There are a few commodities in Kerala that will always be in high demand. Rice, obviously, and the coconut products that invariably accompany it at mealtimes. Liquor, as previously mentioned, is on an upward consumption curve. And then there’s gold. Even as ubiquitous and controversial as liquor has become, it cannot hold a candle to the influence of gold in the average Malayali’s life. The desire to acquire and hoard it seems to be hard-wired, a vital element in the struggle to survive and, if you’re fortunate, to be upwardly mobile. To put it simply, in Kerala, gold – like Gordon Gekko’s greed – is good.
Tag: The NRI
Indian English Class 2 (This Is What I Am Telling)
Since the previous Indian English lesson brought a greater response than expected, The NRI has decided to schedule a second lesson – starting now. After the freeform approach of the first class, let’s try and be a little more focused this time. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and make comments at the end of the lesson.
To get you back into the spirit, let’s complete a brief exercise. In the following passage, there are a number of examples of Indian English we learned last time. Identify them.
‘Kind Madam/Sir, details of concerned products would be arriving in your mail today itself. Orders for Green Bay Packers Hand Glove should be filled at the earliest as product is likely to get over quickly due to demand. Deadline for all orders is by 3:00 PM Friday. Kindly do the needful.’
The New Rosa Parks
In 1955, on a public bus in Alabama, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to stand up when asked to make room for white passengers. Her action was seized upon by a young clergyman named Martin Luther King who organised the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which catalysed the civil rights movement and brought it into nationwide focus; segregation on public transport became illegal the following year. Further laws continued to be passed to make all American citizens more equal, racial tolerance came forward in leaps and bounds and black Americans began to get voted into public office – culminating in the election of America’s first black president, Barack Obama, in 2008.
In 2010, on a public bus in Dubai, an Indian family of four sitting in the front row of seats (marked ‘LADIES & FAMILIES’) was asked to move themselves – along with several large bags from Dubai Mall – to the back of the bus. They did so without hesitation, and none of the other passengers on the bus were moved to speak up, many of whom were also Indian. The event went unreported and the family got on with their lives.
Subway In India: Just Like Home (Kind Of)
It starts as soon as I open the door: that bizarre, enigmatic sensation of being somewhere utterly contradictory. The Subway restaurant on the edge of Trivandrum’s Technopark campus is the only American chain restaurant for literally hundreds of miles around, and this makes it both the starkest example of Western influence on life in Kerala and the most jarring collision between that influence and the steadfast conservatism of this corner of India. The restaurant is right next to the building in which I work, so today I’ve decided to spend my lunch break there.
The music always hits me first. No Bollywood vocoders or Malayali whistles here: the dial is always tuned to an American radio station, generally near full volume. As I walk in, a track by one of my favourite groups, Arcade Fire, blasts out of the PA – a group I don’t think I’ve even heard in restaurants back in NZ, let alone in India. “I woke up with the power out! Not really something to shout about!” shrieks singer Win Butler as I walk to the vegetarian counter. Living as I do in rural Kerala, this line is peculiarly apt.
The Truth About India
I usually skim over and delete forwarded emails within seconds of receiving them, but when Sean-Paul Kelley’s scathing assessment of India popped up in my inbox, I carefully read and re-read each word with rising irritation and, ultimately, anger. Kelley is an American travel writer whose bio on several sites, including The Huffington Post, states that he has had several very good jobs, he maintains a highly regarded blog called The Agonist and he has travelled in more than 47 countries. While this last fact makes his voice a little more deserving of deliberation, it does not transform his words into gospel, even if the majority of what he writes is true; the accountants’ truth matters little if couched in words that are roundly negative, Westernist and irresponsible.
A brief summary of Kelley’s piece:
India (except Kerala) is polluted, infrastructurally backward, bureaucratically inefficient and riven with corruption. And things aren’t going to get better, because no Indians (except in Kerala) “give a shit”.
The Audacity Of Pride: Your Commonwealth Games
You don’t have to look far into the horizon of the mass media or the blogosphere to understand the size and darkness of the cloud hanging over next month’s Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Over here, a Reuters reporter asks how Delhi’s poor will benefit from the Games and finds no good answers; there, an IBNLive staffer suggests that the big winner will be corruption. Indeed, my colleague Vivek Dehejia has roundly denounced the CWG and gone as far as to say that he hopes that they fail. In the midst of all this bad press, there must be something good to say, somewhere, about something. Right?
Indian English Class (aka Doing The Needful)
do the needful at the earliest – Anyone who deals with Indian businesspeople or outsourcing will be familiar with this one. According to Wikipedia, it’s a remnant of early-to-mid-20th Century British English that has died out in the native speakers but lives on in this and a couple of other colonies. Search for it in Google, with quotes, and the first few results are humorous Western perspectives of the phrase, but then you have another 260,000 results of people actually posting that phrase on the internet. Add ‘kindly’ in front and the field narrows to a paltry 103,000. I can only hope that in each case, the needful was indeed done. At the earliest. (Earliest what?)
A Dog’s Life
Marley probably didn’t have the most auspicious start to life. She started out a stray pup, destined to be separated from her mother and to wander Varkala’s cliff in search of charity from tourists dining at Western-style restaurants and cafés. She would have had limited success at this, essentially a cuteness competition with the other puppies and dogs hanging around the area, until she grew big enough to be ready to have pups of her own. At that time, the restaurant and shop owners would have hounded her out, condemning her to a life of trotting and sleeping around Varkala’s streets, maybe venturing out to the cliff or beach from time to time, running in packs with other strays, and probably not living very long purely because she wasn’t blessed with genes that would make her grow big and strong.
The Great Cricket Swindle
In my childhood, I had two dreams: (1) to play for the New Zealand cricket team, and (2) for there to be cricket on television every day. In view of the fact that I am currently here writing this article instead of in Sri Lanka with the Black Caps, we can safely assume that (1) did not come true. (2), however, most certainly has, and in amongst the deluge of statistics and ludicrously controversial no-balls, I finally understand that old maxim: be careful what you wish for.
…read more at The NRI…
The Moustache Maketh The Man
I was at a work meeting a few months ago when something curious happened. We were sitting at a long table, and I noticed that on the opposite side from where I sat, every person had a moustache. As I looked along their faces, all focused intently on the boss’s rhetoric, I was spontaneously seized by a powerful urge to burst out laughing. It seemed so hilarious, like this unofficial uniform – absurd, almost, if it weren’t for the fact that I wore a moustache myself.
…read more at The NRI…
Jdanspsa Wyksui 