Desicritics Author: heartcrossings

Book Review: 100 Questions From My Child - Pop Mothering

heartcrossings — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:01:36 EDT

When you have the Deepak Chopra brand on your side you can write a book called 100 Questions From My Child and get a bunch of endorsements when in fact content at random places on the web gives you both food for thought and chuckle in far more generous portions.

Mallika Chopra's world as it comes through the saccharine sweetness of her copy is perfect beyond belief. There is not one thing out of place in her charmed existence which naturally includes the two little girls. In doing that, the average mother, with her share of challenges in life will find it hard to relate to the framework within which a lot of the questions are asked and get answered.

As for the questions themselves - they are fairly run of the mill in that most children ask them in different variations. And that is not such a terrible thing and does not undermine the importance of the questions in any way. Childhood is a rite of passage and it to be expected that it will be experienced by those who pass through it in more ways that are similar than are different.

Having discounted points for cuteness, exceptionally imaginative or thought-provoking we are left to consider the merits of the answers themselves. Is there anything for a parent to glean from how Chopra responds to what her children want to know ? Are there any lessons to be learned ?

As the mother of a little girl, I found her over the top affirmation of her "beautiful princesses" highly cringe worthy. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to children, love is blind and to a mother's eye they are always perfection incarnate. To take the message directly to an impressionable child is never a good idea. There are much better ways to build healthy self-esteem in children and that includes confidence about their appearance.

Chopra does not leaven her message to her children with humor. There is not one line in the entire book that would provoke a chuckle. To have pop-wisdom dispensed without a smile is pretty hard on an adult reader but maybe her kids have fared better. One hopes her "real life" responses are less stage managed than what comes across in the book. It reminds me of the kid in the movie Ordinary People who comments that his father is so right that he could snap.

The most readable part of the book is the foreword by Deepak Chopra. The idea of the book is fundamentally a good one - listen to the questions your children ask, work on finding the answers and encourage them to ask more. Mallika Chopra has done all of that and written it all down for good measure making it a case of a great idea diminished by mediocre execution.

Over The Hill

heartcrossings — Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:22:28 EDT

Reading this article on been there done that desi dudes reminded me of desi men I have met in the past. Each acquaintance was instructive in its own way. The author might be on to a microtrend here that Mark Penn's eponymous book neglected to capture.

Most of these men were back in the dating scene after a one or two year hiatus. After scouring the market for close to ten years preceding, they had finally found the trophy wife to take home. Unfortunately, the the marital state lasted all of ten months or less before they parted ways. So in their late 30's to mid 40s, with half their net-worth gone in the divorce settlement they are back in the market with some vengeance. They are candid about being "super-selective" and come armed with failure-proof checklists that are as exhaustive and they are exhausting.

One senses a certain pressure to make up for lost time. Career growth and investing are the dominant themes of their lives. A sporty coupe and a downtown loft are typical. They speak of their married siblings with more than a twinge of envy. Their gated communities, Indian association cultural events, PTA meetings are both trite and desirable. They often mention the ages and birthdays of nieces and nephews.

When it comes to relationships, they are determined not to let the horrific experiences of the past kill the youthful exuberance and romanticism of their late teens. Despite running several years late, they refuse to be precipitate and catch-up with their peers.

On the surface that might look like a winning combination - there is this perfect houseblend of ambition, determination, romance and an indomitable spirit. What's not to like? Plus they are articulate, well-read, and well-traveled. The long - suffering independent, successful, opinionated, confident desi woman who had despaired of ever finding a partner in her own community is bowled over by this Renaissance man who is as much in his element in a sherwani as he is in an Armani tux. He bakes almond cookies to die for and can toss up a mean green salsa. Tandoori chicken is so passe - he prefers variations on his grandmother's recipes.

Soon thereafter, the cookie crumbles. He wants the woman in her mid 30s, contending with a ticking biological clock, ovarian cysts, baggage from failed relationships and marriage, fighting cellulite and bulge not to mention social pressure to get hitched post haste to pretend she was sixteen all over again.

She needs to forget lessons learned the hard way - that desi men have completely different standards for girlfriends and potential wives. They will make haste to sleep with the former but wait till the wedding night for the later. At sixteen everything is fresh and innocent, you go with the flow full of optimism and good cheer. Returning to that frame of mind more than sixteen years later takes more than a leap of faith and not many are able to make it.

Desi women routinely disappoint such men and in a variety of ways. She wants to jump right into marriage and we have not even been properly introduced yet. She is way slutty - too ready and much too soon. She is too demanding - i.e. she wants the man to be emotionally available for her and stop shopping around for a bigger better deal. She's really nice but she'd not fit in with the rest of the man's family. She broke up with her ex for the wrong reasons. She is not serious enough. She's does not let her hair down and have fun. The list is endless.

They expect a lot from a relationship while having very little to offer unless the desi men then count their yen for being blatantly irresponsible in the name of an eternally "youthful spirit". In not being able to clearly envision the desired life partner, they idealize every last attribute until the end product is an unreal cesspool of contradiction. After a certain age youthfulness is more vice than virtue specially when its application is so selective. Youth is not consonant with an iron-clad prenup, with paranoia about emotional involvement and with being utterly jaded.

Book Review: One Night @ The Call Center

heartcrossings — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 11:50:01 EDT

By when you make it to page twenty of Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ The Call Center, you see a Bollywood screenplay pretty much writing itself. Had I been more Bollywood-savvy I would have figured the entire cast - a younger Rahul Bose seems perfect for Sam, the narrator. I don’t say this is a demeaning way at all. In the right directorial hands, this is a story ripe for being Bollywood-ized.

The material is fully ready waiting merely a couple of item numbers to be shoe horned at the right spots. There is love, sex, heroes, villains, vamps, God (though God knows why) and a long suffering Indian wife who catches her husband cheating on her even as she slaves to make the perfect Badam Milk for his mother. Plot elements are borrowed from sources on cyberspace and elsewhere – probably a natural thing for something that has Bollywood stamped all over it.

Though the God element in the prologue was intriguing, I did not get the point in the end - especially in the epilogue. Other than that the story is quite readable actually – just like some Bollywood flicks are entertaining and watchable. Some of the stereotypes about the average American customer calling 800 numbers are rather lame - but then that is the nature of most stereotypes.

At any rate, Bhagat warns the reader very early not to expect a work of Naipaul or Rushdie. That is a very useful disclaimer as it turns out. Talk about excellent reader expectation management. Whether or not Bhagat is a writer, he is a salesman par excellence. Reading the Wikipedia entry confirms my first instinct : Bollywood has been quick to snap up the rights.

Movie Review: Laaga Chunari Mein Daag - The Figurative Womb

heartcrossings — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:57:58 EDT

It's not very often that I am able to take away a meaningful message from a Bollywood flick so I had to write about it. The movie in question is Laaga Chunari Mein Daag.

The story is an old chestnut overdone Bollywood-style. A family of four in a decaying mansion - the mother spinning the years away Arachne-like on the sewing machine, the idle father hoping the next lottery ticket will reverse the tide of his fortune and the two pretty daughter unequipped to seek a better future.

Desperate to help her struggling family, she goes to Bombay to find work and runs into a man who promises her a job in return for spending the night with him. She calls her mother defeated and ready to abandon her quest for employment. She is frightened by the proposition and wants to come home to Benares right away.

The mother's response to this SOS is tinged by her precarious circumstances, she does not rush to embrace her child and snatch her out of harm's way. In her daughter's most desperate hour she is not able to be her mother. The girl begins her new life as an escort. The mother is consumed by guilt even as the family benefits tremendously from the first-born's lucrative profession.

What I found most compelling about the story was the older daughter's cry for help, the mother's response to it and finally the consequences. I think our children cry out for help in big and small ways many times in their lives. When we are attentive, we hear clearly and respond decisively. In doing so we are able to prevent harm being done to them.

Yet there are times, when we are not able to hear quite as well. In hindsight, we blame our inaction on preoccupation, inattention or worse expediency because too much was at stake. The cry subsides into a low whimper and there is a deathly silence. We want to believe that the crisis has blown over - that our lack of intervention helped our child become stronger and more self-reliant. But the truth is, a child turned away from her last refuge of hope will often go down a path of self-destruction even while keeping up pretenses of all being well.

As unlikely as it may seem, this movie made me think about a mother's lifelong responsibility towards her children. She must have a figurative womb that they can return to in their darkest hour ; she must always be able to discern their cries for help amid the overpowering noise and chaos of her own life.

We see mothers around us who do everything else right and wonder why their children turned out the way they did - wonder where they went wrong. It is no easy feat to execute flawlessly on such huge responsibilities all one's life. More likely than not, a mother will make some mistakes and the child's life will be a testament of its consequences.

Cram Junkies

heartcrossings — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:44:53 EDT

I am not familiar with a Korean cram school equivalent in India though the unscrupulous coaching centers come pretty close. That said, the cram school sounds like torture that even Indian kids don't go through and that is saying a lot. When the stakes are so incredibly high, often the end justifies the means - be it by cramming without understanding, analysis or reflection or by obtaining "valuable suggestions" from a leaked IIT entrance exam paper. The end as it turns out, is not the education itself but scoring a coveted seat in an elite university.

Irrespective of the means, fair (cramming) or foul(access to leaked questions), the aspirants to these institutions have to work horrendously hard because everyone else in the fray has the same advantages that they have and the acceptance rates of the colleges in question are among the lowest in the world. It takes woefully little to get eliminated and have your life's course altered for ever - or at least that is how these kid are made to believe.

So after giving every ounce of themselves to the brutal system, and snagging the college admission, very few are left with any energy or enthusiasm for the education itself - the relentless pursuit of excellence ironically ends right at the point of entry. While the entrance exams are like sprints to the marathon of actual education and learning that will follow it, most are too exhausted to even remain in the running.

On the contrary, the average kids without the capacity or ambition to cram and slog their way into top-ranking colleges end up doing quite well whereever they end up after being rejected by many if not all elite colleges. They actually learn something in college and are better prepared for the life that lays ahead. Most importantly, since they never depended on crutches like coaching centers to get them in, they go through their academic lives and after much more self-reliant and confident. Having learned to swim without a life-jacket and survived they are the ready for the treacherous waters that they must navigate outside the cocoon of college and university.

It is common to see bright and talented high-schoolers dissipate over four years into mediocrity at engineering school. They recover from the tortures of entrance exam preparations for the first year only to discover that the education for which they had nearly lost their lives and sanity was way over-rated. They slide into the trough of delusion and disinterest only to recover in the final year when they are getting ready to find a job.

The cram mode sets in once again. Interview and screening test questions are quarried, group discussion topics are foraged and final semester dissertations are bloated and polished with plagiarized material.After living in a daze for four years and not having acquired more than a smattering of understanding of the subjects that were taught in that period, these "meritorious" students scheme and scam their way into their first job and that probably sets the tone for the rest of their professional lives.

It is no wonder then that they are notoriously inept at managing time and priorities, applying a disciplined approach to learning anything new, putting together a coherent presentation, displaying a common sense approach to problem-solving, being able to grow with slowly acquired on the job experience. All their adult lives they have absorbed only when under tremendous pressure to do so. Therefore, the 12-14 hour working days (weekends often included) and the lack of creativity and innovation. Since there is nothing in the real world that remotely resembles a cram school or coaching shop, it often becomes necessary to simulate the vibe just to be able to survive.

Mock Democracy

heartcrossings — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:04:12 EDT

Back in the day before I had a mini Obamaphile in the household, I would barely keep my Democrat and Republican definitions straight. I had no idea who stood for what and what if any difference any of it made to my small world. As an immigrant, I am only too painfully aware that political sentiment toward my lot is fated to sway like a pendulum.

There will be carrots by the bushel when we are needed and viciously painful prodding by way of inscrutable and interminably long immigration processes to encourage us to get out of the country. You have to take your chances when you decide to immigrate and make the best of whatever carrot, stick and combination thereof that you find yourself dealing with.

So I never knew who was running, what the polls were predicting and what the spin doctors were frothing. This year, for the first time I’ve been paying a little attention, trying to understand how the country that seeks to define democracy as we know it and indeed takes upon itself to bring this incredibly precious gift to the oppressed , disenfranchised and tyrannized peoples of the third world - even if it takes a hundred year war to get there. Coming from the biggest democracy of the world, I turned curious to see where and how quality differed from quantity.

First the obvious differences – a two party system versus more parties than anyone can count or remember. Low decibel, graffiti free electioneering versus strident sloganeering from the makeshift stages, traffic obstructions and every inch of public white space covered with all manner of political drivel. I might add that Indian politicians attract huge gatherings at their rallies but almost all of the crowd is paid to show up. Often food and an article of clothing is part of the inducement package. Not sure if similar tactics are employed here in the States but the get out the vote sandwich platter sounds very much like the what they have going on back home.

Sudhir Venkatesan in his book Gang Leader For A Day writes about the gangs in Chicago involved in voter registration in inner city housing projects. Part of the “registration” process involves telling the voter who to vote for. When the “telling” is done by a gang member it is likely to carry quite a bit of weight. It seems to me the word of best fit here is coercion. That’s not unlike what goes on India. For the uninformed, Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City is an excellent resource for learning about the under-belly of Mumbai and its enormous political clout.

The more I follow the news these days, the more I am struck (dismayed really) by the similarities in the functioning of democracy in two countries that should in theory operate very differently. Yet in my mind I find myself replacing all references to Bible Belt with Cow Belt, Rust Belt with Bimaru states and everything else falls perfectly in place. Sometimes the sense of déjà vu is so strong that I forget which part of the world I am in right now.

In a culture fundamentally defined by individualism the electorate is most astonishingly not viewed as individuals but as so many distinct blocks of votes. There are racial, income, class, religious, gender and age based blocks. Back in India I never found this way of treating human beings as herds of cattle very surprising. After all we are an underdeveloped country with staggering poverty and illiteracy levels – not the kind of people one expects to have an exacting sense of self. They are too desperate trying to make ends meet to be able to participate in political discourse and yet it is the exercise of their franchise that keeps our democracy going.

It was okay to lump us all together however it made sense and get it over with. Life had to go on and a living had to be made. The fact that the vastly more developed, prosperous, industrialized and educated America would treat its citizenry no different is eye opening to say the least. As in India, all votes are not equal and states have vastly different powers in influencing the final outcome of an election.

In India the educated middle and upper classes are too small a block to make any sizeable dent to the total vote. Our politicians don't need to pander to us and they most definitely don't. It is far more important to appease the constituencies that have the numerical strength to make a significant difference - our version of the working class lunch-bucket voters who apparently hold the key to elections here.

There is the text book definition of democracy and there is Somerset Maugham’s view on the subject. I remembering writing this passage down in my journal when I read it as an adolescent – it helped me make sense of the utter travesty of democracy that I saw all around me and it still does. In his book Christmas Holiday, the character of Simon says :

"Equality? Equality is the greatest nonsense that’s ever muddled the intelligence of the human race. As if men were equal or could be equal! They talk of equality of opportunity. Why should men have that when they can’t take advantage of it? Men are born unequal; different in character, in vitality, in brain; and no equality of opportunity can offset that. The vast majority are densely stupid. Credulous, shallow, feckless, why should they be given equality of opportunity with those who have character, intelligence, industry and force? And it’s that natural inequality of man that knocks the bottom out of democracy. What a stupid farce it is to govern a country by the counting of millions of empty heads! In the first place they don’t know what’s good for them and in the second, they haven’t the capacity to get the good they want. What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily, self-seeking politicians. A democracy is ruled by words, and the orator seldom has brains, and if he has, he hasn’t time to use them, since all his energy has to be given to cajoling the fools on whose votes he depends. Democracy has had a hundred years’ trial: theoretically it was always absurd, and now we know that practically it’s a wash-out."

Book Review: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

heartcrossings — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:43:22 EDT

Reading the collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri in Unaccustomed Earth is like unwrapping layer upon layer of a much anticipated gift only to find a mundane trinket in the end. Lahiri seems to take perverse pleasure in playing bad Santa who stuffs the stockings of her readers with coal, when in fact she could have easily gratified us with eight beautiful presents. I am not entirely sure why she would want to do what she does with unerring success story after story. Is this by design or an unintended consequence?

We all know by now that Lahiri's repertoire is limited to the Bengali Indian-American experience and a perilously narrow sliver of it at that. However, as a Bengali I am glad that she brings the trivia of our people on the world stage. But for her, the rest of humanity would have remained oblivious of the existence of chorchoris and pantuas. I guess one must give credit for being the self appointed ambassadress of the Bengali Indian-American and depicting our tribe as a distinct cultural strain that refuses to be commingled with the rest of India - it is an ambitious goal to say the least.

Yet in talking about her chosen literary vehicle, the short story, one must talk about how she fares. Her limited cast of characters and their monotonic cultural background is not necessarily a sin. Many authors share those characteristics with her and fare very well in spite of it. John Updike thrives with his New England set, Barbara Pym with her English village community or closer home R.K Narayan within the confines of his fictional Malgudi.

What makes the work of these authors special is that the stories they tell speak to the human condition universally. The reader does not need to have wallowed in macher-jhol all their lives to feel the tug of the character's struggles and triumphs. With Lahiri, the scaffolding of the story begins to fall apart when you remove the Bengali Indian American theme and props.

While she does attempt a larger purpose and a transcending theme, each time she finishes just a little shy of the finish line. The reader is left exhausted from the mounting anticipation that is left harshly unfulliled in the end. The callow youth of my college days would have called it a KLPD moment. To have this suffering repeated eight times is quite a bit painful even for the most indulgent of readers.

She tries to broaden her appeal by gratuitous references to things and places foreign to average Bengaliness but that does quite cut the mustard. The trio of stories in part two of the book have Hema and Kaushik bouncing all over Italy, El Salvador, Thailand, West Bank and God alone knows where else but all this serves to do is to overwhelm with detail that has no relevance to the main plot line. As a reader you want to be put out of your misery wading through pages of Italiana and get to the heart of the matter which unfortunately does not really exist.

Being that Lahiri has so much going for her - a beautifully lucid language, an amazing eye for detail and deftly sketched characters set in realistic situations, you wonder why the recipe falls flat. As a reader I am disappointed in my own disappointment with her latest offering and hope Lahiri will find that missing ingredient that it takes to take her from being pleasant to brilliant.

Manohar And Rohan - A Tale of the Indian Middle Class

heartcrossings — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:34:44 EDT

The story of Manohar and his son Rohan is also the story of the Indian middle class renaissance, a transformation that happened between three to four decades. Manohar was in his teens at the height of the Naxalite movement. He observed from the sidelines but never participated - he did not buy into the ideology.

He had a couple of expensive hobbies - mountaineering and photography but not a day job to pay for them. His other passions included obscure foreign cinema and literature. Unfortunately, none of those interests alone or in combination translated to a paying job. His only vice was smoking but that was part of being an "intellectual" or "antel" as they would say in Bengali.

Graduating near the bottom of his class he was a commerce graduate with absolutely no job prospects. Family members did what they could to call for favors, make connections and the like but even so Manohar remained a "bekar jubak" (unemployed youth in Bengali). Back in the 70s it was common to see youths like Manohar - they came home for their meals and to sleep at night, for the rest of the day they stayed out of sight mostly to preserve what they could of their dignity in the guise of seeking employment. They continued with the education even if they had no interest or aptitude in what they were studying. It was important to stay busy. At age thirty Manohar found work as teller in a nationalized bank - a job that paid little but was very secure. He would never have to look for work for the rest of his life. It was time for him to get married now. The family got busy finding him a bride. Manohar has just one request of his elders - that they make sure all facts that need checking were checked out before he saw the girl because he would not decline to marry a woman purely on the basis of her looks - that would be too humiliating for her. So he would marry the first girl his elders took him to meet.

Manohar got married to the first girl on the short list of prospective brides. He still works as in the same bank. Rohan, their only child is close to twenty two and very unlike his father. He sports shoulder length hair pulled back into a pony tail. His hair color is as transient as most other things in his life. He is the lead vocalist in a rock band some kids in his neighborhood with had cobbled together a few years ago and they have performed at minor local events.

Girls find him very attractive and he has been in several relationships, suffered and caused some heartbreaks. It’s been a few years since he lost his virginity. What he lacks in academic brightness he makes up for by being street smart. He can talk his way in and out of situations and gets the system well enough to game it. He realizes that his current call center job will burn him out very quickly but he loves the money and the independence it has brought him.

In a few years he will hitch his star to some gig with more staying power - he does not know what it is but is sure he will recognize opportunities when they present themselves. He is highly networked and is always in the know. Marriage is at least ten years away and his parents know to stay out of the match-making business.

Unlike his father he has no real passions and is not particularly good at anything. But he does not let his mediocrity cramp his style - in fact it is not something he is even aware of. Unlike his father he is not bogged down by middle class mores and morality. He lives the life he wants to without any compunctions.

Manohar finds it impossible to relate to this young man who is his own flesh and blood. He prefers to look away from his son's obvious moral and ethical transgressions. He blames it all on generation gap and the rapid erosion of tradition with the opening of the Indian economy. His son with his faux-American accent and world view is no longer representative of India or Indianness as he understood those things. He wonders sometimes if he would have ended up like his son if he had born thirty years later - he hates to admit it but he envies the "dissolute", "immoral", "materialistic" and "selfish" life his son is leading.

Social Lynching

heartcrossings — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:44:05 EDT

Each time I return from a desi do where I've had to feel like an outcast because I don't come packaged like a "normal" family, I have wondered how many more times I have do this for J's benefit.

At what point would the cultural assimilation be complete so I did not have to put up with desis being their desi-est worst on their own turf? I have gone into these things knowing fully well what to expect but they presented the only opportunities for J to learn about Indian festivals and social customs, meet a bunch of people who looked like her and spoke Indian languages.

It felt wrong to deprive her of the opportunity and risk her growing up with a distorted view of her cultural roots. But my patience is running thin and each time it is a little bit harder to bite the bullet and show up with my child when every pore of me wants to run away. Most often the hosts and a few other close to them already know that there is no husband in my domesticity.

Apparently, word passes around quickly. I have the more cultivated among the guests refrain from any inquiries about my spouse or the lack of one. Invariably, the wife will engage me in conversation alone in the corner of the living room farthest from where the action of the party is and the husband will not be introduced - I guess the standards of decency that apply to normal people do not translate to pariahs of desi society.

The rest make it a point to hear about the missing spouse from the horses mouth. Nothing less will satisfy them. All roads lead to Rome as they say. We could be talking about the recipe for the tasty dhokla someone's brought to the party but a detour will emerge from that conversation leading on to questions such as "Where does your husband work?"

The moral of the story is when you are divorced and desi, all conversations are minefields and there will be no respite until the all important question of the absent spouse is laid to rest in unequivocal terms. Thereafter, you become the leper of desi society left to lick your wounds by the fringes.

It's no different in the workplace either. I have spent close to a year with a group of American co-workers of various ethnicities and colors and never had anyone ask me one question about my marital status. Along comes a desi new hire and it takes her all of two days to ask me about my husband.

Even after all these years, the incorrigible desi does not cease to amaze me. Home or abroad they just don't know how to mind their own business, maintain a friendly but professional relationship with another desi in the workplace. I have been lucky in that everywhere I have worked, I have been able to get my job done with minimal desi interactions. It helps that in the American workplace it is acceptable to be polite but refuse to engage with a co-worker at a personal level.

What irks me most is that I left India to live and work in the States in large part due to such oppressive social mores. I did not want to be treated like an outcast for the rest of my life. It is almost masochistic going into these desi gatherings in America only to receive the kind of treatment I have worked very hard to avoid. I believe there is a point of diminishing return - the gains in the form of J's cultural acclimatization weighed against me volunteering to be made to feel like a pile of trash. Something has got to give.

An older desi gentleman had some words of wisdom for me on this very subject - namely my struggles to give J a sense of her desi identity without getting socially mauled and lynched in the process. In his opinion, desis were being desis when they behaved the way they did. J's understanding of the culture would be quite incomplete - even incorrect without observing that the average desi treated her divorced mother like she was a contagious disease.

Participating in community Diwali and Holi celebrations did not quite cut the mustard when it came to understanding desis and how their minds worked. Was I not interested in giving J an opportunity to see the real desi deal ? To that end, he thought that my situation was a unique gift in as far as the perspectives if offered my child into the world of desis. I should be grateful for that.

What's more, if I remarried the same people who treat me like an untouchable now would roll out the welcome mat for my "family." Unless I was a self-hating desi I should welcome this change of heart as a natural transition that is expected to happen in my culture. J would have known both sides of the story and come to a true understanding of the desi.

According to the older gentleman, I was foolish in complaining about what was really a lifetime learning opportunity for my child. Trying to cherry-pick the desi experience is actually counterproductive. I should just go with the flow, muck and all, knowing it's best for J's greater edification.

I was not able to take this lemon to lemonade harangue too seriously but increasingly I think he was on to something there. Other advice I have received has ranged from "Mothers have to sacrifice a lot for their children. This is only about swallowing your pride for J's sake and only for a few hours. Don't think too much about it" to "Chuck the desis. Cultural assimilation is way overrated anyway. J will turn out to be a good kid. Why get so hung up on making a desi out of her and deal with all that crap?"

My biggest fear is as J grows older and understands all the negativity I have to put up with from people of my own color and culture, she will develop a lasting distaste for all things desi.

That was definitely not what I was setting out to achieve and it would be a sad thing if it did happen. But the only way I know to prevent the worst is to insulate and isolate her from desidom and that I know is not the right answer either. It might turn her into one of those kids who hate being identified with India and Indianness.

I want her to know that I am proud of my cultural heritage and have desi friends who are not anything like what she sees at the average Holi celebration. That there is a subculture worth identifying with and one that defines home and who I am. As my friend T would say "If you can't even identify with a certain brand of desi culture, what's the point of introducing J to it ?" I still hope there is a happy medium that I just haven't found yet.

An Uneven Balance

heartcrossings — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:07:02 EDT

At the end of very long days and especially if it happens to be an important Hindu festival, I ask myself what J and I are doing in this country far away from family, roots and culture? There is no family within a thousand miles of us. We get by as well as we could hope to in a foreign country, thanks to the kindness of strangers and friends. Yet, I can't but help think of Diwali and the flickering earthen lamps, the smell of firecrackers and the gentle nip in the air just when my neighbors set their Jack-o-lanterns on the patio.

J does not insist on a costume, nor is she terribly anxious to go out trick-or-treating. The day after, she will tell me what her other friends did for Halloween and no matter what she always comes into a lot of candy. In my mind, I am back home in India, imagining J bursting colorful fire-crackers, visiting friends and relatives and the overload of mishti that is part of such socialization. I never paid attention to festivals and rituals when it followed the natural course of my life back home.

Whether or not I was an active participant, the world around me stopped spinning for a few days until the festivities and celebrations were over. Even a casual onlooker like myself was jolted out of the daily grind and thrust into the flow of things. Today, participation would involve driving thirty miles to the nearest Dussera celebration inside an auditorium. There would be no external sounds or signs of festivity.

The world outside would not stop spinning even for a nanosecond as we celebrate our biggest festival of the year. When we are done, we would drive back home, alone in our knowledge of where we were and what we did there or why it was so special to us. Having always been an onlooker and never a participant, I find it impossible to go the distance to a mere recreation of a festival that feels meaningless without the cultural and social context.

I cannot go through the mechanical motions without the world stopping around me, without everyone attuned to the same frequency, without festival being in the air - like it is here during Christmas. I miss home and I wonder what I am doing here. The day passes, life returns to its usual pace in India. I feel in equilibrium once again - somewhat.

I figure I would have slaved a sixteen hour day there like I once did, J would be back in school coping with a demanding curriculum, there would be an eight hour power-cut in the middle of summer, the tap would run dry just before I got into the shower, the unctuous neighbor would advise me to return to my "husband" and accept my lot in marriage, my married boss would ask me for a late evening coffee at the local Barista to catch up on work-stuff and make me wonder if I should let HR know this was the fifth time in a month and I was viewing it as harassment.

My aunt would pay me a surprise visit and bring my favorite Hisla curry along, my mother would tell J a story from Ramayan every night at bedtime, my best friend P would invite me to spend Sunday at her house and I would be laughing until my sides hurt because P tells the best jokes in the world. Mala, the domestic help would tell J stories about her village in Sunderbans and the magical powers of Bon Devi, the Goddess of the forest.

All that on one side of the scale must balance my freedom to be, live my life on my own terms and let J grow up without needing to be a multi-tasking, competition-crushing student-bot. Some days, I can't seem to tell when side is lighter and I wonder about where I am, what I am doing, where I am headed from here. When I close my eyes, I can see a thousand earthen lamps flickering in the darkness, hear the fireflies and smell the sulphuric smell of spent fireworks.