I’ll go first.
In 11th grade, i had a frenemy whom everyone loved to hate. I think our problem was that she was this exotic creature, so different from all of us, and so much more difficult to understand. So what we couldn’t understand, we termed as dangerous, bad, ‘unculturely’, thus following the footsteps of so many before us who name the unfamiliar as opposed to culture. Her family was one of the cool ones. Her dad would let her drink a little if he and his friends were having a party and she was around. She would wear the real hot dresses we could only dream about what with our awkwardly teenage bodies. She would hang out with guys, she would do a lot of stuff that we weren’t allowed to. So in our jealousy and narrow mindedness, we thought being one of the familiar majority gave us the right to sit on our high chairs and declare that she was not really a nice person. Maybe she really was not nice. Or maybe that had a lot to do with the way we treated her. But a few years hence, when i was on the other side of the pub door and i was making my choices and discovering the ones i wanted to keep and the ones i felt not so comfortable with, and while this adventure of novelty was going on, people decided it would be in the best utility of their time to judge me, i realized i didn’t like it so much. I realized i was doing the same things that i had dissed a couple of years back. The same and more, maybe. Atleast i was old enough to know my way around people. But that only made me feel more guilty for the cruelty we indicted when we were school kids.
I loved school. I loved being one of the popular girls. I loved people loving me and knowing my name and teachers showing me off and generally being nice to people. I really was nice. And i tried a lot to be nice because before i became one of the popular girls, i was this super shy, super sensitive girls who always ended up getting hurt. I swore i’d never do that to another person. But then despite my best intentions, i did ended up hurting a lot of people. Sometimes just by standing by. To my defense though, there were times when people a lot older than me and who should have a lot more sense but didn’t were the ones inflicting the cruelty. And there wasn’t much i could do in cases like that. Like the time 4 girls got caught cheating on an exam (i think it was a second time offense for one of the girls) and after giving up on advising them, my class teacher decided it would be best to make sure their evil spread no further. So she made the 4 of them sit in the very last row and moved everybody else’s benches away from them so they formed a little island to themselves. Soon 3 of the girls jumped ship and it was just this one girl, the 2 time offender all alone. None of us knew anything about her. We’ve seen her talk to boys (the one cardinal evil in a girls school), mostly friends of her elder brother but a sin never the less. We knew the teachers hated her because she always was this firebrand they never could get to. She wasn’t particularly friendly so none of us ever felt the compulsion to stand up for her. Atleast i didn’t. I didn’t even know her so i wasn’t going to go out of my way to vouch for her/ give her a makeover/turn her into a new leaf shit they show on movies. So i just stood aside and watched the drama. The girl left school. I have no idea where she is now. And i don’t know what prompted me to remember her after so many years. I hope what my very Catholic school did, left no scars behind.
People who know me know i hated the 2 years of DAV and loved my high school. But while my high school was great, they weren’t above this judgementalism, if that is even a word. All these years later i wonder if there was ever a point to moral science classes, if not a lot of non-practical bull shitting. I still remember being taught how a girl should be modest, how you should never show off and if your work is good enough you will be recognized for it. No good has ever come to me from being modest. In fact it is one moral that has been nothing but harmful to me all these years. But that deserves a post by itself. Anyway, to cut a long story short, all these years later i wish we’d been taught an entirely different set of values and not judged so much on how we dressed or who we spoke to. Those were probably dangerous lessons to teach to kids in high school- that you had the right to decide how people should behave and the right to punish them if they weren’t to your liking.
Over the years, i’ve done my share of criticizing the things i didn’t understand- NRIs, my classmates who want to get married early, Vijay's acting skills, Indian education system... You only have to read my old posts to realize how much ranting I've done on this blog. And yeah you can go ahead and call me a hypocrite. Even my mom, who is the one person i admire the most and who is probably the most tolerant person i’ve ever seen, isn’t above her share of prejudices. And while i don’t begrudge you your prejudices, most of which probably arise from gross generalizations of painful personal experiences, i will hate you if you try to enforce them on me. Life has this tendency of making you eat your own words and i don’t think any of us ‘are in a position to diss anything without having tried it first.’ (courtesy: The Mad Momma)
What got me started on this post? I was reading this awesome note on FB by a friend of a friend on why he hates V-day. And everything was great until he said something along the lines of V-day is a western phenomenon and it is only the west that needs days to honor relationships because they really don’t respect and value relationships otherwise. Since it is not part of rich culture, we must refrain from making a big deal out of mother’s day, father’s day and various other assorted commercialized days. Culture talk again! And this time from a guy closer to my age than the orange toting, badly dressed, Shiv Sena members. (Yeah I do not understand the values Shiv Sena stand for and so i diss them. This can be counted as hypocricy. But I would love to sit down and have a debate with you if you agree with their ideals and maybe you could convince/convert me.) Anyway, ever since I started talking about going to the US, I have been hearing shit about the wild ‘wests’ dangerous ways and their lack of culture, not so much from my family since half my family is actually here, but from other random people who are by no means authorities in the field of culture. One person, a person i really liked and still like, told me i should be careful late at night (very good advice indeed) and i should not try and emulate the Americans because they have no culture and so they really wont care what happens to them but i will. That was the stupidest thing i have ever heard in my life and trust me i have heard a lot of stupid stuff. America has been one of the most ‘culture-ful’ places I have ever seen especially from my vantage point inside a university in California. No other place can be such a melting pot of cultures. And trust me, they value their relationships, sometimes a lot more than i value mine. Solitude does not equal loneliness.
I would love to write more but my crazy neighbours are blasting music through the wooden walls. I have to go now. Damn Americans and their love for bad music. This country has no real taste!
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