Playtime is a brilliant critique of the blind rush towards technological mecca and the unthinking obsession with material wealth. But there is a difference between this critique and the one that an ordinary person might mount. The best satire is the one done without anger--this one is done with kindness, with a sense of humour, and with a lot of love.

Also, for all its digs at the newfangled, Playtime is also a delightful little film that embodies happiness. It sure made me smile!

Picture Post: Intramuros, Manila

2007-10-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd begin a series of picture posts. Mine is a basic point-and-shoot camera, but what the heck!
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San Augustin Church, Intramuros

Intramuros is the old Spanish walled city of Manila. There was a wedding at the San Augustin church that day. The weather was hot and sultry, and a few dark clouds hung over the sky that day. We peeped in through a side door to see the couple take their vows.

The garden behind the church, where these pictures were taken, was dilapidated, immaculate, and stunningly beautiful.

Back in vegetarian heaven

2007-09-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

So I'm here in India for a while. It feels great to be back in vegetarian heaven. I'm always wary of labelling India, given that it is essentially a place of contradictions, but I am confident that this label is accurate. Everywhere else in the world, being vegetarian means being on a special diet (as the airlines put it). Here, it is, for the most part, the default food choice, or, in those bastions of non-veg food, the other food choice.

My parents are slightly amused when I tell them that the West debates the idea of raising children as vegetarians. Or when I say that even those that know about vegetarianism in India are astonished that we have been this way for generations.

One of the biggest differences I see is that many Indian dishes are vegetarian from the ground up. This is not a place where one takes a meat dish and wonders what to substitute the meat with (tofu? lentils?) . No, the goal of Indian vegetarian cooking is to create a dish using vegetables, rice, wheat, lentils and spices. It's a fundamental shift in perspective, one that results in a variety of dishes and also basic ingredients.

I have no idea about what percentage of Indians are vegetarian, but the number is significant enough to ensure that international chains and foreign cuisine restaurants also have a decent number of veggie choices. The local Pizza Hut has about six vegetarian pizzas, Maccas in India has the McAloo Tikki burger (more about their veggie initiatives here), and so on. For this though, I think we have the Jains in Bombay and Ahmedabad to thank, what with their being more adventurous consumers than us in the south.

Yes, it is so incredibly easy to be vegetarian in India. It is only when you travel out of India, that you slowly get accustomed to the idea that, wherever you go, you have to proclaim your vegetarianism loudly (and in most cases, in advance). The first year I lived in Melbourne, I learnt that I had to become fussy about my food. There were no other vegetarians in my workplace, so when we went out to eat, I would need to look up the restaurant menu in advance. When we got there, I learnt to double-check everything they listed or displayed. Potato salad, I learnt, might have bacon. Vegetable-based soup or risotto could have chicken stock. Asian food could have fish sauce, shrimp paste, etc. And no, a vegetarian omelette was not a besan omelette.

I now know that Melbourne is very vegetarian-friendly, but it is still daunting for the newly-arrived Indian vegetarian. It takes a while to understand the cuisine, to know what kind of restaurants will have more than one veggie dish. You also learn about fall-backs such as falafel or, at the worst, garden salad with chips.

The other thing you realise is that, outside of India, a vegetarian is seen as someone making a statement of some kind against meat-eating. I am very uncomfortable with this new identity. The Western vegetarian has made a conscious choice, a sacrifice of some kind. I am reluctant to lay claim to any virtue that such a vegetarian may (or may not) have acquired. I also do not want to be identified with groups such as PETA, who I believe have a fundamentally flawed approach to many issues (I cringe whenever I see their pamphlets at vegetarian restaurants in Melbourne). It's simply not who I am.

I'm just your average Indian vegetarian, born into this way of life. For me it's only about the food!

Newsworthiness?

2007-08-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

34 killed as two blasts rock Hyderabad

I've just found out about this. It's probably my fault that I wasn't tuned in to the only two real sources of news in Australia: ABC and SBS

Instead, I was stupid enough to rely on a paper as eminent as The Age. They only had it on as "breaking news" (I'm not sure when this was, but it's no longer on the front page of the World News section), which, of course, seems to have been displaced by other news. No full story, no further coverage. In contrast, the Greek fires have been on the front page all day.

On 7 July 2005, I remember coming home late, oblivious to the news of the London blast, and finding that all the channels had the same broadcast running. There was much rehashing of the details for weeks later by nearly every media company.

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There is only one conclusion to draw.

Feminism for India

2007-08-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

There are some good points made about Indian feminism in a slightly rambling article in The Guardian. From The cult of the sex goddess:

"Between the soap-opera beauties and the establishment figures of "women's empowerment", the Indian woman is floundering for new ideas about herself and her destiny, unclear about what freedom means, at a time when east and west are clashing at every shopping mall."

In many ways, this is an echo of the slow decline of feminism in the West. There is now a strong counter-movement to embrace feminity and a return to homemaking and other traditional pursuits.

The problem in India is just magnified. Feminists here have, despite their good intentions, failed in the battle of perceptions. While the Western feminist is seen as a cold (and dowdy) non-woman, the Indian feminist comes in two versions: an Indian echo of her Western counterpart or, more recently, a Westernised, sexually-liberated woman with no respect for tradition.

The first idea has, I think, become irrelevant in India. The second, is, for me, a more worrying one.

When women's liberation is associated with the fear of Indian culture's corruption, there is sure to be a backlash. Hence, The Guardian columnist's finding that many Indian students are reluctant to be drawn into that and would rather stay within the bounds of Indian culture--better a known devil than an unknown one. And why not, when the soap-opera ideal has shown that the traditional Indian woman is no longer confined to the home. She can go to the gym and the beauty parlour, while still cooking a mean Indian feast and touching her mother-in-law's feet.

It's a sad situation. I grew up imbibing two brands of feminism: one came from Western books and media, the other came from my mother's family. My grandmother, saddled with an errant husband, had almost single-handedly raised seven children. When my aunt was widowed, my grandmother, against all custom, brought her back home, got her to study her Master's degree and raise her child alone. All my other aunts are also educated and empowered. However, they are also traditional Indian women, who do not "appear" liberated to outsiders. They did not need to choose between the two, like Indian girls today think they need to.

The goal of feminism should be to create a world where it no longer needs to exist. But so long as it remains disengaged from people's lives, it will remain a movement with limited subscribers. Whether in the West or in India, we need a new kind of feminism, one that creates change from the inside out.