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)

Well Said by Us!

I am not going to talk about the current economic trends, why the market went down and all. This blog is all about appreciation. My intention though is not to do a free advertisement, but that could happen. Also No offense meant for any other Nation.

Are you one of those who like to read the morning newspaper (Hindu, Indian Express etc.,) with a nice cup of coffee to begin your day? Or may be the lazy Sunday News paper reader? Or infact a tech savvy person who likes to reduce paper wastage and gets his news from the web? Either ways you might have noticed the language depth and expanse of vocabulary in the articles. I have been reading the online versions of our Indian journals and the American ones like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine etc., I don’t get to read every word or sentence it says but I do read in detail about certain News and some articles as time permits.

Recently I happened to read about the Nexus One release by Google on almost every news site possible. I was trying to gather as much information as possible to consider a possible buy of the cell phone. While doing that I stumbled upon this news on Economic Times. Now, I am not sure if it is the same version that came in the printed copy, but the one on the website was by far the best one about "Nexus One". I felt the author had really given crisp points about the phone and the editor has done a wonderful job pulling it together . In some American counter parts I saw spelling errors, grammar errors and worse - even information errors. Same way I was reading this article today again on Economic Times. Normally this topic will be written more or less like a "Chicken Soup for Office Politics Hater's Soul", but the way this article was written I was simply amazed. If you are interested check it out :).

Reading this, thoughts poured in. We have mastered an international language and are producing works that would stump even the native speakers. Is that because of the fact that our country ranks on top for the most number of official languages (22) and in the 4th position for the most number of languages spoken (427)? Or we did that because we are always surrounded by languages and over years we got it in our nature to master them :). Just a possibility!

"Curb" Appeal of Maharashtra Government!

I was randomly browsing the News Headlines on Times of India. This caught my eyes. 3-idiots in ragging row My first thought is - What the heck is wrong with this government

First, why do even politicians bother commenting on a movie? Is it not just an entertainment industry? Do they do it for all entertainment fields? If so then how is it entertainment... doesn't it become a government controlled show? For any industry to grow it needs some freedom. That’s why some industries in India prosper and grow. Not because the government helps there, but on the contrary they keep themselves out of it, especially because they do not understand those fields. 3 idiots is one of the well taken movies in recent times. I have heard people even say that the movie is comparable to most Hollywood movies for the picturisation and all. With good movies becoming a rare occurrence nowadays why do our politicians always find it amusing to pick on crowd applauded movies mentioning words like ragging, violence etc especially where it is totally unrelated?
Second, when the government (rather politician) promotes violence themselves in different ways during elections, bandh, strikes, in the parliament when they hit each other with chairs, during internal border issues (like telengana and belgaum) etc., how can they even think about pointing fingers at the Movie Industry? Even morally what rights they have to do that?

Third, don’t they have better work to do? Maharashtra the second largest in population in India has umpteen issues that the government really needs to worry about. Every time it rains Bombay is flooded, traffic is slow, and can they spend this time taking steps for those things. To appeal the crowd, instead of curbing "Scenes" from movies, they should curb "some poverty and illiteracy" from their state. Please someone let me know, if there is a way to open their brains and put the right thoughts in.

I feel not just this government, it is true with even Tamil Nadu and a few other state governments. Lately they seem to think they can take up silly things and make it an issue and get some publicity by that means - Wake up Government! Your people are smarter than you think, it’s high time you get there! mmm will it be interesting if we can curb and criticize the government the same way they do to the movies or other silly issues.

Festive Season.

Hope you all had a wonderful Diwali. I love Diwali/Deepavali, it is the festival of lights in India. It is to commemorate the victory of Vishnu over the asura king "Naragasura". As usual this festival also has different alterations to the mythical story. But the main thread goes as Naragasura being the son of Mother earth (Bhooma Devi) and Vishnu himself (when he took Varaha avatar) , was mighty and powerful with all the boons he got. One main boon was that he can be killed only by his mother and no one else.

With his power he killed many people, he abducted thousands of women and caused trouble everywhere. He also stole the earrings of "Aditi" a god mother. This outraged Sathyabama, Aditi and Krishna. Sathyabama is another form of Booma Devi and Lord Krishna was an avathar of Vishnu. Together they waged a war against Naragasura and finally Sathyabama killed him (as per his boon). Before dying Naragasura got another boon that people should celebrate his death with lights and colors and hence the festival of Deepavali.

The tradition is to make various sweets and savories for the grand day. On diwali people wake up early in the morning, have oil bath and start with offering prayers to God and then bursting fire crackers. Then they visit relatives and friends and exchange sweets, blessings and wishes. Though I am not in my country now, I still got to do all of these including bursting fire crackers! It was fun to do all these when the fall is at its peak here, yes the short days and long windy, cold nights are on its way. The festive season in India comes to a close now and nothing until Pongal in Jan. But here the festive season is just beginning. Halloween is the first followed by Thanks Giving, Christmas and the New Year. The whole place would be covered in a white blanket of snow soon and everywhere there will be lights and decorations. Ironically, the cold weather seems to keep the spirits of people high :).

Time to make some cookies! So Trick or Treat?

A Happy Dasara!

Festive colors will be all over India now. Navarathri or Dasara is the festival of Good over Evil. Durga/Bhagavathi killed Mahishasura the evil Asura, after 9 days of war and hence the triumph is celebrated. Sakthi which basically means "Power" (in star-wars terms ‘the force’) was given a feminine form in Hinduism. So this Sakthi has several avatars, and this festival is about the Durga avatar. Some parts of India celebrate it on the 8th day of lunar cycle called "Durgashtami", and in the eastern side it is celebrated as "Durga Pooja" on the 10th day and in the south it is the 8th day - Saraswathi Pooja, 9th day - Ayudha Pooja and 10th day Vijayadasami. West Bengal will be the most colorful of all during this festival.

Traditionally this festival is celebrated in my house too in India. When I was young my Sister and I used to build the steps, arrange the dolls, make a small park around it with temples, villages, zoo, motel etc., make rangoli, invite people and eat Sundal :). It was fun-filled-fall-vacation time in India our quarter-year exams will be over by then. Just the thought was enough to get me on my feet to do it here this year. I do not have any idols of the Gods here, so with my mom's idea to base it on "Evolution", I went doll shopping for a few hours. I found all the necessary dolls in the dollar tree, kids shop etc.,

A generous friend with his design skills made the steps out of a card box (without even cutting it), it was remarkable and hence I decided to put a separate picture of it. I made a small shelf for the gods put them on the wall at top of the steps. The only God statues were "Ganesha","Durga" and "Saraswathi". The rest were all "Animalia"- starting from Arthropods (ofcourse the insects scared some visitors) - Fishes - Amphibians - the great Dinosaurs and other Reptilia - Aves, Mammals and ourselves (Homo sapiens). I did go a level further and kept Robots in the end ;). My colleagues came with their families and enriched the festival.

In the beginning of the festival I had challenged myself to make Sundal everyday with a different bean for all 9 days (as is the tradition) and I did it!! The next in my list is Diwali... Lets see how that goes.

Pookolama illai Idhazkolama?

The festival of Onam falls in the month of September on the day of "Thiruvonam" star. Good guess, most of the festivals in India are driven by star and moon positions and hence the date will differ each year. This festival is celebrated to commemorate the greatness of King "Mahabali" who was an Asura king (the divine bad guys :)) and Lord Vishnu who killed this king but granted a nice wish to him. Though Mahabali was very nice to his subjects he was giving trouble to Devars (The divine good guys who are protected by the Gods). He is a strong king but very generous too. So Lord Krishna came up with a plan to destroy him. He came down to earth as "Vamana" a short Brahman and went to meet the king. King Mahabali asked Vamana what he wants and Vamana asked for 3 feet of land, deceived by the size the king granted the wish and asked him to take it. Then Vamana grew so huge and became Lord Vishnu and for the first foot he took the earth, for the second the sky and for third since there was nothing else left Mahabali understood his mistake and bowed down and asked the Lord to take him and the Lord put his foot on the King's head and destroyed him. The devars were happy, but the people of the kingdom felt miserable about losing the king and pleaded to Vishnu, the God wanting to make the people happy granted a wish that Mahabali can come to visit his people every year on that day. Hence the tradition goes as people welcome the king with the "Pookolam (Floral Rangoli) and present him with "Ona Sadhya" (variety of food served on Banana leaf) every year.

This festival is celebrated at my home too because of the Kerala ancestry, and with my "Chathurthi" experience, I decided to celebrate it here in US by making Pookolam and a smaller version of Sadhya. Since it is already fall here there were no flowers in my mini garden, I had no choice but to get flowers from a grocery store. I needed at least 3 colors so settled for a moderately priced bouquet. There were so few flowers in it that I decided to pluck out the petals inside of putting the flowers as a whole. The flowers were not enough as there were exactly 3 colors and I needed to some more to finish the design I took. So took the leaves and some part of stem too. With this all set I had to look for a suitable background. Between a glass cake base and a plain dark blue chart I went for the glass. The picture here is the final look. I sent it to a friend in India thinking it is really nice and all that and the heading if the blog is the comment I got :)), point being The Floral kolam I made did not have even 1 whole flower :(.

To give this to the intended God I needed a Vishnu picture. It was late in the night to go shopping so had to "make my own Vishnu". Found a picture after a bit of 'googling', fed it to my All-in-one printer and framed it. Picture Perfect! Decided to make the sadhya fresh in the morning and called it a night. In the morning Rice was ready as the first dish, followed by the okra theeyal (my ex-roommates recipe, but the stickiness of okra had not completely gone), in parallel channa dal in the cooker for payasam (This came out wonderful). The other item in the plan was raw banana eruseri, only that the bananas were already ripe within the two day shelf life. When the eruseri (Dad's recipe) was done it was almost close but with all the sweetness of banana (people @ work liked it for lunch though). All these dishes were loaded with coconut, coconut milk and coconut oil for nice flavor and taste.

Though it was a comedy of errors, I loved the experience.

"Green" Pillaiyar - Past and Present

Ganapathy, Vinayakar, Pillaiyar, Ganesha are all the different names denoting the elephant faced God in India. The story goes as devi Parvathi created him and Shiva still did not know about him. And one day Shiva went to visit Parvathi. She was bathing and Ganesha was standing guard. Ganesh was not aware of Shiva and vice versa, Ganesha did not allow Shiva inside, hence had a fight. In the ordeal Ganesha lost his head and Shiva gave him the elephant's head when he knew the truth about him.

The festival "Vinayaka Chathurthi" is the celebration for the birth of Lord Vinayaka. This God as per Hindu mythology is good natured, humble, and likes simple down to earth things. The statue itself is made to depict the nature of the God. I love to dress up the statue back in India when I was a small kid because it involved getting flowers from the backyard and on the street corners and making a garland out of that. The Bermuda grass (Arugam pul), Calotrophis gigantia(Erukam poo), Datura(Oomatham poo), Leucas aspera(Thumbai) are his favourite.

For the festival in the South India we get the statue made of clay and decorate it with flowers and cotton garlands, infact a very green way of doing it, but this time I am in US so I was not able to get this clay version, I did not want to get any other statue as I cannot leave it in water after 3 days. Was thinking about it, when it struck me that I can make it with turmeric. Yes, there is a non-figurine version for ganesh, made of turmeric. Also it is a general practice to keep and umbrella and a fan too (so that he can walk down to people's house to eat modhakam), My friend was generous enough to make a fan for my "green" Pillaiyar. Now the decoration flowers, I could not find any so was wodering if I can atleast get the grass, and learnt a rather strage thing. In US most of the grass on the golf course, in the house yards are bermuda grass!!! That was perfect, it was right in my patio.

Final version- An awesome Pillaiyar, huge mound of turmeric decorated with rose flowers, bermuda grass and kumkum, nicely seated in a raised seat (inverted mixing bowl on a wooden chair) lined with silk saree, fan on his side.

The next important thing is Modhakam and Kozhukattai, made of rice flour with sweet and savory fillings. In India the rice is soaked, dried and ground in flour mills a day before for making this dish. But here there are no flour mills, so I soaked, dried the rice and grinded it in a dry mixer, some prefer to save this trouble and use the store-bought flour, well its just me. I did it to get a feel of what my mom was doing for years. It came out nice and white, making the cups was a bit of a struggle for me, but learnt it in a bit. After the "Naivedhyam"- official offering to God and a mini pooja (as I am not all that orthodox), it was heavenly to eat them. Ofcourse took some pictures and sent to my family in India!

Sweet Rights

Its a nice day and I was casually browsing the News from India. This news made me happy.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/tirupati-laddoo-gets-geographical-copyright/517376/

Thirupathi reminds me of laddoo as much as it reminds me of Lord Venkateshwara. I have always liked that laddoo. I dont know if it is because of the fact that it is not freely available or it is the Lord's prasadam or the wait in the queue. Neverthless the taste is unmatchable. And finally this precious little sweet that belongs to India is being protected by Law. I feel India needs to patent a lot more things and get copyrights. Sandal wood products, cotton scarfs, khadi, silk sarees, the color saffron, a lot of rice based dishes, South Indian Sambar, Garam Masala and more :) India can become rich just by suing other countries for using their copyrighted items.

Our Medicine for Their Well Being

This is not a saying but the reality that is happening in India. All of us have been reading about the H1N1 flu virus and the rate at which it is spreading. The WHO has made predictions that a much worse strain of this virus would come back and can cause huge problems in a short while. In US it is still summer and flu generally spreads here in fall-winter seasons, so they are stocking up the vaccines for this virus. The Indian company Baxter has already produced its first batch of vaccines, that should be a happy news right? Well it is not! Here is the twist. These vaccines are going to be shipped to US and UK who already have contracts signed with this company and other Indian pharma companies. Indian government has not done anything about this yet. They have not even placed the orders for vaccines yet.
Somehow I am not able to assimilate this fact. The vaccines are produced in India, by Indians, with Indian resources but not for Indian use? Wonder what was this company thinking, may be their workers and family are immune to this virus or is it just the money or is it business as usual. This sounds like a suicide mission to me. Someone should stop this! For more info check this out http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/H1N1-vaccine-ready-India-napping/articleshow/4946865.cms

Happy Independence Day!

Yes it is another Independence Day holiday or celebration I would say, time for flag hoisting, patriotism and chocolates. Today I sent out wishes to all my Indian friends, colleagues and acquaintances at work, following that at lunch with my close buddies had a heated discussion on India. As always it was all talk and nothing productive happened to India because of that. Then I was casually browsing the News websites of India and found some interesting blogs regarding the Independence Day and India. Check this out if you like http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

You can even put in your comments for some of them. Interesting though how varied and different the thoughts of these people are. Reading all these I was thinking why not take a resolution you know like New Year's resolution how about Independence Day resolution. Nothing major, but we should be determined to follow it, so take practical ones. Like I wont spit on the roads, I will not throw any garbage on the road which includes the used bus ticket and the chocolate wrappers :), being courteous to old people, controlling my anger towards unknown people, being polite in public.. The list can go on but try making atleast one and see if you can stick to it. It can be even something no one would notice. There is a long way to get India into a good shape, but come on we need to start somewhere there is no use just talking about it.

So you must be wondering what mine is :) Since I am currently not in my country I decided to put out proudly the fact that I am from India and make sure to change the notion of anyone who comes and tells me, "I heard India is a poor country. The traffic is bad and people are mean" to "India is a prosperous country with great cultural heritage with strong family values where people strive for a better future."

After a long time I had a strong urge to write this blog today. I have a new determination to do atleast one post per month per blog of mine.