Moments

(You know you're Indian when...you see the title of this post as a pun :)

My friend Shubha, aspiring writer and fellow graduate student, has made a respectable profession out of the traditional feminine talent of prying into people's closets and unearthing skeletons, ostensibly claiming them as inspiration for her literary pursuits. In one of our lengthy discussions on such literary forensics, she claimed that one essential part of the desi immigrant experience is the necessity of having to shorten or otherwise mutilate one's name to make it more friendly for the American tongue.

I don't quite agree that shortening names is necessarily a response to the immigrant situation. I think Santa (Santashil) has been called that way before he came to the US, so has Soups (Supramanya).

My case is even more unique. My actual name (Rajarshi -- if you didn't know) is SO uncommon even in India, I'm used to hearing it massacred from the time my memory can lead me back to. Unfortunately, it's always been confused with a much more common female name 'Rajashri'. So I'm used to being gender mis-identified since childhood -- a traumatic experience for a male child, I assure you. Maybe that's the root of some of my gender issues, in hindsight :D

In junior college, I decided to de-emasculate myself and went under 'Raj', In college I was 'Bando'. These 'ridiculous' (in Shubha's terms) nicknames actually bring me more succour than the idea of having a transgendered name!!!

In fact, I am more comfortable having my name pronounced by Americans than fellow desis, because at least Americans bother to read the letters and pronounce it MORE correctly than my compatriots!!!

This phenomenon turned out to have a dubious advantage, from the early days of call-center outsourcing, I always could detect easily if the person at the other end of the 1-800 number was in India, regardless of accent. I'd spell out my first name. The American would accept the spelling. The Indian would go for pronouncing it, and invariably end up with the wrong gender!!!! And we'd end up having a nice conversation and quick service :)

In my opinion, it reflects on less on the American acceptance of foreign names -- I am very satisfied with Americans on that particular account -- and more on the Indian (in particular, Bengali) tendency towards long-winded 'meaningful' names, often for no other reason than keeping up with the Mukherjees next door, who have fondly christened their only issue something like Shoumoshubhrorobirajkumar Mukhopadhyay. Poor kid, nobody from any other part of India is gonna think he's a guy -- "Soumya?" and his American nickname -- 'Homo'. How do you deal with that - neither the right gender nor sexual orientation!!

My favourite piece of advice to Indian couples in America expecting babies -- tell me what name you're thinking of and I'll tell you what your kid's gonna get called in high school. I think I've saved a lot of children from fates worse than death :D

To top it all: here's the name of Naureen's child (just turned a year old): Nishant Mikhail Dash. Deja vu? Read previous post...

I read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake about a year-and-half ago, during winter break in NYC. Looooovvved it.
Dying of excitement and anticipation for the movie version. Here's Kal Penn's blog about the shooting of the upcoming film, directed by Mira Nair.

I've always had mixed feelings about Lahiri's writing. 'Interpreter of Maladies' may have won a Pulitzer, but I always felt that at least part of the book was not sincere. The stories set in India (the 'Buri ma' story for instance) seemed to have been drawn on traditional hand-me-down stereotypes of the country, and reinforcing them seemed to be pandering to the orientalist instincts so typical of western critics.

However, this book was different. Maybe it was the time period, I'd already been in the US for 4 years when I read it, maybe that made a difference. But Lahiri takes the traditional immigrant and 2nd-generation experience and transforms into a epic saga across generations. What drew me into the book was not its literary merits (though they must exist, if it was so effective!), but the feeling that it was simply infused with sincerity. She seems to be writing 'from the heart'. The conflicts across generations and cultures was captured effectively and with empathy for every character.

At the risk of appearing prudish, I must say I'm a bit sceptical and annoyed by a lot of 2nd-generation art which expresses the ABCD experience by drawing a big black line between ABCD and FOB characters ('American-Desi', 'Where's the Party Yaar?' etc). While I do enjoy the humour to a greater extent than most, I just don't understand the (universal?) tendency of a social minority to stand up for themselves by bashing another less empowered minority!

But the Namesake was different, all its main characters (Nikhil Gogol Ganguly, his parents) were fully developed characters instead of being reduced to caricature. The traumatic immigrant experience of grasping at cultural straws of family, festivals, friends while being swept away by torrents of surrounding alien culture is depicted well; the 2nd-generation experience of cultural schizophrenia between home and the world is of course, the central theme of the book.

I have heard criticism of the book on the counts that it depicts the central protagonist's parents in stereotypical fashion, as clueless immigrants who are insensitive to cultural transformations around them, as well as the diverse needs of their children. It is unfortunate but true, it is a monumental task to adjust to a different culture, and an incomprehensible one to be a parent after that, and not too many parents possess the skills and understanding to handle the job. But I usually tend to absolve 2nd-generation authors from the responsibility of depicing the immigrant experience accurately, after all, they have their own internal culture war to fight.

In a recent insight, I feel that another reason that I (and many of my fellow graduate student friends) fell in love with the book was the trivial-looking fact that the protagonist, Nikhil is male. A surprising fraction of western readers, even highly educated ones, hold somewhat anachronistic stereotypes of Indian society, treating all Indian women as victims and all Indian men as perpetrators of violence and gross injustice. The western media definitely shares a large portion of the culpability for these. It has been all too easy for Indian authors, especially women, to play to those stereotypes with yet another conflicted, abused woman lead, which the enlightened western reader loves to sympathize with and reward with literary laurels. I find it courageous of Lahiri to have avoided that path, perhaps forsaking yet another award.

Well, the most important thing was that there were big chunks of the book I read and took a gasp and told myself, 'OMG, this is ME!' What bigger compliment can a book hope for?

The gay pride parade was yesterday! Attended it out of sheer curiosity, it was quite a spectacle! Ok, I understand that it was not quite San Francisco, but hey, this is Texas. The supposedly conservative, homophobic home state of the one and only George W. The fact there is even a parade happening should shock north-easterners and Californians outta their wits!

The website for the thing is http://www.pridehouston.org/. Impressive list of sponsors: Bud light (!), starbucks, chase, clearchannel and what have you. Gives me hope for gay rights in the US. Whodathunkit?

It was definitely wonderful to see all those people out there, the gay, lesbian, and even lotsa families with kids all rainbowed and cheering and having a good time. Lots of really hot-looking chicks too but then (WARNING: I'm-so-single rant about to commence) the GAY pride parade is definitely not the right place for a single straight guy looking for action. Just my luck :(

REFLECTION: 5 years ago in India when I'd nae idea of what any of the letters in GLBT stood for, or the attached concepts, to me cheering my lungs out for a bunch of rainbow-clad floats. Hmmm...things change, I guess.

Been reading this book over the last week "1421: The year China discovered America" after hearing about it on Sepia Mutiny. Talks about a Chinese marine expedition which circumnavigated the world between 1421-23, about a 100 years before Magellan got the idea. Bloody Portuguese cheats! :)

The book makes a lot of claims, and is written in a very Erich von-Daniken style. For those who don't know, Daniken was a mid-20th century author who was a proponent of the aliens-came-down-and-built-pyramids theory i.e. every major architectural achievement of non-European civilizations was of course, impossible without alien help. Sorry, I'd take the Chinese over aliens anyday!

Well, the book demands some leaps of logic and suspension of disbelief, and is probably only partially correct, but is a great page-turner. At the end of it all, I am glad that someone has the guts to be provocative and challenge the traditional Euro-centric views of history. Contributions of other civilations need to be recognized and acknowledged.

Listening to 'Brimful of Asha' by Cornershop as I'm writing this in the radio station. 'Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow...'. Sigh, tell me about it...

R