Where Indians Stare!

You are busy buying groceries in an Indian store and you get this feeling that you are being “watched”. You manage the uncomfortable feeling for a bit. But then it gets really annoying and you suddenly realize that you are picking up green chilies instead of cucumbers. You take a deep breath, straighten yourself and find the courage to turn around and finally look in to the eyes of the enemy…who in this case turns out to be an Indian lady in her late 40’s. And then it dawns on you that you are in an Indian grocery store and that there is no concept of privacy or “personal space” in here. It’s like you’re at a family function where someone just spread the rumor that you did something really disgraceful to the family and the community, and suddenly everyone starts looking at you like a culprit.

I have noticed this a lot in US, or maybe I have only started noticing this in the US and it always used to be the case. But one favorite hobby of many Indian males and females is to stare at people and not even feel bad about it. Sometimes I think that they are just curious, or rather too curious, but then you meet people who don’t even blink while they are staring at you knowing very well that you are looking at them intermittently to signal them to stop. And when you really want to walk up to the person and smack him/her and say “Stop staring you idiot and continue with what you really came here for. The nurse is calling your name and you can meet the doctor now!”…and the person gives you a naïve smile as if they were just born and can’t understand a word you’re saying. Arrgh!

And then there are those Indian restaurants where people wait inside the restaurant to be seated coz all the seats are taken and you are one of the lucky ones who made a reservation knowing this will be the case and are enjoying your food. This is the basically the worst place to be according to me. People will look at you as if you did a crime by making a reservation, and don’t even deserve to be there. Or some families with kids will go to the extent of saying to their hungry children “Bete jab us table wale uncle-aunty khana kha lenge tab humko table milegi aur hum khana khaenge. Bas thodi der aur” (Son, when the uncle-aunty sitting on that table have finished their food, we will get that table. Just hold on for a few more minutes). Then they will look at you and give you that naïve smile, while their kid will be wishing to god that you finish soon. Yeah rite, so now we are family and I’m supposed to feel sorry for that hungry kid for what is clearly your mistake? And where the hell is that moronic waiter who pointed at our table and told these people that they will be sitting here next?

In many Indian restaurants in the US, I feel, they give special attention to Non-Indians. It’s like we Indians are always going to come there no matter what and wouldn’t complain much or we “will understand”. It’s always some reason or another to ignore us. My wife and I had been to this south Indian restaurant last week. When we got to the restaurant on a Thursday evening, we were the only ones there. We figured at least we will get a good service. So a lady wearing a traditional Indian sari walks out of the kitchen and asks us where we would like to sit. We choose a table and settle down. The lady is just handing over the menu’s to us and was about to ask us something, when another couple walks in. And in the next 10 mins, 5 tables are full. Each of the table had couples and two of the tables had an Indian dude with a non-Indian Caucasian female (whom Indians living in India love to call ‘foreigners’). Initially, I thought that it was just a coincidence that the lady was attending to the 2 special tables. But later, as she was taking our order, the dude from one of the special table just looked at her and she immediately tells us “1 minute” and walks over to the other table. And before we know it, she is running to the kitchen and comes back with their dish personally serving it to them. Umm…ok! Weren’t we the first ones to come in? Basically, this continued for the rest of the time we were there, and she hovered around those two special tables a little too annoyingly close.

I sometimes don’t understand this treatment of Indians by our own people, but what do you say? Most people would listen to you and ignore, others would listen to you nod their head in all directions so you think they got you, and then they will ignore, still others will agree to you apologize to you, and wait till you walk a few feet away, and say “Indian hai lekin apne aap ko american samajhta hai” (Indian who thinks he’s an American). I know I sound like Ludacris from the movie crash, but hey, what can I say, I’m an Indian.

Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5…

I’m not one of those people who love to get in to these so called social networking sites. I frankly think it’s a waste of time. But of late many of my friends and family have insisted that I join “their” network and share my views thoughts etc and check out their photos. No offense to any of them, but I don’t see the point in broadcasting my views, messages, photos to everyone out there. Whatever happened to good old emailing each other and talking to friends over the phone? I know one response I often get is “yea, but what if your friends and family are in different countries and all of you want to stay in touch with each other?” Well, whatever is the reason, everyone these days is on one social network or another. Some of the networks have scraps, some have tweets, some have messages, some have “what are you thinking” or “what’s on your mind”…I mean come on people… what’s on my mind? And that’s not all, once you’re “in the network”, you can always find old friends, classmates, college mates, old girlfriends, group of people who share your hobby, group of people who live in the same country, city, area as you, who watch and like the same shows as you, who follow the same presidential candidate as you, who follow the same game team as you do, who just want to make new friends and the possibilities are endless. My point…does anyone have time for all this in your day-to-day routine? I mean, I agree that I’m not a people’s person but doesn’t this go beyond “staying in touch”?

I’ve also heard from a few friends that on some sites which let anyone see your “scraps” and photos there have been some morons who stop-by just to look at the pictures and then leave inappropriate messages or comments on them just for fun. So you see there are some disadvantages of always being “in network”. As if there are less creeps out there in the world, that now you give them an easier way to find you. Then a few months back there was this supposedly big news that a lot of senators and congressmen and congresswomen have joined the new generation networks (thanks to Barak Obama’s election campaign tactics to get the younger crowd). John McCain is on Twitter, and so are numerous other politicians (you can find the list here). Um okay, so other than pointing fingers at the opposition party members, not figuring out a way to solve the economic crisis, wanting the President to fail and not doing anything for your constituents and states and cities; you now have time to tweet / scrap whatever the hell it is you do? I mean who cares? Just do the job you were elected or appointed to do that’s all anyone asks of you and save the people you were elected / appointed for from losing their hard earned money. You don’t answer their questions anyway and just want to broadcast your message to a broader audience. We get it…now move on!

And as if it wasn’t crowded enough with the politicians, there are now many television and movie artists on to this too. Do we really want to tell everyone every minute of what we are doing, where we are and what’s on our mind? I know I don’t. Don’t the politicians have news reporters and actors paparazzi on their back every second anyway? And what’s the craze about. I can understand school and college students doing this, because they have a lot of time on their hands and don’t know what to do. But that’s not the case with people who work right? Even on the TV you can find programs and reporters showing their TV viewers what’s going on in the twitter circuit or what messages they got on facebook. Huh? And as if all of these “people and celebrities” weren’t enough even MnM Chocolate candies have their own facebook page with more than 4000 fans, not to mention TV channels themselves like NBC and CNN.

All this networking and the need to know everything at every time of the day does have one good output though. Whenever you take a break from all this communication craziness and spend some real time with friends and family face-to-face, you will enjoy every minute of it. Or will there ever come a time when we would be satisfied with meeting our friends and family only on these networks, exchange a few thoughts, photos and get on with our over communicative lives?

I take offense!

I was reading about Fareed Zakaria on Wikipedia this morning, and then moved on to his web-site (www.fareedzakaria.com ) to read about the books written by him and then on to the reviews about his new book “The Post-American World” on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I haven’t read the book, but after reading one of the reviews, I was furious about the stupid views this person has of India and the way he was stating them as if they were a known fact or something. I understand that every country has its flaws and so does mine, but being an Indian, I also take pride in my country and will not tolerate offensive statements about it; especially if they are totally rubbish. To give you a taste of what made me so pissed off, here’s part of the review from Amazon

“The most outlandish assumption made by the book is that the US will no longer be a dominant force in world politics, being replaced by India and China. India? With it's delapidated airports, crumbling roads, vast slums and impoverished villages. The India with containing several Nigerias within it? India, with 300 million people living on less than one dollar per day? India, home to 40% of the world's poor and the country with the second highest population of HIV-positive people? That India is going to be the country to take over the world? Huh? India, whose population goes down to a river to bathe? Yea, right, they are going to take over the world. Give me a break!

All you need to know about the author's agenda is that he is from India. That is why he proposes that India will take over the world.”


Now you get it? How can one not feel offensive about this crap? The reviewer is someone from Texas, who has this preconceived pre-independence view of a developing post-independence 21st century India. I also feel sorry for the illiterate reviewer because I have a feeling that this person has never left Texas or traveled abroad to either India or China for that matter. Either way, my response to the above review is

“Dilapidated airports of India? I agree that the airports in India are not the best, but based on a 2008 TripAdvisor survey (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/738684/Heathrow-voted-worlds-least-favourite-airport.html ), the two of the world’s least favorite airports in terms of ease of navigation, cleanliness of their restrooms and quality of their parking facilities were London’s Heathrow and Chicago’s O’Hare. Go figure! And India does not have the best roads in the world and there are still some villages that survive with dirt roads, but at least we are moving forward from no roads to roads. Do you know that American Society of Civil Engineers gave the roads in US a grade of D minus (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/politics/28projects.html?ref=us )? How’s that for some statistics? And did you know that based on the CIA world fact book statistics (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2003rank.html ) both Nigeria and India had a higher GDP – real growth rate % in 2008 than US, which was ranked at 179 just below Finland, Mexico and Belgium?”

I can go on and on with these numbers and grades, but the point is it’s very easy to demean a country and its people by portraying just its flaws but if you take historic markers in to context you get a better picture of where it was 10 years ago and where it is today. So let’s not get in to this nasty game of finger pointing because it only exposes the shortcomings of our respective countries. That said, I do take offense, and will always take offense whenever anybody demeans my country by stating false information.

May I have a seat?

I got in to the bus yesterday morning and usually it’s a little empty, but yesterday it was quite full. So I had to look at some faces, and figure out which one looks less grumpy early morning at 6:05am. So let’s see who do we have here…oh, a college student, nah…this early with a bad hairdo, looks like he hasn’t taken a bath…next…oh, a desi let’s…wait a minute, did he just give me a wide smile…this early…nah, will talk too much and I won’t be able to check out the news…next…American guy, well dressed and in his mid 50’s with a gray hairline reading a novel…so I ask “Excuse me! May I have a seat?” and suddenly the medium build guy who was sitting kind of laid back on one and a half seat and had his bag on the other half of the seat, straightens up looks at me, and gives me a dull, boring and basically disgusting look and just pulls his bag to himself. I feel a little uncomfortable and look around, but I’m basically in the end anyway, so I take a chance and take the seat.

The next 20 minute ride was the worst since I moved to this new locality about 9 months ago. The jerk, literally gave me a taste of racism against Indians…of course according to me that is. I’m pretty sure he is a nasty character in general. So, a few minutes in to the ride, I take out my iPhone and put my headphones on to see last night’s AC360 podcast. As soon as I start the podcast, he moves around in his place pushes his bag on me a little and sets himself comfortably on his seat disrupting me the whole time, and not once saying “sorry”. I give him a leeway (my mistake, I should have given him a piece of my mind instantly) assuming that maybe he had a bad start to the day. Next, he turns on the light above my seat and tries to pull it so it shines on his book. So let me get this, all this time when you were sitting alone, the light was bright enough, and now all of a sudden it has gotten so dark that you want to switch on my side of the light and turn it on your side? This is when I get it that he’s just trying to make my ride miserable, but I hold on and try not to puch him in the face…think Gandhi…think non-violence…but I just watched The Godfather series, and I really “want to make him an offer that he can’t refuse” but I control myself.

About 15 minutes in to the ride, the guy gets so frustrated with god knows what that he closes his book with a thud, loud enough to jolt me and make a few other guys on seats around look at our seat. And now I really feel a little humiliated and surprised that “what the F did I do?” Thankfully the bus comes to a halt at a stop and a guy sitting two seats in front of me all alone on his seat gets up to get off. I blurt out “Oh, Thank god!” and run to the seat that he left empty.

Today morning, I got on the bus, and found a few seats empty. So I go to one of the seats and see the same jerk sitting behind my seat. I see that he’s not reading any book today..aaha, I have Newsweek with me. I take a chance and sit on the seat in front of him and push my seat all the way back well aware that he is going to be uncomfortable. I hear him tussling and turning uncomfortably on his seat. I give it a few minutes, and then I switch on both the lights on my seats and turn it all the way back on me. I take out my Newsweek and iPhone. I then listen to songs on my iPhone while reading the magazine and all along making sure that I change positions constantly so the dickhead behind me is burning and irritated. After a few more minutes of silence and reading Fareed Zakaria’s article, I bang the Newsweek on my bag in a loud manner, which I hope jolted the guy and gave him a taste of his nonsensical and racist behavior from the day before. Take that you moron! The dialogue from the movie Troy plays in my head…(Achilles to Agamemnon) ”Before my time is done, I will look down on your corpse and smile!”. But after all of this revenge, all I felt was annoyed and miserable about my own behavior. How could someone be so rude to anyone, and start of his/her day like this?

What's in a gift?

If like me, anyone has been keeping an eye on the G-20 summit, you would have noticed that for quite some days now, the news media and tabloids all over America and England have been buzzing about "the gifts" that were exchanged between the President of United States and the Queen. And if that wasn't enough, there was some "anger and disappointment" over how the first lady of United States put her hand over the shoulder of the Queen. And no one ever does that. You know why? Because the Queen is "Royalty" and she has never had anyone put arm over her shoulder. Oh, thanks for telling us. Arrgh!

I mean come on guys, don't you have enough to handle with the general public in London protesting day in and day out, vandalizing public property and breaking glasses of bank buildings. All of a sudden you feel like you are watching the hooligan fans of Manchester united after their team lost an important game. After all of this, you still have time to waste air time and paper on these petty things.

So the President gave the Queen an iPod. Who cares? Did you want him to name a room of the white house in favor of the Queen? And I agree that the gifts might not be of great value to the people in England, but again, who cares? Why is it that every time someone does anything which is not considered "royal" by the British media, it becomes a big deal? Get a hold of yourself and move on. I don't see the Queen's office putting out statements that she is disappointed by the gift or that she did not like the first lady putting her hand over the shoulder. If Price William gives his grandmother an iPod, everyone goes..."oh, what a wonderful gift from a grandson to his grandmother", but if Obama does that, "Oh, how rude!"...blah..blah..blah..

And before this it was cribbing about the gift Obama gave to the British Prime Minister when he visited United States recently. I thought there was only one Royal family in England, but it looks like every citizen in England has a royal attitude to everything. I mean, one minute you are the rowdiest crowd in the whole world, and the next minute you are talking about "Royal Etiquette". Take a chill pill guys. And not everyone in the world is perfect in giving gifts. So what? It's the gesture that counts not what the value of the gift. So grow up. I mean, what's in a gift?

Auto Industry

So a few days back, I read the news that President Obama fired the CEO of GM. My instant reaction to this was…Finally! Way to go Mr. President! Since GM, Chrysler, and Ford have not been showing considerable improvement since receiving federal money from the government, I think this was a good step to tell the other two of the “Big 3” that you better get your act together otherwise you are next. However, when I turned on the news channels in the evening, I saw a lot of dissatisfaction among analysts and news anchors questioning how the President can decide who has to be fired from GM or any other auto company’s top ranks?

So now I’m thinking to myself, what if when AIG gave out their bonuses to its employees the President would have fired the AIG CEO Ed Liddy, would we have had the same reaction? I can understand that people in big firms who have taken the federal money, the stock market and other companies in trouble are afraid and skeptic of this action with the GM CEO. They think that the US government will soon start dictating other decisions in companies that took federal money. There is already a cap in place on executive salary in companies that received help. My view is – why not? You were in trouble and were about to shutdown, so some XYZ investor steps in and invests a lot of money in your company after taking more than expected heat for this decision. And now XYZ is telling you that you better take some actions otherwise I want my money back and I don’t care if you go bankrupt. So how does it matter if this XYZ is the US government? Once GM has enough money and it returns the federal money back, it can always start taking its own decisions and hire any Tom, Dick and Harry as the CEO again. At least now you have a goal to work towards.

I for one don’t agree with all the decisions taken by the Obama administrations but on this one, I’m with them. The Big 3 automakers have had way too much time, money and leeway with the previous governments and due to that they have become very sloppy and have spiraled down to their worst performance ever. If you can’t walk with the rest of the world on making cars of the future which are energy efficient and continue to make gas guzzlers that give 11 miles / gallon, who cares if you go bankrupt? I know there are a lot of employees working in these Big 3 manufacturing plants and they would feel otherwise, but we really have to ask ourselves that if we want to compete with Toyota, Honda and Nissan what do we have to do? The answer is pretty simple. Change the way you make your cars and make it for the common man who is under a lot of financial stress and burden to survive. Think about him when you design a car or a truck. Don’t for once think about the profit that you will make out of it. You have had way too many years to make all the profit that you wanted to, and you screwed up. So smarten up now!