Baby in the looking glass

This post on Women’s Web and a comment that linked to this article got me thinking about the sexual politics of Facebook profile pictures.

The Women’s Web post is about women using their husband’s Facebook accounts instead of their own* and the article linked to in the comment is about women using photographs of their children as their Facebook profile photo.

I have always found the idea of using my child’s photograph as my profile picture fairly nauseating. It seemed to me to quite clearly declare that my child had taken over my identity. For the same reason, although I’m married, I’ve never have had a Facebook photo with my husband. I wanted my Facebook identity to be just me. V never used a picture of both of us as his profile photo either – he has used the same one of himself since the beginning.

But when I began looking through my earlier profile photos, I realised I did once have a baby replacing my image as the profile photo. That was when my sister’s baby was born. I was so overcome with emotion that day, I think the birth of that child was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me in my life. I’ve never had my own child up as my Facebook photo, though, ironically. But since Benji was born, almost all my profile photos have been with him with the exception of one, in which I’m with my niece.

What’s in a Facebook photo anyway? Well, it’s now generally accepted that Facebook is where we not only interact socially online but also where we project a certain image of ourselves. What we put up on Facebook – photos, status messages, links, wall posts – are a specially curated image of ourselves, what’s we’d like other people to think we are and possibly what we end up believing we are in some cases. Hence, often when people take a photo of you these days and it turns out nicely they go “oh Facebook photo”. Generally, this is a particular kind of image – one in which one looks good, of course, but also one in which one looks like one is having fun, part of the vibrant, hip, fun Facebook world. Hence, a lot of people’s Facebook photos (apart from the nostalgic/horrendous days-gone-by ones) are of them out and about, doing interesting stuff, partying etc.

So what do my Facebook profile photos say about me? Clearly that since my child was born, he’s a big part of my life. He occupies at least half of a space (the profile picture box) that was earlier devoted to exclusively me. This might reflect that he has taken over half my life.

And what do the profile photos of women who use their baby’s image instead of their own say about them? That their baby has taken over their entire life maybe. That they equate their whole identity with that of their child, just like it seems like I equate at least half of my identity with that of my child.

This seems to turn off a lot of people, and I admit I was one of them. But when I think about it – so what? So what if at this point in my life, I have allowed my child to take over half of my life? It is a fact that right now I am half mother and half everything-else. And I am happy this way. The thing that gives me a great deal of joy is my son just as that summer my niece captivated me and one year a reunion at a friends wedding in Goa inspired a whole group of us to post a very similar image of our group of girlies partying it up.

There are many people whose Facebook photos almost entirely consist of images of them living it up, partying etc. Somehow this doesn’t seem to elicit much comment. It is kind of understood that these are the kind of photos to be posted on Facebook. What conclusions might one draw about these people? That their lives are exclusively dedicated to partying? Why is that more palatable than a woman whose life seems to be dedicated to her child?

In a similar vein, why the lamentation about women who talk only about their children? Again, I’m one of those that was and is probably still bored by too much talk about children. I am careful not to do this myself. But a lot of people drone on about a lot of other things – how much they drank last night, for example. This doesn’t seem to draw the same amount of aversion.

Maybe because the feminist in us balks at the idea of women going back to those days when their lives had to be dedicated to their children. But I think we’ve come far along enough since then to not panic anymore.

First, not every woman is replacing their self-image with that of their babies. So if some women are doing it, just as some seem to exclusively post images of themselves drunk or in bikinis, that’s okay, right?

Just because a woman seems to be saying her identity has fused with that of her child, now, doesn’t mean it will be so for all eternity. It may be a phase they are going through – generally in new motherhood – and maybe five or 10 years down the line, they’ll begin posting the drunken photos that seem so much in demand again or something else entirely.

Moreover, the Facebook image is a selective one. I don’t believe that those people who exclusively post images of themselves partying are actually only about partying. Neither is it true that just because I never have my husband in my profile photos he is not an important part of my life. So why assume that a woman’s Facebook image is all she is just because she has a lot of baby photos there? Our actual lives may be very different from the ones we project on Facebook.

What’s interesting to me is why we project the selves we do on Facebook. Why do certain people want to project themselves as the party type? Why do I want to stress that I’m me, even though I’m married – avoiding a profile photo with my husband at all costs but ok with profile photos with other people (my baby, niece, friends etc.)? Why am I less defensive about my image being co-opted with that of my baby but not that of my husband?

For me, this is more interesting that saying – oh dear, another woman obsessed with her baby.

*I probably more eeked out by the idea of women using their husband’s FB account rather than getting one for themselves. Though maybe they’re just not that into FB or don’t want to create an account for practical reasons (one of my colleagues had a stalker, for example). I am even more eeked out by people who start sending you combined Christmas greetings from them and their boyfriend almost as soon as they start dating and people who create a joint email account as soon as they get married and then only get that one. I mean, really, why? What if I want to send you an email that I don’t want your husband to read?

Things I want to incorporate into my life but cannot be bothered

1. Scarves. Was having this discussion with Curly about how I miss wearing Indian clothes in HK and that Indian-print stoles might be a way to incorporate those textiles into my wardrobe. I was surprised to discover that she too thought scarves/stoles are too much trouble. Scarves or stoles are just so pwetty and I always end up buying them but except for the ones that get used as a shawl in office – and that tends to be one that gets used ragged – they either sit in my closet or I wear them and then they get abandoned after a couple of hours. Also, I don’t know how to tie/drape them properly so that they don’t look like this knotted lump that feels like a noose. The difference between Curly and me though is that I am fine with a dupatta if wearing a salwar kameez (but the kameez has to be long and not a kurti, if it’s a short kurta, the dupatta is more like to get discarded, not sure why) but Curly says she ends up abandoning dupattas as well. So while there is no hope for Curly in this regard, my ability with dupattas might indicate that there is a glimmer of hope for me. I’m not counting on it though.

2. Barbeques: These are one of those fun things that one is supposed to enjoy. However, I realised I just don’t. I don’t get the point of standing over coals waving a paper to get the fire started and then hanging around getting the food to cook at the end of which the food is just so so. Unless, it’s Indian tandoori stuff in which case it is yummy but it is yummy if you ordered it in also, probably more so. Maybe it’s because I’m not into cooking. The problem is that if it’s a barbeque, then everyone is expected to pitch in and help. If not, one poor sod gets stuck turning the food around. Inevitably there aren’t enough also, or there is too much of one thing, some things undercooked, some burnt. I’m sure there is some point to the whole exercise; I just don’t get it.Actually I kind of feel this way about hot pot as well. Clearly I’m a lazy eater. I don’t like cooking while eating.

On belonging

V and I are in the throes of an on-and-off argument on whether to move back to India (at some point) or not. He wants to, me not so much.

His reasons, as I understand them, are partly self-centred – he does not want to keep working in the banking industry forever, with children the stress of keeping them in school here would require him to keep striving. And partly to do with what he claims to be the welfare of the children – a greater sense of belonging, growing up surrounded by family etc.

My reasons for not wanting to move are more practical – we have a relatively stress-free life here, leaving us with time to enjoy each other, our children and life. I can earn more money here with less effort than I would in India. Now that I have a child and another on the way I value safety even more. Lingering somewhere at the back of my mind is the thought that having been presented with the choice of living in a safe city, if I moved back to India and something violent happened to my children, I would never forgive V or myself.

Yes, the big thing we give up on living abroad is extended family. I have begun to wonder, though, whether the wonders of extended family are worth the stress that the immediate family would be under living in India, a stress that you will only be aware of if you have lived outside India and moved back.

And then there’s belonging. The one thing that niggles me about Hong Kong is the inability to belong. Racially, one is an outsider, and not an outsider from the preferred white-skinned race. One will always face a subtle racial tension and this is a barrier that cannot be really overcome, just ignored. One way of integrating is linguistically; one of the reasons expat remain always slightly removed from Chinese society is the inability to speak Cantonese, a difficult but not impossible language to learn.

The irony is that I don’t speak any Indian language comfortably either. Linguistically, I am as much an outsider in India as I am in Hong Kong. I have always contended that I belong in India because I have roots there, I am ethnically Indian, I have the whole background of India in my bones.

But do I? I have also always felt a certain amount of foreignness even while I was in India and adult enough to be aware of it. Part of it is because Goan culture, especially the lifestyle of Goans outside Goa, is so Westernised. I grew up with so many Western cultural references. Part of that is speaking only English and a difficulty picking up Indian languages. With English as one’s mother tongue, always a source of some confusion, and only the barest bones of Hindi available, one is always slightly cut off from the masses on the street. And being from a minority religion, once one steps out of the world of Christian educational institutions, puts one in an increasingly insecure space politically; the slight fear that one of these days the communalists might come knocking at your door.

I have never been detached from the street, which I consider to be the ‘real’ of any place, but if I am honest, I never quite fit in on the street in India. My inability to converse in the language of the street excludes me. I will always be a little bit the outsider. In Hyderabad, I was actually asked which country I was from and told that I looked like a foreigner, even when dressed in a salwar kameez. I probably had more in common with expat Indians than Indians in India.

And that brings me to my current epiphany. Sometimes it’s easier to be a foreigner in a foreign land than a foreigner in your homeland.

(Or maybe all this is just to rationalise my fear of rocking the boat.)

Observations from the weekend

A friend of V’s from Bangalore stayed with us over the weekend. I had only met him a couple of times vaguely at parties so he was pretty much a stranger when he arrived but he’s the voluble sort and so really liked him.

Mainly, though, I’m surprised at how enthusiastic these 30-something single guys are with babies. I noticed it with two of V’s other friends. They want to hold the baby, play with the baby, take photos of the baby… if the baby is reluctant, they back off and try again. There is no social pressure on men to bond with babies, and there is noone around to impress but us. Their interest seems genuine. It is endearing to watch.

* * *

On Sundays, in the absence of our helper, we have started going on little excursions with Benji. He’s easier to manage in a pram, amused by things he hasn’t seen before.

This time we went to Lei Yuen Mun, a fishing village that I didn’t realize was just one MTR stop away. It’s like another world. You wind your way through a labyrinth of seafood restaurants to emerge into the silence of an actual village, the kind you would call a wadi in Bombay. There were even rough looking dogs roaming around at will.

V wants to buy a house there. “I’m really a villager, aren’t I?” he said. “Yes,” replied this girl in whose bones the city lives.

* * *

Breaking up is hard to do

Last night, was watching an as-usual hilarious rerun of Seinfeld in which Jerry has this childhood friend he can’t stand who keeps calling him up and George is urging him to ‘break up’ with the friend. Jerry points out that there’s no precedent for breaking up with friends. You can’t do the usual ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ shtick.

It got me thinking. Guys get a lot of flak for trying to wiggle out of the break up. I remember a friend who wanted to break up with a girl and who was like: “So, you’re saying I can’t email or sms?” And I was like: “No! If you’re in the same city you have to tell her face to face. Even if you’re not, you have to at least do a phone call.” I think he went with email though after a bit of soul-searching (though inexplicably he is now married to that girl). Most guys, due to a hatred of confrontation, would rather just drift off, stop calling etc. and hope the girl gets the picture. But this is generally not considered to be the done thing.

How come, then, it’s acceptable with friendships? Drifting, not calling, generally phasing out a person is exactly how friendships end. And I’m not talking about when it just happens like that. Sometimes it’s deliberately done. I’ve had it done to me by a very close friend and it was very painful. I told her so a couple of years later when we reunited and she admitted she had been horrible. I admitted that I understood it because I’ve done the same (in fact I’m currently doing it to her) but that it still felt shitty. But normally, this conversation never happens, the one drifted away from eventually gets the message (unlike Jerry’s friend) and the driftee is relieved of the burden of the friendship.

Recently, I was faced with an old friendship that seemed to have outlived itself. I had nothing in common with this person anymore and worse, she was actively getting on my nerves every time we did catch up. She had said something super-hurtful to me (well, I thought it was) and that was possibly feeding into the aggravation that her newfound personality was causing me. Or possibly her newfound personality was what had caused her to say the hurtful thing. Either way, I was tempted to call it quits. I was dissuaded from doing so by another neutral friend who felt that a) confrontations do no good b) old friends should be held on to.

Well, in a world in which most people don’t really give a shit, it does seem wasteful to discard a person who actually makes an effort to keep the friendship alive. Plus it’s hard to give up on someone you’ve known for a decade. So I’m hanging on.

But it does beg the question – why don’t we break up with friends. Why don’t we sit down with people with whom we think the friendship has run it’s course and have The Conversation? Well, because as guys have known all along, confrontations can be messy and as one honest bloke I was dating once told me “we like to keep the door open just in case”. I get that. But why is this behaviour acceptable in friendships but not romantic relationships?

Have you ever broken up with a friend?

Dear husbands, placid wives

It is ever so common to hear women speaking of their husbands’ incompetence in the home. They complain how their husbands don’t help at home, don’t help with the children etc. These women are women like me, educated, financially independent, living in nuclear families etc. Their tone is one of exasperation but not anger.

I am puzzled about why they are not angry.

If my husband left most of the housework to me, didn’t help at all with the baby, routinely offered to help and then messed up and said “you do it”, I would be very pissed off.

Newsflash ladies. If you give someone a choice to do nothing except what suits them and pick up the flak, they won’t turn you down.

I know this well because I am quite incompetent myself. My cooking skills are dismal. I avoid opening letters from the bank. I don’t know my way around a toolbox. I cannot operate my own washing machine.

However, when I have no choice in the matter, I rise to the occasion if not admirably then at least passably. When we didn’t have a helper and the husband was away, I eventually learnt how to cook, even if it was terrible spaghetti that I could barely bear to eat. I need to write down step-by-step how the washing machine operates but really, it is not rocket science. I will never be great at money management but yes, I can file my own taxes and get bank work done eventually. I discovered how to change lightbulbs.

The point is there is no reason husbands cannot do most work around the house, including caring for the baby. Women were not born with some mommy switch that told us how to rock the baby to sleep or change a diaper. We learnt through trial and error and simply having no choice.

So why can’t husbands learn too? Sure, there will be some things you are good at and some things he is good at and the work can be divided. And it may not be divided exactly equally but at least somewhat equally.

And if that is not the case, I don’t see what there is to tsk tsk about. It is just bloody unfair and why are women putting up with it? I would be very ashamed and embarrassed to be made such a doormat of and would not be broadcasting it in terms of such indulgence.

Mind your language

On a Hong Kong parenting forum, there was an interesting discussion going on putting one’s native English-speaking kid in a Chinese-language school. The idea fascinates me for a number of reasons.

In Hong Kong, one can get by perfectly well speaking only English. However, one will always remain an expat. A huge number of things happen only in Cantonese and a huge number of people feel comfortable speaking only in that language. I have attempted to learn Cantonese in a class twice and made some progress but time does not permit me to pursue it. The foreigners who can read and speak Cantonese fluently, and a huge number of these are Indians and Pakistanis (or as they called here, South Asians), studied in Chinese-medium schools. They speak like natives and the idea of my son babbling away like them warms the cockles of my heart.

The other advantage of a Chinese-medium school is that the kids that the fees are cheaper. This would not only be easier on my pocket, but would give my child the opportunity to mix with children from a range of backgrounds, rather than just children whose parents can afford the high English-medium school fees.

However, a child in a school where the medium of instruction is not their first one is harder on the child and the parent. Unlike the other kids, my child would not immediately understand what the teacher or his classmates are saying. He would find it harder to make friends because of the language barrier. As he picks up the language, these hurdles would disappear but many children have a hard time adjusting to going to school itself. As a parent, I would not be able to help with his homework, join PTA meetings or understand school circulars. I would have to rely on tutors to help my child after school – this would continue even in the later years when kids might ordinarily be able to manage their homework themselves and also schedule homework time at their convenience.

The rewards are fluency in a language that is really hard to otherwise pick up. But is it worth the extra effort both by my child and me?

In India, there are many children whose first language is not English who are sent to English schools. I’m sure they would face some of the same hurdles that my child and I would face were I to enroll him in a Cantonese school. Granted, they would not face a racial divide and there would be many more children that would converse in their native language during the break (though I can’t recall that many kids speaking even in Hindi during the break at my school). The benefit of fluency in English is so great that this would seem worthwhile, especially for children like my helper’s son in India where speaking English might be his (and the family’s) only ticket out of blue collar jobs and poverty.

Many Chinese-speaking parents here in HK are also keen to send their kids to English-medium schools. Some of them have started speaking to their children in English at home when they are not that fluent themselves. Not sure how I feel about this. Definitely fluency in English opens doors to career advancement. But there are more jobs around in Hong Kong that require fluency in Chinese than in English, though of course fluency in English will take you to a higher level. So a person could build on English skills in later life, though one might argue they would rarely reach native fluency.

Anyway, why do I find it easier to deal with the idea of children in English-medium schools when English is not their native language but not the same for Chinese-medium schools? Is it because, Chinese, while a great bonus to know, can still be got by without?

In which case, the extra language becomes like any other extra skill. Like piano, swimming, art or any of those extras that parents these days seem determined to expose their children to. I am not against them but I don’t think need them essential.

One parent argued that sure, learning in a language different from your own is not easy, but we underestimate what kids are capable of and that we should be pushing them unless we can see that we are making them unhappy. I’m not sure where I stand. I am intrigued by the idea of fluency in another language – but school is not an extra class than can be easily dropped or substituted. It’s a whole day thing, apart from the fact that if a child is not getting along in the system finding another school place is hard. If fluency in Cantonese is not essential, then why not build on it as an extra class?

On the other hand, there’s the idea of my son babbling away in Cantonese that I just can’t get over. Hmmm.

Of swans and ducks

Ramya’s comment on this post articulated something I have been thinking about since yesterday. Living in India, one might be forced to make moral compromises one might not have to make elsewhere. I would argue that making these compromises does not make one a bad person as long as one can honestly say one has tried one’s best to do the right thing.

Thus, one is not expected to be a swan – which I think is a tall order – but to just be the best duck one can be. That is, if you can accept that you are never going to be a swan, and not hate the duck looking back at you when you into the mirror (as Ramya puts it – to live with your choices). Then again, the person who leaves is not a swan either; just a duck in a cleaner pond.

I have not read the Mahabharata fully but one thing that struck me from what I did read is the contextual attitude to morality. The right thing to do for you might be the wrong thing for someone else. This is different from the more binary Western attitude to right and wrong. But even in the Bible, there are shades of gray – “Let one who has never sinned cast the first stone” and “give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s”.

The idea, I guess, is to live thoughtfully. To really choose instead of succumbing to the status quo. Even if one chooses to succumb to the status quo, to do so after challenging oneself to take the harder path. And yes, to not beat oneself up if one succumbs but just to keep trying to be better.

Siblings

My love of reality TV plus my love of food (but not cooking it) has me hooked onto the Masterchef series. Yesterday, I caught an episode of Junior Masterchef in which the final two were being decided. I haven’t watched the whole Junior series but from what I seen, I was touched by the friendliness and supportiveness of the kids towards each other, apart from their incredible culinary skills. Contrast this with the adult version (which I also enjoy) where everyone is always bitching and backbiting.

In this episode, the judges had to choose one kid out of three to go into the final round and of them, two were sisters. The girl chosen was one of the sisters and the two girls – the winner and the one not selected – were both in tears and gave each other a huge hug. Then, the judges asked the two girls who were not selected to share their favourite moments on the competition. The other girl who wasn’t selected was nine years old, the youngest one in the competition, and she gave a very sweet answer which I can’t remember. Then, it was the turn of the sister who lost. She said: “My best moment was now, watching my sister go into the final two.”

That is what it is to be a sister. More happy that your sister won even if it means that you lost.

To be, or not, in India

Some time ago I read this piece (which I’m sure many of you have already read and reacted to). I then read the comments which for once were quite coherent and interesting, except then they became repetitive so then I stopped because, well, there were 17 pages of them. Anyway, the gist of the comments were:

1. “Go back from whence (I really wanted to say ‘whence’) you came, stupid NRI-type, we don’t need you!”
2. “I identify with the author.” I think all these commenters were people who had lived abroad for at least a while; noone who had never lived outside India held this view (though I didn’t read all 17 pages of comments).
3. “Be the change you want to see.”

Entertaining as the 1-type comments were, after a point there’s only so much of that you can take. I found 2. and 3. more interesting.

In principle I agree with 3. A truly great person would be the “swan in dirty water”, as one commenter said quoting scripture. Agree we should all aspire to this.

In practice, though, most of us are not cut out to be the swan. Not all of us are cut out to fight that battle. Is life supposed to be throwing ourselves into battle anyway? Most of us just want to get on with it, without being called upon to change the world at every turn. Even those on whose behalf we are supposed to be fighting the battle would probably say that if they had a choice they would rather not be in the battle but sitting somewhere in a tent having lunch.

And living in India (which has many benefits, family being the primary one) is a bit like going to battle, more so the less money you have. This might be something that resonates only with those who have stepped out of the country. But unless you are inured to its ways – and you have to step out of India to not get inured to its ways – India challenges you morally in ways that you wouldn’t encounter if you lived in some other places.

For example, where I live, I am not confronted with the sight of children begging and compelled to choose every day whether I give them money and support the begging network, give them food (which they often don’t want) or give them nothing and if they get irritated and smack or scratch me (which has happened), deal with the emotions of anger at a child in a very helpless position and struggle with hating the sin and not the sinner. I don’t have to choose whether to bribe someone (and I maintain that there are instances where paying a bribe can be matter more serious than just making one’s life easier) or not. I don’t have to push someone to get ahead or risk just standing there and never getting into the train. I don’t have to walk around elbows out, suspicious of every man while reminding myself that all men are not like that, only most of them. Etc.

India makes you deal with these things every day. On the one hand, this is good. It’s good to be bitchslapped by the reality in which the vast majority live and forced to deal with it. Sometimes I wish Hong Kong commuters could be sent to a Mumbai station for a crash course in real life. I find it irritating when people from other cities in India sneer at the slums in Mumbai and say how dirty it is. For me the slums are the lives of masses of people, why should they be swept under the carpet unless their lives no longer necessitate that kind of living?

But living with the dirt created by slum-dwellers is not easy. Living with a daily shove (or catfight, or guy masturbating down your back) to get into the train is not what anyone would choose. Choosing to face that reality every day (if you have a choice) is not a no-brainer.

Yes, great (and I don’t mean this sarcastically) are the people who sail through this reality like swans, smiling beatifically at the begging child who just grabbed their bag or/and even better volunteering at a charity. Great are those who, faced with the prospect of their daughter’s body being carved up ruthlessly in a government morgue, decide not to pay the demanded bribe. I don’t know any Indian woman who manages to walk the streets without a degree of watchfulness.

Great are these people and yet, can anyone be blamed for finding the facing up to these challenges every day exhausting and wanting an out? I wonder how many of those who recommend ‘being the change’ are actually being the change themselves. This is not to deny that there are some who really are the swans, and to them, yay that people like you exist.

But, for example, how exactly do you get into a Mumbai local in peak hours without pushing? I think many have just made their peace with the struggle and some resent being told they are struggling or that somewhere it is possible to not struggle. Instead, they say, I am in some sort of valiant struggle when really, what you are in is a daily shove to get into the train. And that daily shove does something to you just as becoming the kind of person who can stare away from a begging child without a reaction does something to you.

I also find the join-an-NGO suggestion ludicrous. Not everyone is cut out for social work. The solution to society’s problems is not for everyone to join an NGO.

I do think that everyone should try to do their bit in their own lives – whether in India or anywhere else. But India just makes doing the right thing more challenging than doing the right thing anywhere else. And that, I think, was all he was trying to say.

At the risk of being accused of orientalism, it actually reminds me of Heart of Darkness. Going into India, is like Marlow’s journey and you confront the vision of turning into Kurt. Sometimes, like Marlow did, you need to get out. That might make you weak but it also makes you human.

PS: Of all things, I was impressed by a post by Chetan Bhagat. I think the way people in India treat their household help is illustrative of many things, most obviously because the household help brings the realities of India right into one’s home. One of things that that rubbed people the wrong way was the inevitability in Sumegh’s attitude to the help. That said, I am impressed by Bhagat’s dogged pursuit of his welfarist attitude and if they can afford it, which a lot of India now can, they could take a leaf out his book on what it means to be fair to their household help.

Psst: After Sumegh’s comment I have deleted the part about his driver’s son since it appears I misunderstood.