Category Archives: desi / india

Happy Deepavali

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Thoth - India Festival Of Light

A float in the Krewe of Thoth parade - Mardi Gras 2008

Apropos of the reason for this Hindu festival: Questions Lit Up, in which Pratap Bhanu Mehta takes on the Delhi University ban on teaching A.K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana and chides the Indian left and right for hijacking the culture for political gain.

… The Right commits the mistake of assimilating all tradition to one single glob, undifferentiated, where nuances don’t matter. But equally, the so-called Left has created intellectual divisions and categories of understanding that bear no relation to the texts at hand.

I’m A Dirty, Dark Tamilian

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Oh, she actually meant dirty. From IndiaTV:

A US diplomat was caught in a row after her remarks of “dirty and dark” Tamilians, prompting the American consulate [in Chennai] to term them as “inappropriate”.

“I was on a 24-hour train trip from Delhi to Orissa. But, after 72 hours, the train still did not reach the destination… and my skin became dirty and dark like the Tamilians,” US Vice-Consul Maureen Chao said, going down the memory lane two decades ago when she was a student.

So, of course, that IndiaTV article shows a rare picture of many dark-skinned Tamilians getting dusty while traveling by foot in the hot sun.

Why would Maureen Chao, who otherwise seems like a fairly decent person say those words and in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, for cripes sake? And what the hell was she thinking saying this in a country in which self-loathing about skin color is #1 pastime after cricket pathology? (Has anyone made a bar chart of Fair And Lovely sales by Indian state yet?)

Kuzhali Manickavel puts it the best. [Inserting reminder to self to get her new short story.]

… I am also very much louing the illustrious people who are taking the high road on this one, kindly educating the rest of us on how us Indians should consider that an apology has been issued so that makes everything ok, it was ‘just a joke’ and most importantly, we should remember that all of us want to study in America and then live there forever and ever and that is FAR more important than some diplomat saying something about Tamilians being dark and dirty. You’ll never get that green card honey if you upbraid US consulate peeps. Come on now, eyes on the prize.

Meanwhile, in England, rioting “whites have become black” and The Help is screened at the White House.

Better get on making those mixed-race babies and quick.

Mumbai Bombed Again

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There’s a very high probability that all of you who read this blog know about the IED blasts across Mumbai yesterday that claimed 18 lives, injured many others and has understandably increased the stress levels of an already put-upon city. Just imagining a surviving Mumbaikar thinking “It could have been me or someone I love” and “When will it happen again?” makes me want to turn off this computer and go hide in a cellar for the rest of my days. They’ve been through five bombings in the last fifteen years and could just as easily flip out like we have and would. But, the resilience and the way they’ve come together in the last 24 hours. It’s humbling.

I am so glad my fellow Vatul, Harini, and hers are safe. She writes:

Near my house – a little shop open. Most businesses were. Even those that didn’t need to be. When terror strikes – and I have been back in Mumbai since 1994 and have lived through quite a few – there is this really inexplicable sentiment that kicks in – I won’t let the Bastards cow me down. It is not just me – every one I knew was out and about. And not strangely, not many of us got too much work done. The turning up was the symbolic F*** U – both to the terrorists and the system.

Sepia Mutiny has a collection of reactions to the blasts. Here are some that stand out and give Americans perspective, especially considering that happenings east of here are more crucial to our future than our all-Casey-Anthony-all-the-time “news” cycle provides. Some of it also sounds remarkably familiar in terms of how the government-public safety apparatus of some American cities work.

… Now that the USA and the west have come to their senses with regard to the reality of Pakistan, now that the USA will not pour more and more billions into Pakistan, now that the USA will no longer cover Pakistan’s back at the United Nations, now there is hope that slowly but surely the world, and India, can take action against Pakistan without having to worry about the reaction of the USA, the great protector of Pakistan for the last 50 years and more. The pusher to Pakistan the addict.

… Please remember that India has more than 140 million Muslims. For a Muslim population of that size, India is remarkably free of terrorist attacks.

… A lot of it has to do with the underworld take-over of Mumbai politics and even the police … Summary: a non-functional police and intelligence operation, mostly focused on extracting rent from real estate transactions, which are otherwise all “illegal” due to various bizarre rules and laws.

… the point is unless people get to know that region better, they are in no position to judge our 2012 [candidates'] readiness in combating foreign problems.

Also read: The online samaritan who tried to help Mumbai

Ge(neal)ogist

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While talking with my dad yesterday, he mentioned that now that both of his parents have passed, he often performs a Hindu ceremony called Amavasya Dharpanam in their and other ancestors’ honor. This ritual is conducted on the day of a new moon, and to keep a long explanation short, is the equivalent of the Catholic All Saints Day or Dia de los Muertos when family members who have died are remembered and honored. Every culture seems to have its version of flatbread, meatballs and the Day of the Dead.

At the South Asian Journalists Association annual convention this past weekend, Oberlin College (and Smithsonian Institute) sociologist Pawan Dhingra announced that he wants home movies and stories for the Smithsonian’s HomeSpun Indian-Am Heritage project. My family’s experience as Indian-Americans starts in 1990, coincidentally when my dad discovered the Hi-8 camcorder and started to take it everywhere he traveled in his new home. Once I get these over to a digital format (and after editing out portions of the program in which I am seen in neon wear and Keds), I will be sharing them with HomeSpun. Whether you are Indian-American or have Indian-American friends, please get the word out and send any good videos HomeSpun’s way.

The project reminds me that I have a National Day Of Listening interview in mind for both of my parents. Here are the questions I’ve chosen for them. What would you ask your parents?

  • What is your earliest memory?
  • Where is your mom’s family from? Where is your dad’s family from?
  • What were your grandparents like?
  • What were your parents like?
  • Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you?
  • Who were your favorite relatives?
  • How did you meet mom/dad?
  • What are the classic family stories? Jokes? Songs?
  • How has your life been different than what you’d imagined?
  • What are you proudest of in your life?
  • What advice would you give me about raising my own kids?
  • Is there any message you want to give or anything you want to say to your great-great-great grandchildren when they listen to this?
  • Turn the tables: This is your chance to tell the person you’re interviewing what you’ve learned from them and what they’ve meant to you.

Thai Poosam

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Vadapalani Andavar, an incarnation of the Hindu God Karthikeya

My mother’s family started and has sponsored the annual celebration of the Hindu festival Thai Poosam in the temple at Vadapalani since the late 1930s. It’s a great thing which I witnessed once – the hustle and bustle of religious activity over days, walking everywhere on the temple grounds and my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins taking turns pulling the massive golden chariot on which sits an idol of the younger son of Siva. Just this morning, my mother recalled to me how she has visited that temple as long as she can remember. Her father, my grandfather or Thaatha, insisted that all of his daughters wear their newest pattu pavadai (silk frock) to temple on this day and would not look at the freshly-bathed and decorated lord until his brood of eight was accounted for. Yes, this was my grandfather who almost smacked two-year-old me on the head with his cane to keep me from cutting off the family German Shepherd’s tail with my newly-acquired skill of Hey I Know How To Use Scissors I Have The Power! Looking back on the, ahem, adventures of his children and grandchildren, I’m surprised all of our skulls are not dented and in multiple places.

Thoughts of Thai Poosam and Vadapalani mean memories of my Thaatha. He never once left South India but would dig what my “foreign” brother and I have become the most. And, you know my opinions on god, superstition and the afterlife, but I can’t help but feel that he is looking out for us now.

Downward Facing Derp

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It was a cold evening in the American southwest. I pulled my favorite shawl around me a little tighter. A woman smiled at the shawl – a burnt-orange, paisley piece my mom picked up in India – and said, “I know why you wear that. It’s because of your religion.”

“Actually, I wear it because it’s pretty and protects me from the cold,” I replied.

She insisted, “No, you don’t have to say that. It’s because of your religion.”

NPR | Yoga: A Positively Un-Indian Experience

True confession: I am an Indian who doesn’t do yoga. I wouldn’t know a downward dog if it bit me. But because I’m Indian, people don’t even ask if I know yoga. They ask, “What kind of yoga did you grow up with? Iyengar? Ashtanga? Bikram?”

… “The instructor pointed to me and said Indians are better oriented towards squats. And I realized he was holding me up as an example of how we primitive people are better squatters and have looser hips,” she laughed.

Yes, you outed me, oh wise one. I wear the shawl because of my religion. It’s a new faith, one we’ve termed The Wet Shawl Snap.

Some day, children, I will tell you the story of “Hindu squats.”

The Irish In India

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Last post it was the Jews in India, now it’s the Irish. Aren’t Slumdog Millionaire, yoga pants and Deepak Chopra enough for you? Let my people go!

D sent me a link to this Trinity College Dublin exhibition with the message, “Shoot! Ended yesterday!”

I’m all about the accumulation of historic knowledge, but it’s just as well that we miss it. Those who have read this blog for some time now know how I feel about colonialism and proselytism. (If you are new here, here’s a hint: Murder. Death. Kill.) Really, you want me to make a complete haymes of this trip and get kicked out of Ireland for starting the second mutiny in a Dublin museum?

“Friends, desis, countryfrieds, put down your navratan kurma …”

That will end well.

But this, glorious this, before the TCD website takes it down. (Big) Pimpin’ (came from India, apparently). All I need is this outfit (and a pint of Guinness) to be your Rebel Queen.

“The Death Knell Of All Fanaticism”

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The next few posts center on my most recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. Twenty years I’ve been going to this museum and it has never let me down. There is always something new and walking by the same Renoir, Matta, Rodin and 12th-century religious art is like visiting old friends. I don’t want to leave.

If you are in Chicago right now or plan to visit in the near future, you should check out Jitish Kallat’s Public Notice 3 and the special exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography.

Art Institute of Chicago

You may miss Kallat’s installation because it is, quite literally, underfoot and everyone is usually busy being lost or staring up at the skylights in the quest for Real High Art to realize that, hey, these shiny LED letters are not normally here. OF COURSE there was a part of me that wanted to run up and down the stairs to see if the lights would go off and on as I yelled “Billie Jean is not my lover.”

Remember those words? No, not Michael Jackson’s lyrics, but the ones on the steps. I had to rummage through my memory for a few seconds until it hit me. Pictured above is the first part of the speech with which Swami Vivekananda, the English-speaking, orange-clad monk who brought Hinduism to the west, opened The Parliament of World Religions at the Art Institute on September 11, 1893. As you walk up the stairs, the rest of his words unfold.

Sisters and Brothers of America,

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions, and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

The weight and irony of that last paragraph are not lost on Kallat:

Drawing attention to the great chasm between this speech of tolerance and the very different events of September 11, 2001, the text of the speech will be displayed in the colors of the United States’ Department of Homeland Security alert system. Opening on September 11, Public Notice 3 explores the possibility of revisiting the historical speech as a site of contemplation, symbolically refracting it with threat codes devised by a government to deal with this terror-infected era of religious factionalism and fanaticism.

I fear all religions, even Hinduism, have disappointed Swami Vivekananda in the way they have allowed their hateful and tyrannical to speak most vocally and react, not act, on their behalf. It is then up to the rest of us to keep the swami’s vision alive by acting through reason and compassion. Wisdom comes when we understand that whatever we want to save in our respective faiths is not worth us turning into that which we hate the most.

But wait, did he say that India contains “the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny?” Hello, Hinjews calling. Come in, Liprap! I told you guys the lost tribe ended up in India. In Cochin, in fact, following “the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 CE.” And you didn’t believe me. Hmph.

Krish Ashok Does The Creation Museum

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One of my peeps, as in snarky, Tanglish*-speaking person of Madras** origin, tires of Cincinnati and visits the Creation Museum. It’s great stuff, so please head to his blog and read it all.

This paragraph, in particular, cracked me up because of its conclusion.

Cincinnati is a large city with levels of urban excitement that slightly exceed that of a doped bear in hibernation. So when I found myself staring at a 2 week long stay, I was worried about what I would do in my leisure time. That was when my colleague Harish … pointed out that the Creation Museum was just a few miles from downtown Cincinnati, my religious (and blogging) instincts fired up and we found ourselves at 2800, Bullitsburg Church road, Petersburg, Kentucky on a Sunday afternoon. Kentucky is filled with places that end in “burg” and for some reason it reminded me of whiskey and hooded white men wielding torches that burned crosses, so we decided to play it safe. I became Christopher (“Chris”) Asher and my friend, Harish Ravindran became (as a result of his undying fanboyism) Harris Jeyaraj. I even told him that he could explain his last name to evangelical Christians as “Victory of the Kingdom of God” or something to that effect.

… I am always disappointed when my precisely nurtured stereotypes fail to come true.

Such cross-cultural exploration has distinct advantages. Like repeatedly reminding us that the more humans are different the more we are the same, superstition is not the specialty of a single group of people, we are all whackjobs so it’s a miracle humanity has done anything constructive, etc.

… Now, lifetime members are a different species altogether. They pay $495 and are people who seriously believe that (barring the engineering that built the museum itself) science is generally bad and that (a specific English version of ) the Bible is literally true. But then I have met VHP-RSS type uncles in Chennai who believe that India had the Pushpaka Vimaana thousands of years before the Wright brothers. And people drop jewellery into the Hundi at Tirupati, so to each his own I guess.

Not to mention the creation of happy-making neologisms such as Wyoming Tyranoswareshwara Iyer and the Vadivel Theory of the Origin of Man.

* Tamil-English. Think Tex-Mex, but funnier. Also, snarky Madrasi is a redundancy.
** I refuse to call it Chennai.