840/- DD 1000 /-

A long line of people standing outside the wall of the US consulate (USEFI, if it is still called that) in what was then Madras, now Chennai... needless to say, a long long time ago.

A 20 year old boy who entered the queue at 5:30 AM (people had told him to go early) only to find that there were already over 100 people in the line to get a Visa the next morning.

We are talking early nineties where you had to go with a bunch of documents, be within the first 200 people in the line, be screened, be interviewed, pay fees and then get a Visa stamp later that afternoon.

If you had a scholarship and all your papers, chances are you were directly called to the counter to pay money and skip the interview part, provided you managed to get in that morning. All you needed was the right applications, the documents (I-120 or whatever.. ), your passport and a DD (Demand Draft) drawn to an exact amount of 840 Rupees for the entry fee. No DD meant, no entry into the gates!

The US consulate taught you very early on that "Money = Possile Entry. No Money = NO Entry", be it the consulate or the country. Capitalism 101..

Yours truly had the DD. In fact the documents were checked and rechecked multiple times as there was nothing else to do in the line from 5:30 AM to 9:00AM under the sodium vapor yellow light. There was also the constant checking of the pockets to make sure that the Visa fee of 3000+ rupees was still there!

A PSBB dude called Guru was behind me and we did some idle chit chatting. He was worried that he would be rejected for various reasons. I was more worried about losing the 840 Rupees. The girls in the line came prepared with magazines to read. Some folks in the line ahead were drivers, helpers, servant maids for the pampered chosen ones who came later in the morning in their fancy cars, all dressed up to take the place of the servants who had slept on the pavement the night before and that showed you another face of Capitalism..

Have servant, you dont have to wait on the pavement yourself. No servant, you have to!

The best part was the third glorious glimpse of capitalism from that very same pavement. This line of almost 300 people... wait, did we just read 300?

Yes. They would only allow 200 people in, but 300 would line up hoping that some of the folks in the line would be rejected for improper documents, stress burnout, sickness, servant reaching the gates before the real applicant, or the MISSING DD!!

Apparently all very common happenings on that line as another seasoned veteran of two attempts later explained to me while waiting inside.

There was one chap who was making a fortune using that line of people.

He had a large drum full of chai/Coffee loaded on the back of a bicyle. He also had bottles of "Bisleri" drinking water hanging from all sides of the plank that he had wedged into the carrier. Then there were magazines, cheetos, etc. all sold at premium pricing to the people who dare not leave the line.

Every now and then he would shout "eightfortydeedeethousandrupees, eightfortydeedeethousandrupeeeeeeeeesssssssss" just like they sell Idly and Vadai in the south Indian railway stations.

At first we did not understand what he was saying. Then we figured out that he was selling Demand Drafts taken in favor of the US Consulate for Rs. 840 with a nice markup. He was selling 840 rupees for 1000.

He would come close to us and say "Saar, DD irukka check pannu saar.. illena ulla vidamaatanga theriyum ille? 4 DD dhan baaki irukku"

(Sir, check if you have your DD.. if you dont have it, they won't let you in. You know that right? I have only 4 DD's left)

This was all round service. He must have made at least 3000 rupees in those 3+ hours with his enterprise. Now that is capitalism for you.

Chances are he is a CEO by now and he never had to sit on any pavement to get his Visa...

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What does one say?!

Adengappa is on the receiving end right now. I completely understand what he is going through!

He is receiving condolences, sympathies for being Indian, amazement that every Indian in the USA made it out of the Indian slums, etc.

This is not a new problem and it goes both ways. Eastern perception of the west or the Western perception of the east (trust me, my Chinese grad school buddies have told me similar stories and this is not just and India USA thing) have the same issues.

In case you are not following this yet, let me give you some case studies.

Mottai or Mundan : We went to India to celebrate my daughters first birthday. As is the south Indian custom, we had our daughters hair shaved off just before her first birthday. We do not give haircuts till sometime before the kid is 9 months old and the first hair cut is a total shave and the hair is offered to gods (usually done in a temple). Grandpa says this actually helps hair take better roots and there is some hair health secret behind this. Nevertheless...

We come back to the USA after the celebration. The kid is a little tired after all the travelling. A woman at the local grocery store is all sympathetic to her. I didn't get it initially and finally figured out that she thought my daughter had cancer and was going through some kind of Radiation treatment! Why else would a kid get its hair shaved off ?!

Women who don't believe in pre-marital sex : This might get me in hot water and you might say this is generalizing, but based on the limited sample size that I have encountered, there are a lot many desi students who show up in the USA who belive that the average American woman accepts pre-marital sex as the norm and are genuinely surprised to find that to be not true!

There are Indians who don't know English : Yeah, seriously.. there were a lot of Americans I have interacted with who thought that all Indians were fluent in English, were we well "versed" in Madonna and Michael Jackson Lyrics as they were with Vedas and Upanishads. After all, why wouldn't they?! All the Indians they encountered in school spoke fluent english. One professor even thought all Indians wore a "poonal" or sacred thread. That really was something. That meant all his previous grad students were Brahmins and no one told him that it was a very small subset of the population.

All Americans are well educated : Even beggars in America beg in English and by extension, they should all be well educated! If you think this is a joke, go take a survey in the potti kadais and barber shops of Chennai and you will see that this image holds true. Truth is far from it. In India speaking English is a sign of education. Here everyone speaks english (or American) and there are people here who cannot read and write fluently but they only speak the language. The public education system here today is no different from the state of "corporation" schools in TamilNadu in the early eighties and people are just about to start chanllenging and changing this system.

Every Indian has visited the Taj Mahal : Just like the Eiffel tower shows up in the window in every hollywood movie that is supposedly shot in Paris, every desi is supposedly been to the Taj. This is almost something taken for granted by Americans. I am yet to visit the Taj Mahal and it is something to be "rectified". I also happen to have travelled the USA a lot more than the average American! Know a lot of Californians who have never visited New York or Washington DC! Seriously, I kid you not! Both India and the USA are large countries and not everyone in these countries has visited every national monument, tourist attaction, and yet.....

All Indians write software,

All Americans own guns and are trigger happy,

All desis are cheap and go to India everytime they need a root canal

etc. etc.

and the list goes on...

All Americans are war mongers : This one joined the list in 2003 after the Iraq invasion.

All of India is a slum : this has just recently joined the list, after Slumdog

There will be many more additions to the list over the coming years!

What does one do though, when faced with these situtations?!

Here is a tip. Do not laugh it off or try to be very witty. It usually does not go well in any situation in any country. Stereotyping is not something that was invented in this century. It has been happening for millenia!

Fifteen odd years ago, I made a remark that went something like "let me do the Indian rope trick or get on my elephant and go find out for you.." and it really rubbed the other person the wrong way! When I found out that the other person really believed that sterotype and the history books in China actually teach them stuff about India in a certain way, I was horrified.

Today's history and geography books in the east and west are probably teaching the kids a view of the other side that is not entirely true. Recently heard on the radio that there is less than 18 pages of total material in history and geography texts in the US about China. That is right, 18 pages for 3000+ years of history! Equally sure that the 200+ years of American modern history is seen as something that doesn't count as history in the true sense of the world. Yet an American very close to me taught me that it is not the number of years of civilization that matters, but what has been accomplished in those years. We would have arguments and he would come up things like "it took you guys almost 400 years to get Independence from the Brits and we did it in 200" and that would send me scurrying to the history books.

The best way to deal with it is to explain in a short sentence that their belief is not supported by real data and leave it at that. Remember, if you are visiting another country, you DO represent your country. Even if you have changed Citizenship, this still happens and you constantly end up reminding yourself and others of your nationality, and it doesn't get through!

As the world shrinks and communication is supposed to shrink it further as the years go by, we grow farther apart with myths and the blurred lines between real and real life which give us more organized sterotyping!

We can only hope for a better world, where more people are eager to learn about other cultures and do get to learn the truth, by traveling as opposed to a jaundiced and censored lesson provided by the press, governments and movie houses!

Happy monday folks!

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Sexual Harassment

Recently took a course at work on the topic. Have taken many a course on workplace ettiquette, sexual harrassment etc. over the last decade (especially after they made it mandatory), but this was the first time we had a lawyer give us the course (and there was no paper exam!, but a spot quiz)

It was interesting to see the range of subjects covered, especially the case studies. It was almost a course on law itself, from the legal point of view, how we would think something is "suing" material, while it is not and other things we would not think are worth suing over which really are etc.

For the most part I was going "come on. no one in their right mind would do something like that." or "this sounds so far fetched. why do you have to lecture us on this stuff", to the borderline "duh! I have been working in the US either at School or industry for all these years and have never encountered anything like this" etc.

The lawyer told me that all the stuff he showed are examples of things that HAVE happened! Just could not believe it.

On an afterthought, I must have been blessed in a previous life not to have seen any of that stuff around me.

Thank god for small favors, or big favors!

The one other thought that won't leave my head?

In this day and age, women in America still go through this for real! Somehow cannot get around that. Words fail me!

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A few thoughts....

Here are some thoughts, that spring to mind after reading the news today.

The American view of a tolerant country is equated with "loser" or "pushover". That is the reason why they really don't understand the concept of Non-Violence.

In America, guns settle things. Be it in old westerns, Chuck Norris movies or the real world, the Marines will take on any problem and where they land, there will be order established! This thought seems to be deeply implanted into most young Americans that I know (not that I know a lot of them, but the statistic is showing high probabilities!).

Also, anyone who suggests taking to guns in haste is not a good thing gets branded as a "Pu$$~", "Wimp" etc. That is the same reason why Obama gets negative ads. when he suggests diplomacy and is exactly the same reason why India is dished out crap by the US Government and there is all this "Pakistan is a victim" stuff we see in the US Media.

There is also a tremendous positive bias for Pakistan in the US Media and at best a feeling of neutrality towards India. The people we interact with daily seem to share a better sentiment of India than the media. Do not understand this.

There is also a TV program that played here every saturday, Namaste America! We stopped watching that a long time ago, because we seriously thought it was funded by Pakistan. It would always put India in bad light to an American audience. No Indian channel worth its salt would put out a "news" program that ran like an ISI infomercial!!

It is a free country out here. Except the microphones are placed in front of certain folks and of course, the loudest voice wins!

It would be really ironic that these "American Voters" would be talking to their representatives to "do something" about "India Vitimizing? Pakistan" in a few months.

When it is time to sell the next load of B15's C15's or F15's or whatever as part of the next wave of improving the American economy, downloading unnecessary weapons to unstable nations and making new foreign policy to strengthen America's ties with "its allies", killing all birds in one stone, the "informed voters" will support the worthy cause, eventhough they don't get 70 virgins for their actions!

Now,that was the cynic in me rearing his ugly head again.

What every Indian or Indian supporter needs to do right now is to undo what the media is doing. If you are an Indian go take over the press! Be a fresh voice. Go do the Mera Bharat Mahan thing, for real!

If you support India, spread awareness on what the real India is like, what real Indians are like, tell people what it meant, means and possibly will mean to be part of the Indian experience.

There are a lot of people I deal with everyday who associate India with the following words:

India =
(
East;
Taj Mahal;
elephants;
british;
rope trick;
raj kapoor;
Gandhi;
Delhi;
himalayas;
poor;
hindoo language;
religious tension;
)

That is their sum total understanding of a country of a billion plus people who have been around in that location for 4000+ years!

So, please sit with the folks and add more words to their idea of what is India. You will be doing the country a great service, and India needs more of this, now more than ever!

A country with a billion plus Ambassadors to the world, with the right message can drown out any, if not all of the negative smear tactics that the media can come up with.

Just my two cents...

ps. We were actually out in Sacramento, spending time at the zoo. The kids were promised a trip for the last two weeks and it was high time we made a trip, to anywhere! Will post pictures tomorrow. The animals co-operated very well for the photos, when the kids disappointedand vice versa, and it was a great day to be outdoors in the Sacramento area...but the thoughts kept going back to Mumbai and Chennai where my parents have to pretty much row out of their house.

pps. In case you haven't heard it in the news, (I am sure you haven't) Chennai is the new Venice!

ppps. Found Sidin's post very touching, very fateful!
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Aaalum Velum palluku urudhi

What does that mean?

(it means that your teeth get stronger if you brush it with twigs from certain trees .. Pipal/Neem to be more specific)

You see, people in the villages in south India used to use twigs from these trees to brush their teeth. Western medicine has finally caught up with the twigs and rumor has it that there are neem farms in Florida where medical research is coming up with neem extracts for curing gum diseases. Now, that is one instance of a natural product that helps dental care. But there are other issues with this.

I tried brushing with a neem branch when I was 5 or 6 years old and did more damage to my teeth than good! While the chemicals in the neem twig are medicinal, twigs are pretty rough on the teeth and gums. Colgate and Binaca toothpaste (or Margo Neem soap for that matter) made it the best of both worlds! As you have probably figured out by now, this post is going to do a 270 degree turn and veer far from the neem twig freeway!

If you are a regular of this blog, you probably know that it sticks 80% to "a naturalized American from India, raising kids in the USA", "how to get the best of both worlds", "how to deal with the worst from both worlds" , etc.. and the other 20% is posts on events that affect the blogger and his family like Bailouts, Voting, travel issues etc.

By now, you have also heard me complain that there is a blatant double standard imposed on Indians who live abroad for the most part, by telling them that they have no right to say anything that could be interpreted as negative. Apparently only people who "live with the problems" can say "where is the problem?" or "we have a problem", and it is some kind of right that has been "earned"!

Now what has this got to do with "Aaalum Velum..."?

This phenomena of "you don't live here anymore, so go mind your business" is true of anyone who leaves a place to go live elsewhere, and is one of those Anthropology things for all I know, and chances are, there are detailed paragraphs in Manu sastra which tell you about this!

Sarcasm apart, my dad tells me that when their family left the village to come settle in Madras (this was 60 odd years ago), they would get the same treatment when they mentioned things like "antibiotics", western medicine (vaccinations), etc. when they went back to the villages and they would see people die of causes that had preventive cures in the City!

They would get the "aalum velum pallukku urudhi" lecture, blown to extraordinary proportions from the guys who never left the village.

It was just funny to see the problem is a universal one (the people, the settings, the issues may be different) which has nothing to do with George Bush, Oil Wars, American Capitalism, Indian culture, etc. etc. All those are just detractors used to argue the "Protectionist" logic. (If I find a good book that deals with this subject, will let you know. Worse case, when I finally retire, tired and broke, a long time from now, will write a book on this topic with the same title as this post and hopefully make some money! After all, universal topics have great readership.)

Fast forward to thirty years ago! Similar things happened to my FIL who decided to graduate from IIT Madras, and go settle in Bombay because he got a really good job there, where he felt he made a difference. He got married to a Tamizh girl, they had San while they were in Bombay and when he would come back to Madras and tell people of how things are "done differently in Bombay" and seem to work for the better, he would get a different version of "Aaalum Velum..." except this time the reasons would be tradition, Tamizh culture, lack of Agraharams in Bombay etc. etc.

Now fast forwarding to the last 13 years or so (ever since my first trip back to India after coming to the USA to study), the same thing happens to me. I get that same "you are an outsider" treatment (this has been irrespective of F1/H1B/Green Card/Citizenship). All I am allowed to do is send money to repent for making that choice to go abroad to study, then work, then raise a family, be some kind of emotional punching bag for the near and dear ones when they see all their problems, as being due to the most energetic person in the family, not being around to do all kinds of errands, from getting Pachchai Milagai from the local grocery store to standing in line for Milk coupons.

Even got a lecture once along the lines of "sundaram, viralukku eththa veekam dhan daa irukkanum.." (Sundar, a finger should only swell to the right size.). What is implied is that if one finger in a hand grows too long, then either the finger has to be cut or the whole hand is to be cut as it will become useless. The translation was, that the average family wanted me to be an average guy so I fit in. So any suggestions to change anything would be considered as a finger too long!

Things have changed a lot, now that everyone in the family has visited the USA or some other country over the years and the advent of the internet penetrating the households. These days I even get sympathy from family when people misunderstand me, things in the USA, how somehow I am responsible for all of GWB's actions, the Iraq war, rising prices etc. They somehow understand that my getting to vote and voting for Obama is taking a stand for issues! At least the ones who understand correct the ones who don't.

Us vs. Them is not a new concept. It has existed for ages, be it in the east or west or anywhere else for that matter, with a varying demographic segment!

Used to end a lot of conversations with "the world is shrinking!". Do not know if it is shrinking or just segregating into a lot of little pockets, like milk that curdles in front of your eyes or blood cells that segregate into little pockets on a slide when the CSI agent puts that special reagent on them, each drop unable to merge with its nearest neighbours*.

Do not know what my girls will go through a few decades from now. What will be the centerpoint of the argument over which they will be taking sides? What will be their choices? Will have to live and see where all this is going.

For the interim, the blogger and this blog are doing to take a resolve to increase the % of lighter side of life posts. It is better to have face to face discussions with folks.

The internet seems to be a wrong medium for a lot of topics.

See you all around!

For now, this blog takes a break from seriousness.

*In 1993, an undergrad student complained to my department head asking that I be warned for using the word "neighbour" when I corrected his Materials 101 exam! He was apparently offended by my spelling and his claim was that he was studying in an American University and he did not have to be corrected on his answer with a "British" spelling. So much for Us vs. them!

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