The most painful break-up part 2

Part 2 of the break-up and I’m focussing attentions a little closer to home. It could be argued that the reason I don’t get on with Indians that well is because they didn’t have the same experience as me growing up. Say that is true, wouldn’t that mean that other British Indians, who’ve been through similar stuff to you will be the ones you get along with best surely?

I’m afraid not.

It appears I don’t fit in with British Indians either. And why is that? It’s really not that clear to me to be honest but I’ll do my best to explain it to the best of my knowledge. What it appears to me is that, whilst BritIndians are more open to interact with the general population than other ethnic groups (and that includes a lot of white people, Nick Griffin), they often end up in one of two categories. In either case there is a lot of Indian egotism combined with a type of social autism that is most definitely British.

There are those BritIndians that hang out with other BritIndians and develop their own identity as such. They’ll all listen to that god-awful Asian fusion music (and my sister blog 'the musical idiot' will rip that to shreds soon enough, don’t you worry! ;) ) and spend their time discussing outfits and behaviours like old gossiping ladies as you do when you have a degree and didn’t grow up in poverty. Let’s call them aunties because that’s what they are essentially with the gossip, albeit ‘trendy’ because they listen to the audio guff that the youth do. These people often constitute a large proportion (but not quite all) of a Hindu society.

Yes, I’m about to burn that bridge too. I’m feeling extra friendly tonight.

In I walk in with my unconventional hair style, which isn’t the gelled up spikes look which is ubiquitous now or a pathetic side parting and instantly we’re off to a bad start. You’ll be amazed at how quickly that will make it into discussion even when something not even remotely about hair was being talked about. I wouldn’t care if it didn’t happen 9 times out of 10! Assuming we get over that hurdle they ask me my interests. Rock music? You’re a coconut (heavily Anglicised Brit) right? Oh you read the Gita? No, I don’t read that. I was too busy watch the latest generic Bollywood movie because that’s what Indians do, don’t they? How can you not watch them? Something wrong with you? I have also been described as being ‘too Hindu by many of these people for wanting to take an interest in my religion and culture, something which has been a term of endearment for my more international friends even though we don’t share much theologically. One particularly vindictive member of this group set to poison the minds of my friends against me for this ‘crime.’ Thankfully it didn’t work for the most part and I found out from one of my friends that he was doing this and it caused me a great deal of disappointment. He did end up souring a few relationships, and if you understood the bleak loneliness that causes you’d understand this is not mere finger pointing and gossip

Sigh. I don’t know why I bother. Now let’s say we’re at something a little less…normal. A Hindu society event. You being pious and having some theological knowledge should help shouldn’t it?

Unfortunately not.

What happens at these events is the most depressing thing of all. Whilst on the one han d these people make me glad in what they do - we have charity workers, Kathak dancers and playwrights within our ranks – they are as much in a cleek as their more boring counterparts and perhaps I was not at the party where everyone was invited to join the cleek because I’m not a part of it. I start going round and schmoozing as I would do with others that are Indian and get the friendly Pam Am air hostess response. For a moment, I’m the most important person in the world to this member of the Hindu society; they are eager to know my name, what I’m doing, why I joined and what I want to bring to the table. We will chat for literally seconds and they will pretend to be impressed by my accomplishments and I will genuinely give a proverbial thumbs up back to theirs but as soon as one of their little friends arrives I may as well not exist. I can understand wanting to give someone you know better more of your time but to just walk away? When I want to do something for the samaj (community)? What’s going on there? Sometimes it does feel like someone genuinely wants to talk to you and hear what you have to say but then someone higher up ushers them away as to say ‘you don’t belong with them’ and suddenly I’m the perpetual outcast again. I hear speeches all the time about how these people become your closest friends, and your family and there have even been marriages out of this. I’ve yet to feel this warm welcome. I have been the bystander whilst everyone else has been having fun. I watch as two people who have just met start telling each other jokes that are barely funny but have each other in peals of laughter because of their new found camaraderie. OK, I’ll be over here staring at the floor while you form a new bond with everyone else, OK? Grand…

There are many people out there who share a passion for their spiritual persuasion in the same manner that I do that have been shunned by this pseudo-friendly manner of doing things. I even brought it up once to a member of the society. He agreed that this was the case, that there’s a social order that you are either in or out of, but he also promptly shrugged his shoulders. Is that it for those of us who don’t quite fit your mould? Cheers!

Then there’s another group of people. The coconuts. They shun anything even remotely of their ethnicity and are for most intents and purposes white people. Yet they hang out with other coconuts. Something weird here, don’t you think? Indian egotism and clinginess at play again. They are always looking to ‘out-white’ each other, having more ridiculous and generic British accents, more debauchery than who they emulate (as hard as that is to believe) and are ever more looking to outdo each other in terms of immorality. Maybe it’s some new drug, maybe it’s who they can sleep with, it never quite seems to end. I look conservative in their eyes, an old dinosaur who is a party pooper cos I don’t want to get involved in their stupid games. And yet a great deal of head scratching goes on when they see that I actually have white friends, despite being no-so-white. The mind boggles.

So there you have it, reasons why I’m not British Indian in the conventional sense. I wish it wouldn’t matter but try existing just outside a society and you’ll know what I mean. As ever, my relatives expect me to get married at some stage. Will that happen?

शमा कीजिये नानाजी, आपका हर सपना पूरा नहीं कर पाउँगा…

Regards

The Vedic Underdog

The most painful break-up part 1

My national identity is something I have covered before but recent events have seen a slight change in my perception of it.

And by that I mean I’m even more confused than I was before. But before that the most painful break up anyone can ever have, more than you can in a romantic sense.

I have broken up with India. Yes, it hurts to even write those words, and believe me I can hardly believe I’ve written them on this screen, they seem branded into it now, something which shouldn’t really be there. But it is unfortunately how things are. And when I say I broke up with India, it also means that relations with most British Indians have also been soured. This is something that has been boiling up since the end of last year but it really has come to a head in recent times. I shall endeavour to explain.

One should not stereotype a whole nation when one can avoid it but it is hard for me to do anything to the contrary when one meets nothing but people of a certain sort. And Indians seem to come in one single flavour; arrogant show offs that only wish to show you up so that they can look superior. I shall describe but a small number of anecdotes, or should I say evidence, to support this. So I shall begin with an incident that took place with a retired soldier. That’s right, a PROUD, PATRIOTIC INDIAN who would put his life on the line for the nation but could not let his ego subside for even a second.

The incident in question was quite straightforward really. He introduced himself (in English grrr) and offered his hand forth in greeting. Me being the traditionalist placed my palms together in the conventional ‘Namaste’ as it felt more appropriate to me (and I suppose I wanted to impress a little, but we’re talking small potatoes here!). At this stage the gentleman thought it appropriate to say that handshaking was the more internationally accepted manner of greeting. Yes but Namaste is sweeter, more personal and more hygienic I said back. At this stage he proceeded to tell me some bull about how hand shaking was a gesture that proved to the other person that your hand is clean and available to shake because of it. Look it up if you don’t believe me but I know for a fact that hand shaking is an indication that there is no weapon in that hand, it is a friendly gesture. But this guy wasn’t having any of it. Fantabulous. Later on he said dinner was ready and so we should go to the dining room and so we should leave. In my British humour style I dared to utter the words ‘get out’ as part of a longer sentence, one that was not vulgar. But of course idiot-brained Indians can’t see it that way, I was demeaning them, wasn’t I? In fact at the time I had no idea why one of the people I had been talking to decided to say to me ‘I was taken aback by the way you were speaking to me.’ I apologised profusely despite not being fully sure about what I’d done wrong at the time. Later on my mother told me about how it was the height of rudeness to say those words together in Indian society, and that it would appear that the person that took offence. Poor English wins again (see ‘The English disease of Indians’ for more hilarious stories like this). If you’re offended by that, then take a look at this, it sums up what I think of your arrogance (contains colourful language):

http://kingmediocre.deviantart.com/#/d4vxbr9 :)

Some of you may also be aware about how India is the most vegetarian country on the planet. No other country even comes close. Yet within her borders you hear the stupidest and most insecure arguments EVER against vegetarianism. Stuff you would expect more brain-dead people in other countries to say where it isn’t the norm. If you’re vegetarian for health reasons, they leave you alone. But I dared to argue from a moral and ecological point of view, that killing animals is bad and that the environment suffers for it. And when I say that what do I get to hear? ‘But you’re upsetting the food chain!’

You’re sat in a marble house, eating sweets that were made in an electric oven and I came to this country in a giant metal bird that weighs more than several elephants. What the hell is natural here? And the environmental argument is juxtaposed by the magical health benefits of meat that boil down to one person feeling slightly better after going back on the butter chicken (psychosomatic maybe?) and ergo nuts to how it exhausts the planet. My personal favourite response has to be a relative of mine, who despite having heard all the arguments against meat eating and knowing them back to front living in a house of staunch vegetarians says nothing more than ‘मै बचपन से खाके आया हूँ!’ (I’ve been eating it since childhood!) as though it makes it all OK. Indians, it appears, always want to have the moral high ground over you. Even if they’re killing babies with hammers and you aren’t, they’re undertaking some greater good that you haven’t thought of. For that reason, you’re the monster!

It also underlines a conservative attitude that almost everyone has in India, regardless of age, that they will not budge on. It’s amazing that such a level of insecurity and such a large insecurity complex exists within the nation. I am from a proud Hindu family, such that my father and uncles will say to an Indian Christian ‘why don’t you become a Hindu, your ancestors were!’ To which the Christian will invariably reply with how it was his father’s religion, and his father before him etc. I would imagine that if I was an Indian Christian I would most probably remain so for the same reason. Who cares about personal growth though, right?

Not to mention Indian weddings. I thoroughly and whole-heartedly despise them. They are nothing more than extravagant expressions of wealth for the parents of the two kids getting married. It’s amazing how Indians save their money throughout their lives to blow it all on one event. It makes no financial sense in the slightest. I remember a story in a British newspaper of a wealthy Indian-Belgian businessman that had thrown the world’s most expensive wedding. And can you believe it my relatives were proud! Forget the scientists combating polio every day, forget the Indian author winning the Booker prize, this gets everyone riled up! And I have lost count the number of hours of my life I have frittered away hearing Indians of all ages describing in painstaking detail the intricacies of it all. I felt like shouting out ‘I DON’T CARE HOW MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF MALT LIQUOR THEY HAD AT ALL!’ but I resisted that urge. Another reason I hate them is because I’ve heard tales of great mental abuse one family will give another if everything isn’t right. Why wasn’t there non-veg (meat) in the reception? The alcohol selection is beneath our dignity! Yes, this is actual dialogue from an actual conversation, albeit translated for your convenience.

Is this what has become of the land of the famous Indus valley, pioneers of surgery, poetry linguistics…I could go on? Whilst every Indian could probably recite to you some amazing facts about our ancestors it never ceases to astound me to think that this country has produced so many writers, scientists and activists when everyone carries on this way. Hinduism is a miracle simply for the fact that an Indian came up with something so radical. And me with my weird, more open minded look on things, not to mention the audacity to be a boy with long hair (oh my god, what’s wrong with you, don’t you want to look good? I get told) means I don’t fit in.

Fine, I’m not Indian then. Got no idea what I am but I’m not Indian clearly. I’m not British Indian by most respects but see part 2 for that. Yes I haven’t even started on you guys yet!

By Indian society I am close to marriageable age now. But with such a grim selection and a hairstyle and a personality that is not shallow and egotistical in the Indian way am I going to find a bride?

शमा कीजिये नानाजी, आपका हर सपना पूरा नहीं कर पाउँगा…

I’ve got the Kaliyug blues badly it seems, summed up in song by Digital Hippy here: http://soundcloud.com/digital-hippy/kaliyug-blues

Regards,

The Vedic Underdog