To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
 

OK. I did promise I would remark upon things that struck me from a cultural point of view.
So I was exchanging a general morning greeting with a British colleague who sits in the same office space. He asked me if I had a nice weekend. I said I did and told him that I had a fun event to attend, a baby’s birthday party. His next question was, “Is the baby cute?”
I was stunned for a moment at a loss for words. And then I burst out laughing. I acknowledged to him that where I came from this question was unheard of. He shared with me that it was pretty normal here and also that some of his uncles or aunts themselves admitted how ugly their baby was!
Which got me thinking. Is it that we in India are supersensitive about our kids? I wouldn’t dare even think, forget about telling, someone that their baby is anything less than gorgeous. This puts needless pressure on people like me who find it difficult to articulate a compliment even when it is deserved let alone having to admit something is cute when it isn’t. But why is it that we are so cagey about hearing something negative about our kids? I have noticed that it’s not just limited to the looks but even in general you have to be really careful if you want to point out anything relating to the conduct of the kids to the parents. For one, they will not believe you, and for two, they will immediately pounce on you for making any such as they would think ill-intentioned comment. Not for a moment do they consider that the said superlative kid might actually have some genuine scope for improvement and that it is a good thing they were being made aware of it because they couldn’t have spotted a fault in the kid even if it shone like a torchlight. I wonder if it’s this Indian middle-class tendency to put their own kids on pedestals that contributes to them growing up with a rather inflated sense of ego.
This reminds me of another incident where I was discussing the many problems with an essay with a British student. I advised him to get someone else to read his essays to get a perspective from the reader. He told me that his mother usually reads his essays. I remarked without even thinking to the effect that his mother would certainly not find any fault with his essays. He told me that his mother actually told him that she did not find any of his essays interesting! I was quite flabbergasted to hear this because—well, I won’t say anything about my mom because maybe my essays were really good ;)—but I couldn’t imagine an Indian mom giving her daughter and particularly son such a straightforward feedback. It made me think about how this must differently impact the kids. They would have a rather solid idea of where they stand, and trust their moms to tell them like it is!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 1:44 am 0 comments
Saturday, November 03, 2018
 
What the Trump?

I usually don’t discuss politics or make any specific comments about political developments on this blog. If you go through my blog posts since the time I started it, you’d be hard pressed to find a ‘political’ one, almost as if I exist in a political or economic vacuum. It may be that since my early childhood I was a lot more interested in philosophy (that is, abstract ideas) than in politics (practical administration) (I do understand that philosophy and politics have intricate links but let’s keep that discussion aside for the moment). I also never cared to read the papers—again maybe the disinclination to read the practical goings-on or the dreary language in which they are reported—so I remained quite politically uninformed too. I generally tend to keep mum on topics I don’t know much about.
But…living in current times…living in the age of social media where the political developments are thrust onto your feed even if you don’t go looking for them…I have become more and more attuned to the political side of things. I probably still am ignorant about many aspects of various political debates, but sometimes I feel that you might be able to see some things more clearly if you see them in the simplest possible terms without all the haze surrounding them.
So what is bothering me so much that I decided to write about politics? Well, let me put it mildly, Trump. I never thought I would live to see the day when the leader of one of the most, if not the most, powerful country in the world, one of the most economically advanced country in the world, would turn out to be a character that even in a movie we would all despise as an abhorrent villain...and what is more, such a character would not only be accepted as a leader but would also be welcomed by the majority of this supposedly evolved population. I have to admit that it has made me question whether this country is so evolved after all (no offense to those who do not support Trump of course)…or is it that we were all along mistaking economic evolution for intellectual evolution?
It seems to me that there is a very…I shouldn’t say ‘interesting’ considering how dangerously it affects all of us…but an ‘important’ lesson to be learnt from all of this mess…If we were to analyse the principles on which the US has prospered so far and what those principles have led the population as a whole to value most of all…we should probably not be so surprised that they find the unlikely figure of Trump worth worshipping. Maybe it’s a good thing that this rash broke out the way it did because had it not, the disease would have anyway entrenched itself deeper and deeper without anyone, maybe even the sufferer, any the wiser for it. I guess if we must be optimistic then it is about the fact that we all now know that a problem exists …Trump is only a timely (hopefully!) symptom…and we have to be thankful to him for showing up when he did!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:57 pm 2 comments
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