Scenes from a company picnic

Co-worker's new husband to my beloved S: "So, you're with IT?"
S: "Ummm...no, I'm married to her. She works with your wife."
Co-worker's new husband: "Wait, so you're not in IT?"
S: [perturbed silence]
S to me: "Is there something wrong with this guy?"
Z to group: "Hey, don't worry about it folks, he's doing something better than IT -- he's unemployed!" (Ba dum ching!)

Uncomfortable conversations with a recent immigrant

Partygoer: So, S, you've just gotten here from India. How do you feel?
S: Well, it's still a little overwhelming, you know. I'm fresh off the boat -- only been here for a few weeks.
Partygoer: (Uncomfortable silence)
S: Great to meet you!

Z to S, in hushed tone: Ummm ... so Americans are a little more PC than that.
S: What do you mean?
Z: It might make people feel weird because you're talking about your recent immigrant status in what could be construed as a derogatory way. Wikipedia says, "The term "FOB" has been used with offensive intent, often to those with a foreign accent or ethnic style of dressing. Depending on the person's attitude to the culture in question, he or she may or may not take offense at these statements. The term may also be used by people who themselves were immigrants years ago, in a way turning the insult once hurled at them onto the new arrivals, and in so doing emphasizing their own progress in assimilation or improved language skills."
S: Can't we just tell them to fuck off?
Z: ... And never the twain shall meet.

So what if there are human bones in his medicine?

... he IS wooing New York, you know.

That's right, at his camp in the U.S., Swami Ramdev attracted more than 1,000 guests.

(Compulsory link to controversy here.)

I'm just saying ... I went to look at an apartment the other day, and I mentioned that I had lived in India for two years, and my potential landlord was all, "Oh! India! I have a friend who's spent time there, and he has a number of gurus. And we talk about it a lot, but I can't pick which guru is right for me."

You know, if you can't figure out which guru you want to follow, perhaps you shouldn't follow one at all.

Development porn

If I weren't so insanely occupied with my impending (72 hours!) relocation to NY, I would be blogging about something lots of other people on the Interwebs have been commenting upon of late: the preponderance of white Western males as photographers of the developing world and the corresponding effect of this upon the way in which mainstream media depicts poverty, community building, etc.

Boing Boing has an excellent discussion of it here. I don't have much to add in theory, but I must say that the way in which people respond to me, a white woman trying to capture images of life in the subconty, vastly differs from the way in which they respond to my esteemed third-world photographer husband.

Perhaps a good project for him would be to chronicle New York as what people may assume to be a tourist. Somehow, though, I don't think it plays the effect back in the same way. Back to the drawing board.

Just a staffer

Or, running commentary on "They are not foreigners, just staff" from today's edition of The Hindu.

"A German candidate essentially forwards a prolonged CV running into five or six pages whereas a Frenchman prefers a short, handwritten one. Russians indulge in detailed biographies and the Chinese present numerous recommendation letters to back them up. An Austrian candidate invariably lands up in highly formal attire, irrespective of the weather, while Americans are casualness personified. Australians display right attitude traits like honesty and straightforwardness at an interview and the Finns prefer to showcase their teamwork skills rather than their technical abilities. A Canadian aspirant waxes eloquent on his accomplishments while the British focus on competencies and competitiveness.

"To top it all, a Swede will definitely turn up with a trade union representative in tow.

"Contrary to what it may appear, this is not a satire on the individual job search idiosyncracies of different nationalities. It merely presents a window for recruiting foreign applicants in keeping with global trends. Yes, looking across the country's borders for fresh talent is no flash-in-the-pan."

The reporter neglects to mention that they must look beyond the borders because Indian applicants present lengthy CVs from headhunters' templates, then call every person they've ever met asking for internal company contacts, which they next proceed to hound for weeks until the HR department tells the applicant that the company will call the police if the person doesn't stop bugging its employees.

"At the time of hiring, it is necessary to understand the cultural background of the applicant apart from a comprehensive review of his qualifications. They should be made aware of issues pertaining to management of employees, peers, suppliers and others from local cultural issues. This calls for cultural sensitivity training to sensitise them to the nuances of customs, ethnicity and language."

Things I wish I'd been told before I started working in India: 1) It's not necessary to speak Hindi (or Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, or Marathi), but it's quite advantageous. People don't talk about you all the time in the mother tongue, but you'd be surprised at what they'll say when they think you're not listening. It's sort of like being a superhero. 2) It doesn't matter how hard you work -- if you're not sitting at your desk, it doesn't count to your manager. 3) Everyone wants to know who you are, how much you make, why you're here, and why you left the land of the free. If you don't want to narrate your entire life story, you'll probably be considered pricey and aloof.

"Employing foreigners calls for a higher payout rate. The employers have to offer cost of relocation, higher salaries, special perks and leaves at par with the country of their origin."

Really? Why didn't anyone tell me?

"A multicultural workforce can stir a hornet's nest too. The domestic employees may view 'the outsiders' as a threat or be peeved. Cultural differences may set the stage for tussles and misunderstandings."

In one of my favorite Indlish aphorisms, cultural differences and misunderstandings are there. But if there's one thing I've learned from my time in Dilli, it's beneficial for everyone if you come into the office with humility and an open mind. Don't be afraid to explain misconceptions, but be sure to hear what other people are saying -- there's a tremendous opportunity to learn about and improve yourself if you spend time with people who differ from you, so long as you don't imagine that you are superior by dint of the geographic serendipity of your birth.

Save the cheerleader ... ignore the credibility

(Or, another stunning derivation into India as portrayed by American pop culture.)

So one of my favorite guilty pleasures is Heroes, mostly because it's airing nearly in real time with the U.S. -- meaning I can visit all sorts of obnoxious time-wasting Web sites where people discuss the relative hotness of Milo Ventimiglia et al.

HOWEVER -- and this is a big however -- I'm really annoyed by the depiction of Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), who is the narrator and is following up on the work of his father, who discovered what are essentially genetic mutants and was subsequently killed for reasons unknown but presumably connected to his work. Anyhow, the plot doesn't matter too much, but what DOES matter is that Mohinder is supposed to be from Chennai. And...umm...every time he comes on the screen, S starts shrieking, "There is just no way any Tamil would name their kid Mohinder! The names don't go together! This is a travesty! Blargh!"

OK, maybe that's quibbling, and it does rest on a neatly smoothed bed of assumptions (that because he's from Chennai he's Tamil, etc.). There's room for error there. Perhaps more disturbing is his absolutely absurd accent, which, while sexy, is certainly not one I've ever heard in the subconty. As one Web poster notes, "I thought he was definitely cute, but the accent gave me the heaves. Being Indian myself and having extended family that fits both the 'Indian raised in India with English medium schools' as well as those 'raised/educated in Britain' profile, I can say that his accent is nowhere near either of these categories, if that indeed is what his character is supposed to be." Another rants, "Mohinder must be trying for a call centre job here in India with that pseudo-British accent he's doing. Producers, please do some basic research. If a guy is supposed to be from Madras, please get him to practise a South-Indian accent. And don't give him a completely North-Indian name like "Mohinder"."

And then the show follows Mohinder (gah!) back to Chennai when he has a crisis of conscience.

Seriously, it's like the producers/writers just gave up. One, it's clearly set on a sound stage in California; havelis, though lovely, do not make the depiction of the city more credible. (Note the accompanying picture, which is allegedly Kanyakumari; the characteristic Kumariamman temple is TOTALLY Photoshopped in there.)

Two, unlike in Japan, where everyone is speaking Japanese and they give them subtitles (even one staple character, Hiro, primarily speaks Japanese and gets that treatment), in Chennai, everyone is speaking English in a variety of accents. Granted, many people in India speak English, but in bazaars, in normal middle class life, most lapse into the vernacular -- Tamil or Marathi or Gujrati or Hindi or Malayalam, whatever. These small inconsistencies? Chipping away my soul. My tortured, tortured soul.

Americans are uninformed enough about other cultures. When I tell (American) people I've lived in India for about two years, the most common questions I get are about bride burning and tantric yoga. I may be making a mountain out of a molehill -- after all, it is just TV, and who said the media is obligated to depict the world as it exists? -- but wouldn't it be nice if someone acknowledged that, just as there is no one "America," there is no one "India"? That trying to generalize one billion people and as many opinions, hearts, and minds, into one Funjabi, masala-fied mess is kind of insulting -- to both the culture and to Americans who are deemed incapable of understanding that the subconty is anything beyond chicken tikka masala?

(For your reading pleasure, a nice chat on cultural hegemony; I'm currently hopped up on painkillers because my ear feels like an alien is going to burst out of it, and thus am incapable of making prescient observations about issues of culture and domination and media, but I really feel what this woman is saying.)

NYC: No visa needed

That's right, upwardly mobile India: Why visit one of the world's greatest cities when you can live in it -- without even straying from the Mumbai-Nasik Highway?

Hindustan Buildwell Pvt. Ltd. assures us, "Plot purchased by many film/TV stars." Well, thank god for that -- I wouldn't want to share my living space with someone who hadn't appeared for an eight-second cameo in the item number of box-office bomb.

And can those five boroughs; this New York City includes a helipad, mini golf course, a "gymnasium equipped with the latest tools to keep you in shape," and an "entertainment club."
Frankly, this whole thing looks a lot more like someone's wet dream of a stripmall in small-town USA. I'm just saying, if anyone tried to get a hipster from Brooklyn to book a flat in this development, I think he'd run screaming and impale himself upon the razor-sharp edge of his acerbic wit.

(And, moreover, why do we have to build up this myth of America as the promised land? Most of my Indian friends and loved ones say that Americans have rather distorted views of what India is -- bride burnings, poverty, tie-dye -- but this certainly isn't an accurate depiction of a rather flawed land, either.)

Reality and race

So if you're in India or the U.K., you know there's been a firestorm of criticism over Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother, with brazen reality hussies mocking Bollywood bomb Shilpa Shetty. It might be racism, it might be ignorance, it might just be people with nothing better to do than form petty, meaningless blocs that can bandy insults back and forth.

Seeing as I haven't actually viewed any footage (of them allegedly calling her a "Paki," a "dog," and telling her she can't speak English), I can't really comment; furthermore, even if I did see it, it's nearly impossible to divine the intent behind the words, because, to an extent, they should be considered within the context of the incredibly strange, surreal situation of being locked in a house and filmed 24 hours a day, which may or may not cause people to behave as they would not in the "real world." If you do want more info, or a comparison of how media is covering this (which I find endlessly fascinating), try this link.

No, I'll restrict my comments to a short criticism of India's I&B minister, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, who has decided that this is an excellent occasion to highlight just how reactive and moronic government officials can be. According to Vijay Rana's report in the Indian Express ("Government's latest role: Shilpa Shetty's Big Brother"), "...Dasmunsi said actors on foreign assignments should 'inform the government' and also the Indian High Commissions/embassies on reaching foreign shores so that not only the Bharatiy nari's samman [Indian woman's honor] is safe, the country is also saved from 'unnecessary embarrassment.'"

1) I fail to see how a few narrow-minded, silicone-injected, bleached blonde bimbos (if that is indeed what they are) could harm the honor of roughly 500 million people;
2) Will Salman Khan or Mallika Sherawat reporting to an Indian consulate necessarily prevent him or her from making an ass of him or herself and, by extension, the ass of the subcontinent?
3) Isn't this more embarrassing to the U.K. public at large, if one can extrapolate that manufactured C-listers represent the pulse of a nation?

(Note: I am QUITE heartened by the response of Shetty's spokesperson -- "Shilpa's family strongly feels that this is a game, and it should be treated in that spirit, rather than becoming an issue between two nations." At least someone has some damned sense. Unfortunately, of course, not the respondents to an IE online poll, 54% of whom think the government was right to butt into the situation.)

Headline o' the week

Courtesy Indian Express, October 31, 2006: "Americans, Americans: Why Do They Do Things So Differently?"

And, for your pleasure, if you click "read more," you can read my version of the story -- in which I have merely substituted references to America with references to India and its people, and which I call, "Indians, Indians: Why Do They Do Things So Differently?" (Tongue, of course, firmly planted in cheek.)Do you think The New York Times would consider running this on their editorial page?

Europeans call them crazy. But are Indians really crazy or do they just do their own thing?

I have always been intrigued by their use of the word "prepone." When the world refers to plans that have been fast tracked, they say "the date has been moved forward," but Indians say prepone -- even if the prefix has just been added to an coantiquated term for a type of bread!

Even if India's teas were introduced to the world by exploitative colonizers, India's beverage of choice is still chai. And how. A paper cup of milky, syrupy sweet tea filled every two hours or so. Ditto with the samosas. A couple of friends may go through several dozen of these deep-fried wonders in about an hour. I've often wondered if there's such a thing as Indian food -- apart, of course, from tandoori, Chinjabi, dal, and roti.

Talking of khana reminds me of a time when I was visiting a small Indian company. We'd been working nonstop since morning and I was beginning to feel hungry. Finally, at 2:30, I asked we could grab a bite. "Oh, I'm sorry," responded my host, "I usually don't eat until later in the afternoon. And then I just see what's in the canteen." So we walked to the cafeteria; there was enough to feed an army, but I was with someone who "just wanted to see." I got myself a liter of water and some salad, with a small bowl of dal and some boiled rice, but there were Indian and Continental choices aplenty, which my host proceeded to heap in large portions and leisurely consume, before going back for seconds -- and having four or five jalebis. And this guy just wanted to check out the scene!

The Indian economy has traditionally been a disaster. They don't bat an eyelid when government officials embezzle crores of rupees , yet they complain when their company deducts 500 rupees from their monthly take to cover the free lunches and dinners provided at the workplace. Every Indian carries a few hundred spare rupees to bribe traffic police if they're pulled over for running a red light -- who cares if these are the same people who are outraged when Transparency International publishes reports that cites corruption in the country as endemic. Is this all a grand Indian scheme to drive the rest of the world crazy?