A Recap of the R2I experience...

A year and four months since I moved back to India -

Let's see how it feels...

Much of the intensity of the loss of a lifestyle is gone. Stray thoughts bother me at times...maybe when I watch a Hollywood movie or come across a favorite cold weather outfit and high heels hidden away in some corner but otherwise for the most part it is a pretty sanguine existence.

The material negotiations of life, like haggling, scolding, arguing, endlessly chasing...all feels normal again...

Traveling through insane traffic and sticky pollution is no longer the big deal it seemed to be once upon a time...if you get into an accident and only your vehicle is hurt...fling curses at each other and move on...if you are hurt, go to the nearest hospital and pay your own bills...the other person has to do the same too...if your vehicle happens to be the bigger one, regardless of whose fault it is, give the small vehicled guy/gal some money and lots of apologies and move on...and oh ! obviously if you die...Rest in Peace.

The climate feels fine too...after the grandeur of the monsoons and the pleasant warmth of winter, summer is the price you pay for enjoying the rest of the seasons...after all there's no such thing as a free lunch! So what if you go absolutely psychotic in the summer and live in fear of losing your mind and sticking a knife into somebody? As long as you don't actually do it, you are OK! 

Keep your eyes open for the heartwarming resilience of life, be it poor little children or the brilliant flowers that grow in the teeth of so much that is deadly about Urban India.

If you get tired of the politicians' embarrassing and most times downright criminal activities, remember that they are politicians and they at least are doing their jobs without us having to chase them...in fact they are so good at it that we have to chase them to stop doing their job...so what if we don't have the world's best athletes and the like? We have the world's best politicians!

And before I get carried away by my own cynical eloquence, let me remind myself that none of this is as bad as it seems...at least, I am free to get into traffic accidents, enjoy the seasons, revile the politicians and generally make an ass of myself to my heart's content with no fear of being stopped, either legally or violently...

R2I? Wise or unwise...you let me know!

Meaningless Conformity...Is that any way to live?

I think the most annoying thing about living in India is the petty stuff that comes about due to our immense cultural  diversity and differences and the godawful number of unwritten rules that make up the day to day lives of us Indians. Every culture is convinced it is the best, every person is convinced that s/he knows best how to follow what should be followed, every role is expected to be played out with inhuman perfection...and any so called transgressions are considered crimes extraordinaire...

On the surface, there's a veneer of progress but any attempts to put that progress to hard testing and it invariably collapses crushing you under its stinky weight...

Will this ever change? Will we ever go beyond our differences and culturally imposed expectations and recognize the frail humanity beneath that could so easily flourish if it were allowed to do so? Or will we continue to hold a gun to each other's heads and demand meaningless conformity?

 

Good Lord! Am I in a polyandrous marriage after all???

Disclaimer: I am not obsessed with polyandry...it's just that I couldn't find a better analogy for this state of being! 

Ques: (Me) "Can you not come home early? Your schedule is throwing  mine off pretty badly and I cannot continue like this any longer. You used to come home early before, what happened now?"

Ans: (Cook) "No...I have work to do... places to go before I come here...excuses excuses... whine whine... and then...you don't take tension, I will come even if I am late" (????!!!!!)

Another time, another person

Ques: (Me) "You can't keep doing the disappearing act and calling me to inform that you've already vanished from town..can you not be a bit more responsible?"

Ans: (Maid) "I am not lying, sachi..promise! Sometimes, things come up...Can I just come in sooner or later, morning or night, sometime or anytime...?" (WTF??)

Whew! A year and three months since I moved back to India and my household "help" trauma continues unabated. 

I am at my wit's end and sorely tempted to turn off the cook and after buying some appliances turn off the maid as well. But DH (Dear Husband) is a total scaredy cat when it comes to living without household help for fear that I'll play my "I am an aspiring writer" card and force him to become the "household help" by default...well, I can't blame him because that is probably what will happen anyways!

Also, to be fair to my cook and maid, they work well once they come in, I like them, trust them enough to leave my house and plants in their care when I travel and... thank God they don't know this but they are very much an integral part of my pathetic social life here...!!! All of which makes me feel like I am in some insane polyandrous marriage.

I grumble, complain, converse with them, seek their help sometimes and throw orders at them that they have no qualms about disagreeing with if they don't feel up to following on that day. I continue to let them be a part of my life no matter how frustrating their unprincipled attitude towards time - and meeting our needs the way I need them to at least most of the days - are for me. Many times I feel as though I adjust my times and days to facilitate their needs instead of the other way round. Now, if this does not sound like marriage, what does? 

You know, the state of being where it can get frustrating to constantly work at twining your life with another individual, but once you've started on that route, it feels senseless to let go unless the issues are earth shattering?Well...hobnobbing with Indian maids is kinda like that...

So here I am , a year and three months later working hard at making my relationships with my maids work...good thing DH and I had already had four years to work at our marriage before we landed here...else I shudder to think of the consequences!!

Eve Teasing/Female sexual harassment in India

There was an interesting response from "Bharathiya Nari" to my previous post - titled India Bashing: Favorite tourist activity - commenting about "eve teasing" of women on the streets of India.

Why do we have this problem, this "eve teasing"? 

Three reasons;
One, our culture seeks to confine sexuality to marriage including placing intense emphasis on a women's chastity while being very forgiving of male peccadilloes; thus repressing and titillating some men...

Two, men do not have innumerable outlets like topless bars, strip clubs, peep shows etc etc (as these outlets are rightly considered distasteful in our culture) to satiate their lust at whatever level they choose. I mean, not every one is hungry all the time for the complete sex act, or always up for visiting sex workers! What if at the end of a long hard work-day, a man decides that the best way for him to de-stress is to watch a pair of bouncing boobs without being called upon to perform in return?! Yeah yeah, we have Bollywood but what if he feels that nothing beats a live act? Not that there are live acts on the Indian streets but he could use the "male gaze", I mean his X Ray eyes on live women....

Three...like everywhere else in the world, women in India too are objectified one way or the other which means they are open targets for male entertainment whenever and wherever the men choose to use their "privilege".

So does this mean legal and organized sexual entertainment for men, using a woman's weaknesses, be it moral, emotional or economical, in the form of strip clubs etc has no connotations of sexual harassment??

Aren't both eve teasing and the regulated sexual entertainment industry different symptoms of the same problem? A forgiving acceptance of uncontrolled male libido and objectification of women? Well, of course, eve teasing is not legal and not considered acceptable...at least in theory.

Eve teasing is another instance of a universal problem assuming a unique form in India. 

Note:
1. I am aware of the existence of male strippers, male sexual harassment by females etc...but this post is chiefly about female issues in response to the comment, not a comprehensive analyses of this topic.
2. I am not branding the entire male population as repressed or sexually uncontrolled, only those who get their joys out of eve teasing/sexual harassment.

India Bashing...Popular Tourist Activity

I think the Indian Tourism Dept should get together with our Great Indian IT Wizards and create centers of India Bashing activity for the unhappy tourist...

I have read plenty of writings written by Foreign Visitors to India, "concerned" about our various "issues"...traffic, pollution, corruption, heat, smell, etc etc. There have been some really "thoughtful" and "deep" complaints...some real "heartbreaking unhappiness" over this issue has been expressed as well. But none made much of an impact on me as listening to a writer actually read such a piece. 

Suddenly, I had this vision, of setting up India Bashing Centers (IBCs), preferably near airports and around hotels. As soon as they land on our soil and actually see soil and freak out and before this terrifies them completely along with the traffic, the air, the dogs, cows and hidden snakes, they can destroy everything potentially hostile in the world of virtual reality and create a pure, sterile India sans traffic snarls and holy cows, pollution and power cuts... in short along their own needs, in those IBCs. Maybe after this kind of cathartic activity, they'll have a better chance of being happy in India for a week or two or three whatever... we don't want our guests spending so many days of their life in unhappiness now, do we? Athithi Devodbhava and all that....

Are you wondering why listening made me so sad for their ordeal while reading didn't impact me much? While reading it in a book, no matter how evocative the writing, the tourist trauma did not come through as clearly as it did when the writer actually read it out. Can you imagine, making all those plans, spending all that money and getting to India, only to collapse in utter disbelief and discomfort? Their vacation utterly ruined! How devastating that must be to them!! We are actually making them forget their very human status by inviting them to our dirty country...if you don't believe me, pay close attention to their complaints for heaven's sake! Their misery is all encompassing...they feel so brutalized that they forget concepts like compassion, analyses, balance, cultural and lifestyle peculiarities and priorities...

How can we be so blind to their sufferings? We can't change our country unless a combination of plague, fire and earthquake (PFE) wipes out half the population, which is obviously not happening...so the alternative would be to create IBCs...with the PFE option of course, so, if they want to indulge in virtual destruction, instead of verbal destruction and jump in glee, they can do that as well!!

Home...

Studying and traveling in the UK...Oxford Uni is awesome, just doing a summer course and gaining so much from it! Tremendously enjoying the weather, the ease of getting around, the gorgeous countryside, the sights and sounds and things...everything...but it's not home! Dreading going back to my searing hot country but looking forward to it as well!!

Happy Independence Day India! You are the best...

Bombay Bombing...

More bomb blasts in Mumbai. Considering they were RELATIVELY low-level, I fear if this is a forerunner of worse things to come. The crucial question? How can this be stopped?

Many people here compare the condition between India and the US, specifically the fact that after 9/11, the US has successfully prevented more attacks. Well, the stories of these two countries are entirely different. The US does not have home grown terrorists like India does...and as for the differences in systems organization and population...I really need not say anything.

The way I see it there's only two ways this situation can be resolved. The really ideal, Gandhian way would be to engage the darn militants in peace dialogues and cause a change of heart....I better stop dreaming!

The  other way as I see it...train the citizens for some kind of citizen watch. Let's be realistic, India is too vast and crowded and multicultural and contradictory and unpredictable for us to rely solely on police protection systems. Considering how easy it is for people to just disappear in the crowded streets and by lanes of cities like Mumbai, there is no other solution. It is not enough for citizens to simply be alert...especially when you don't know what form the next attack may take. People need to know what to look out for and where and how to respond if someone or something appears suspicious.

The logistics of organizing a citizen watch program may seem incredibly complex...but honestly, what other choices do we have? If it were only a question of preventing outsiders from coming in, it would have been a different matter...when the madmen are either from this country or can pass off as Indians very easily, how can they be apprehended without proactive citizen help?

Another thing...pay and train the poor cops...it's foolish to expect a house cat to do a tiger's work! For instance, when I found out the pittance of  a pay that our traffic cops who spend hours on these insanely crowded, polluted city roads under this harsh sun get...I had to appreciate them for being smart enough to figure out the entire bribing system...(Who pays how much for what!...long back I once had a cop who first inquired what my monthly pay was before asking for a "fine")...so they can also live a comfortable life.  They even have to chuck the crappy cloth they get towards making their uniforms and end up spending their own money to get good stuff!! Not to say all cops are helpless victims of the system of course...but still...!