Heartcrossings

It is hard for someone of my vintage to understand the rationale behind Indian kids celebrating mock weddings in college campuses . One way to look at it a second chance at prom and doing it the desi way instead of fitting into something that is culturally more distant. For kids from outside of America, they may have not experienced prom at all - only seen it in Hollywood movies. Its a chance to get in on the action in a familiar setting. There is also Bollywood weddings that many might see as aspirational but reality for them in the milieu of their own family and friends might look quite different. In a sponsored wedding where the person is the playing the role of a bride or groom, they can have an experience that matches the collective aspirations of those who are there to participate. From what I have observed in friends and family circles back home, Indian youth does not seem to be in any rush to get married and even if they do, they have little desire to have kids. Seems to match

I started watching Made in Heaven out of curiosity and found it quite enjoyable. The story is about mega rich desis getting married along with the pomp and circumstance that goes with the territory. The production is slick and the women parade spectacular wardrobes. The vast majority of the men are portrayed as gay, this is interesting until the gratuitous sex scenes detract from the goal of depicting societal hostility towards the community. No significant character is entirely black or white and that is perhaps what holds the series together. They all have secrets, back-stories and do morally dubious things. Yet they have redeeming qualities. Each of them has a story with enough heft to stand alone. When their complex interactions comes together it produces rich narrative schema.  Is this "real" India? Most desis would agree that it is not. Real is a very relative term in the Indian context. What this series depicts might be close to reality for a very tiny sliver of

This post about low divorce rates in India and the reasons for it are (sadly) all true.  Earlier today, I was chatting with my cousin M about the only happy couple we know in our whole extended family. That is a lot of people we are talking about here. In my grandparents' generation having eight to ten kids was more norm than the exception. The couple in question who stood out to us as the happiest we ever saw, had none of the traditional markers of "success". The man had a humble job in Indian Railways and never went to college. His wife was better educated but stayed at home.  Their wedding was a very simple affair as she came from a poor family. Over a decade after the marriage, she got pregnant and had a miscarriage. They died people of very modest means and childless.  Through the fifty plus year marriage, they remained the only couple anyone of us knew that lived in peace, never ceased communicating, frequently laughed together and made others feel at ease around

Standing in line waiting my turn can be a very calming experience if I am not racing the clock. Such was the case this past 4th of July when we stood in line for a ride on the hot air balloon and at local park. Children were devising impromptu games everywhere along the serpentine queue. Adults milled around the crowd, chatting with friends and neighbors who were also there waiting. I took my time to people watch -  a great way to kill time when electronic devices cannot distract. The half a dozen desi families were easy to spot in this largely homogenous crowd. Most had very young children and some had visiting family from India.  They either kept to themselves or interacted with the other desi family they had come with. I am by now used to the fact that desis avoid making eye contact with another desi they have not met before. Family from India is another matter - they will happily strike up a conversation with any desi unless they are steered away from doing so.  We seem to like

During J's winter break, we were visiting with a friend of DB's whose wife recently had a baby. It is not often that we get five days of the immersive desi experience so it was almost like a trip to India minus the cost and the hassle. We had freshly cooked meals four times a day - both DB and I love to cook so we gladly pitched in. The mom-in-law caught her desi soaps on the living room TV and after the kids and grandma went to bed, we watched a Bollywood flick. This family is all set to return to India in the next couple of years - it has been their plan from the start. The amped up desi ambiance around the house is supposedly for the benefit of the kids who will find the transition easier. They socialize only with their kind to minimize the impacts of a culture that will soon become foreign to the children. As we watched some of the ridiculous shows grandma is hooked on to, we could not help comparing them to some of  the entertainment Doordarshan provided in 80s and early 9

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 particul

Read this Interesting observation on why the more affluent and educated families in India are more likely to have fewer daughters. This is something I had heard anecdotally from a friend in India who is involved in the production of social awareness documentaries. Whereas he just stated it as a matter of fact, here is an explanation of the phenomenon : ..wealthier and more educated women face this same imperative to have boys as uneducated poor women — but they have smaller families, thus increasing the felt urgency of each birth. In a family that expects to have seven children, the birth of a girl is a disappointment; in a family that anticipates only two or three children, it is a tragedy. The article mentions advertisement for ultrasound in India “pay 5,000 rupees today and save 500,000 rupees tomorrow.” that I don't recall ever having seen - but it is entirely possible that they exist. The argument is therefore development in a country with deep seated gender bias and di

Several months ago, I met C a desi man in his early 40s. Since the acquaintance had come about through work, we knew little beyond the other's name and job function. One evening, I had to scuttle from a meeting to pick up J from after-school care. That was when C became aware I was a parent. Soon after he moved on to a different job. In the interim we became aware of each other's single parent status - his two boys lived with their mother. As we were very clearly not each other's type it was easy for us to get over the initial discomfort that results from our marital status situation to become friendly acquaintances with somewhat  similar challenges. A few weeks into his new job, he called me one day to see if I was up for lunch midway between his workplace and mine. We chatted about work (his and mine) for a bit and then conversation drifted to kids and from there to ex-spouses. This was the first time I was hearing about his divorce. He had married an Indian woman born

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

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. Ma

Having loved Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, it was a great deal of anticipation that I started reading Between The Assassinations . I am sad to report that my disappointment is complete. Each story is hard to read, the characters are two dimensional. Denouements simply don't happen and when they do the reader does not sense closure. The book reads like a writer's notebook of character sketches and work in progress story ideas - not a bad thing in itself as long as expectations are managed correctly. Billed as outtakes of White Tiger, this would have been very interesting but the reader is set up to expect a brand new book with a come-hither title no less. I labored from one story to the next hoping to see some of the White Tiger magic once again but sadly that does not happen. I have recommended the White Tiger to both my Indian friends who are not big fiction readers and non-Indian ones who are (or not) but are looking to read something authentically Indian. Both kinds of fo

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques

A desi of my acquaintance recently became a first time home-owner. Not content with making this leap of faith from renting to owning in these confusing times, he was determined to show me what his new home looked like. I was given a tour of all three floors of this brand new home, told how much the whole thing cost him, what he and his wife would be paying towards mortgage plus month and of course only an absolute dim-wit would still be renting. He pointed out sagely that any money in the bank was good for toilet paper at best if the currency was USD. His brand new home in a small-town American suburb on the contrary was equity that would keep growing forever and more. How the two statements can mutually coexist and both be true was beyond my ultra-limited grasp of the subject matter so I held my peace and absorbed the bounty of knowledge that was so generously being bestowed upon me. This is not the first time a desi had impressed on me their superior financial savvy not to mention in

I logged into to an old email account after a long time to check if it was still active. Back in the day of my disastrous forays into the world of desi dating, I had used this address and no sooner than I had logged in, did I get pinged. The guy's name was not even vaguely familiar but he insisted we had chatted at some point in the past. What is more he insisted on chatting now. I figured the only way to shake if off would be to go offline or go invisible. But I got lucky : Him: where r u now a days ?? Me: (name of my state) Him: ok... Him: how long u have been there ? Me: is this the typical desi fact-check - how long lived in US, when arrived, visa status, annual salary, rent or own, skill-set ? Him : lol Me: I don't respond to any of those qs Never heard a peep from him after that. I was able to clean-up my Inbox in peace and sign-out when I was done. I guess the desi bro had nothing else to ask me outside my will not respond to questions. Strange are the ways of the brethr

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

G is like my kid brother and is given to checking on me every once in a while. I wish he lived closer, so J could have a sense of extended family. His child is less than a year old and would fulfill J's strong desire to be someone's big sister. He and his wife have tried to socialize with desis in their city (they have lived in several up to now) and have faced challenges not very unlike my own. I used to imagine that desis are very accepting of two parent families as they view this to be the normal family configuration. Apparently not. G has lived in America since he came for grad school, worked almost every kind of odd job there is to help pay his bills as a student. He is not the lowest common denominator desi IT worker in that he has a wide variety of interests outside his day job and can carry on an intelligent conversation that has nothing to do with technology or immigration. He happens to be a Bengali who like me never lived in Kolkata. He would love to be part of somet

Back in my school days, history lessons taught us how the people of India have always lacked unity allowing foreign invaders to divide, conquer and rule over us for hundreds of years. Our teacher's favorite line used to be "History is important because it helps us learn from mistakes we made in our past so we know not to repeat them" She almost always ended her lesson on that note and would encourage us to find ways to apply lessons from Indian history in our daily lives. I remembered the wisdom of Mrs. G recently when a client I work for, floated an RFP out to a few Indian vendors along with some near-shore ones in Mexico and Canada. The responses that came back were interesting and educative. The Canadian company did not offer any significant cost advantage over a local development shop but they tried to make up for it by going the extra mile to please. Even before we had asked for it, they came back with design and prototype demos to show us what to expect and of cours

I run into a bunch of desi kids (and parents) each week at J's music classes and each time I am amazed by the few things that they have in common. To begin with, they appear to be highly compliant - working diligently on their Kumon homework while waiting for their music lesson to begin or reading a book with such great concentration that one wonders if it only for pleasure. Right after music lesson, these kids will fan out to go to other activities - tennis, swimming, karate to name a few. They usually come geared for the next thing on the calendar. They all look pretty serious for their age - even with a room full of 6-10 year olds, there is absolutely no noise or chaos. It is not as if their parents are monitoring them - the kids are pretty self-regulated. If their music lessons are any indication, they go through the motions of "learning" whatever it is their parents want them to on auto-pilot. They practice enough to have the tunes right, are well-prepared for tests

I have been following a thread on Immigration Voice for the last couple of days. It concerns a company posting an ad on Dice saying that the client is open to H1-B applicants as long as they are not Indians. No sugar coating there - those were the exact words used on the posting. Needless to say, there was a huge outcry over it and before the end of the day, the poor cog in the wheel sod who had posted the ad at the behest of the end client had been fired by his employer. Dice had pulled the ad off their site even before that had happened. At the time of this writing, the "end client" who had actually asked for non-Indian applicants only had not been touched by any of this. The fact that stands out most prominently, at least in my mind, is that the company that posted the job ad on Dice is Indian owned and the recruiter in question is desi as as well. This is both a telling sign of the times as well as an example of abysmal depths companies like Abstar will sink to make a f

As the risk of resorting to a terrible cliche, desi kids winning the Spelling Bee has become as predictable as a cherry on a sundae. It is about yet another contest and yet another desi winner who wants to become a neuro -surgeon when they grow up . We seem to have a little system going there. Blogosphere has been buzzing with desis ruminating on the topic and I figured it would not hurt to thrown my two cents at it. I don't fully get the point of the Spelling Bee but then I don't get the point of quiz contests or trivia challenges either. It is something desis apparently get and get really good as well. I can understand why I might enjoy watching a figure staking contest or a tennis match - there is deep admiration for the talent the contestants have and amazement at their proficiency. Both are very positive feelings. With a Spelling Bee, my initial reaction is one of concern for the kids who will not win - as a parent I wonder how they will cope with the disappointment