Blending Cultures II

In Part I described what’s changed for ordinary Indians - some changes happened simply because we made conscious decisions and had more choices. Others were a necessity. The one change we should have the strength to resist is peer pressure or any pressure from others to change.

What was it about the other culture that so fascinated me? Why did my husband and I give up good careers, our home, our family and friends and a good life to move to New Zealand? Yes, it was the clean environment, the disciplined traffic, the (relative) lack of corruption, the ease of getting things done without jumping bureaucratic hoops,  and knowing everyone paid the same, fixed price for veges. It was also the fun of interacting with a different variety of cultures - Asians, Middle Easterners, Afrcans, Europeans, the English - to name a few. And a lot of it was rose spectacles. We've been here for over twenty years so the blinkers have come off. I can honestly say we are settled, familiar with the place and culture, with realistic expectations and reasonable optimism.

How has it changed me? I have learnt to be a bit more independent. To varying degrees so have my counterparts back home. Have I completely capitulated to the west? I don’t think so. I enjoy being Indian way too much. I was born Indian and although I live in another part of the world, I will always think of myself as Indian first. 

Diya by Zeimusu, free clipart

Introducing new elements in a culture should unite or blend the best of both worlds but doesn’t have to change a person completely. The ease with which we absorbed the best of both is something, to my mind, uniquely Indian. (see Mumbai's Psyche). If a person is confident of his or her core values, whatever they may be, no amount of outside pressure will make them give those up. If a person does give up certain traditions (with no outside pressures, overt or otherwise), it is only because they’ve always wanted to anyway.

As for becoming  a boring homogenous race, there is one unpredictable factor in all human beings that will never allow that. It is the variety of human emotions at any given moment. Humans, as such, might have made progress in leaps and bounds where technology is concerned. But we still have the same basic emotions - both positive and negative - that we had right at the very beginning of our existence. Our values are, and always will be, unique to each of us. On a day to day basis, each one of us feels differing emotions at different times. The permutations and combinations of these day to day emotions are numerous and seemingly contradictory. While some of us feel happy, others are sad or angry in similar situations; there’s generosity or envy; wile, guile or innocence; boredom or lively interest; and so on. And this is on any given day. On another day, it might be completely different. Besides, we are the sum total of our experiences and there’s too much out there for us to ever absorb in a single life-time. 

Christmas Carols, free clipart by Gustavorezende

Here’s a completely opposing viewpoint written by an American who travelled through India, witnessing the "erosion" of Indian traditions and culture. I do believe he has underestimated us Indians. Our American doesn’t have faith in Indians being able to resist the “buy-buy-buy” culture. Some folks will never give up on retail therapy whichever culture they belong to. For the rest, feverish consumerism, after a while, does slow down. Besides, there is a new reality in this day and age which forces us to think before we buy - how will buying this product impact our environment?

The American thinks capitalists have no regard for differences in culture. He thinks a market economy leads to unequal distribution of wealth, and therefore, of power. He may be right, I don't know.

What I do know is, given any type of economy, people compete for a piece of the pie – some by fair means and others by foul. I believe that in any system, people with more wealth exploit the ones with less, and people with more power exploit the ones with less. It isn’t the system per se. It is base human nature (read vices) that has created that system. And I can say with conviction that there's an even  sprinkling of every type of human (nature) throughout the world.

As the philosopher, William Pfaff, suggested, “Only if we recognise that base nature as well as what we are capable of by way of our highest ideals will we be able to scale heights as never before.” The exact words are here. 

Our American has also romanticised the clearly demarcated lines between the sexes that exist in India. He’s rued that it is blurring. But to my mind, the less we see people as different simply because they belong to a different sex, the more we simply see them as human beings the same as everyone else, the better relaxed we’ll learn to be with each other. The more lines are demarcated, the more someone determined to enforce those lines will allow, or even commit and justify, crimes against other human beings. (She looked at him - I'll teach her a lesson by pawing her. My lust isn't the issue here. It is the fact that she is besharam for casting her eyes on him and needs a lesson which I will give her. He spoke to her - stone him to death.)

If life is to be preserved as it is, we might as well live in a museum. Life is ever evolving as are cultures. They change with time, circumstances and necessities. It is our core values that we need to make every effort to preserve for they are what make us the person we are.

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Blending Cultures

The other day I passed a bunch of kids returning from school in NZ. They were laughing, kidding one another and generally having a jolly old time. What struck me about the group was that it was totally multicultural and yet, undeniably, each of those kids sounded like New Zealanders or Kiwis. This set me thinking - will the blending of cultures eventually produce one homogenous block of humans who, whether in London, Mumbai, Brazil or China, will lead disgustingly uninteresting and similar lives? Mere shadows of one another?

Well, for starters we already do. Giving in to peer pressure, be it to people who belong to the same community or to different communities, is much the same thing. When someone insists and we capitulate (eagerly) to their demand that we look and sound exactly like them before they accept us, it is a subtle play of dominance-subjugation. It happens, to varying degrees, wherever there is a majority or, wherever there is muscle power. Youngsters are especially vulnerable.  I believe objections to such capitulation are justifiable. Don't give up a part of your cultural identity simply because it might be more circumspect and convenient to do so. Children being especially vulnerable, teach them to appreciate those aspects of your cultural identity that you like, respect and enjoy.

Peer pressure aside and purely because we are human, we pick up things from other humans. It is a natural instinct. It stems from the desire for self preservation, safety and a sense of belonging. It makes us fashion ourselves along the lines of other humans we admire, enjoy or feel safe with, or, would like to call our inner circle. If an aspect of another culture is sometimes more enjoyable to some folks, the communal minded are umbraged. [How can someone like something from the other culture so much that they are willing to give up part of ours?]

When we migrated to NZ, my family and I were following a dream. We wanted to be amongst people of various cultures, especially cultures that we didn’t see much of in our own neighbourhood. We read about them, were fascinated by them and in some ways, identified with them. An objective outsider (or an insider from that other culture) would have rightly said, we had romantic notions of this other culture. When we did settle here we realised it was a mixed bag. Not everything (nor everyone) was as wonderful as we’d imagined. There was much that we thoroughly admired and wanted to absorb from the new culture. But there were things Indian that we realised we preferred and wanted to preserve.

These are some of our initial reactions – that the local kids weren’t able to shine as much as our Indian kids at studies; but they were really good at sports and music (which were much harder to earn a living off, weren't they?); that we enjoyed our culture of home cooked food versus fast food; stay-at-home mums who welcomed kids back home from school, helped them with their studies and generally provide stable home lives. But guess what?

Our perceptions began to change. We slowly began to understand that our kids were brilliant because of rote learning; that experimenting, researching and looking at knowledge from different angles, questioning the written word and drawing our own logical conclusions was brilliant too; that fresh air, the outdoors and enough play time was essential for our kids and not just being bogged down by mountains of homework and mugging what had been taught; that besides being lawyers and doctors there were many fields they could follow; that one could actually link one’s extra-curricular activities and interests to one’s earnings.

Next, our ideas about stay-at-home mums started changing slightly. Of course they started changing in India too. Sheer economics, a desire not to waste qualifications, to be out and about amongst peers, made us stay-at-home mums seek careers. Were we giving up our culture by going off to work? Perhaps, to a degree – but it wasn’t because of pressure from the west. It had not only become a necessity, it was quite desirable too. Mums started working while their kids were away at school. Here in NZ we’d secretly felt sorry for kids who were sent to baby-sitters by their career oriented mothers. Now we were considering the same. What we began to understand and appreciate was that women here had managed to combine both, their professional and family lives, with a tougher set of options than their counterparts in India. In India, we had the best babysitters in the world – grandparents, to nurture and supervise, as also cheap, paid help to do the hard domestic chores of cooking and cleaning. Over in NZ, the extreme anxiety of having to leave kids with relatively unknown people had produced a win-win outcome too - professional baby-sitters.  They underwent training, learnt how to deal with emergencies, their houses were inspected for cleanliness and safety and, there was a strict ratio of the number of children to the number of trained sitters looking after them. And if we found someone who, over the months, proved to be kindly and affectionate with our children, a little more of our anxiety gave way to relief. Another tradition sacrificed? To my mind, just two different but equally good choices made available – one from our traditions and one from theirs.

We appreciated the fact that we could earn a decent wage working part time. So some of us worked part time to be back in time to welcome kids home from school. Whether we did so or stayed longer at work, when we got home, there was no paid help to do our cleaning, washing, cooking, repairing, building, painting and gardening. We – both partners - did most of it ourselves. Or, if we got paid help, we paid a good rate by the hour, which couldn't be less than the minimum wage as set by the NZ government. The paid help drove up to our homes, worked for about two hours each time before driving off until the next week or the following fortnight.

Continued as Part II: Do I think, after we’ve incorporated so many changes that suit our family’s life style and beliefs, that we've completely capitulated to the west?


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Is There An NRI Stereotype?

My next post "Is There an NRI Stereotype" is on Purba Ray's Blog, A-Musing. After thoroughly enjoying "I'd Rather Be a Bitch" on her blog, I was hooked - a regular visitor. Purba started visiting my blog too and we soon started corresponding by email. In one of her emails she said, “Btw I love your blog title –Never Mind Yaar...Makes me think, Damn! why didn't I think of that!!” Typical Purba :-) I guess it tickled her funny bone.

To be perfectly honest though, “Never Mind Yaar” isn’t meant to be funny. It is an attitude - our tendency to feel defeated by the scale and nature of certain problems, give up and move on with a sigh and a "never mind". 

For more, please head on over to A-Musing.



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Bombay In Her Heart - K.Mathur Interview

I enjoyed being interviewed by the Hutt News for Never Mind Yaar and managed to talk about many things I feel strongly about besides the book.

Please click on the photo to enlarge and read the interview

In NZ the book is available at The Best Little Bookstore 

Also available on Amazon, USA.

For excerpts and reviews please go to the following page.

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My First Review from INDIA!

I said I would let you know when "Never Mind Yaar" is made available in India. I said I'd celebrate the milestone with a link to one of my favourite songs. Well, the song might be just a bit premature because the book is with my Indian Editors. Not yet published in India. They would like to get rid of my explanations for Indian words. I mean everyone, but everyone in India knows who a Daadi or a Chacha is.

Why write all this today? Well there is a very special reason. I received my first Indian Review. Here it is.

India Redefined (IR) a Long Term, Citizen's Action Plan

IR is a movement started by Ranjana Kanti to give our desire to do something for India a structure and a plan. IR believes we can be effective only if we are actively involved ourselves. That is the only way to hold our elected representatives accountable. Ranjana is right. We cannot leave governance to people who we cannot hold accountable. When we see the rule of law broken with impunity by those in power, when we face people who constantly fudge the facts and are not transparent, who take their cut, are corrupt, self serving to an amazing degree and arrogant, what should we do? To date we’ve simply grumbled, raved and ranted but eventually sighed and said, “Never Mind Yaar”. This waiting for our knight in shining armour, that one honest and honourable person who will right everything for us, hasn’t worked. As Amit, one of our IR members rightly points out, there comes a time when a tolerant and easy going people erupt.

But when things erupt ordinary people have no chance. People with their own agendas who are thirsting for someone’s blood come out of the woodwork to take advantage of the chaos. A better strategy is to unite. After all, whose voice is stronger? A billion lone individuals or a billion strong force?

So at the risk of sounding repetitive, our only hope is to get involved ourselves. There is so much Ranjana and IR have planned to give structure to our desire to do something. She has laid out simple initial steps – identify and do something about any three small, very small, things that ail your own locality. Then inform IR about what you did, what challenges you faced and how (or if) you overcame those challenges. I know she has more planned. But first, she wants to foster our spirit of volunteering and discovering for ourselves we can be effective.

It is obviously a long term plan. Some think it’s a pipe dream. A pipe dream to want ordinary Indians to live in a safe, clean and secure environment, to want to lift the appalling standards of living, health and education of poor Indians, to want to live in harmony with other cultures even while we are proud of our own? Let them call it what they will, I hope we never forget what we are all trying to achieve. I hope IR’s existing members, who are in their thousands, don’t lose faith.

So many of us have joined the movement because we are fed up of the indifference of some politicians and we are clamouring for change. But it won’t happen overnight. The problems are huge.

I know Ranjana is working on a document to outline some of the ideas she has. In the mean time, if you have any ideas, write and tell ALL of us on our Facebook forum, not just Ranjana privately. (I know she is inundated with phone calls, emails and Facebook messages. So much so that she spends most of her time answering those. Sorry Ranjana, the price of fame!) Our Facebook forum is either "Ranjana Kanti" or "India Redefined". Please join only one and not both forums. If your name appears twice, it denies one more person the chance to join. Everyone in India or abroad is welcome to join.

Also, your thoughtful comments on others’ posts are what we need to make our forum vibrant, alive and active. As Aparajita, another IR member, commented, “talking & talking of problems is better than shrugging them off in indifference.” True Aparajita. It is certainly a step in the right direction.

Once we identify those problems, ‘solutions’ is what we all in IR want to, and will, see.

To our continued success.



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MELODY MARRIED TO HARMONY

This is a celebration. Here's a song - Rondo a la Turca by Al Jarreau - to announce my book.

Yes, Never Mind Yaar, is on Amazon.

Here"s the link:
Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Never-Mind-Yaar-K-Mathur/dp/0473174790/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289163271&sr=1-1
(shortened link: http://tiny.cc/8imyw


By next week it should be available at The Best Little Book Store, NZ. When that happens, I shall put up a link to another wonderful singer - Aziza Mustafa Zadeh - singing Inspiration.

Next stop - India!



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