Kedar Writes..

Indians suffer from two unusual syndromes: their obsession to be an American and their obsession to be a blindly patriotic Indian!

Having spent the first 25 years of my life in India and 10 years thereafter out of India, I have seen these viruses infecting many. To tell you honestly, there is no vaccine for these die-hard viruses because their genetic structure is quite complex.

Virus #1: I wanna be an American!
America is a country of immigrants – Chinese, Europeans, Russians, Africans, Japanese, Indian, Middle-Easterners, many of them. They all came here, established themselves and blended in. There is a certain uniqueness attached to Indian populace, however, atleast to a majority of them. The uniqueness is about how distasteful they are of their origins, how irritated they get to be associated with India, how lowly they feel when they get associated with Hindi rather than English, with Bollywood and not Hollywood, with Cricket instead of Baseball, with Hindi TV serials instead of The Bold and the Beautiful’s of America and with 330 million Gods instead of a Christ..! Yes, some of them.

Indians are desperately seeking to be Americans! The only thing they cannot get rid of, is their skin! The moment they walk through those immigration gates at US airports, their goal is to be like that American standing in the Citizens’ queue.

It becomes their lifelong mission to get attention of every American, to show as if they do not have any knowledge about that third world country called India, to wonder aloud how those Indians can tolerate a 3 hour song-n-dance emotional roller coaster called the Hindi movie, to tell stories about how they had a hard time this time around speaking in their own mother tongue back in India, and how their allergy to pollen grains got worse back there and so on.. and to top it all, they must in all circumstances wear this facade in front of their fellow Indians – Now that is very important, to convince their fellow Indians that they are not one of them, but are almost genetically closer to Americans!

Indians take the phrase – “When in Rome, act like Romans” – to its limits. They not only make it a point to act, but they just want to be ‘Romans’ themselves!

Almost every immigrant in America enthusiastically speaks his language when he meets one of his own kind on the streets of America. However, I have seen many Indians who speak loudly in (accented) English, to let the world know how they are more suited to be Americans than Indians. Arguably, nobody denies the importance of a language like English these days, but to associate your prestige with it, is truly Indian at heart! Understandably, speaking in your non-English mother tongue in front of people who do not understand that language, is not a good etiquette.. but not speaking in your mother tongue with someone who speaks it, is not only being arrogant but also being ill mannered. People need to understand, I think, that a language is just a medium of communication. The medium does not earn you respect automatically, it is what you convey that holds the meat.

An Einstein in German is no lesser Einstein than one in English. But be it in India or abroad, I have seen Indians associating English with everything ranging from being cool, being smart, being intelligent, being hip, being superior, being authoritative, …the list goes on. I have heard of people who come to the US and decide they will only speak in English and never in their mother tongue. They find pride in declaring that their kids don’t know a word from ‘that language’! Isn’t this hilarious to feel proud about one’s own ignorance, one’s own lack of knowledge?

What’s with language is with many other things.. where Indians are unique in their behavior.

I have seen so many Indians retreating every night to their own private kitchens and secretly making their Indian meals. But during the day, they claim to be gastronomically Italian, French or American – anything but that oh-so-spicy-oily-and-unhealthy-red-curried-Indian! Suddenly the food you were fed with all these years appears unhygienic. I know one can start liking a different cuisine, but if it is for the wrong reasons, then it’s just a case of losing your identify in the pursuit of a mirage which you can never touch, reach or acquire.

Life need not be one sided and when you start taking sides, one needs to realize that a whole lot of baggage comes with it. People overlook this or are generally unaware of this, in the initial phases of this ‘viral infection’. They adopt the easy transitions quickly and by the time they realize the limits, it’s already too late. There is no going back even if one secretly wishes. There is nothing wrong in assimilation, just that its practicality is limited. Communication, Entertainment, Food, Festivals, Religion all of them together form the fabric of your material life. One doesn’t need to get stuck with whatever he got when he was born. But at the same time, one does not need to look down upon whatever he decided to leave behind. Making a choice is good, but it need not be based on abasement of the choices you once had. Recognizing the faults in your old way of living and the qualities in someone else’s lifestyle isn’t what’s bad. What’s bad is looking down upon that lifestyle you left behind but which still hosts millions of others. What’s bad is looking at it in a biased way.

Think about it.. a system that has supported such a big mass of people for more centuries than humankind has memory of, can’t suddenly be tagged useless just because you or I thought it isn’t so cool.

And so I wonder.. What makes an Indian lock out a block of memory in his brain that holds traces of his origin, what makes him so eager to trade-in his Indian passport for a brand new American one, what makes him hate the very food that his body cells were nourished with back in India, what makes him want to forget that his entertainment platter was once full of those high pitched dialogs of Amitabh Bacchan movies and gyrating dance numbers performed by Indian actors and actresses..

I have heard reasons and excuses… but it is difficult to differentiate between the two when you hear them. The dividing line is very thin. It is interesting to see how our mind favors one over the other once it is biased.

People start seeing the oils in their food, the stupidity of emotions in their movies, the impracticality of their festivals and traditions, the inexplicable number and nature of their God, the inconvenience of a Sari, the embarrassment of a wine-less meal, and so many other things.

And at the same time, their bias allows them to ignore the fatty hamburgers, the unrealistic emotionless action adventure and superficial love in Hollywood, the unreasonable one-turkey pardon by a President in a nationwide turkey massacre during a festival, the scantily clad summer crowd on the beaches, the so-called exquisite albeit unsatisfying meal with a slab of meat topped with a basil leaf next to that glass of wine and so many other things.

And thus many of them fool themselves, thinking they are getting wiser, more sophisticated, more civilized if you will, and more in line with someone they were not meant to be. They deny and ridicule their very existence and never realize that Americans do not respect them for doing that. A man who mocks his own brethren to get ahead was never meant to be an ideal recipient of admiration in any world community.

But it’s a virus and it doesn’t let the victim know it exists, lurking beneath the skin – that irreplaceable last piece of this puzzle….