I am soooo sick of this one!

Okay, so this one was just basically a bomb waiting to go off: I have been wondering recently about various (sort of and former) friends who live where they do because its safely "white." They tell me that they think their preferred neighbourhood  has good schools, where their kids "learn the national ethos", but frankly when I look at the Ofsted figures, these are the schools that do poorly for one key factor: diversity (read slowly: "good" Home county schools are "great because they are predominantly white").

And then it makes me question why we were ever "friends" at all? Was I their token "race" justification or proof against racism?

Its a bit worrying when you start wondering how racist your friends and lovers really are; and if they have been using you as their token for proving their non-racist credentials:  Kills all respect and affection, I promise you!

But the reason the proverbial cup runneth over tonight of all nights (is that WAAAY too many references pulled together in way too few words or its just me being too bookish?), is getting to the Times page and seeing the ultimate F&CKing cliche! Sigh! Really? Are we f*cking done?

How often do you see me - the brown Indian woman, and no apologies for the language - declaring that there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with white people because they think that Haiti's earthquake happened because Haitians made a pact with the devil? When do I expand that one statement to the general populace? But I guess that measured thinking is the requirement only of the "other" and the marginalised!

And when do we - as in the brown people - start using a single dumb statement as a point of explaining how stupid, prejudiced, backward, illiterate, prejudiced, white people were?
 
See my point? Generalisations are dumb! And prejudiced! And based on a lack of understanding. 

So when I see a headline talking of: "Millions Rush to Cleanse in Filthy Ganges" I want to scream! I want to point out to these little white/middle-class (and yes, believe me, few people who are not either/or get employed or consulted at the Times) insular shits that they need to get over themselves!

That poor brown people like me who think nothing of bathing in a "filthy river" think that "their" reverence for the queen and the royal family is just as  if not more idiotic! Hell, bathing in that filthy river gets me benefits post-mortem but you lot bow to a some human who is supposed to be greater than all others in the land WHY?  So WHY do modern, post-Enlightenment, educated, humans bow and courtesy to these "royals"? Frankly, I will bathe in that filthy river a million times before bowing/courtesying before a pathetic human who has no worth beyond their birth! And PLEASE tell me HOW the Brits can justify that reverence for the monarchy as any more rational and logical than the Hindu partaking of the Mahakumbh (and we are not even getting to religion here!)

One good reason I have always thought for never giving birth to a child on UK soil is that the top post in this country is hereditary! I mean WHAT sort of a loser accepts that as part of human development?  And as a life-long republican, I can't see the point of ever raising a child with that sort of absurd limitation.    But  of course, as the apparently enlightened Brit journo will tell you: certain kinds of "royalty" are okay: funny how the British press is quite happy to talk of their own and other European royalty in laudatory terms but of course anything nonwhite is "oppressive," "backward", etc, etc.  

So yeah, I am sick of this one!

I am SICK of getting the bloody colonial British take on India (and much of the world) over and over again.   And worse still: you know the Brit press's favourite "uncle Tom yes-life-is-so-great-out-here-coz-we-have-no-clue" British Asian take?  Get OVER it: most second and third generation British-Asians (immigrants in general) are people who have no clue about India or the general subcontinent! They don['t speak the language, don't know the traditions or history or literature. Their parents were often illiterate when they got to Britian/USA and hardly in position to talk of their "culture." The first city they often saw was not Delhi or Lahore or Dhaka but London or Manchester.  Its like having a random American be an "authority" on Britain simply because somewhere two or three generations ago, their parentage was Welsh or Scottish or English (funny just how much fun the Brits make of the Americans looking for their heritage but then have no qualms turning the lens the other way). 

Point being, this is not just about cultures as in east or west but also urban vs rural. I find a 3rd generation British-Asian from the midlands is more backward/conservative than a first generation Indian villager who went from a home without electricity to working for NASA in six years (thats IIT graduates for you!).  But that is the point for a different post.

It is the embedded, intrinsic colonial conceit that pisses me off. And I am not quite sure what it would take for the people who peddle it constantly to realise that the empire is over. And frankly such retrogressive headlines don't do any good: the balance of power is shifting. Grow up and deal with it!!!!!

PS: Not particularly erudite, I have to say, but this has been written at the spur of the moment and I am furious (not unusual). I try to not blog when I am angry, but today, I make an exception.

"In Praise of the Delinquent Hero" out now!

This is a good moment to plug a new anthology, How They See Us: Meditations on America, edited by James Atlas.

When I was asked to write for it some time back, I thought it was a good idea. After all, haven't the Americans been proclaiming their confusion about the reasons why so much of the world doesn't like them, or is disappointed, disillusioned, saddened by them, since 9/11? It seemed like a good moment to open a discussion about how the rest of the world sees the US of A. I had no idea who else would be included in the collection, but it seemed like a great opportunity.

Well the anthology is now out. And boy! Whoa! Some serious heavy hitters in there: Mourid Barghouti, Terry Eagleton, Alberto Fuguet, Luis Fernando Verissimo....and of course, the minnow: ME!

Needless to say, I am pretty chuffed!

More interesting for me than the actual publication however is the reaction the anthology is raising from the American press. After all, as a non-American writer, this is an amazing opportunity to observe American reactions in a specific context: a sort of intellectual petri-dish if you will.

Sadly however, the initial reviews of the anthology seem to confirm what I have long thought: that there is a small band of Americans who are interested in actually hearing what the non-Americans have to say. San Francisco Chronicle (even though they got my gender wrong) and the Publisher's Weekly seem to reflect that America (that is the one that I got to know during my years as a teenager in NYC and then as a university student at Brandeis). However, beyond this circle, most Americans don't care about the world beyond their borders (and as such are constantly surprised when that world doesn't agree with their own self-image).

I have also been reminded of a remark that Belgian friend made back at university about how Americans didn't get irony, especially by the WaPo review which ends by quoting Verissimo's piece. Did the reviewer really read that anecdote straight, without irony?

If so another anthology, and another, and another may well be in order!

Lessons of 2009 (Part II): Amazing Friends Equal Happiness

A couple of months ago, in the midst of massive personal upheaval, I commented to my sister that I was extremely fortunate to have so many exceptional people love me! Her response, rather predictably, was to thank me for thinking her exceptional.

So I clarified: "Actually, I am speaking of my friends. Family has no choice but to love me." (Further note: My sister did make a very good point that the above is not quite true. A lot of families are unhappy enough and feel no need or motivation to love each other).

But getting back to the point: 2009 was the year of learning just how many extraordinary people form part of my life. For most part, they have very little in common with each other - except me. This was highlighted when we were at a house party over my birthday: my friends didn't necessarily know each and shared even less. They were drawn from different parts of the world and hold wildly divergent interests, political ideas and world views.

Lets be honest: a dance school owner, a clown, a banker, a terrorism expert and a bar owner have very little in common, although it does sound like the opening line of a long, complicated joke. And yes, that is just a cross-section of those who travelled from around the globe to be at my birthday.

I have thought about it a great deal since that party and finally realised that despite the overt differences, my friends share one thing in common: their incredible passion for life and their insistence on living each moment of it. Not one of them follows rules set by others nor tries to conform to what is expected of them by social norms. It is a tougher way to live as they often fight harder for what they believe, have more complex (and often unachievable) ambitions, and always inhabit liminal spaces regardless of the company they keep and societies they live in. And yet, they would have it no other way, choosing over and over again to live their lives on the "tip of the rabbit's fur" (to paraphrase Jostein Gaarder).

They are extraordinary not only because they are deeply loyal and caring, but also because they are good at nurturing others' ambitions and dreams. No matter how outrageous the ambition, or how far the goal, none of them ever seems to voice a doubt. Instead each wild idea provokes gales of laughter and then a determined attempt to see how the person chasing it can be supported.

Before this all begins to sound too happy-shiny-people-y, let me point out that none of this means their lives are perfect. Indeed far from it! Living at the tip of the rabbit's fur seems to mean making more and crazier mistakes to learn from, and falling lower and harder and far more often than those who live safer, more conformist lives. Despair when it strikes one of us seems deeper and darker than for most others, and perhaps because of it, happiness is also shinier and brighter than others.

An acquaintance told me some years ago that she found just hearing about my life exhausting. Looking back at 2009, I realise just how much living my friends have packed into a single year. Not surprisingly, anyone without the same passion for living each moment seems to fall quickly by the wayside: partners, lovers, and new friends who are initially attracted by energy and passion often find the pace tiring. Worse still, I am beginning to realise that far too many people choose emotional safety even if it means stagnation and misery over taking chances and living fully. Yet when one of us meets a partner or friend with the same kind of passion, they quickly become part of our lives, linked not by any shared interest but by what my sister once termed the "wooo-hooooo" factor (as in the ability to go through life as if on a perpetual exciting rollercoaster)

My mother says that lots of people like grabbing the tail of a comet but they can't last the ride. 2009 made me realise my friends are like those comets. We all have different paths and trails, and we don't always manage to be in the same country, or same life-path to be able to connect except very briefly. On the other hand, there is always a mutual recognition of eachother's blazing paths. And there is an instinctive respect for our shared ability to embrace life - no matter what it holds - regardless of the risk and and pain. Perhaps, thats why we stay friends.

And for that, I am very grateful.