I wonder a lot about the flow of time through my life. How it speeds up and slows down at will so I can never say if a summer went by too fast or too slow. I wonder about what I would be doing a couple of years from now, this very date. I try to remember what I was doing this exact same date, a few years earlier. It helps put your problems into perspective and it reminds you of the person you were. And dream about the person you might be. That's one reason I write. It makes the past a lot easier to remember and a lot clearer.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
On prejudices
A few months back I wrote about prejudices, about how I was falling prey to the convenience of them- the convenience of fitting people into different categories that predict expected behavior so you would know how to behave around them. The problem with prejudices is the problem with any classification algorithm. You are trying to fit an infinite range of people into a finite set of classes. And even the strongest classification algorithm supported by the strongest of data has its flaws. And there will be outliers.
I have never been exposed to people from other parts of India much. Tamil Nadu has always been stereotyped as an extremely self-sufficient or in less flattering terms 'not a very convenient place to stay in if you are an outsider and don't know the language'. So we don't have as many out-of-state people per unit area in Chennai as, say. Bangalore. Thus I grew up conveniently ignorant of how the rest of India behaves and had no need to learn the prejudices and stereotypes that try to describe an entire group of people in a few words. Now that I am outside my little cocoon and meet new people from across India all the time (what better place to meet Indians than the US) I have given in to this deplorable habit of learning about stereotypes and trying to fit people to them. And as I do that, I also come into contact with stereotypes about Tamilians. Like any self-obsessed blogger, I love hearing what people think of me and how they perceive us as a people. And a lot of it is news to me. As a disclaimer I must state that my family is not the stereotypical Tamil family and a lot of that is due to my mom who is not the stereotypical Tamil mo. So the reason I cannot make any sense of Tamil stereotypes is not maybe because the stereotype is false but that I am an outlier. That being said, I feel a lot of the people I know would be outliers.
Myth #1: Our ability to speak Hindi and English
A lot of my friends can speak impeccable Hindi though I personally suck at it. But most of us are pretty good at English. Most shop keepers and auto drivers can understand English and the ones that do love showing off. So have no fear. But I speak for Chennai more so than any other city/town/village. So dont take this as a general rule.
Myth #2: Our food habits
I hate curd/yogurt. I prefer rotis more than rice.
Myth #3: Our language obsession
We are not all fanatical about our language. Speaking for myself, I don't understand a lot of the most beautiful words of Tamil beyond the ones I use in everyday conversations and the only reason I can read and write it haltingly is because my grandmother taught me the letters of the text from gossip magazines about film stars. And that is the case for most of the urban youth. A lot of us are more comfortable with English than Tamil and I agree that that is a sad sad thing.
Myth #4: Our chutney serving sizes are too small
Chutneys come with unlimited refills. Ask and it shall be given.
Now follow the Chennai myths.
Myth #5: Autodrivers rip you off if you don't know Tamil
First things first. There are no fixed auto fares in Chennai. The meter is for show. It hasn't been in popular use since 1998. Everything is negotiable when it comes to auto drivers. The direct implication of that is that you are only as strong as your negotiation skills. If you are an outsider, you are going to get ripped off because you are not going to know the standard fare for going from point A to point B and that is a chink in your bargaining armor. And trust me, our auto drivers are a hardened lot. If they see a weakness, they will swoop in for the kill. The end result? You will be taken for a ride, pun intended. It has nothing to do with the fact that you don't know our language. It is not personal. If you don't want to get ripped off, study up on the rates you have to pay and brush up your bargaining prowess. Else, call a cab. We do have them and share autos and buses for the faint of the heart.
Myth #6: Chennai Tamil is ugly Tamil.
This is a myth that people who grew outside Chennai love to propagate and stress on every time I comment on their Tamil. Chennai Tamil is NOT just slum Tamil. We are NOT just a city of slums. The slummish version is a stereotype that Vivek the Comedian made famous and we didn't mind because he was funny. But we do not all start every conversation with "Ae kasumaalam".
Some generalizations about Tamilians and Chennai are true. We are a coastal city and the climate is typical of that. It is extremely humid. We love Rajinikanth, more so because he is a humble and generous actor, than for any other reason. We are not yet completely conducive a state to outsiders but we are slowly becoming better at understanding what outsiders need and implementing it- English signs on all buses and road corners and most shops is one such step.
All being said and done, stereotypes exist for a reason and do apply for the vast majority and as long as you remember that there will be exceptions and take care to not judge people too fast you should be fine. And personally, I am going to stop subscribing to prejudices and trying to slot people. That can be my new year resolution.
I have never been exposed to people from other parts of India much. Tamil Nadu has always been stereotyped as an extremely self-sufficient or in less flattering terms 'not a very convenient place to stay in if you are an outsider and don't know the language'. So we don't have as many out-of-state people per unit area in Chennai as, say. Bangalore. Thus I grew up conveniently ignorant of how the rest of India behaves and had no need to learn the prejudices and stereotypes that try to describe an entire group of people in a few words. Now that I am outside my little cocoon and meet new people from across India all the time (what better place to meet Indians than the US) I have given in to this deplorable habit of learning about stereotypes and trying to fit people to them. And as I do that, I also come into contact with stereotypes about Tamilians. Like any self-obsessed blogger, I love hearing what people think of me and how they perceive us as a people. And a lot of it is news to me. As a disclaimer I must state that my family is not the stereotypical Tamil family and a lot of that is due to my mom who is not the stereotypical Tamil mo. So the reason I cannot make any sense of Tamil stereotypes is not maybe because the stereotype is false but that I am an outlier. That being said, I feel a lot of the people I know would be outliers.
Myth #1: Our ability to speak Hindi and English
A lot of my friends can speak impeccable Hindi though I personally suck at it. But most of us are pretty good at English. Most shop keepers and auto drivers can understand English and the ones that do love showing off. So have no fear. But I speak for Chennai more so than any other city/town/village. So dont take this as a general rule.
Myth #2: Our food habits
I hate curd/yogurt. I prefer rotis more than rice.
Myth #3: Our language obsession
We are not all fanatical about our language. Speaking for myself, I don't understand a lot of the most beautiful words of Tamil beyond the ones I use in everyday conversations and the only reason I can read and write it haltingly is because my grandmother taught me the letters of the text from gossip magazines about film stars. And that is the case for most of the urban youth. A lot of us are more comfortable with English than Tamil and I agree that that is a sad sad thing.
Myth #4: Our chutney serving sizes are too small
Chutneys come with unlimited refills. Ask and it shall be given.
Now follow the Chennai myths.
Myth #5: Autodrivers rip you off if you don't know Tamil
First things first. There are no fixed auto fares in Chennai. The meter is for show. It hasn't been in popular use since 1998. Everything is negotiable when it comes to auto drivers. The direct implication of that is that you are only as strong as your negotiation skills. If you are an outsider, you are going to get ripped off because you are not going to know the standard fare for going from point A to point B and that is a chink in your bargaining armor. And trust me, our auto drivers are a hardened lot. If they see a weakness, they will swoop in for the kill. The end result? You will be taken for a ride, pun intended. It has nothing to do with the fact that you don't know our language. It is not personal. If you don't want to get ripped off, study up on the rates you have to pay and brush up your bargaining prowess. Else, call a cab. We do have them and share autos and buses for the faint of the heart.
Myth #6: Chennai Tamil is ugly Tamil.
This is a myth that people who grew outside Chennai love to propagate and stress on every time I comment on their Tamil. Chennai Tamil is NOT just slum Tamil. We are NOT just a city of slums. The slummish version is a stereotype that Vivek the Comedian made famous and we didn't mind because he was funny. But we do not all start every conversation with "Ae kasumaalam".
Some generalizations about Tamilians and Chennai are true. We are a coastal city and the climate is typical of that. It is extremely humid. We love Rajinikanth, more so because he is a humble and generous actor, than for any other reason. We are not yet completely conducive a state to outsiders but we are slowly becoming better at understanding what outsiders need and implementing it- English signs on all buses and road corners and most shops is one such step.
All being said and done, stereotypes exist for a reason and do apply for the vast majority and as long as you remember that there will be exceptions and take care to not judge people too fast you should be fine. And personally, I am going to stop subscribing to prejudices and trying to slot people. That can be my new year resolution.
My Australian cousin shot this pic. Due credit therefore must go the typical NRI Praveen Gounder
Saturday, December 24, 2011
And it begins again
I've been meaning to write for a long time. After all a lot always happens in December. I have a lot of half written notes floating around in my laptop's disk from all the posts I meant to write but got distracted through midway- one about my birthday, another about my trip to Arizona for a friend's graduation, another about being awkward around strangers, another about getting drunk on other people's happiness and happiness sponsored tequila shots and yet another about pretty girls making bad relationship mistakes which was precipitated by my Arizona friend's roommate bawling her eyes out several times a day everyday over her boyfriend.
This note however is not about something that happened. On the contrary, this is about nothing happening and about how my life seems to have become stuck in stagnation and how i wake up everyday with an incredible sense of deja vu. I talk a lot about the minor events of my life, how I'm feeling on any given day and in general treat my blog as a diary with minimal explanation about why I am feeling what I'm feeling and minimal context. The reason is I have no idea who reads my blog and who doesn't. Over the last few years, some very random people have told me they read my blog, my ex-roommates aunt for one, and I dont know if I am comfortable with some people knowing some parts of my life. Not to be secretive or anything, but I dont want to worry my family or scandalize them. Which is why I came up with the very clever idea of tracking my audience (thats the bar you see on the lower right) but clearly it is useless for anything except to feed your ego. So I've given up. I think this is a personal dilemma every public blog writer has to go through- how much do I put on my page, how much can I reveal and how do I not use my blog as a vessel to showing off and projecting an image of you that is not the real you but the you you've always wished to be.
Anyway, breaking out of this digression, the reason for my worry these days is that I am planning on graduating in March and my job search still winds on. When I got my internship a couple of months back, I was pretty sure I was set for life, that I'd never have to face the debilitating waiting and applying and hours and hours of staring at job listings and the slow waning of your confidence with every rejection. I thought I'd know what to expect this time around. And that would prepare me better- to get a job and to deal with the pressure if I dont land one straight away. But even knowing what to anticipate doesn't really prepare you for the depression when it hits. And the fact that this time the stakes are higher, that I need to find a job within the limited time I have, does nothing to help. Its like a constant sour taste at the back of your throat, an itching niggling prick that pulls you back to it, even when you try and prioritize and concentrate on something else. I so tried to avoid reaching this point, starting January and my final quarter without a job. There are a couple of my friends in other universities who just graduated and who are still on the lookout for jobs and I saw what that did and does to them. Slowly counting down to a deadline, reaching it, stepping over it and now starting another and more final countdown while waiting for a call and an offer. I saw what the stress does to them and it scares me, makes me kick myself for every interview I messed up.
I miss my friend K. He's gone to India for the winter holidays and among all my friends he is the one person I miss the most. Which is surprising. He is my cribbing partner. Especially when it comes to jobs and relationships and sometimes money, which I guess covers the whole gamut of reasons to crib about. Over the last few months, we've perfected our own cribbing routine.
"Why is our life like this?" I would go.
"Why should we always be put through this stress and worn thin before being given what we want?" he would ask.
"Why do some people always luckier than us?"
"Why is life so unfair?"
And then we would comfort ourselves with our weak and watery consolation, "Someday we would look back at this and laugh. And we can tell other people that we too struggled to succeed in life. And we would know we are capable of getting through life's incredible penchant for pressure tests."
I had an interview two weeks back with Qualcomm that I kicked ass in. I got a reject a couple of days back and ever since then I have been walking around like a zombie. And yes, that is what precipitated this post. Life begins to descend into the chaos it once was. I am running out of the money I managed to save. I've always had money, so it surprises me that it would mean so much to me and cause me to dissolve into a fit of panic every time I open my account details. I feel lost at times and find myself staring into space for long periods waiting for someone to tell me what to do. I find myself shying away from talking to people I am convinced will never understand this, alienating myself from friends who really have no clue and can only offer mindless platitudes. I find myself letting Led Zeppelin blare through my eardrums and I wonder if anything has changed at all from the last December 23rd.
I tried writing a personal Zeitgest for 2011 but I really cant see much that is worth mentioning and that has changed my life around in the last year. I am sure that is not true and my perception will change when my mood improves but right now if I had to choose a soundtrack that will describe the year with all its associated growth pains, I would go ahead and choose exactly the same song Google chose- "Sooner or Later" (I would have chosen "Good life" for last year too. Seems like the world or atleast Google search statistics reflects my life, like the country and the protagonist in Midnight's Children which I just finished reading). Its sad that the prevailing sentiment at the end of a year would be "we made it". Here's to an overall better 2012 for everybody.
This note however is not about something that happened. On the contrary, this is about nothing happening and about how my life seems to have become stuck in stagnation and how i wake up everyday with an incredible sense of deja vu. I talk a lot about the minor events of my life, how I'm feeling on any given day and in general treat my blog as a diary with minimal explanation about why I am feeling what I'm feeling and minimal context. The reason is I have no idea who reads my blog and who doesn't. Over the last few years, some very random people have told me they read my blog, my ex-roommates aunt for one, and I dont know if I am comfortable with some people knowing some parts of my life. Not to be secretive or anything, but I dont want to worry my family or scandalize them. Which is why I came up with the very clever idea of tracking my audience (thats the bar you see on the lower right) but clearly it is useless for anything except to feed your ego. So I've given up. I think this is a personal dilemma every public blog writer has to go through- how much do I put on my page, how much can I reveal and how do I not use my blog as a vessel to showing off and projecting an image of you that is not the real you but the you you've always wished to be.
Anyway, breaking out of this digression, the reason for my worry these days is that I am planning on graduating in March and my job search still winds on. When I got my internship a couple of months back, I was pretty sure I was set for life, that I'd never have to face the debilitating waiting and applying and hours and hours of staring at job listings and the slow waning of your confidence with every rejection. I thought I'd know what to expect this time around. And that would prepare me better- to get a job and to deal with the pressure if I dont land one straight away. But even knowing what to anticipate doesn't really prepare you for the depression when it hits. And the fact that this time the stakes are higher, that I need to find a job within the limited time I have, does nothing to help. Its like a constant sour taste at the back of your throat, an itching niggling prick that pulls you back to it, even when you try and prioritize and concentrate on something else. I so tried to avoid reaching this point, starting January and my final quarter without a job. There are a couple of my friends in other universities who just graduated and who are still on the lookout for jobs and I saw what that did and does to them. Slowly counting down to a deadline, reaching it, stepping over it and now starting another and more final countdown while waiting for a call and an offer. I saw what the stress does to them and it scares me, makes me kick myself for every interview I messed up.
I miss my friend K. He's gone to India for the winter holidays and among all my friends he is the one person I miss the most. Which is surprising. He is my cribbing partner. Especially when it comes to jobs and relationships and sometimes money, which I guess covers the whole gamut of reasons to crib about. Over the last few months, we've perfected our own cribbing routine.
"Why is our life like this?" I would go.
"Why should we always be put through this stress and worn thin before being given what we want?" he would ask.
"Why do some people always luckier than us?"
"Why is life so unfair?"
And then we would comfort ourselves with our weak and watery consolation, "Someday we would look back at this and laugh. And we can tell other people that we too struggled to succeed in life. And we would know we are capable of getting through life's incredible penchant for pressure tests."
I had an interview two weeks back with Qualcomm that I kicked ass in. I got a reject a couple of days back and ever since then I have been walking around like a zombie. And yes, that is what precipitated this post. Life begins to descend into the chaos it once was. I am running out of the money I managed to save. I've always had money, so it surprises me that it would mean so much to me and cause me to dissolve into a fit of panic every time I open my account details. I feel lost at times and find myself staring into space for long periods waiting for someone to tell me what to do. I find myself shying away from talking to people I am convinced will never understand this, alienating myself from friends who really have no clue and can only offer mindless platitudes. I find myself letting Led Zeppelin blare through my eardrums and I wonder if anything has changed at all from the last December 23rd.
I tried writing a personal Zeitgest for 2011 but I really cant see much that is worth mentioning and that has changed my life around in the last year. I am sure that is not true and my perception will change when my mood improves but right now if I had to choose a soundtrack that will describe the year with all its associated growth pains, I would go ahead and choose exactly the same song Google chose- "Sooner or Later" (I would have chosen "Good life" for last year too. Seems like the world or atleast Google search statistics reflects my life, like the country and the protagonist in Midnight's Children which I just finished reading). Its sad that the prevailing sentiment at the end of a year would be "we made it". Here's to an overall better 2012 for everybody.
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