Think you’re restoring your children to your Malgudi Days childhood? Think again.
If you’re relocating from overseas because you think you’re giving your children a chance to discover their true identity as Indians, think again.
I speak of Bangalore because I moved here, but this applies to all overseas Indians moving back to India.
Your children are American/British/whatever nationality they have been born into and raised in. Like it or not, accept it or not, that is their new identity. You pushed them into living in your time warp while you were abroad building your cushion of hard currency. But why push your children into duplicating your life and chasing your unachieved dreams?
Yet thus so many children of NRIs live, in a world of parent-approved schizophrenia, where they preserve two conflicting identities: one of compliant over-achievers yearning for the approval of their parents, and the other to be the sum of their hidden desires and find a place in the bigger world outside that they desperately want to belong to but their parents insist they should insulate themselves from.
So many returning Indians think they’ve left their families’ inner Indianness intact and unsullied by all the decay in the West they’ve fearfully cocooned themselves from. They keep their families protected in a cultural capsule, sparing no effort to carefully bring this precious little egg sac of their genes and all their savings back safer and richer to India.
Welcome home and find the same decay here. If you’re returning to a place like Bangalore that prides itself in being globalized, be prepared to run into some of the same problems you might be running from: families caught in the rat race and hard-pressed for time for each other; children getting obese on junk food; narcotic drugs (oh yes, available every where, unregulated and far more cheaper than they were abroad).
Bangalore has among the highest crime and suicide rates in India. With rapid, uncontrolled growth has come a breakdown of old ways across India, and more so in urban India. Bangalore is where old people gather at park benches and talk about all the places in the world their children and grandchildren are scattered.
You do get more time to spend with your family because you can afford to outsource domestic drudgery. But you also spend a lot of time keeping this house of cards from collapsing: supervising staff, picking up the slack when they don’t show up, and just doing many of these chores on your own because you don't want fo let your sense of independence lapse.
And yes, it is easier to prolong your children’s childhood in India, but you aren’t restoring them to the simple, bucolic era of your childhood. You cannot expel Kentucky Fried Chicken and Facebook from their lives. Drugs are cheaper than in New York, and easy to buy.Rapid urbanization has made city life more impersonal. Our elders kept up with their distant cousins despite a decrepit postal and phone system. Now, in the era of mobile phones and social networking, those elaborate family networks have shriveled because no one has time.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Bowing to Ignorance
I didn’t know there were so many people in America, men and women, who wore veils or oppressively enforced the wearing of veils.
I’m being facetious, but there’s a point I want to make.
As an American who lives in India and has traveled extensively across Asia and Africa, I can tell you there are millions of women who live covered by purdahs and burqas, whose families would feel dishonored and beat them if any of these covered womenfolk dared to make eye contact with or shake the hand of a man who wasn’t their husband, father or brother, even if all they intended to say was ‘hello’ or ‘thank you.’
Even if all these women wanted to do was say, “Thank you for the smokeless stove so I don’t have to breathe in the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes every time I cook a meal.” They dare not say they were just returning a friendly greeting in the manner their kind host. Dare not say it because it’s no defense against being lynched by the guardians of their honor. And these guardians know a lot about honor and how to keep it from getting smirched. What would come of the world if these women got their heads filled with new ideas and (God forbid!) started greeting people in any but the clan’s prescribed way?
The fundamentalists in this part of the world who insist women wear veils and shouldn’t read or write are no different from the fundamentalists in America who believe there is only one way – their way – of being polite, even when they’re in someone else’s country.
The grouse du jour in the United States is that their president greeted the Emperor of Japan, a man 28 years older than him, on Japanese soil, in the manner most polite people would in that country. He bowed to him.
Immediately, this simple gesture was loaded with political color and dissected across the country as further damning evidence of the president’s un-American predilections. How much better if he had had a shoe hurled at him amidst secret congratulation, or had thrown up at a banquet. American leaders don’t bow before anybody in deference to local custom. They genuflect before dictators and prostrate themselves so they can get oil for their country’s gas guzzlers.
And it’s not as though the Japanese crowed that aha, finally they were able to drag the butt of an economically weakened America before their emperor for payback for Hiroshima. Yet many Americans were steamed at the idea that their president belittled his office by bowing.
These people just don’t get it. Everyone bows low to the emperor. It’s just local custom, just as everyone bows or curtseys before Queen Elizabeth without harboring seditious thoughts or plotting the subversion of the U.S. Constitution. It’s just the etiquette the cultures of these countries follow. Had Obama bowed low before the Japanese prime minister, the chief executive of that country, and not been reciprocated -- that would have been an insult.
It would never occur to the same kvetchers that shaking hands or making physical contact with a stranger is culturally offensive in many parts of the world. And yet thousands of people who are culturally programmed to feel disgusted or affronted by a proffered hand generously put aside their reservations because they recognize that no offense is intended by this presumption of familiarity by an earnest if ignorant outsider.
The sad thing about Americans is that they have become such a tired and divided people. A great many of them are so filled with intolerance towards each other, suspicion of their own government, and mistrust of the rest of the world that they snap and bicker at the slightest provocation.
Had Obama had occasion to open the door for Emperor Akihito, a man frailer and considerably older than him, would that gesture reduce him to a doorman? Could he just open a door for a woman out of politeness, without precipitating a national crisis? Will there be a national discussion on the state of the president’s masculinity if we see pictures of him wearing a skirt in Scotland?
Obama’s bow didn’t diminish his status as president of the United States. But the laughable trail of outrage back home has diminished America.
I’m being facetious, but there’s a point I want to make.
As an American who lives in India and has traveled extensively across Asia and Africa, I can tell you there are millions of women who live covered by purdahs and burqas, whose families would feel dishonored and beat them if any of these covered womenfolk dared to make eye contact with or shake the hand of a man who wasn’t their husband, father or brother, even if all they intended to say was ‘hello’ or ‘thank you.’
Even if all these women wanted to do was say, “Thank you for the smokeless stove so I don’t have to breathe in the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes every time I cook a meal.” They dare not say they were just returning a friendly greeting in the manner their kind host. Dare not say it because it’s no defense against being lynched by the guardians of their honor. And these guardians know a lot about honor and how to keep it from getting smirched. What would come of the world if these women got their heads filled with new ideas and (God forbid!) started greeting people in any but the clan’s prescribed way?
The fundamentalists in this part of the world who insist women wear veils and shouldn’t read or write are no different from the fundamentalists in America who believe there is only one way – their way – of being polite, even when they’re in someone else’s country.
The grouse du jour in the United States is that their president greeted the Emperor of Japan, a man 28 years older than him, on Japanese soil, in the manner most polite people would in that country. He bowed to him.
Immediately, this simple gesture was loaded with political color and dissected across the country as further damning evidence of the president’s un-American predilections. How much better if he had had a shoe hurled at him amidst secret congratulation, or had thrown up at a banquet. American leaders don’t bow before anybody in deference to local custom. They genuflect before dictators and prostrate themselves so they can get oil for their country’s gas guzzlers.
And it’s not as though the Japanese crowed that aha, finally they were able to drag the butt of an economically weakened America before their emperor for payback for Hiroshima. Yet many Americans were steamed at the idea that their president belittled his office by bowing.
These people just don’t get it. Everyone bows low to the emperor. It’s just local custom, just as everyone bows or curtseys before Queen Elizabeth without harboring seditious thoughts or plotting the subversion of the U.S. Constitution. It’s just the etiquette the cultures of these countries follow. Had Obama bowed low before the Japanese prime minister, the chief executive of that country, and not been reciprocated -- that would have been an insult.
It would never occur to the same kvetchers that shaking hands or making physical contact with a stranger is culturally offensive in many parts of the world. And yet thousands of people who are culturally programmed to feel disgusted or affronted by a proffered hand generously put aside their reservations because they recognize that no offense is intended by this presumption of familiarity by an earnest if ignorant outsider.
The sad thing about Americans is that they have become such a tired and divided people. A great many of them are so filled with intolerance towards each other, suspicion of their own government, and mistrust of the rest of the world that they snap and bicker at the slightest provocation.
Had Obama had occasion to open the door for Emperor Akihito, a man frailer and considerably older than him, would that gesture reduce him to a doorman? Could he just open a door for a woman out of politeness, without precipitating a national crisis? Will there be a national discussion on the state of the president’s masculinity if we see pictures of him wearing a skirt in Scotland?
Obama’s bow didn’t diminish his status as president of the United States. But the laughable trail of outrage back home has diminished America.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Birds of the Indian City
Peacocks may be the national bird, but the signature bird of Indian cities has to be the crow.
Crows are everywhere, with their scruffy gray collars, rumpled feathers and glossy, Cherry-blossomed beaks, scouring neighborhoods so they do not miss any interesting leftovers, sights or prey. Throw out something, and they alight in a minute, cocking their heads and commenting loudly on their find.
Hawks are secretive about their catch. They will take it to a safe height and look regally pleased. Crows are not circumspect. They’ll be practically dancing, doing a little victory hop from side to side. “Ka. Ka. Ka,” boastful and insistent. One crow outside my window even did some secret political campaigning every day: “O-ba-ma, O-baa-ma.”
There is little pride or honor in the code of conduct of crows. They will hijack the catch of other birds. Although physically smaller, they tease the hawks and swipe at them until the hawks have to defend their dignity by tearing after their tormenters. The crows give chase, then quickly dip down below roofs. There, they flap and catch their breaths with mirthful taunts as the hawks are forced to suddenly brake their swooping arc and cursingly flap their wings to a safer height. Crows are the cheeky urchins who rule our rooftops.
In Singapore, the common Indian crow is deplored as an illegal immigrant. The government pays rifle owners who shoot down crows, and yet has not been able to thin down its crow population significantly.
When I read about these efforts during my family’s time there, I was moved to show my solidarity for the birds who had been my childhood neighbors in Kolkata. I would tear up slices of bread and strew them over the little picnic mat-sized yard attached to our Singapore condominium. It was my way of thumbing my nose at the rigid control the local government tried to impose on what their citizens did, saw, ate, thought and imagined.
The crows would show up the moment my food scraps hit the grass. They would hop over, bully away the mynahs and scoop up the goodies. They looked better fed and glossier than their cousins in India. Sometimes, I had an ethnic treat for them – day-old chapatis. There was no outpouring of sentimental gratitude from my guests. They ate with the cockiness of local thugs collecting hafta. Still, I invited them. My baby daughter sang with them. Tropical humidity, rain and crows immediately made me feel at home.
Sparrows seem to have disappeared from the city sky. I remember dozens would be perched on electric poles, fidgeting and cheeping anxiously. Now, the trees and electric poles are themselves vanishing. There are fewer places to perch. Buildings have airconditioners belching hot air and noise and floor upon floor of dusty, tinted glass.
Then there are mynahs, stepping quick and dainty in funky yellow lipstick, flying off in a latte-whipped flurry of cocoa and white. In my Bangalore suburb, I also see dozens of black and white tuxedoed magpies, shy olive sunbirds, chattering parrots, and the occasional kingfisher. There is even a crow pheasant, which looks like a crow on steroids with a brown, droopy tail and red eyes, and lives in a strand of ficus nearby. In a few years, most of these birds will probably disappear from my neighborhood as the city’s leafy canopy recedes and the march of concrete and glass-fronted towers invades us.
I have not seen many pigeons around where I live, but along with crows, they are the infantry of the Indian metro. People love to throw broken wheat and grains to feed pigeons. When crows close in on the periphery of a mass pigeon feed, they shoo them away these uninvited guests. The cheek of these dark, uncouth intruders! The crows retreat nearby, protesting their banishment. They take safe little hops to be in the midst of these goodies. Until they’re shooed off again. The crows don’t stick around. They’ll happily zero in on an easy feed any time, but they’re not going to fake the servility of a pigeon or the cute hop of a mynah to get food out of humans. They’ve got standards.
I don’t see the charm of pigeons. They feed constantly, rest their double chins on their pillowy chests, crap and shed flaky feathers everywhere. I could ship them all to Trafalgar Square and let the old ladies sitting in their woolen coats feed them as much as they want to.
I like the raucous frankness, the unpretentiousness, the disarming ordinariness of crows. They know when to back off, but never quit. They keep coming back till they get what they want. They are determined to get the most of any situation. No wonder crows look so comfortable in our midst. They epitomize the spirit of all the migrants who flock to any Indian city.
Crows are everywhere, with their scruffy gray collars, rumpled feathers and glossy, Cherry-blossomed beaks, scouring neighborhoods so they do not miss any interesting leftovers, sights or prey. Throw out something, and they alight in a minute, cocking their heads and commenting loudly on their find.
Hawks are secretive about their catch. They will take it to a safe height and look regally pleased. Crows are not circumspect. They’ll be practically dancing, doing a little victory hop from side to side. “Ka. Ka. Ka,” boastful and insistent. One crow outside my window even did some secret political campaigning every day: “O-ba-ma, O-baa-ma.”
There is little pride or honor in the code of conduct of crows. They will hijack the catch of other birds. Although physically smaller, they tease the hawks and swipe at them until the hawks have to defend their dignity by tearing after their tormenters. The crows give chase, then quickly dip down below roofs. There, they flap and catch their breaths with mirthful taunts as the hawks are forced to suddenly brake their swooping arc and cursingly flap their wings to a safer height. Crows are the cheeky urchins who rule our rooftops.
In Singapore, the common Indian crow is deplored as an illegal immigrant. The government pays rifle owners who shoot down crows, and yet has not been able to thin down its crow population significantly.
When I read about these efforts during my family’s time there, I was moved to show my solidarity for the birds who had been my childhood neighbors in Kolkata. I would tear up slices of bread and strew them over the little picnic mat-sized yard attached to our Singapore condominium. It was my way of thumbing my nose at the rigid control the local government tried to impose on what their citizens did, saw, ate, thought and imagined.
The crows would show up the moment my food scraps hit the grass. They would hop over, bully away the mynahs and scoop up the goodies. They looked better fed and glossier than their cousins in India. Sometimes, I had an ethnic treat for them – day-old chapatis. There was no outpouring of sentimental gratitude from my guests. They ate with the cockiness of local thugs collecting hafta. Still, I invited them. My baby daughter sang with them. Tropical humidity, rain and crows immediately made me feel at home.
Sparrows seem to have disappeared from the city sky. I remember dozens would be perched on electric poles, fidgeting and cheeping anxiously. Now, the trees and electric poles are themselves vanishing. There are fewer places to perch. Buildings have airconditioners belching hot air and noise and floor upon floor of dusty, tinted glass.
Then there are mynahs, stepping quick and dainty in funky yellow lipstick, flying off in a latte-whipped flurry of cocoa and white. In my Bangalore suburb, I also see dozens of black and white tuxedoed magpies, shy olive sunbirds, chattering parrots, and the occasional kingfisher. There is even a crow pheasant, which looks like a crow on steroids with a brown, droopy tail and red eyes, and lives in a strand of ficus nearby. In a few years, most of these birds will probably disappear from my neighborhood as the city’s leafy canopy recedes and the march of concrete and glass-fronted towers invades us.
I have not seen many pigeons around where I live, but along with crows, they are the infantry of the Indian metro. People love to throw broken wheat and grains to feed pigeons. When crows close in on the periphery of a mass pigeon feed, they shoo them away these uninvited guests. The cheek of these dark, uncouth intruders! The crows retreat nearby, protesting their banishment. They take safe little hops to be in the midst of these goodies. Until they’re shooed off again. The crows don’t stick around. They’ll happily zero in on an easy feed any time, but they’re not going to fake the servility of a pigeon or the cute hop of a mynah to get food out of humans. They’ve got standards.
I don’t see the charm of pigeons. They feed constantly, rest their double chins on their pillowy chests, crap and shed flaky feathers everywhere. I could ship them all to Trafalgar Square and let the old ladies sitting in their woolen coats feed them as much as they want to.
I like the raucous frankness, the unpretentiousness, the disarming ordinariness of crows. They know when to back off, but never quit. They keep coming back till they get what they want. They are determined to get the most of any situation. No wonder crows look so comfortable in our midst. They epitomize the spirit of all the migrants who flock to any Indian city.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Reason #7: Neither Garden Nor City
This garden city doesn’t have many gardens and it’s not much of a city.
Bangalore does have more trees and parks than the average Indian metro. But an appallingly large number of these grand, elephantine trees have been sawn down.
And if you can actually cross the streets in an area to walk to the local park, these islands of green are usually filled with jittery lovebirds and evening-walking retirees glaring at them through their monkey caps. For children, there might be a steep concrete slide and some jagged edged play equipment that can cause serious head injuries and tetanus. Some parks have topiaries and lovely soft grass tended by gardeners who shout at people to stay off it.
What strikes you most about Bangalore is how unremittingly filthy and unswept it is. You can go through major streets and see piles of litter, smelly open drains, dug-up footpaths with slabs of concrete jutting unevenly, amputated trees with their remaining foliage brown with dust.
At night, vast stretches of street are routinely dark. Even the old Airport road along HAL, a major provider of military hardware and helicopters, is unlit. Roads outside swanky IT parks look like they were recently bombed.
Laid-back neighborhoods have their trees ripped out to accommodate vehicles and the Metro. And all these are overseen by a municipal corporation whose main function seems to be to preside over the planned degradation of the city.
Bangalore feels like a small town thrust and unwilling stuffed into the ill-fitting clothes of a large metro. You can sense the city’s discomfort and resentment towards this forced transformation everywhere. It is sad to see this sprightly small town reduced to such a resigned shuffle.
Bangalore does have more trees and parks than the average Indian metro. But an appallingly large number of these grand, elephantine trees have been sawn down.
And if you can actually cross the streets in an area to walk to the local park, these islands of green are usually filled with jittery lovebirds and evening-walking retirees glaring at them through their monkey caps. For children, there might be a steep concrete slide and some jagged edged play equipment that can cause serious head injuries and tetanus. Some parks have topiaries and lovely soft grass tended by gardeners who shout at people to stay off it.
What strikes you most about Bangalore is how unremittingly filthy and unswept it is. You can go through major streets and see piles of litter, smelly open drains, dug-up footpaths with slabs of concrete jutting unevenly, amputated trees with their remaining foliage brown with dust.
At night, vast stretches of street are routinely dark. Even the old Airport road along HAL, a major provider of military hardware and helicopters, is unlit. Roads outside swanky IT parks look like they were recently bombed.
Laid-back neighborhoods have their trees ripped out to accommodate vehicles and the Metro. And all these are overseen by a municipal corporation whose main function seems to be to preside over the planned degradation of the city.
Bangalore feels like a small town thrust and unwilling stuffed into the ill-fitting clothes of a large metro. You can sense the city’s discomfort and resentment towards this forced transformation everywhere. It is sad to see this sprightly small town reduced to such a resigned shuffle.
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