My language 2!

I remember when I was two years old, I had started saying, "amama, thatha" and then I was also saying "A-Z". Before I even learnt my so-called mother tongue I was speaking a semi-international language. When did I learn my mother tongue? I guess when I heard people around me speak that, since I was three may be. I was never formally taught that language. Then there came a time when people around me changed their language to English so that I could pick up English words. I was always praised for speaking correct grammar or adding new vocabulary to my sentences.

Soon I came to express in English, the language that is most familiar to me, the language I appropriated from childhood. In which language do I cry? English. In which language do I laugh? English. What makes my communication most efficient? English. Soon my grandfather could not understand half the words I used. He asked me one day, "Kanna, what is this e-mail?" I started saying, "Thatha, It is actually a medium to communicate just like the actual mail service, just that.." My grandfather just stared blank. I was not speaking Tamil to him, I was instinctively communicating in English. Then I spoke in Tamil, using English for connectors.

English is in my system now. Fortunately the language has incorporated words like 'puja' and 'aarti' in its vocabulary, words that are familiar to my culture. Then I come to this new land of America where people say, "we pronounce words like this, You need to learn this way. English is our first language..." "Really?" I wonder, "Why would i unlearn twenty odd years of training in my language?" "What makes English my second language?" I ask. "Because obviously you are not an English nation", they say.
"As in?" "As in, you don't know English!", comes their prompt reply. "That is what I was born with", I say. "Really?"

The deviant Indian

"Oh you have a guy house-mate? Never mind then", Poonam replies instantly to Rakhee who has a place to sub-lease. Rakhee hangs up staring at the phone, this is probably the fifth caller with a similar reaction. "It is not like people make-out with their flat-mates!" She thinks. Firstly finding the apartment and then room mates, that is only the beginning of hassles in America. But for friends, one would be a living
dead - body. Soon she calls her friend with whom she shares her sorrows. "Venky", She yells, "Why the fuck is it so difficult yaar, it is not like you are sharing a room, it is just a flat-mate for God's sake!" Venky from Chennai is very empathetic,"I understand, I would be really okay with it except for sharing a bathroom with a guy." Rakhee wonders, "Really?" So she asks him, "Why, what do guys do differently in a bathroom?" Venky's trained Engineering mind understands that logic but he says, "Guys and girls don't stay together for a reason. I mean, I can't leave my stuff around." Rakhee cuts him, "But that's what your room is for, and even if you do, don't both sexes have enough knowledge already of each other's under garments? What is new in that?" The very open-minded Venky is now too shy to reply, so he hangs up wondering what this girl is made of.

Rakhee is now shattered,"Venky is my friend, isn't he? But he didn't offer me his place to stay when I had no where to go". Her 'sex' seemed more of a priority than being a friend. Basically, she doesn't really have friends here. This fact dawns on her. She does not belong to the majority.

What is this whole thing about being uncomfortable around the other sex? The Indian community here prides itself on maintaining its 'morality' which even surpasses 'humanity'. What makes the reactions of "Poonams" and "Venkys" 'normal'? It would be alright if they were sexually active but then sharing a room with the other sex might actually hint at their 'activities' that they try to hide, so they avoid it, is it? It is thanks to the abundance of their kind that Indian 'culture' gets marketed as a morally parochial culture. Somehow as soon as these kinds step foot in America they instantly uphold the 'right-wing' India, trying to cut the wings of many libertarian Indians. These libertarians are not a myth, they exist in umpteen 'Rakhees', just that the majority from India consider them deviant.

Real Football

I was incensed at this blundering headline on CNN-IBN "Mittal eyeing English soccer club" No, it wasn't because yet another premier league club is under the uber-rich guys' scanner. And no, it's not because Mittal's looking at Birmingham City - a mid table club when at it's best (Mittal is twice as rich as Chelsea's owner - Abramovich). Isn't it obvious? Soccer?.. Soccer?? Since when did Indians start calling football soccer? Where are all the guys that cry hoarse over the malignant impact of the Western culture on Indian society? I demand that Shiv Sena immediately send some of it's youth wing people to the IBN headquarters to smash some TVs and windows and maybe even to 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens (just for the heck of it.. it does have a lot of windows!)


Why do the Amricans call it football anyway? It's not like the players use a lot of their feet. And certainly American football wasn't invented before football. I guess you could put it down to one of those "American things" that you cannot fathom. Like mashed potatoes?

Some more cool shirts:


You can buy these and more at this site. Isn't it ironic that the site's name is soccer.com?

 

Technorati Tags: Football, American Football, Soccer, Mittal, Birmingham City

The Abbreviating Species

Abbreviating names is a common phenomenon here for certain species; 'paeri'(phonetically written) for Parminder, 'faeti' for Fatinder,'saeti' for Satinder and so on. These 'abbreviators' never fail to amaze anyone with their concern for India. But when you ask them (ços you do not understand their abbreviations), "Are you an Indian?", their instant reply is: "I am not, my parents are." Then their names strike you as familiar.

Did you know India is backward in the way it treats its women, its various castes and religions? Of course not, you have to know it from these species! They are appalled when you say we communicate with most of our friends in English, pitying that we are losing our culture. Little do they know of your British ancestors. Well, totally identifying with their concern, you empathise with them. But didn't they tell you sometime back that they are not Indian? Nevermind, you tend to forget that because they are really so concerned about your homeland, oh no, 'our' they say.

Then you suddenly observe that these species are always out with their make-up on, just like all the Americans you see. Then they praise America's penchant for equality. "Really?" You wonder, "Is that why women here are forced to look and behave like women? I never had to do all this back in India. When was the last time I said "wow" with an extended "ow" when I was seductively touching my neck?" Never. You won't even remember having guy friends who are your friends only because they intend dating you some day. So who is forced to perform roles, people here or people from India? When this knowledge strikes you, you smile at your new-found friend 'Paeri'. You observe how much she emphasises on the pronunciation of her name, on her nail paint, on her hair, on her clothes etc. She is always an 'American' but when it comes to taking credit for being from a different culture, she is the first one to do so, not you.

She is always 'politically correct'. Only you know the culture she represents and the culture she adopts, but because she is one of the 'Americans' too, her voice is louder than yours. You just stand and watch, till she fumbles with Indian politics and then you take-over, till everyone looks at her claims with amazement and wonders, "How could she make such claims, what is wrong with her?"

But now, you must smile at her innocently, like she always does. No, no, it doesn't end with the smile, hug her tight and say "Hey darling! thanks for talking about India, that was so sweet." And she will smile back, proud of herself!

How loud can I cry?

Still asleep my hands search for someone on the bed. "Nobody next to me, how come?"I wonder. "Amma", I call out involuntarily. No reply. "Amma", I shout. No reply. "Amma", I yell. No reply. My eyes open wide; new ceiling, new windows, ahh, the sun strikes me in a new manner. Where am I? It then strikes me like a thud, I was the one who left home, I came away from there, to this, this new place. Sun back home was milder, it never felt cold so often. I look for my phone frantically, oh, I don't have one here. I need to buy one. What do I eat, I never thought of that. I run into the kitchen looking for something familiar, I still search for my ground, when I know it is a new ground. I feel no hunger. I can't feel, I need to stop feeling, because if I do, I shall cry. I shall surrender to this new ground and then I shall not remain.
But I still cry, cry out loud, "Amma", such that no one can hear. I am scared of people wanting to sue me for interrupting their personal space. That's all that my cries are worth, but I chose it.

Life's Biggest Question?

"In a progressively more secularized world, the only religious people in the world seem to be fanatics"

Is God Real? I'm sure many of us might have debated the question at some point in our lives. I'm not here to drill in my opinion or bore you to boredom heaven with facts. Oh wait! This is a blog and I am supposed to give opinions and facts!

Sam Harris, the bestselling author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason has some pretty interesting and solid points to make about well, religion terrorism and reason.

Now, all of us are familiar with the Religion vs Science and the whole 'If the human body were to be one of God's intelligent design products, where does the appendix figure?' argument. What Harris talks about is the reason behind a person's belief. Hope turns into belief as long as you have a convincing argument supporting it he says. This is plausible as far as science is concerned and indeed he makes an excellent point saying there is no Christian Physics and Muslim Mathematics. But what happens when we start treading on the slippery religious and moral grounds? What distinguishes belief from hope?

The Tibetans have been oppressed and flogged for centuries. Do we see Tibetan suicide bombers running amok in Tiananmen Square? Yet, politicians and thinkers alike wouldn't dare discuss issues like this let alone topics like atheism. Coming to atheism, stats say that half of Great Britain and almost 80% of Sweden and most parts of Western Europe consists of atheists. I'm not saying we should have more atheists in India, but we don't even seem to be anywhere near an intelligent debate on the subject. I'd love to see Sam Harris face off with the likes of Praveen Togadia and Ashok Singhal!

One this is certain - religious debates are never boring! Or is it just me?



Newsweek has an interesting debate between the evangelist Rick Warren and Sam Harris here

Technorati Tags: Athiesm, Terrorism, Religion, Sam Harris, Rick Warren

The birds & the bees

I have always been fascinated by the captivating power of the lucre. Everybody, everywhere, everytime(mostly atleast) has a thought pertaining in some way or another to this mother of all magnets. If Ali, could "fly like a butterfly, and sting like a bee", this is like a point blank shot to the temple with a very high-bore gun. The conduit for the flow of all this moolah, the stock market, prompted me into coming up with this very bizzare analogy while being perched on my thinking pedestal. Here goes... (this refers to the recent rise and fall in the Indian economy)


The rise of the sensex (indicator of the nation’s growth) can be credited to a variety of reasons from expendable incomes to favorable global phenomenon, from foreign investments to the coming of age of our own industries and so on. The meteoric rise can be compared to the feelings of a guy in the company of a beautiful woman, being enticed and excited. The guy gets aroused at a steady pace reaching higher and higher plateaus on his way to his threshold. As the seduction reaches its peak the guy makes one final charge and like Newton’s law, “everything that goes up must come down’. The guy is no exception. Once the threshold is breached, the guy can no longer defy gravity. What happens? He begins to deflate. Only in the case of the sensex, this fall was exponential.

Investment, yeah I know the word sound dreary and boring and more often than not, best left to the patriarch’s of the family. But with financial stability becoming the need of the hour for guys and the fairer sex (independently & together) investing is one heck of an idea. Oh and before I forget, this is most probably the best time in the country’s history in terms of economic growth and can be can be compared to a guy’s growth on ‘Viagra’. Thus the time is ripe to get on the bandwagon and reap the spoils for the rest of your adult, active lives.

Alright, for those who think short term; no pain, maximum gain, try this on for size. Your better half’s birthday is on the anvil or an important day of your relationship is fast approaching and you, my friend, as usual are short on cash! The thing for you would be to invest small, for a few weeks and withdraw at the end of that making a neat, albeit smallish profit. This technique also works when you total your car and can’t afford, literally to tell your folks about it and could use some moolah!

Before going any further, let me just spell it out for you, “the previous paragraph is a complete no no!” I was just kidding around. This is best left to the experts. Dabbling in such doings is as hazardous as playing with fire, and will leave you scarred for life (at least majority of the times) and will leave you ‘up the creek without a paddle’. The idea is as ludicrous as a study done on the U.S Presidential elections, which revealed that the taller candidate always won.

Coming back to the analogy we started off with (if you don’t remember, go back to START), what the whole investment game needs is foreplay, vis-à-vis, research, and loads of it. Copious quantities of this will hold you in good stead throughout your adult, physically active life (pardon the pun).You can never get enough of it and large doses of this never resulted in a grunt of discomfort from anybody.

Once this is adequately dealt with (whenever that may be), one can get down on their hands and knees and delve deep into the world of… you guessed it, money (for all those who guessed different, get a life!). All this talk of analogies is actually quite tedious and has prompted the writer to take a thoroughly deserved break, to succumb to the call of the thinking pedestal!!

Perverted, maybe... Insidious, could be... but these are the thoughts that make life fun and worth waking upto!! Think about it?

 

Technorati Tags: Sensex, Viagra, Money, Investment