Displaced Desi... or When I Became a Statistic

It's been almost a year since I moved to Detroit from Pune and to my horror I've realized that I've become a faceless, nameless statistic with a certain set of characteristics that hold true for that particular set. 

I am now an IT employee who has relocated from 'offshore' to 'onsite' in an intra company transfer to work at a 'client site' in America. In my own head I used to have a very clear definition of people who fell under this category and all the cliches and quirks attached to their life and behaviour in the US. The only comfort (if at all) I derive out of the realization that a lot of these cliches have come to hold true for me as well is that at least I'm self aware. It's sort of like watching yourself fall off a cliff in slow motion and deriving some sort of perverse satisfaction from the fact that you can see yourself falling unlike some poor idiot who is falling and doesn't know it. 

So in order to evaluate how badly I have fallen I decided to run a checklist culled from my definition and see how I measure up. 

1.  Moves to America and tries to find an apartment where loads of Indians live. They won't mind the food smell so much.
   Check. Partially correct but because the place where tons of Indians were living had no vacancy, I'm in a marginally more diverse place. 
2. Has a Vonage connection to call family.
   Check
3. One of the first things bought by them is an iPhone
   Check
4. Abuses the quality of Indian food in the Indian restaurants and ends up eating in one once a week at the least anyway.
   Check
5. Drives a Japanese or German car.
   Check
6. Must see places are: New York, Florida, Las Vegas in no particular order.
   Haven't fallen for this trap. Yet. 
7.  This one doesn't apply to me because it's an observation about guys in their mid to late twenties, typically on long terms projects: Moves to America, value in marriage market goes up as duly noted on their biodata by specifying type of visa and salary in dollars. After a year or two gets sick and bored of doing household chores and cooking and being lonely, goes back to India for 10 days, sees 40 girls, picks one to marry/someone agrees to marry him, brings her to America on a dependent visa and proceeds to daily enjoy a 3 course homemade lunch in office from then on. 
8. Is in terror of his/her clothes smelling like Indian spices and has a wholesale stock of Febreeze at any given point in time.
   More or less!
9. At least one weekend a month the day's activities consist of mostly: Calling India for a few hours from aforesaid Vonage connection, spending  2 hours in Walmart, 1 hour in the Indian grocery store, watching the pirated DVD of the latest Hindi movie
   Not guilty of too many of these except the India calling
10. Will make the maximum use of facilities like public libraries, rec areas and state parks, community centers and all such places which are funded by 'their' tax dollars.
    Hell yes

Disconnected thoughts on a rainy saturday

I've become addicted to coffee brewed from freshly ground beans. Bye bye sleep.

Currently topping my list of 'stuff I detest' -  wall to wall carpet.


I am suffering from monochromatic disorder  - beige walls, beige blinds, beige carpet and beige doors are about to drive me to do serious harm to myself.

Oh public transport! Where art thou?
 
Never, ever, ever rent a basement apartment. Ever.

I thought not buying a TV would mean I would waste less time watching mostly nonsensical material on it. I didn't account for Youtube and Netflix.


Die chain stores die! Where is a kirana store when you need one. Free delivery, I miss you. 





















 

Indianisms

Though I'm somewhat of a stickler for grammar and don't really get 'da sms lingo whn u typ lyk dis' (I almost gagged after typing that), I think language becomes very interesting and rich when it's flexible enough to include nuances and quirks of a place or culture that the original language just can't evoke.

Some of my favourite examples

chaddi buddy: because 'childhood friend' just doesn't cut it and neither the more accurate but staid version 'known each other since we were in our diapers'. This phrase suggests more than just  people who've known each other forever. It has a faint tinge of subversive activities carried out together, nefarious schemes participated in and endless thrilling childhood adventures lived through.

whattay: This word combines the frank & genuine appreciation found in the phrase 'what a movie/meal/time/picnic/any appropriate noun being praised' with the kind of fervour  that I personally believe is purely tropical or Indian or desi to be more precise :). It adds a more undefinable hence much more appreciated quality to the object/person in question.


first class: this might qualify as Indian English, because while it's not distorted English, what it means is entirely incomprehensible to someone not familiar with the usage. I'll illustrate with an example - 
person 1 to person 2: "How are you?"
person 2: "First class!!" 
which means person 2 is doing great, feeling like a million bucks and is better than just a lame 'fine' or a 'very well'. 
*Note: I think this usage is more common in the older generation, unlike many terms that have emerged from the supposed mess that the present generation has made of the language.

bucket bath: Totally desi. Totally confusing to anyone who can't figure out that showers  and tubs were both not common features of  bathrooms in Indian houses, till not so very many years ago. Very practical, very eco friendly and makes cardio part of your daily routine!

Please do add, if anyone reads this that is. 

**Update: I found this site http://samosapedia.com and realized there are entries for some terms already which is natural.

You know you work for an IT company when... Part 2

... you start referring to everyone in India as 'offshore', even your family.

De-addiction

I'm an information junkie, internet addict, habitual multi-tasker, which is all to say that I'm mostly distracted, unfocused and have a fairly short attention span. Sure, sometimes all these are helpful in my work life but I have a sneaking suspicion that they're not actually as beneficial as I would like to believe they are. I've recently come across http://zenhabits.net and find some of the ideas in it very appealing!

Minimalism, focus, eating right, decreasing clutter and distraction and thereby achieving much more - all nice concepts. So where do I stand?  A few points come to mind:
1. I'm fairly de-cluttered, I don't like collecting too much stuff. The two things I AM guilty of is hoarding books and clothes I hope I'll fit into someday :)
2. Cutting off the distractions in life - I've managed to reduce my TV viewing to almost zero. The trick being - I didn't renew my TATA Sky subscription! On the flip side, internet & information remain a massive distraction for me. I have already checked my facebook three times from the time I started writing this post.
3.  Multitasking is another problem area. I read while I eat. Hell I even read books while browsing, to fill the waiting time between pages loading due to a lousy connection speed.
4. I'm a perpetual list maker, which apparently is a good habit. But I make them all over the place, I write them down, put them in task manager programs, put them on post-its and invariably I forget about all of them.
5. Eating right - this is at least making some progress. I'm not a huge processed food fan but then I'm also a miserable cook. So the options are either to take up some cooking or to train the cook how to make interesting, healthy food or eating fairly boring, healthy food made by her. I'll take the boring, healthy food anyday :) The danger being, obviously - boredom and therefore a lapse into eating wrong. I'll live with that for now though.



That doesn't add up to a very impressive score overall. But as the author suggests, if I had to pick just one area to work upon - it would be decreasing the internet/info overload I subject myself to. If my next post is sooner than a month, it'll be an indication of some progress at least.

and it was all yellow.....

Well, so finally my principles went crumbling down and for my well being and to get all the good forces of the universes aligned to my energy fields and for generall all around fantastic-ness happening to me - I decided to change my curtains and put in yellow/greenish yellow ones!

What has happened till now is that the only thing the positive forces of the world have succeeded in doing is breaking my curtain rod. So the problem of the blue curtains casting their malacious shadow on me is solved. In fact there is no chance of ANY curtains casting ANY shadow on me since I can't hang any curtains on that window anyway.

Not one to be deterred by all these magnanimous powers that be, I decided to tackle the second window in the room. So what if one window didn't have curtains? ONE window is damn well enough especially armed to the teeth with yellow curtains. Bring it on shani and whichever other planets and cosmic bodies have it in for me.


Normally , this should involve a simple process. Unscrew rod. Take off blue curtains. Put on yellow/greenish yellow ones. Screw rod back on.
This is actually what happened. Unscrew rod. The whole rod + the holding bit breaks. Take off blue curtains off the rod. Throw rod on the floor. Scream.

I have currently two broken curtain rods. Two different coloured curtains in my living room (from where I was trying to effect a smart swap with the blue curtains) and needless to say, a room without any curtains AT ALL.

Feeling Blue

Having given up on ever understanding me, my parents have started seeking divine explanations in the hopes that fate, cosmic interventions and destiny all play a stronger part in my life than my own choices do. Possibly because they don't like the choices I make or hope to counter them with some help from the stars. I still haven't resolved the inner debate on fate vs choice and while I have my fair share of eastern fatalism I do like to think I have control over some things. 
So when there's a question of fate can horoscopes and astrologers be far behind? I don't pretend to know much about astrology and since I haven't delved into the science it claims to be based on I prefer to be dictated by, for lack of a better word - philosophy or systems of reasoning, that I can actually make sense of.
The root of this whole rigmarole of an explanation lies in a very recent analysis made by an astrologer about, not the havoc planets and constellations were wreaking on my life, but the effect colours were. Yep, that's right.
Ok so I know blue is a 'cool' colour, red is a 'warm' colour and all the frequency stuff and green being soothing but I hadn't realized that astrologers had started including colours as makers of fate in their repertoire. I actually wonder if having run out of regular reasons like planetary misalignment and warped orbits wreaking havoc on my life the astrologer had to pull something out of his hat in desperation and voila! colour it was!
Whatever may the case be, a slight twist to this is that the guy actually got it spot on that my curtains were blue. He then theorized that the blue colour was to blame for a number of unnamed things and I need to immediately drench my life in yellow. This is the part I really hate - when a wild guess mixes with the little bit of eastern fatalism streak I have and messes with my mind.
 A small part of my brain is egging me on to go on and experiment and change my curtains to yellow; after all it's harmless, they're only curtains and it's not like I'm going to change them and then sit around waiting for yellow to work its miracle and transform my life. "What if there are golden opportunities I've been missing which I won't even know, because my curtains are blue?"
That's when the inner struggle begins.
"So you think if you change them everything will start going right? What's been going wrong anyway?"
"Well but how do I know they can't go more right than they are going now?"
"But if they go along the same as before will you start getting annoyed at yellow for not doing it's work? Or if something great happens it's no credit to you and it's all credit to yellow curtains?"
"Ummmmm no, but I can just change them and then forget about it. No harm right?"
"What if something not nice happens? Then you'll start thinking you were better off with blue"
"Uhhhh maybe"
"And then you're going to stop thinking you're responsible for anything that happens to you and ..."
At this point my mind descends in to general chaos.Do I need the crutch of this mumbo jumbo? Dare I invite the wrath of the colour deities?  This, over the colour of my curtains, mind you.
The jury is still out on this one. In the meantime I will listen to "Yellow" by Coldplay and hope that it counts in some measure against the cosmic war blue is waging on my fate.