Monday, January 30, 2012

Embracing my Indianness


The exchange students in my college last semester complained about how everything in India happens “tomorrow.” I chuckled like I always do when I hear jokes that I don’t believe are at my expense. “Oh how Indian!” I thought to myself. What I’ve come to realise lately is that I’m more Indian than I think I am. I have been meaning to study “tomorrow” for the last 15 years and I’m yet to get around to it of my own accord. What’s a 2-month delay in installing an internet connection compared to that? I also unnecessarily add “only” at the end of each sentence, as if my conversations are really chequebooks. I use present continuous tense where simple present would suffice. I have no notion of punctuality. 

I remember having watched one of Russell Peters’ shows where he said that Indians probably don’t find jokes with the Indian accent offensive because they don’t think they have it. “They think there’s one guy in the country with that accent!” I think that logic can be extended for most Indian stereotypes. We are a part of the crowds we so detest. We’re exasperated that nobody stands in line although we always break it. I think we consider it okay to break the rules. We complain because everyone else breaks them at the same time and that inconveniences us. It’s as if we think we’ve landed up, quite by accident, in a place that’s so full of people who don’t behave as we would like them to. That we’re one of them is immaterial. 

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