Of good and bad neighbours

It appears I am in the lonely minority of those who do not see Pakistan as The Enemy or last night’s India-Pak semi as The Match. I am also surprised at the strength of the India-Pak rivalry because I had genuinely thought it had died down. It turns out it was just me.

I admit I used to get caught up in the India-Pak fervour when I was younger. As one of my Brit friends pointed out, it’s only right to hate your neighbours as they do the French. Later, though, I began to feel that if there were to be an ‘us vs. them’, Pakistan counts more as an ‘us’. After all as brown-skinned developing nations, we are all kind of in the same boat and it’s been my principle to support India first and our immediate neighbours next in cricket ever since.

Yes, even Pakistan. Considering that for most of us in this generation, Partition is a distant memory from another time, it seemed weird – and racially obsequious – to abhor Pakistan but not England, our erstwhile colonial master, and I would say instigator of the India-Pak rivalry in the first place. Overall, though, much of that happened decades ago and we should be over it. We can’t hate Pakistan for something that happened decades ago any more than we can blame England for all our economic woes (as we tend to do).

Moreover, I think governments and the policies of their secret service (if it is indeed true that the secret service is funding terrorist attacks in India) should be distinguished from regular people. For me, Pakistan is about regular people and when I have encountered these, they seem quite similar to myself, and don’t condone random acts of violence.

I know that 26/11 changed things. It hardened the stance of even moderate people like my own friends because it was so close to home. But I refuse to let it harden me, not because I live abroad (I have enough love for and stake in Mumbai to weep over its misfortunes) but because that is exactly what those who planned the whole horrible thing wanted. And I refuse to let them win. But also, I just don’t believe in my heart of hearts that the average Pakistani is sitting around thinking horrible thoughts about how Indians should all be dead. I just think that most people have better things to do. I do read that the fundamentalists are gaining ground in Pakistan but I wonder if we have reached the situation where we can call every single Pakitani a monster. Call me naïve.

If I hate anyone, it’s fundamentalists in any form. I am as unforgiving of the terrorists who held people hostage in Mumbai as those who went on a killing spree in Gujarat in 2002. I don’t group these people as Hindus, Muslims or whatever. I group them as the crazies, and us. Sometimes I wonder if it’s time for the moderate to take up arms, like the crazies. But then I realize we’ll just be the crazies ourselves.

Back to cricket though. While I agree that rivalry is fun and it’s even more fun to compete against one’s neighbours (like the English and the French do), because of the very real problems in neighbourliness facing India and Pakistan, it’s not all in good fun. It’s not just about cricket and people actually believe that Pakistanis are the enemy who need to be defeated in other areas too. And that’s why I, at the risk of being a spoilsport, think those of us who are sane should not be joining the chorus of those baying for Pakistani blood, on the cricket field or elsewhere.

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Looking glass

A few weeks ago, I went to a lecture by a visiting writer.* And I got chatting with a professor who had struck me as quite a nice guy when I had first met him but on further inspection it appeared that he conformed to the general tradition in literary circles which is to appear all free-and-easy while actually being just a dreadful intellectual show-off (hmm, I am probably guilty of this myself though in a lesser degree). There was also another professor there who was all tattooed and pierced and thus seemingly boho but with a penchant for namedropping the books he had read and making the odd snarky remark.

I realised that academics, even the younger ones in the English department, are as likely as anyone else to become so circumscribed in their field that they lose all sense of how it is a mere drop in the ocean of life in general, and probably not even a very relevant drop.

And then it hit me that this probably says something about the nature of me and not them. Because I am the one who can unfailingly step out of situation, even one which I personally enjoy, and see it for what it is to the outside world. Maybe this is why I am meant to be a generalist journalist.

For example, I wrote so many articles about the wine industry when I was with the newspaper that people began to regard me as something of a wine expert myself (a myth I always was quick to deflect). But I did consider that I could make it a specialization of it and do very well as a wine journalist. The reason I didn’t pursue it further was because that would have meant never being able to step out of that world, having to commit to it and believe in it as something worth devoting considerable time to. And I really think that interesting as wine and the growing industry it is part of is, there is a limit to how much one can and should go on about what is essentially a beverage.

The same goes for fashion. At one point in my life – don’t laugh, when I was a teenager – I aspired to be a fashion journalist. Ok, the fact is that I am hardly fashionable enough to be a fashion journalist (though this does not stop many fashion journalists) but also I would just not be able to talk in revered tones about something that is essentially superficial. Great fun and very pretty no doubt, but essentially and literally, a frill in the great story of life. I would always have something of a deprecatory air which might go down something like the smirk did in The Devil Wears Prada.

On the other hand, I can be in public relations because it is honest about being faff. PR people are not expected to believe in what they’re doing, they are just expected to make sure others do. Which has a nice ring of honesty to it in an oxymoronic way.

At heart though I think I’m just a journalist.

*Why do speakers at these events persist in using photographs of themselves as much younger and more attractive people than they are in the promotional posters? It’s not like they are drawing people in by their smouldering sexiness anyway. Not if they’re authors of some obtuse biography anyway. Which I shall now read because she made it sound damn interesting but that’s besides the point. I would have gone to the talk regardless of her photograph, and a more realistic photograph might have saved me the double-take when I walked in.

The Mother Goddess

Recently a girl I knew in school who I had lost touch with until she added me on Facebook (ha!) tagged me on some note with a whole lot of random people. I thought it was a mistake and didn’t bother to even read it, until someone mentioned something about Mother’s Day and then I realised that she had tagged all her friends who are mothers.

It was something about how mothers are amazing angels and don’t get enough appreciation. All true, and I would have no hesitation in applying it to my mom. (I also went into a slight panic about not wishing my mom who is quite sentimental about being wished on Mother’s Day but it turned out to be the usual confusion of church’s Mother’s Day vs the international one. So I’m safe for now.)

I somehow felt quite unworthy of such lofty sentiments being applied to me. Not because I have any anxiety about how good a mother I am. I am over that. I am probably not going to be the world’s best mother but neither am I going to be the worst. I am just going to be the best mother I can be. And I keep working on this every day.

However, I don’t feel – at least now – deserving of any gratitude from my son. (Okay, I do think I deserve diamonds for the pain I went through in labour but he can buy me those later given he is just a baby and all now.) But in terms of everything I am doing to look after him now, I’m doing it because I chose to have my son. So why should he be grateful to me?

Maybe later when and if I go beyond the usual call of duty to raise him I will expect accolades of this kind. But I’ve been a mother for just three months (though it seems like forever). I don’t feel like I am in the same league as my own mother, who is according to me the best mother a girl could wish for.

I think that kind of gratitude is due after years and years of putting in the hours – not just the initial sleepless nights (which happened when most of us were too little and they are too remote for us to be grateful for) but the unwavering care when we were sick, the taking us to extracurriculars, the birthday cakes, the dresses stitched, the chats over biscuits and tea after school every single day, the help with lessons and projects, the being there even when she didn’t understand what we were doing or didn’t approve, the tolerating our boyfriends and tantrums, the chaperoning on holidays with friends, the socializing with our friends parents, the negotiating with angry father and more recently, the cooking and care when we were pregnant and the support and help when we had our babies. That is motherhood. And I am only a toe into that journey. I am unworthy of even standing next to such big shoes.

Old Wives Tales2

One of the other things someone said was that “women are complicated”. I admit I also bought into this stereotype for a long time. Then, I got married.

See, women talk a lot about their feelings. I know we have a reputation for not saying what we mean but I think our signals are quite obvious even when not voiced. And more often than not we do voice our feelings. In fact, women are also accused of talking too much about feelings, even as they are stereotyped for not saying what we mean. (So, which is it?)

Men are portrayed as a straightforward, easy-to-read bunch who pretty much say what they mean. I believed this too. Men definitely don’t talk feelings as much as women do.

But not articulating their feelings is not the same thing as not having them. I’ve discovered that men’s emotions can be pretty complex, more so because they are quite often in denial about them, even to themselves. Because most men don’t go about analyzing their feelings in the way women do, they present a calm and unruffled surface. Then suddenly, and many a woman in a relationship will have experienced this, they explode, taking their bemused partner by surprise.

I think men’s emotional landscape is more mysterious because not only do they not say what they mean, they don’t say anything at all. Unlike a woman who might give some hint by her words of behaviour that she is miffed, men adopt this stoic pose that cannot last forever.

I also think that men are as capable of being as emotionally manipulative as women. It’s just that they’re not so vocal about it. It’s presented as something passive like laziness. For example, showing less interest in the woman’s side of the family or friends so slowly, the woman being ever the pleaser, begins spends less time with them and it all seems to happen quite seamlessly as opposed to how a woman might do it, by drawing attention to her lack of desire to meet her husband’s family by making petty-sounding comments.

Moreover, by not examining their feelings too closely, men can perpetually coast by on the “I didn’t realize” or “I didn’t mean to” defence. In law, ignorance is not a permissible defence but in relationships, living in a state of denial seems to be. By not probing the depths of their own emotions and owning up to their motivations, men give off this air of guilelessness which serves to excuse them from their own complexity. By facing up to their emotions and frankly sharing them, women it seems have got the bad rep.

In older, more traditional marriages, I have seen the classic case of the wife acting as the expression of the husband’s negativity. The husband tends to nag and grumble in private, this plays on the wife who then tends to remedy the situation in public, thus earning her the rep as the evil one.

Thus, while acknowledging since I have been so told that men are very capable of staring into space for minutes on end without a single thought running through their head, this does not mean that no thought runs through their heads ever. Rather, they tend to sit on unpleasant thoughts and let them stew where they aren’t seen, until they emerge at some surprising moment in a most inexplicable way. I really don’t see why this is preferable to plain old honest feeling and saying what one is feeling.

Old wives tales1

At a party last weekend, someone proposed that wives are most often the cause when men lose touch with their friends. I find statements of this sort – which cast the woman in the role of eternal vamp with endless powers to manipulate her poor, impressionable man – quite irritating.

I am sure, as was suggested, there are wives who keep dissuading their husbands from meeting their friends because they don’t like them, think they are a bad influence (whatever that means) etc. I personally have not seen such examples but television and my friends at the party tell me they do exist.

I am equally sure, and this I have seen, that women often lose touch with their friends because women tend to be pleasers and also tend to make more effort socially while the husbands tend to be lazy about meeting new people. So the wife will initially persist in meeting her friends herself, but slowly, because both she and the husband get along well (thanks to her efforts) with the husband’s group and since its something they can do together, they hang out more with that side of friends and slowly the women’s group takes a backseat, or becomes relegated to occasional meet-ups.

Maybe women are more vocal about their pettiness. Men tend to couch it as something more passive like laziness (“I really don’t feel like going out. There’s a match on. You go.”) Women definitely make more effort to stay in touch with friends overall and so maybe we don’t cave so easily to pressure in this regard – even if we’re not meeting as regularly as we used to, we’ll send the occasional email or sms. Men if on the receiving end of pressure from the wife, poor darlings, maybe just drop the friends. Now, if women can keep up their friendships under pressure, why not men? And if they don’t want to put some effort into maintaining their friendships, why are their wives to be blamed?

I actually don’t see this as a gender thing. I think it happens across the board. Marriage changes people. It’s a new lifestyle and adjustments are always made. So some old friends will receive less attention, some new friends will be made, for both husbands and wives. And both have to make compromises and also be firm about keeping what’s important to them. What’s the deal with pinning all the blame on the wives?

I am always surprised that women are so eager to accept and propogate negative stereotypes about their own gender without at least critically examining them first.

Edited: MinCat has a post about it here.

Am I over Bombay?

I watched Dhobhi Ghat last weekend. [Aamir Khan has become a very self-indulgent actor. But that is neither here nor there.]For the first time in five years, I did not get the usual pangs when I sawBombay on screen. I was able look at it with amusement, with interest, with vague nostalgia but maybe not with longing.

Has the distance been achieved? Am I ready to move on?

Free and easy

I’m a firm believer in the need for things to be free (or almost free). Among the things I believe should be free are:

1. Newspapers: In India, newspapers cost almost nothing. So I was shocked when I came to Hong Kong and found that newspapers weren’t cheap. Since I couldn’t bear to buy a newspaper, I decided to work for one. Even then, when my paycheck depended on the principle of news making money, I continued to believe that charging subscriptions was a waste of time. I still do.

2. Books: I would love to be that girl who spends hours browsing in bookstores, buys a tones of books and stacks them up on her heaving bookshelves. Instead, I am just the girl who spends a lot of time browsing in bookstores. I find books shockingly expensive. Especially since I am never sure if I am going to like a book enough to finish it, or to ever read it again. Finally, I have come to terms with the fact that I will only buy authors I already know and love or books I’ve already read. (this is another one for that list). For the rest, it’s the library and thank God for Hong Kong’s public library system. Till very recently, I was also a patron of the guys who come around selling pirated books at traffic lights. My reasoning was that since I lived in a third world country (or grew up in one) I should pay third world prices for books. However, now that I moved to Hong Kong and am not a pauvre journalist anymore, I decided I could afford to buy books in shops but only in India where books are much cheaper. In fact, my current favourite thing to ask people to get me from India is books by Indian authors.

3. Music: I haven’t paid for music since I was in college and it was fashionable to buy and trade CDs. Then limewire happened to me. Or rather my cousin who was a limewire addict. I am too lazy to actually download anything. Also apparently in Hong Kong you can’t download legally from iTunes because the site is not enabled here. I’m told. I never tried. You will be happy to know, however, that I recently paid for music on my iPhone. I suddenly realised it wasn’t so expensive after all. So who knows… maybe this will become a habit.

4. Movies: That is, the ones one would watch at home. I still go to the cinema a lot. Mainly because it is just something to do when the weather’s bad and you want to get out of the house but you don’t want to go shopping for fear of what might happen to your wallet or to a restaurant in deference to your expanding waistline. However, these days I try to limit my cinema-going to just movies that are worth watching on big screen. Which means that a lot can be watched on small screen. However, I have now abandoned pirated DVDs and illegal downloads for movie because the quality is always hit-and-miss and I get very grumpy if I’m into a movie and the screen starts to skip.

5. Cultural events such as performances, public lectures etc: As a journalist, I had access to all of these free. Even some holidays were free (inexplicably called junkets). So now I cannot bear to pay for them (Except for holidays, thankfully. I was always stressed out on those free trips, earnestly scrambling to everyone’s bemusement get good stories out of what was intended as a pleasure trip). Luckily since I work for a university, a lot of this happens right where I work. So I can stock up on freebie culture and intellectual discourse.

6. Education: My education in India right up to the postgraduate level cost a laughable amount. Thus, I don’t see why I should ever pay for an education. Again, this is quite ironic considering my present job but I seem to have an attitude that is permanently opposed to moneymaking potential of my workplace.

Anyway, I am aware that most of this is completely illogical and doesn’t present me in a very good light (honesty, as ever, being my credo). However, I stand by 1) at least. Some time ago, Rupert Murdoch said something about how he was going to make all his publications paid-for. I can’t argue with a canny businessman like Murdoch but I still feel like this strategy might not work. The world has changed and people are used to free access of information through the Internet. Paying for online content just seems wrong, and anyway safeguarding digital information is super-tricky. Wouldn’t it be easier to focus on advertising and attract more hits by providing free content?

Husbands are surprising creatures

One morning V says to me: That Eunic D’Souza’s poems are pretty cool.

Me: Eunice [pronounced ‘is’]. You read them in the toilet? [I have a book of Indian poetry in the loo].

He: Hahn, his poems are cool.

Me: It’s a she. Yeah they’re fun.

A pause

Me: I like Arun Kolatkar’s better.

He: Yeah, those are also good. But I like hers best. Also because they’re short.

Ok, this is a man who does not read at all. (i.e. he’s not illerate; he reads stuff in office and the newspaper but that’s it). Now suddenly I find myself discussing poetry with him. Curiouser and curiouser.

Edited to add: The day I posted this, I came across this post by Anandita Sengupta on the audience for poetry which linked to this column by Eunice De Souza on the audience for one. I was very excited about the serendipidity. Also since there now seems be an audience of two for poetry in our home, and maybe the Benj can be coopted and make it (gasp!) three, I suppose it’s time to actually buy some poetry books.

What am I doing here?

So I signed up in this. Mainly I wanted to learn how to do things that are obvious to other bloggers – format the blog nicely, record stats etc. Which it turns out this exercise is not going to provide. But whatever it turns out to be, it can’t hurt can it?

So the first thing I was asked to do is write a mission statement for my blog. Ok the very first thing was actually to conduct a SWOT analysis (such a poncy MBA-sounding term designed to put me off but I shall persevere), part of which involves writing a mission statement (another MBA type term, which calls to mind Tom Cruise in Jerry Mcguire, probably the last movie in which he was cute, going “it’s not a memo. It’s a mission statement.” I have only recently discovered what a memo is, by the way).

After much thought, here is my mission statement:

1. To record my journey (ok this is filched off someone else’s comment on the mission statement post on proBlogger. In actuality, it’s more like ‘to serve as a glorified diary because I can’t sit scribbling into a pink-coloured notebook at work and while writing this on the computer I can pretend I’m working).

2. To magnanimously open the hopefully-interesting contents of my head to other similarly-bored people and do my bit to provide time-pass.

Worthy causes, if I do say so myself.

 

Dear Catholic Church

If Cinderella had three fairygodmothers, why can’t my son? Have two godmothers, that is.

Me