August 2003

Re: # 88

Those are some heartfelt words right there. Did you trade in one suffocating cloak for another yourself, or is this a theoretical comment? Theory makes sense when things are constant, but human beings are variables. Maybe freedom might be taken for granted and seem like nothing out of the ordinary when things get settled down and we form cliques. But I`d rather trade suffocation in a place I cannot relate to, with suffocation in a place that I can relate to. I think I`d be happier that way. You`re right. Judgement is bound to happen at some point of time, no matter where one is. Fortunately I haven`t been in one place long enough to be seriously judged. So far.

Re: # 92

Don`t know why someone should be interested... maybe because it might make them recount their own experiences and compare them and think about it- as happens with any form of media relating a story.

It didnt have a purpose. There was no point to drive really. Just speculations, thought processes, and putting things in a form that I could understand too. All the interaction and questions to and from makes me think, and I form new neural connections, and that helps me think some more. Hopefully it got someone else thinking about why their life turned out the way it did.

A

Aruna

Were one to simplify the plot here, this is what it would be: you spent your impressionable years in Arab countries, living with an Indian family that did not encourage you to cross the divide existing between Arabs and Indians. You were uncomfortable with that. So when you got a chance of moving away from your family, you became part of an Arab circle. You also exchanged some Arab/American practices for the ones your family had followed upon during the time you were with them.

Nicely written it surely is, but I am tempted to ask: so what? Why should the reader be interested?

Thanks.

#89, No, and No.

I might be confused, but am learning to accept that too. ``

i liked this specially as a finish. it could be something like a woody allen`s character verbalizing and going on about... :) good writeup and best wishes.

cheers.

#88
And if you are not forced somehow or the other, you end up conforming anyway, just to ``blend in``, voluntarily, and out of need.

you sure, this is not a contradiction?

Your ``real friends`` who shared your enthusiasms and other things college, too must have eventually ``grown up``.

does ``growing up together`` mean anything to you as a phrase? ppl. drift apart just for as many reasons as they become closer. (imo)

#74, 75 stated that college campuses allow more freedom and you make “real” friends who share your newly discovered values. That is moot, colleges exist for experimentation and finding yourself. But students do grow up. Your ``real friends`` who shared your enthusiasms and other things college, too must have eventually ``grown up``. Is their value set still the same? I would think not, nothing is static. But eventually, when you get out of college, most people seek acceptance yet again in another grouping, this time with some permanence to it. they find themselves conforming to their surroundings, and eventually if that setting stays pretty much constant (ie not too many major upheavels in their life that warrant an about face), they end up with the values of people surrounding them, consciously or unconsciously imbibed. Friends who did not ``judge`` you in college, because you were all in the same boat - are they still free from the judgment taint today? They`ve been forced to become whatever they`ve surrounded themselves with, and so have you. And if you are not forced somehow or the other, you end up conforming anyway, just to ``blend in``, voluntarily, and out of need. Man is, after all, a social animal. He can`t live without the social order he is most comfortable with. If you changed your gender, religion, or sexual preferance, to me, those are the only things that can drastically change your personal lifelong value system because that means your thought patterns have changed - not developed but changed (there is a difference). Cancer cannot do that, a new wife cannot do that. Only you create a new, independent, ostracized self. Families come and go, friends come and go, societies come and go, health wealth come and go, but unless you reevalaute your entire existence and the learned prejudices that it is based upon, do a 360 degree shock to your system by being completely reborn, which includes reeducating your mentality, you`re still the same. you will form the same pro-con hohum judgments as everyone else, you converge. In the end, what you are basically doing is shedding one cloak for another. You think it is “more free”, but it is still just another form of the same repressed herd-mentality lifestyle you are leading..

five liters of ginger ale obfuscate things completely.

Re: # 86

really? why so?

aruna, freedom is just exchanging one suffocating cloak for another.

Re: # 81

Hey- Well, it all depends on how far you can go with the invisible cord that connects you to your family and social expectations. I did have those curiosities in India too- I desperately wanted to see the inside of a church and a mosque for example- but so many people in my city knew my family, and rest assured, news travels fast. I think I managed to visit the church, but I was so nervous.

I guess we are the gate keepers of our own prisons, and I could have been `free` in India if I was brave enough. But I was not. To me, coming here offered a new taste of freedom.

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i dont know what ails the desi boys..they for some reason seem to carry all kinds of odd-baggage .. 5000 yrs or civilization to simple notions like they have to be smarter than the `goras`. they are absolutely miserable..only thing they seem to enjoy is (window) shopping. there is so much to enjoy, but they seem all stressed out, while girls seem to just seem to enjoy themselves more. and they have a `sense` of freedom, and anticipation and like the array of deoderants available.

i asked a relative who was here to go skiing..or sailing..he thought its too expensive and not worth.then he goes and buys a gold coin. i dont know what it all means, but he became happy once he found a cricket club where other desis played cricket and then watched hindi movies over internet.

Hi, Aruna-I spent some of my childhood in England before my father decided he had to do his duty by his parents and moved back to India; and everything I lived through after that was coloured by my experience of living in the west. So I do have some understanding of the situation you were in.
A few thoughts, though-how much easier would it be for many people in this situation if their parents did not expect them to fall neatly back into their own (that is, the parent`s own) social slots? I don`t think it would have made much of a difference for me-my main problem was that I had lost my Bengali and Hindi-but I have seen it with cousins and acquaintances. Often-not always-people leave middle-class or lower middle-class, and return upper middle-class; they then expect their children to fit into their own previous lifestyles, but once you have known a better life, and maybe never known any other, it becomes very hard.
I also thought your experience of feeling free only in the US is reminiscent of novels by Bharati Mukherjee. I have never agreed with her in that, and I still think that just moving to another country doesn`t set you free. I know I carry some of my shackles with me, but it is the only way I can be at peace with myself; I have internalised some of my family`s expectations. But no one stops you from ordering a steak in Bombay or Calcutta or going to church; I decided myself that I should eat fewer, not more animals-I won`t eat kangaroo either-and have given up on religon, at least for now. Perhaps you were just ready to be set free and it happened in the US, but it could have happened anywhere.

Aruna

Nice write up.

``Most of all, she was exposed to a plethora of questions that began with `why?```

Would you share some of those questions with us, Aruna?

Re: # 69

I can imagine! Do you plan to write on that boarding school thing sometime?