Adopting Western Culture - The Dont's

If you are watching the recent happenings around the world you will notice that not a day goes by without a horrifying news. A civilian killed by cop, cops killed by civilians, riots, bombing on a festive day, bombing in airport, mad shooting on streets and airports. What is the common thread? Well it is all happening beyond the Asian borders. It is not from India or China. It is on the west, the culture we most certainly adore and want to copy everyday.

I feel we should never copy certain things Guns, Transport, Racism, Suburbia, Encroaching Nature, Debt etc,. from America. Without the guns we already have quite a bit of protests and riots that are set of by politicians in the name of caste. We have enough deadly weapons at our disposal that we do hear about many fights and killings. If we add guns to the mix no one can save us from the dreadful doom.

Second the transportation. Let's actually learn from the mistakes of US on this and  if we absolutely need to copy, lets copy from Europe. When the Europeans went to the US, they introduced railroads there too. Used it for passenger and goods transport, but somewhere along those lines they forgot the importance of it when they got the highway system. The cars and planes boomed, but railways for passenger transport deteriorated.

Today in the US it will take more time for you to get from point A to Point B with railways or bus than with your car. Cities like New York and Boston are some exceptions. But majority of the cities do not even have a local bus transport. They don't have taxies or autos like we do. So this makes it hard for people in suburbs to travel for work. Cities like LA have the reputation of worst traffic congestion as everyone took to the car. Some states do not even encourage car pooling.  In India on the other hand we have very good public transportation system.  But nowadays people use cars more than the city buses, trains and company vans. This leads to congestions of the roads and heavy air pollution. Lets take a step back and start Using public Transport. Lets not adopt the western ways here, especially when it is proving detrimental.

Racism in India comes out as casteism. Luckily we did not have African slaves, instead we made some of our own. This was way in the past and we may claim it is not there today. But look closely. We should respect every position people play. From a janitor to a professor, it is just that person's job.  Also we do know politicians pit us against each other using this, so lets be mindful of that. We can be proud of our heritage but no need to put it on display, the moment you do that you loose the respect for that heritage and yourself. There should be no more mention of "tolerance", it should be coexistence after all we are a secular country. There can be bosses and CEOs and political leaders from any caste or religion. If you hear anyone generalizing a caste or sect there, right there is the racist behavior. We should curb that and not encourage.

Suburbia is a phenomenon where the cities become just work sites and people flock to live in the outskirts close to the malls and shopping centers. This creates a void in the city streets and they never develop leading to homeless settle there and thugs to occupy it. In India this has not been a problem at all. But there is a different type of problem creeping up. We have IT giants occupy the city outskirts and they have big complexes built on marsh lands and natural preserves. US did a similar destruction of wildlife and forests to build suburbs and highway systems. Now they are screaming about global warming. Lets skip that step. Lets stop the companies from doing this and give back the land to the birds it belongs to. So many housing constructions and road projects in Chennai is making life a nightmare for long time residents and pollutes the environment. Infact we should think of developing towns. The manufacturing boom developed small towns all over the state. Similar to that IT companies should be dispersed across the state instead of just major cities. This will reduce everyone moving to Chennai and clog the roads. The entire state can see an uplift and share the load and wealth. 

Last but not the least is Debt. When I was 6 my mom got me a piggy bank. Anytime I ask for something big like a cycle or stereo set my parents always asked me if I saved for it. Savings and money management seem to be at the center of our culture. Even our financial systems are based on that. But off late i hear youngsters in India getting lured into the web of credit cards. Credit card purchase is not fancy, it is debt, same as borrowing. If you default a payment the interest goes up and the peace of mind goes down. You start owing more  to the bank. If we think we are being cool by spending more on frivolities think again. Only now countries like US are realizing this mistake and are trying hard to change that behavior. Once you get into a habit, it is hard to recover. So start planning your finances, do a budget based spending and teach your kids about savings. Do not let India go through a financial crisis.

These are only a few things I thought of, but there may be more. In short lets be smart and avoid whats not suitable for us and adopt only good things. Easier said I suppose! ☺

Adopting Western Culture - Status Quo

Since ancient times Indians have been curious to the way of the world and quiet open. I believe our ancestors thought we are grow our knowledge by sharing and learning from other cultures. So we started copying or rather incorporating some of the customs, religion and food right from our early invaders the Persians.

I am not against adopting western ways, like jeans, t-shirts, dresses, sometimes I even feel they are a lot comfortable. We got our salwars from elsewhere too. I even see that saree has taken on in a fashion trend which is cool.  Even food for that matter we always put an Indian spin on whatever we take from outside like Biriyani, pasta and noodles. We even adopted vegetables beans, carrots, tomatoes, chillies. Today we cannot imagine cooking without them.

Festivals are whole another game. The culture we came from is the one where peace is chosen instead of war, we only go for war when the very livelihood of people are threatened, we went to war to save poor neighboring countries. We respect parents everyday not just on mother's day. We take pride on the endless parade of festivals like Diwali, Holi and  Sankaranthi (pongal).

Recently I heard that there were Halloween celebrations in India in addition to Valentine's day and mother's day and the like. As long as we only choose to see the fairy land of princess and places across the ocean we will be tempted to copy them. Let's peel that screen off remove the cartoon glasses we have on and open our real eyes and see the matrix. Yes the truth is really scary.

The education system, banking and whole list of societal practices as well we took from outside and modified to suit our country. I think that is bold and creative. Is there a boundary line for this?

(Part 2 and Part 3 will cover do's and don't s)

Taking a hit at Technology is not the solution!

If you are part of any social networking group then you probably know what this is about. Either you received such a post or sent one :), Which post you ask? The one about the benefits if using a bucket of water to wash Vs. Using a washing machine, or a shower vs bucket bathing and the usage of machinery vs. manual labor for agriculture. Well you get the picture.
Now what is wrong with such posts? We all know what is right in them though :). It is a negative propaganda about "Technology". Like many things technology evolves and there is a generation gap in accepting this technology. I will explain it a little more. We did everything by hand the hard way, only then we discovered the stone tools.. evolved to iron age and then to the industrial revolution. This took eons not 2-3 generations... more like 2000 or more generations. There is no agriculture if not for tools, which was the new technology for its time. Technology made things cheaper and easier. What was once a luxury was made available for the masses.
But it does come at a price. Any new technology needs moulding, like a baby. It takes time but making it better will yield a greater good than avoiding it.  You want an example... instead of avoiding cars, make battery cars cheaper. Instead of blaming manmade plastic make organic plastic that is environmentally friendly. Use nature to build the technology and make it better.
The forwards themselves are not bad, but in addition to awareness it spreads negativeness. Instead we should be forwarding messages on the success stories..like coffee cups that are fully paper and how CA cities curbed plastic from its shops etc.  Happy networking!!

Kids Snacks! Ofcourse Fried !!

I recently saw an add for a new snack parlour near a school in Chennai. Their advertisement prompted me to write this. I wish they change their menu to have some good food instead of what I feel as 'junk' food. When the world is screaming to be organic, use less water, plastic and fertilizers and grow own plants on roof garden, conserve water and not to use plastic, the norm seems to be different. Other than the crazy few who seem to have a ton of time on their hands to clean up beaches and talk about saving the planet and the harmful nature of using refined oil and frying food in it twice, some parents seem to turn a blind eye to all this and let their kids consume food that's really unfit.

When you were young do you remember, when you had the luxury of eating sweets or savories? I remember eating them for Diwali mainly and may be for one or two other minor ethnic festivals like 'Krishna Jayanthi', 'New Year' and 'Pongal' if you really press it. So 4-5 times a year. And what were they? Home made ghee and sugar or jaggery based sweets which was done in limited quantity per person, shared with friends and neighbors and I got to taste a little bit of everything. It will not last longer than 2-3 days. If anything is left for after school I will have it but otherwise mostly after school snack was limited to idlis, boost, bonda, dosas, upma and all kinds of fruits, sathu maavu kanji etc., Sweets from shops was even rare 2-3 times a year, when someone comes to visit or you go to a new place.

A few generations back this was even different. My parents tell me the 'muruku' their parents made was from solam and kambu. Since 'refining' was not all that famous, most of the oil used was unrefined and home made. For sometime in my young age too I remember making coconut oil from the few coconut trees in our house. That was used in food and for hair mixed with herbs. They have had puttu and appam again made at home for their snacks.

Now to the present - What do kids have today? Let me guess kurkure, chips, potato wedges, cutlet, somosa, fried pakora, aloo bonda, pani poori and to top it all Maggie!!??!!. It is not wrong to indulge in invigorating the taste buds, but if we say using technology is not bad, lets use it to make our food even healthier and better than before. Make 'Kuzhi paniyaram with grated veggies' - grate the veggies before hand and freeze it. How about a little whole grain burger patties toasted in oven or on stove top. Chopped up fruits with honey on top and grated dark chocolate. If your kid just loves fried why not bake some veggies in the oven, the basic counter top ones are not very expensive. It is the crispiness they prefer not the oil. Homemade granola bars, nuts and dried fruit laddu, sesame seed balls, even some of those old time groundnut balls pack in lot of energy and health.

Yogurt parfait, soy milk mixed in with dark chocolate, mixed nuts, sundal are other possibilities that do not need a lot of preparation. For drinks definitely try the good old lemonade with a dash of mint/sabja, throw in some sabja seeds in their tender coconut water, watermelon juice with lemon/orange squeezed in, buttermilk (my favourite), chilled milk with some kumkum, Gulkand in milk, dates/apple milk shake, chilled green tea with lemon with tulsi leaves made at home,  You can even pack some for the next trip for the whole family!!!

The Time and Date Conundrum

A few days back when I had to face a mysterious problem at work. For some reason a birthday was shifting by 1 when it was getting printed. Now if you are jumping up and down with your hands up in the air screaming I know! I know!, wait and hold that thought.

I was looking for all possible rational explanations of which day light savings seemed most reasonable. A coworker suggested difference in server times due to day light savings. Well guess what? the servers are in that one state AZ where there is no day light savings. So what else... What seems to be a simple issue in time became complex. After much pondering it happened in a single machine with the same date. No it is not an issue with leap year. It is 11th Oct 1942. What happened on that day you ask, well the world was at war. It was world war II period and for a few years in US they had only a 'war time' throughout the year. This was not the only occurrence of such meddling, there were others before and after this as well. And the software was brilliantly telling that the time component associated with the date was forcing it to believe it was 10th Oct and not 11th.

I was curious after this discovery and went to research more. It appears not just once but many times through out history man has changed the clocks and dates by months to align with calendars and religious dates. He has moved time around as if it were a pawn on the chess board. 

We think we understand Time and we have a feeling it is this one single continuous flow since the big bang. Turns out that is not true. For the way man has meddled with it, who knows we may very well be in 2018 already.

Food and Delivery Bikes

Do you remember the gas man pedaling down the street delivering gas cylinders to every house down the road ? It takes about 10 minutes per house, he delivers them, checks them and takes back the empty cylinder. You sign and pay him with a tip and sometimes tea or coffee or a diwali bonus.

If you grew in South India, you would have heard this every morning when you woke up in the  native language of the place " thakkali, vengayam, ara keerai, mulai keerai..." a repeated poetic sound of the vegetable monger. So many other street vendors also do the same for fruits, candies, ice cream, and any more.. driven in a tri cycle or a four wheeled push cart or some workable version of it.

In the many cities of India you would have seen street carts filled with vendors selling pani puri, dosa, selective foods, fruits, juices and even cosmetics. These are also a modified push cart with 4 wheels. Most of them will be pushed back or driven back (if it is tricycle) home in the night and brought back to the same or different location in the morning for sales once again.

If you have not read the news here it is  NPR Food Bikes News

Reading the news, all of the above came to my mind and it occurred to me, a concept that was there forever in India and many other Asian countries seems to start flourishing in US now. And when it did they write a huge post analyzing the benefits. These carts and bicycles have been saving so much of energy and pollution all these years. They have made it possible for the vendors to door-deliver goods to their customers. Looks like Asia has been having a sophisticated life style by these standards :).

A Walk (on the Water) to Remember!

On a spring weekend I was driving past a lake right along the freeway. Pictures flashed in front of my eyes on how the lake looked a couple of weeks back. The unbelievable transformation surprised me and the memories of the day came rushing to me.

Past: It was a warm day (around 40 degree F) close to the end of winter. We were driving on the familiar freeway to get to the restaurant for lunch. Seeing the frozen lake and all those people who were fishing we got excited to have a closer look. So after lunch we took a detour and went to the lake. It was a small beautiful lake, 95% frozen with small puddle of water starting to show up and for the fish in that small patch hundreds of sea gulls were flying above. Some of the brave men were ice fishing on it.

After a few skeptical withholds, we let go of the fear and stepped on to the ice sheet. The imaginary ice movement scared us, but we walked forward. We reached a few hundred feet from the shore seeing holes in the ice, trying to judge the depth of the ice, noticing the pecked fish and capturing the sea gulls in the camera.

There we met one of the sporty fishermen. He was all so excited to see us and showed us the ice fishing tactics. Of course he ridiculed the unfit clothing and shoes we had on and warned us to get back to the shore before we freeze. After learning to make a ice fishing hole and sharing his strange adventures which included horror filled ice fishing stories we came back to the shore all safe!

Back to Present, those moments though one might consider as stupidity I still would call it one of my life time experiences. I would have never dared to walk on the water otherwise. Inspite of the sheet of ice that was holding me up I was worried deep in my heart what if it gave way :) Now, I drove past the lake that is brightly shining as a vast blue stretch!