On judgement

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, which my post on money brought into focus, and R’s Mom’s post galvanised me into getting off my ass and writing up my thoughts.

One of the Christian teachings that impressed me early on was the episode in which a woman who commits adultery is brought before Jesus and the elders ask him whether they should stone her as per custom. They were basically trying to trap him, because if he said “no” he could be condemned as a blasphemer, but if he said “yes” he would be contravening Roman law as only the Romans were allowed to issue a death sentence. Instead he said: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” And they all went away quietly.

The passage is generally interpreted to mean don’t judge, unless you’re blameless yourself.

It used to mystify me that Christians around me generally seemed to ignore this passage* and go about with an aura of smug contempt of anyone who deviated from the most trivial aspects of the religious code. It still does, though now I understand better how people prefer to brush away inconvenient truths.

However, I have also begun to wonder how practical the no-judging dictum is. If no one who has ever sinned is allowed to judge anyone, then how do you institute the law? You could never have courts with judges because I’m sure there isn’t a single completely blameless judge. If we are to follow the dictum strictly, then in, say, the Delhi rape case, none of us should be judging the perpetrators of the crime, leave alone the judges in the case.

The law is in essence a collective decision based on the judgement of society that certain actions will not be tolerated. Or that they will be tolerated only under certain circumstances. Thou shall not kill another human being (though animals and plants are okay)… unless in self-defence, or unless your country decides to go to war, or unless the person you are killing is judged collectively to be a danger to society (capital punishment).

At the individual level, we judge every single day of our lives. Every decision we make involves judgement. I choose to send my child to a particular school, judging it better than the other options. In doing so, I am judging some schools and by implication could be seen to be judging the parents who put those kids in those schools (hence the defensiveness the entire subject arouses).

If we are never to judge, we must never weigh up options and make a decision in our lives.

Interestingly, while searching for that biblical passage, I came across the chapter before it in which I found this quote: “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

That’s more like it for me. I don’t think “not judging” is realistic even at the personal level. But I think we need to judge the quality of judgements.

So the commandment should be, judge, but ensure that:

1. You are not making petty, instinctive judgements that are less about the issue at hand and more about your own prejudice and defensiveness.
2. You introspect. There may be no one among us who is blameless, but how close is your “sin” to the one you are judging. If there’s 100 degrees of separation, then fine. If there’s six, then sorry, you aren’t fit to judge.
3. You try to be neutral and consider all possible perspectives.
4. You do not waste a lot of energy and get worked up in the process of judging when you could be productively doing something else.

   This post on Women’s Web illustrates how we are quite often closer than we think to the “sins” we are condemning, though I don’t agree with its conclusion to give up judging altogether or that it’s mainly women who indulge in the preoccuption of judging or that we should stop judging because it somehow defies the code of the sisterhood.

Caveat 1: Avoid airing your judgement unless it’s going to serve some constructive purpose. If you can help it, keep it to yourself and let it guide your own behaviour. For example, I judge people as stupid/narrowminded/misguided/ill-informed every other day. But no purpose would be served by informing them I think so. First of all, because it won’t go down well and ignorant people rarely change on being informed that they come across as so. Second, there’s the possibility that I’m wrong. However, I just resolve to learn more and not be stupid (or as Prof Eunice DeSouza would say, “a cabbage”) myself.

[Edited to add]

Caveat 2: Stop being bothered by the thought that other people are judging you. Of course they are. As long as they keep their judgements to themselves, carry on. I find this relatively easier in Hong Kong because the Chinese way is to  put on what I, following that Genghis Khan book, refer to as the “cold face”, which one can safely ignore. Even better if you are a foreigner, because if comments are passed, you can’t understand them because they’re in Cantonese. I have the same approach with my MiL and Malayalam, I don’t understand what she mutters so if I perceive her judgement it has to be intense. Yay for outsider status! Thus, although apparently Hong Kong guys make fun of women who don’t shave their legs, I have never noticed this and exposed a hairy ankle now and then blissfully unaware. Maybe solidifying their view of Indians as uncivilised brutes; however, as long as I don’t hear it, I don’t care.

I can see how being constantly subjected to voiced judgments can be trying though. Here is my short guide to dealing with judgements in social settings:

1. When someone says a judgy thing to you, first take a breath. Resist the urge to hotly contest their point of view and/or kick them in the shins. (I also need to work on this one.) Instead,  if the statement is something you have never heard before, think about whether it might have merit.

2. If you are too irritated to think on the spot (quite common in these situations), respond with “Hmmm”. This effectively shuts down further discussion till you have had the time to consider things at length. Contrary to popular belief, one normally does get a chance to give vent to one’s considered response at different occasions because people, fortunately or unfortunately, do tend to appear more than once.

3. If what they are mouthing is the same tired drivel of old, think about whether there is any hope of changing their mind by contradicting them. If no, then go with “Hmmm” as above. Or “I don’t agree.” If yes, proceed to state your point of view, possibly opening by acknowledging that you can see what might have led them to their (errorneous) position.

4. If people persistently press the same opinion on you, then say something like: “I’m sorry, but you’ve said this before and I don’t agree. Can we talk about something else?” If that doesn’t shut them up – and I’ve actually come across people who are unrebuffed – remove yourself from their presence. If necessary, forever.

Amen.

*While searching for this quote, I came across several links contending that this passage shouldn’t be included because it wasn’t there in the original texts. Heh.

Out and about

The weather was balmy (i.e. not freezing) on Saturday morning so we took off to this nature education centre in Sai Kung. Turned out to be gorgeous – essentially huge grounds covered with plants of different kinds. Ostensibly for educational purposes, but really just a great place for kids and dogs to romp about in. Although organised into different areas, showcasing different kinds of plants, it is not manicured at all in the way parks in Hong Kong used to be.

Benji was so taken, he refused to move from the first corner of green wildness, which was a problem because there was so much else to cover. Mimi unfortunately fell asleep pretty quickly, only waking up when we began moving to leave.

**

In the evening, V and I went off for dinner alone. Recently, we’ve been bonding over ramen. After my first few tastings, I’ve steered clear of Japanese food because it is expensive and while I don’t mind it, I don’t particularly like it. I usually end up ordering ramen and I never quite understood why I need to pay a third extra for what is essentially a bowl of soup noodle, usually the cheapest thing on the menu in Hong Kong.

Apparently, that was because I hadn’t met the right ramen.

This is probably the best ramen joint in Hong Kong. It is a hole in the wall, where you are likely to get crammed into a table with other people and find yourself precariously balancing on a toothpick-like stool, as stools are want to be in cha chaan tengs. The line outside is long, the menu is basic, the bowl of ramen expensive (80$-100$ish), but it is worth it.

We had hoped that dinner might draw less crowds in an office area but, no, the line was as long, so we took a chance on the place opposite and while not quite as stellar, it was good and had actual chairs that one’s arse fitted on completely.

Over bowls of broth, V and I finally found ourselves coming to some understanding on our future plans. We are not entirely on the same page. But I can at least see why V is on the page he’s on, and reconcile myself to it. That’s progress.

***

V left on a business trip on Sunday. I have finally begun to take advantage of his absence to do things he wouldn’t want to do, and to do them myself if there are no other takers. So this time I watched Les Mis. And yeah, movies, so much better alone. For one, I was five minutes late because I got distracted by a sale en route. No need to apologise to anyone except my wallet. Then, during the slow bits of the movie, I whipped out my phone and checked Twitter. Again, no need to be embarrassed. I could claim the corner seat and sneak out for a pee when I wanted to. Why do people go to movies with other people again?

As for Les Miserables, although my attention did waver now and then, considering it’s a 2-and-a-half- hour film with no interval, it went by pretty quick, mainly thanks to the catchy tunes. I have to say I did giggle on occasion when people broke into song, which is never a good thing. But my main intention was to cheat on reading the novel. After watching the film, it seems quite clear to me that a novel named Les Miserables is going to have lots of miserable bits, and having these translated into song made them go down easier. So I would recommend watching it on that count.

***

The other thing that seems to happen when V is away is that I tend to wander into shops and spend money. My latest weakness seems to be jackets. I have managed to resist winter coats for a while, seeing as my closet is bursting with them, but a few loose stitches in my oldest black winter jacket was enough to make me get a new one. And I also got a new formal jacket on the grounds that my current one is looking a little worse for wear (although I rarely wear it).

Hong Kongers are majorly into layering – as one Chinese friend commented, you’d never catch a Hong Kong girl with jeans and just a plain T-shirt – and while it’s a look I covet, it’s not one I have the patience to execute. Enter one-piece tops that are designed to look like a sweater on top of a shirt. Sounds absurd but looks quite nice. I am wearing one right now, blue sweater over polka-dotted shirt underneath and I am tres happy with the results.

 

 

 

Oneder

Mimi turned one this month. Bad parents parent that I am, because Mimi’s birthday fell on a weekday, I contemplated skipping her first birthday celebration and clubbing it with a christening party that will happen in India in February. Not that “celebration” means anything major in our household. As it turns out, on Mimi’s actual birthday we cut a cake and then we did a repeat round on Saturday when we hosted a little party for our friends.

Since November, Benji has been singing “Happy Birthday to You”. First for his own birthday, then Christmas (we never managed to get around to teaching him Christmas greetings) and then Mimi’s birthday.

Since the middle of last year, Benji began showing signs of remorse. If he pushed Mimi and she yelped, he would come back and say “Sowwy Mimi”. It warmed the cockles of our hearts.

Increasingly though, the novelty of her is waning, particularly as he has realised that our attention is more divided. We had been ignoring Mimi a bit in favour of Benji but now that she’s old enough to notice, we won’t do it anymore. Which means less of us for him, which he does not like and he knows who’s to blame. Initially, he would tell one of the helpers to take Mimi but now that that’s not working, he resorts to just pushing her out of the way. He also always wants what she has. He was taught to give her something else if he’s taking something from her, but now that Mimi’s older she’s not so easily distracted. So there’s been a lot of wailing in our household.

Mimi said her first word – Ello. She started off by putting her hand to her ear and saying it as if she’s answering a phone. Her utterance is very dramatic, her whole tongue flung out. She also seems to be saying “Tita” (Aunty in Tagalog, which the kids call our helpers), “Dada” and just yesterday “Amma”. Of course, Amma came last.

She has begun taking her first independent steps. She’s been crawling and cruising for a while, but now she lets go and runs. Of course, she is impatient. For a while last year, it looked like she wanted to give crawling a miss and get straight to walking. Now she seems to want to skip walking in favour of running.

She is really the most surprising girl. I could have never imagined such a daughter. Focused on what she wants so that even at five months we couldn’t easily take things away from her. Fiesty as hell, so if she doesn’t get her way, she flings herself back and screams. On the go, always, this child who sat so still for 9 nine months, refusing even to turn despite me practically standing on my head to get her to, now making up for all that inertia. Unconcerned about injury mostly, which she literally brushes off with her hands as if a bump on the head is a speck of dust. Indifferent to cuddles, and woe betide you try to hug her while she’s involved in something else. A couple of weeks ago, I cuddled her from behind, she turned around whacked me and then bit my arm! I am reduced to soft kisses when she’s not looking. Frankly, I’m a little afraid of her, tornado that she is.

My curly-haired meercat, I could never have imagined you in my wildest dreams.

 

The grey zone

One of the more popular posts on my blog is the one on Love in Mahabharata. I lost track of comments on that post because I wrote it so long ago and when a comment would sporadically pop up, I would be confused and then forget to get back to it. And I’ll admit, I lost interest in analysing that one particular episode. I had intended to write a series of posts as I read Ramesh Menon’s version of the Mahabharata, but I have been reading it in a fragmented way and honestly, didn’t have anything to say. I passed the pivotal dice game, an episode I believe holds great significance, taking a chapters in the book. But the metaphysical points being made, beyond the superficial events, escaped me and I had nothing to add.

Most people tend to fixate on the idea of Yudhishthira’s foolishness. I did not grow up on those stories and nobody held Yudhishthira up to me as a paragon of virtue. So perhaps I am able to a more neutral view of him. Certainly, in the Mahabharata, he is extolled for his virtues and all the other Pandavas defer to him. The dice game provides a crisis of faith, which it appears most modern commenters have succumbed to. Perhaps, the older generation overlooked Yudhishthira’s flaw (because it appears there was only one) when they praise him as a role model and the reaction of the younger generation seems like a backlash. From everything I have read so far, I am on the side of the older generation.

For me, the beauty of this epic lies in the nuances. None of its events, actions and characters are strictly black or white, they exist in the grey zone. Everyone, even the Gods, are fallible. And yet, some are less fallible. Yudhishthira is one of these. It is acknowledged that his weakness is gambling, that is why the Kauravas chose gambling with which to trap him. And yes, he loses control, he falls for it.

The Greek epics also have heroes and Gods who fall. It seems like the ancients were more realistic than us moderns who seek perfection in those we are asked to admire. In Greek tragedy, there’s the concept of hamartia or the fatal flaw, sometimes interpreted as tragic error of judgement. One of the most common traits is hubris (or pride). It seems to me that Yudhishthira’s fatal flaw was not so much gambling as arrogance. He was warned that the Kauravas would have a trick up their sleeves, that they would probably cheat, but he so strongly in his gambling abilities that he thought he would win. Some argue that Yudhishthira didn’t really know how to gamble before this match but the version I’m reading seems to say he did and was an expert too. Later, he disguises himself as a gambler in Virata’s court so he must have been good at it.

Yudhishthira’s other flaw is his adherence to dharma. This is not so much a flaw as his personality. He is supposed to be the embodiment of dharma. So when he is invited by his uncle (which could be read as a summons), he is obliged to accept. It is also is adherence to dharma that has him accept the unfair decrees of the elders once he has lost everything. For example, nobody addressed the question of how Draupadi could be put up as a stake as a queen, and how she could be put up by someone who was already a slave and hence had no property. (On the subject of which, read this). But Yudhishthira accepted the elders’ verdict because that is what he believed was the righteous path.

So Yudhishthira’s obvious flaw was his pride in gambling and his inability to accept that he was losing and wouldn’t be able to turn the game around. But the more nuanced flaw is dharma itself. Are we being told to tread carefully on the righteous path as it can lead to disaster?

What most people seem to forget (or don’t know) is that Yudhishthira is tortured thereafter by what he has done and repents deeply, repeatedly begs forgiveness and tries to gain the better of himself. What he does not do is stray from the path that he thinks is right. Like every leader that ever was, he fell. But he raised himself with dignity and tried to do better. That’s pretty heroic, IMO, albeit in an understated way that might seem boring to some. After the dice game there are so many times when Yudhishthira is the voice of wisdom and reason. Of all the Pandavas, he does have the best judgement, even though his judgement tragically failed him on (as far as I know) one occasion.

***

And while we’re talking about nuanced characters, there’s Karna, the most ambiguous of them all, placed smack between the forces of good and evil. The most moving episode I have read so far is the one in which Surya comes to warn Karna that Indra is going to try and trick him into giving up his armour and that he must refuse or he is risking his own life. Karna refuses to refuse Indra. He too insists on the path of honour even if it costs him his life. In this, Karna seems to be the equal of Yudhishthira, even superseding him.

Basically, Karna is a tragic character. He is doomed and worse, he knows it. Still, he does what he thinks is right. Always. Okay mostly. Mostly is good enough for me.

***

And then there’s Duryodhan, the villain of the piece. Even in him, there is something admire. He was the one who stood up for Karna and said the Pandavas couldn’t dismiss him just because of his lack of lineage because Kshatriya law did make allowances for people of exceptional talent to join their ranks. This episode brought the caste system into focus, and Duryodhan stood of the side of caste mobility. He may have had ulterior motives, but no one contradicted his logic.

I also admire Duryodhan for his courage. One can even understand his sense of being wronged, after all he was raised as the heir apparent and suddenly he has to deal with the idea that he is to play second or sixth fiddle. His flaw is that he is on the wrong side of destiny but unlike Karna he doesn’t know it or he lets his worst instincts prevail mostly. Nevertheless, in battle, he has courage. After challenging Virata’s army to draw the Pandavas out, the elders advise running away as soon as Arjuna appears. Their reasoning is that they are sure to lose. For Duryodhan, that Arjuna is powerful is no reason not to fight.

 

 

 

 

Django Unchained

Around 2010, I lost the ability to sit in a darkened room and watch a movie that didn’t interest me to its conclusion. The first movie I ever walked out of was Robin Hood (Cate Blanchett, Kevin Costner, didn’t think it was possible to ever go wrong with that combination but there you have it) during my first trimester of pregnancy with Benji. Admittedly, I was already feeling a bit nauseous. But the move was too blah and I just couldn’t bring myself to keep sitting there. Later, I tried watching it again on DVD and failed.

Since then, I have become more discriminating about which movies I go to watch in the cinema. To some extent, this is a budgetary as well as a logistical problem seeing as we have to be more conservative with both our money and our time since having children. But it is more an internal change, because of all the post-kids-bedtime activities we could pick, catching a movie is probably the easier to arrange and least taxing. Unfortunately,  I’ve lost the tinted classes that enabled me to suspend disbelief and stop rolling my eyes.

So I’ve seen increasingly fewer movies, and mostly I’ve been able to know which will work for me just from reading the blurb and if in any doubt, a couple of reviews. Thus, on Friday, I found being tasked with planning movie night and not being able to pick a single thing. Finally, I settled of Les Miserable but V refused. I was also keen on Life of Pi but timings didn’t work. So we abandoned it, until Saturday when a friend at a party mentioned Django Unchained and that it was by Quentin Tarantino, a fact I hadn’t noticed when perusing Friday’s options.

We went and I’m glad:

1. Ironically, at the party, the one thing about the film that was mentioned to us almost as a selling point was that it’s a blood fest. On a side note, it is a little boring to observe men feel obliged to make these apparently macho comments. Maybe I am being unfair and being a Tarantino film, we should have known it would be more. Then, being a Tarantino film, one would expect a blood bath and it needn’t be mentioned. I got the impression that this was some macho thing to mention. And the female point of view, was that we should watch it because Jamie Fox is hot.
2. After I watched the film, I found both these opinions terribly distasteful. This is a film about slavery and violence. It is not, like Kill Bill, an aesthetic celebration of violence. Quite the contrary, it is the exposure of the savagery and pathology of violence in its specific racial avatar. It is also not a film about the beautiful body of a black man. The defining image of Jamie Fox’s body in the film for me was when he was hung up naked and tortured. To be fair, there is another glorious image of Jamie Fox’s body early on when he casts off the sack-cloth of a slave and claims the jacket of a fallen overseer. But the drama there was in the lash marks on his back. I believe as women we need to stop and think before we indulge in this reverse objectification of men. At least, contexts such as these should make us pause.
3. Nevertheless, maybe it’s a good thing no one told me this is a movie about slavery (and I hope my saying so is not going to put anyone off). I avoid watching movies about slavery because I know they are going to make me cry. They are probably excellent films but like all films and books that purport to deal with depressing subjects, I give them a wide berth because I’m already depressed. Sometimes I may accidently watch a film whose subject is man’s terrible history and streak of cruelty and I never regret it but I can never really bring myself to choose this kind of film.
4. The difference between this film and other films on the same subject is that right from the beginning the slave is not victim but hero.
5. And also – and this for V was the defining thing – there is humour. It is incredible how many outright laugh out loud till your side hurts and you begin to feel embarrassed but you can’t stop laughing moments there were in this film. (Almost that entire sentence needed to be hyphenated, I know.) This is another Tarantino hallmark and maybe I would have gone and watched it even if I knew it was about slavery because I should have known it would be redemptive and not depressing, and also funny as hell. There are a few extremely talented people in this world who can take something as horrible as the slave experience and find a way to make the audience laugh, not at the slaves (though sometimes with them) but at the absurdity and downright crazy of those who promoted slavery. My absolute favourite was the Klu Klux Klan segment, which I won’t say more about so as to not give anything away, since I am very sure all of you are going to rush out and buy tickets for this film on my express recommendation.
6. It seems Tarantino has found a new muse in Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds fame. The villain of that piece is the hero is this, and as stellar as the nice guy as he was as the brute.
7. Leonardo Dicaprio once again proves that Titanic was an aberration and he is one of the greatest actors of this generation. In his character, Mr Candie, is all the pathological pent-up madness of the racist. And this, I feel, is one of the crucial thrusts of the film. These are not people we can excuse for being socialised into racism. Their brutality goes beyond enculturation. It is an expression, encouraged by culture but very much their own, of the worst of the human instinct for cruelty.
8. I am haunted by the portrayal of Mandingo wrestling, a concept I was only passingly familiar with until this film. This portion, and some others, I just closed by eyes through. I have no idea how much they showed. The sound was enough. It was like a descent into hell. Some research says that mandingo wrestling may not have happened at the time, for which I am entirely grateful. But even if fighters did not fight to the death, it seems entirely possible that they were forced to fight till they brutalised each other. Again, this is not a celebration of violence. It is a call to remember, to face the horrors of the past in their raw form, to repent.
9.  Moreover, the wrestling scene, and another one which follows it of the savage treatment of a wrestler who tries to run away, is evocative of another idea at the heart of this film. That under all the Southern gentility it basically just boils down to money. A wrestler who denies his master his 500$ worth is deemed worthy of the most brutal death, a fact argued for eloquently by the cultured master, and a black man might sleep and dine in the big house if he has enough money to back him.
10. Somehow, I got the impression that this film ties into the Newton shooting and the call to arms against arms. It seems to expose to hypocrisy and historical prejudice of the ideology of the majority of those advocating gun ownership. This is probably just my reading though.
11. I have only a passing familiarity with film history and thus missed many allusions. Read about them here.

On schooling

LLT has a post on finding a school for her son which got me thinking on how my views on schooling have evolved since I started the same process myself. My position on the subject in the past was encapsulated in a discussion I had with Sangitha and which can be summarised as:

1. Many of the facilities and interest classes that the new-fangled private schools offer are just that, extras, and unnecessary.
2. The schools are too expensive.
3. They will be full of wealthy kids of parents who can afford such fees, leaving the students with the skewed view of a world in which everyone’s parent owns a car.

In this sense, my views haven’t changed that much. I do believe that those facilities and interest classes are not strictly necessary. The schools are expensive, leading to children mixing only with a certain economic class.

However faced with the no-longer hypothetical situation of charting an educational future for my child, I have had to unpack some of my own instinctive reactions on the subject:

1. While a child not taking music, horse-riding, and whatever else is on offer at the more expensive private schools will not be a huge roadblock in their progress through life, taking them is not bad either. To be fair, having the chance to do more of those talent-development things at school and less classes in which one simply memorises facts that may or may not be relevant to life is a good thing. If I’m very honest, I would have loved to be able to take horse-riding classes.
2. I have to admit that I’ve been sceptical about the pedagogy and education style at some of the new schools, which as per my understanding at the early stages tends to be namby pamby play-based and at the later stages remains loose, exploratory and less rigorous. I was prey to the stereotype of those Americans who can’t do Math properly versus us Indians who are math geniuses. This stereotype is propagated in the mass media even in the West, but first-person testimonies seem to say otherwise. The whole idea is pretty laughable seeing as I excelled in the Indian system but pretty much had no idea how to change decimal points till Standard X.

Moreover, common sense and a lot of research points to children, at least the young ones, learning through play and exploration and that rote memorisation is not of great use and can actually put people off learning for life. The traditional Indian education system seems to prepare children for the traditional Indian public exams, and so maybe the fear that children who go through the alternative schools might not get into or cope with universities in India is justified. However, it seems that universities in India now do accept students who have done an international certificate instead of a local one (correct me if I’m wrong).

1. I have always thought the accents children come out of international schools with are pretty embarrassing. I now realise that one’s child “talking funny” and one’s own prejudice against people with foreign accents who one encountered in college do not count as good reasons on which to base school choice.
2. Largely, my entire reasoning was based along the lines of “I went through that system and I came out pretty okay, so what’s the point of spending money on anything fancier?” But is this strictly true?

It is true that I came out okay. If I’m honest, my school education was mediocre but I came out of it able to cope with and sometimes superseding people who had all the right boxes ticked to do better than me internationally: they were white, went to prestigious international universities and therefore had both the education and the networks that these conferred.

There could be two reasons for this. I am unusually bright, and at the risk of sounding immodest, I kind of am. I look around me and I see a number of Indians doing well in Hong Kong and when I look even more closely a lot of them are among the brighter varieties of middle-class Indians and coupled with that, we have the big advantage of middle-class English education which is fluency in English. The other reason is that the Indian education system is so rigorous that once we survive it, everything else is cakewalk. I think there are other complicated reasons why Indians of a certain background (because at the end of the day, it’s a small minority of Indians who actually have the opportunity to go abroad at all) do well abroad and our schooling as a factor in our success may not be the dominant one.

If I look more closely at the education I received in school, it was no great shakes and some of it was downright erroneous. We had a few great teachers and I had my father who kept challenging me with ideas and I read like a maniac, but I doubt the actual education I received in school was very useful. I was mostly bored and read whatever I could get my hands on under my desk, or daydreamed. The subjects I was weak at like maths, physics and chemistry, I remained weak at. The subjects I was good at did not add to my knowledge greatly because I would pretty much finish reading those textbooks – English, history, geography – in the summer holidays as soon as they arrived and there was nothing more to learn.

Now take V at the other end of the spectrum. Like me, he thought school was a drag, but while I excelled at it, he barely scraped through. Professionally, he is more successful than I am though. What schooling did to him was more terrible – it killed the desire to read, to learn formally, to study further.

At school, I was often made to sit with girls who were failing academically, and I saw firsthand what a crap deal the education system was for them. I know some of them went on to do well. Others languished, but basically their time at school was not pleasant.

Two things strike me here:

a) It seems that if you’re bright, your schooling won’t hold you back. Thing is, parents can’t know beforehand whether their children are going to bright or not, though I’m sure we all are sure our babies are geniuses (geniii?). I would assume that a less rote-based environment would be better for non-academically inclined kids. I would also assume that it would be better for kids who academically excel. I’m pretty sure I would have been better off given more history books to read and projects to do (instead of reading Curly’s precious supply of Sweetdreams and Miss A’s religious magazines under my desk) and someone spent tried different approaches explaining decimal points to me, even if it meant keeping me back at maths. I may even have come out of school able to look at my own bank account without shuddering.

2) My overall impression of traditional Indian schooling (and traditional Hong Kong schooling is similar from all accounts) as we knew it is that it’s boring and a waste of time. The entirety of what we learnt in 10 years could have been squeezed into 5. Maybe schooling won’t scar my child for life. But at best, it’s very likely he’s going to be bored. Do I want him to be sitting somewhere memorising something that could be spent on learning something useful or even playing? Not really.

Now, the sad fact is that the schools that provide an environment where children explore instead of being confined are expensive. It could be that it is because they are expensive to run. Employing qualified teachers costs money. It’s very possible that there are people who are not qualified educators who are intrinsically good teachers. My instinct tells me that these paragons are few and far between though. So in the absence of innate talent, training might be a safe bet. It takes training and funds to run structured chaos. Ideally, there has to be a small class, high teacher-student ratio. This costs money. Maybe the government should be subsidizing this. I realised this when I visited one of the more reputed kindergartens here. They are very clear about their educational philosophy and training. The other kindergarten Benji got into I know for a fact employs white faces who are not necessarily trained. I don’t think the latter is a bad bet, it’s got a decent reputation and we might still go for it, but I won’t deny the reputed one looks like it’s reputation is warranted.

Conclusion of all this rambling: If you can afford the international/play-based/alternative school and the logistics work out, send your kid there.

If you cannot, back to my very first point. It’s not reason to panic. The traditional schools are okay. Also, I’ve been hearing that many of the traditional schools (both in HK and in India) are loosening up a bit and experimenting more. So, maybe there’s a win-win scenario of low fees, rejuvenated pedagogy there.

I used to be contemptuous of parents panicking over their children’s schooling. Although I still feel like there’s no reason to panic, because we do have options, this is an important area of your child’s life and it’s a choice one would like to give some thought to. So around the time kids are of school-going age, you will hear parents discussing this topic a lot. A lot of the time they are just venting or thinking out loud.

For non-parents, a primer on why schooling choice can get complicated:

1. Possibly, we have more options today. There are more categories of schools to choose from. We have more income enabling us to choose.
2. In Hong Kong, you have to choose between English, Cantonese, Putonghua, and bilingual education. Many expat parents don’t even consider non-English education. But if you do, it requires some research. It also requires you to project into the future, where you intend to be long-term, whether you can afford college education outside Hong Kong.
3. In Hong Kong, places for English education are not abundant. So broadly there is competition for places, with a small number of children not getting a place at all anywhere and having to be home-schooled. Nothing wrong with home-schooling. Just that not every parent is up to it. Or can stay at home to do it. I have a feeling competition for English education has increased in India too as the middle-class expands.
4. Among the English medium schools, there are different categories. In Hong Kong, it’s international (private schools), ESF (government subsidized but still expensive), full government subsidized “local” schools (extremely difficult to get into as they are the elite schools, often still have a Chinese language subject that foreign students would struggle to meet the level of), DSS schools (government subsidized with some flexibility in curriculum), etc. You have to research all these and figure out admission procedures. Again, most expat parents don’t look beyond international and ESF. In India, it would be the different boards to choose from.
5. There are a lot of logistical things for parents to consider. Parents don’t have endless freedom in how much they can pay. Therefore, they hope their child will get admission to a school the fees of which they can afford. Then, parents don’t have endless flexibility in where they live. If your child only gets into a school way across town, then you have to either move, or have your child travel a long distance, and/or have yourself be further from work, all of which mean less time for parents and children to spend together.
6. Moreover, kindergarten is only the start of the process. Parents would have to go through the entire rigmarole of admissions again for primary school and then for secondary school. Thus, kindergartens that feed into a primary which feeds into a secondary are the most prized. Can you blame parents for hoping against hope that their child gets into said kindergarten so they are saved this hassled over and over?

So what have I decided about my own child’s education (for now, this is an evolving story):

1. I cannot afford the international school fees in Hong Kong. However, ESF should be considered more strongly than the local system, which by all accounts is very similar to typical Indian schools. If we move to India, I need to look at the international/alternative schools and see if they fit my budget.
2. For kindergarten, I want a school that is reasonably close. I am willing to forgo the security of a primary school place by not sending my child far off. Maybe this is easier for me because I’m not sure we have a long-term future in Hong Kong.
3. I prioritise morning school over afternoon school (kindies here run two sessions). I’m pretty sure Benji is going to be offered an afternoon ESF place while he already has a morning place at a less nice kindergarten and that makes my choice very difficult. I can tell that the ESF school is a great school. The one he currently has admission to is an average one. Is it worth it shifting his nap? Both had pros and cons that would take too long to list.

If I pick the original kindergarten and not the ESF one, I know I am not picking the best school for my child. But it would the choice that we believe works best for us as a family, given our finances, future plans, current location, etc and which we think is good enough. I don’t think as parents we have to believe we are picking the “best” option in the market for our kids. I won’t diss the other great options out there either just because I didn’t pick them . The best option may not work for us.

 

Update: 

Update: Last week, I attended a playdate at the ESF kindergarten which has resolved matters in my mind. I appreciated that the format was a free play session for the children accompanied by the parents, and not an interview. The teachers made it clear that they simply wanted to observe the children interacting naturally. Nevertheless, I found it a bit unnerving. Did not help that Benji clammed up as usual, was probably the youngest and least loquacious of the kids there, and is still a very drooly kid with a cold that made this worse. The teachers came around and informally chatted with the parents, though they did ask some targeting questions like “why are you choosing this school” (something I should have been prepared for, but was a bit thrown by as I was involved in a sandpit installation at the time) and “how involved are you prepared to be”. I would have thought I was being overly nervous but another parent who I shared a cab with after the session also said he felt a bit unnerved by the observing teachers. Anyway, this is the most sensible format for evaluating kids, and for that the school gets points.

Nevertheless, something struck me as off. My instinct was to identify it as the “whiteness” of the experience (meaning, the teachers, parents and even kids are mainly white people), or more specifically the dominance of the Western viewpoint and the confidence in its unassailability. This school, by virtue of catering to primarily children from native English-speaking families, is one of those expat havens, and as someone who has consciously always lived in very Chinese areas, and now works in a very Chinese environment, I find it disconcerting. On the one hand, doing so has exposed me to the good, bad and ugly of Hong Kong culture to the extent that I have decided we might need to leave soon. One solution to that might be to ensconce myself in exactly the kind of expat ghetto lifestyle that this school offers. On the other hand, I (and my wallet) resist that too, at least in terms of where we live. But then, I have to confess that in India, I didn’t exact a lifestyle that was one with the masses either (https://thebluebride.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/passage-to-india-1/). I have never completely been an insider in India (https://thebluebride.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/being-indian-2/). Though Indian culture is more welcoming of outsiders, I believe. I am aware that this has only little to do with the original topic of school. For schooling, I am possibly willing to suspend my need to integrate.

More to the point, on paper this school ticks all the right boxes. On second impression, it is not as perfect as I had initially thought. Which kind of makes my decision easier, that is, if Benji gets a place and I even have a decision to make.

Money matters

Note: I’ve made some edits to the original post to be fair to the other decision-maker in our family. Also to the definition of financial independence which I didn’t read carefully enough at first.

Last week I read this very thought-provoking post by Pepper on money, marriage and financial independence. R’s Mom also had a post in response to Pepper’s. It’s a topic I’m always interested in because it’s one of those issues I have struggled with myself.

Since I was about 11 or 12, I’ve pondered the power dynamic in a marriage and how money plays into it. Even as a child, I had this thing about financial independence. Ever since I was old enough to understand about money – and we were introduced to money early as our parents never co-opted cash gifts given to us, but let us save and spend them after discussing our purchases with them – I was never comfortable spending anyone else’s money, even my parents. I was parsimonious in my expenditure, even as my sister was gregarious.

The moment I got my first paycheck though, it was very different. I could be very generous to myself and others with my own money. I didn’t even track it that carefully. My sister was the opposite here too. This is not to say I was financially independent. I couldn’t be on the pay I was receiving. And then when I did my Master’s I was dependent on my parents for an allowance. But that was a hisab I kept in my head and now that I am in a position to pay them back, I keep trying to settle that account, though they insist that higher education was and should be their responsibility.

When I got married and moved to Hong Kong, I was dependent on V for a very short while. V left money for me every day but I felt the need to use it very sparingly. I remember very clearly buying the cheapest burger in McDonald’s. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t get a job – I’m pretty sure we would have figured out something that did not involve be subsisiting on cheap food – but I found a job very quickly. I maintained rigorous accounts for the first year and discovered I was well within my limit, after splitting expenses and saving a fixed amount each month.

 Now to some of the issues raised in Pepper’s post.

The infernal “so what do you do?” question: This question has begun to offend many. My brother-in-law, for example, hates it. I used to be contemptuous of it myself. But I’ll admit that I have used it in social settings, simply because I sometimes can’t think of anything else to say. I must emphasise that I am socially inept.  I don’t think this question is always posed in an aggressive or needling way; often it is a thoughtless one, tossed out automatically with the hope of providing other topics of conversation. The Mad Momma had once posted about how people often look bewildered when offered “stay-at-home mom” as an occupation. I again admitted to being one of these people, simply because I didn’t know how to take the conversation forward from there, not out of any disrespect to stay-at-home moms. Now that I am a mother, I have no such problems. I have lots to ask other parents. The Mad Momma suggested some alternative conversational props and I took her suggestions to heart.

I also think, though, that people who have made a choice must be secure in it. If you have chosen to take a break from the professional track, be proud of it and say so. It’s similar to questions that working moms face about leaving their kids – I recently got asked “oh you left them so early?” with a shocked expression, but I simply said “Yeah, I think that’s the best for me as I can’t handle being home with them 24/7 and I was fortunate enough to find really good helpers” and that was that. The interlocutor may not have been convinced but she had the grace to accept it. I would not brook rudeness though, and I would explain my choices firmly a bit and then just tell people off. I can understand how it can be annoying to be asked things in a judgmental way – like the incessant “any good news” question new couples face – but these questions are not always badly meant, so we need to examine our instinctive reactions to them. I also think that people, men and women, working outside the home has become the norm and if we want to dismantle that norm, we are going to have to work at it, and getting irritated at the ignorance people display, at least the first time they display it, might not be the best tack. Repeat offenders can be snapped at freely, I say.

Financial independence: Pepper makes a good point that married couples are rarely financially independent because even when they are earning separate incomes, their decisions are joint. This is true at the conceptual level.

But decision-making is just one aspect of dependence. The other is one’s contribution to one’s own upkeep. If you are not bringing in an income, do not have an existing income, or are not providing a service that could be quantifiable in income-terms (and I believe a lot of what a homemaker typically does can be) then one is dependent.

For me, financial independence means earning enough or having enough funds to meet one’s basic needs oneself.*

Thus, does one need to be working professionally to be financially independent? No. You could have a trust fund that covers your expenses. You could have saved enough to tide you over. You could have assets in your name designated from the income of your spouse or parent or benevolent uncle that could cover your expenses.

I remember telling my mother that I wonder about my cousin’s wives who do not work professionally because what if something happens to my cousins. My mother pointed out that they have property in their name that would keep them well provided for. Frankly, these women are probably more financially independent than me toiling away at my little job ad infinitum.

You might have quit your job but be very sure that tomorrow, if need be, you could get one and be back to earning and supporting yourself pronto. The reality is, though, as many women who take a break to care for their children fulltime when the kids are young discover, is that it is not that easy to slide back into the workforce. Nevertheless, for certain specialised jobs, it might indeed be easy to find a well-paying job. So are they financially independent or not? I’d say at the moment, no. But they are 90% sure that they could be in a jiffy and that should be good enough.

Pepper cited the example of a friend who earns a very basic salary and counts on her husband for luxuries. Is she financially independent? I would say, yes, if she can support a basic lifestyle. However, what I was earning when I started off as a journalist would not support even that. So at the time, I was not financially independent. I had a friend who was a teacher and earned a pittance. She was not financially independent either, nor did she claim to be, though she rightly took pride in her work, just as stay-at-home moms rightly take pride in theirs.

I think if you are dependent and it’s a well-reasoned dependency, then why quibble about it. My current visa status is “dependent”. I choose this because my husband’s office processes the visa very easily and it gets renewed for a longer duration that it would had I processed it myself. I know for a fact that I could get a work visa at any point should my marital status change. I choose to be “dependent” for my own convenience and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Frankly I think it’s quite ingenuous of me.

Financial independence, as per the definition above, has been touted as a mantra for women because it has been found that generally women who did not have an independent income fared worse off in a divorce or when the spouse suffered an untimely death.

It may be possible that people are very sure that they are well covered even when their income is mixed with someone else’s and it is possible that they are. However, the wisdom comes from generalities and it tells us that some amount of clarity in matters of money makes sense, especially in places (like India) where the rule of law is weak.

And herein lies the crux of my dilemma. I would like to think idealistically like those who advocate a “what’s mine is yours and vice versa” approach. But from a practical point of view, what if there is a breakdown of the marriage? When it comes to deciding on the division of money then, it is always acrimonious and I’d wager that if one member is earning and the other has not been for a long time, then the earning member is in a stronger position to claim assets and funds. It’s not like I would covet the lion’s share of our joint income were V and I to divorce. I would just want to be very clear that I am left fair and square with what I am due, which according to me is what I earned and extra services I provided to the marriage that facilitated V to keep earning (like giving birth to my children). Which is why I feel it’s important for non-earning partners in a marriage to secure an income for themselves for services rendered within the marriage.

The fact is that V and I are very similar people. We view things very practically. Maybe we are not generous enough to give each other blank cheques. We also have different priorities and spending styles, which means that there is a certain amount of push and pull over what we spend on and how we spend.

So how do we manage our finances in our marriage?

This is something that I only just achieved equilibrium on. We have a joint account in Hong Kong, into which both our salaries go, which I was always iffy about because I had no clarity on where my savings ended and his started.   This I felt the need to know about due to the reasons mentioned in the preceding subsection, and also some below. I also felt that if I had a separate account, I would pay more attention. V pointed out that this wasn’t true (and he’s right). I basically don’t have a separate account because I cannot be bothered to pay much attention and someone does need to pay attention. But my lack of attention would scare me sometimes and then I’d grumble to him (instead of paying attention).

We do all our household expenses from this account. We used to update each other on every little luxury expenditure, but now we don’t. But we do consult each other on the big expenditures.

Sounds good right? But there’s a but coming…

This works when the couple’s spending style and priorities are more or less aligned. Many couples cite that they resolve differences by “having a discussion”. But what if you cannot resolve things with discussion?

On certain occasions, V has made major investments without me agreeing to them. To say that I was pissed would be putting it mildly. My instinct says that major decisions, like buying property for example, should be taken jointly and those assets be held jointly. But my sense of fairness questions this.

More to the point, what if partners cannot agree on what to do with their money? Or one is passionate about an investment that the other doesn’t buy into? What if one is so passionate that it’s a lifelong dream? Ideally, the couple should come to an agreement. But if they can’t, would it be easier for them to separate finances in such a way that there is his, hers and our money, whereby each individual partner can follow their own discretion even on some biggish things.

The more I think about it, the more I find that the coming to agreement on finances works smoothly when serendipity strikes and people were somehow able to achieve that balance, or when one partner is more laidback about the financial decision-making. When both have very strong views about what they want to do with the money and these views tend to diverge, divide and rule might be the way to go.

For example, I foresee that I might want to support my parents financially in the future. It is completely unlikely that V would ever need to do this for his parents. I would want to be as generous as I like. But I know that V and I might have different ideas on what is appropriate. But know I would not really want to have a discussion on this. That’s why I would like to know what’s mine to play with.

V very shortly wants to quit corporate work and pursue his own interests. Maybe I should be bankrolling him. Unfortunately, I have neither the earning capacity nor the generosity of spirit (maybe I would have the generosity of spirit if I had the earning capacity). V argues that he will not be living off me, but his savings. This is strictly true. The fact is that V has pushed himself harder careerwise all his life and spent less than I ever have to reach this point. But to quantify his savings, so that he can dabble into them in peace, we have to separate them from mine.

Hence, right now, we have one joint account which might be something like the current account in a business, which operate for regular expenses with relative smoothness and a certain amount of grumbling. And we have separate accounts in India with savings in each of our names, to some extent proportionate to our contributions. I believe this is fair. It works for us.

I still believe that couples should keep each other informed and take the views of their partners into account on major financial decisions even with their “own” money. I cannot logically justify why I feel this way – I do not subscribe to sentimental notions of oneness –  except to say that in a marriage the other person is your back-up/security, even if he/she is not your immediate provider. Individuals need to have a realistic picture of the financial status of that back-up. They also need to be comfortable that a financial decision taken with their partner’s “own” money doesn’t end up compromising their and/or their children’s agreed upon lifestyle.  I also think that it’s important for partners to agree upon a base lifestyle that each of them will contribute to maintaining (and traditionally non-paid for services like caring for children, looking after the home, cooking, count as maintaining said lifestyle and should be quantified and accounted for).

When I asked around, I found that couples have a range of styles in financial management. I know one couple that started out with a joint account but found themselves squabbling over minor expenditures and luxuries so much that they separated the accounts and have a joint one into which they transfer household expenses.

I know that in Hong Kong divided finances are so common that in extreme cases some couples even settle accounts with each other for dinners out. While this seems too much for me, it gives me comfort that I am not way off. Hong Kong has a higher divorce rate than India but there are still many many marriages that last extremely long and remain very romantic till the end. The number of old Hong Kong couples I see on the streets holding hands and being generally solicitous to each other warms the cockles of my hearts. But they are an extremely practical society when it comes to money matters.

Just as those who are tagged as “dependent” feel judged, I sense a counter-judgement coming from their direction about couples that choose not to completely mesh their finances. I think the dominant directive will and should continue to be in the direction of individuals securing an income for themselves in their own names as well as, if needed, the income they have with their partners. But I also feel like there might be a range of practices in between and that to judge, the details are really important and there might not be a one-size-fits-all answer.

 

*Initially I had posted this this definition of financial independence, posted by Pepper’s first commenter: “Financial Independence is a term generally used to describe the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live indefinitely without having to work actively for basic necessities.[1] In the case of many individuals whose financial circumstances fit this description, their assets generate income that is greater than their expenses.”

This is a very ambitious definition which I don’t quite agree for a number of reasons.

Shanti, Shalom, etc.

What’s your biggest aspiration for 2013?

This is my last post under Weverb12. I really enjoyed participating in this initiative, the prompts largely did get me to reflect on various aspects of the year gone by and brought into focus some things that I might not have noticed otherwise. It also provided ready inspiration for blogging, so yay to that. I also found myself reading the posts of other participants and some of what they wrote made a gentle impression on me. I must thank the people behind this effort who created a nice-looking website and thought up the prompts.

I think it was Sangitha who proposed (or at least that’s where I first came upon the idea) of coming up with one word to crystalise what one hoped to achieve in the coming year. I do make resolutions (I notice this word is going out of fashion, with people calling it by any other name, which I find very amusing) and setting these targets does go a small way towards making change in my life. This year my resolutions were a number of small things – maybe too many, I probably should have stuck with just five – and I’m happy to report that 10 days into the year I am putting some of them into practice.

So, on many days (if not all) I have forced myself to get out of bed earlier, especially if I’m just lying there tossing, even if it means rising at 5 am like I did this morning. When this happens, I do a bit of pranayam. And I get more time with the kids. I have also reduced my chocolate intake. I have signed up for a kickboxing class during my lunch hour (though turns out I’m on leave a couple of times its held), admittedly due to peer pressure from colleagues. I’m not sure the momentum can be maintained but eating less chocolate for 10 days means 10 days worth less of fat on my bones, so I win no matter what right?

I can also already see that biting my tongue is going to be the hardest and most crucial resolution. If I had to pick one from them all, I guess it would have to be this, and this is also the one I’m most likely to fail at.

In the spirit of this prompt, it might be useful to pick one overarching goal for this year and I’d like to use the one word format. My word for this year is “peace”.

I need to learn how to keep the peace more. To speak mindfully, thinking about whether what I am going to say really needs to be said and also to consider whether the other person’s motivation might be different to what I intuited at first. To do this both at home and in company. To distance myself from people if they are too annoying. To embrace doing things on my own. To take my job lightly while still doing the best I can. Basically to do what it takes to maintain my mental and emotional equilibrium.

Amen.

Happy times

Post a picture taken of you or by you this year when you were happy.
capture [LISTEN]: This post is part of Weverb12.

In keeping with New Year Resolution no 11, here are a couple of photos from my romantic minibreak with V in November. The sense of release I felt just stepping into the hotel room was so tangible and the view reminded me of the beauty of Hong Kong that I have begun to take from granted.

Our hotel room that I thought was pretty stunning.

Hong Kong harbour

Brekkie with a view.

A reflection of me taking photos of the harbour.

Embracing the disconnect

With whom did you make the most worthwhile connections in 2012?
connect [LIVE]: This post is part of Weverb12

This is a toughie. I can easily cite who I did not make worthwhile connections with:

1. My husband
2. Close friends
3. Even my mom to some extent
4. My colleagues
5. My helpers

As most of you know by now, this has been the year of angst and irritation. People mostly got on my nerves. I probably got on theirs. Worthwhile connections were lacking.

Mainly, I forged a closer relationship with my kids. I realised I can stomach their company in larger doses than I can most adults. This is a complete turnaround from someone who would run a mile from kids. I am now the person who goes goo-goo-gaa-gaa at babies in the MTR. Stranger things have happened (NOT). Apart from genuinely enjoying my interactions with my children, as I realised on Christmas, they crowd out the need for other people and paint the grotesqueness of many adult interactions in sharp relief.

And if my children hadn’t caused me to isolate myself, Hong Kong encourages it too. One of the pitfalls of life in Hong Kong is that people wrap themselves into their own cocoons and the efficiency of the infrastructure and the way the city functions means one doesn’t need people in the way that one does in India, for example. So one is forced to consider whether one actually wants people. I fully recognise that this is a dangerous game to play whereby one could find oneself very alone and isolated later in life or if one moves away from Hong Kong.

But for the here and now, this year I found that I preferred solitude and my own company more than anything. For example, the week that V was away at the end of the year, I did a couple of things myself and enjoyed the experience immensely. I went to an exhibition of Andy Warhol’s work and loved taking my time and absorbing it at my own pace, reading every caption as is my want without feeling guilty about making others wait. And on Saturday night, I went to a HK Philharmonic concert, making a conscious choice not to call friends, and again, I loved being alone. I could space out and let the music wash over me without feeling the need to make conversation or think about whether anyone else was entertained. I could go to the loo twice during the interval without feeling embarrassed about my small bladder. At the end of it, I remember thinking how this was so much more worthwhile than doing than drinks and dinner. On a side note, I’ve discovered I enjoy Ravel – the gypsy notes in his music resonate with me – and I find solos trying.

I’d like to say that I’m going to make more connections in the coming year, but I think I need to wallow in solitude more. I need to cast of the cloak of needing people and being anxious about company. One of the wonders of Hong Kong is that one is free to do things alone. So, if anything, I’m hoping to isolate myself more and keep my interactions with people light.