Monday, December 12th.
If some of you remember, this was the day when the nurse was unable to find a vein to sample my blood for thrombosis after a foot fracture. She dug into my fore-arm several times leaving numb scars and started venturing into my wrist in vain (lol). What was to follow can be submitted to a selection panel of scenari for horror movies.
The nurse, a cute lady in her mid-fifties with a lunatic pair of black-framed glasses hanging on but threatening to fall off her nose any time, with a terrified look on her face, inspite of quite some years of experience as a nurse in France & overseas, dug on, in shame and panic. I sensed the need to encourage her and not to give into panic, though it was my wrist that was going through the torture. I was asked to clench my fingers tight, so as to help the veins bulge out. And like an annoyed sewing teacher, my nurse kept digging to find that goddamn missing thread. At one point, she thought she had made contact with it and tried to pull it out upto the surface of the skin and what ensued was eerie.
My fists were clenched so hard, I could have broken an arm. They were gripped tight, not only because I was asked to, but because of the fear, the pain and the will to keep my cool with courage. As I kept clenching my fist hard, something was to happen to burst the dam and make me lose my cool.
My ring finger without my brain's orders to do so, simply pulled out of the clenched fist. I realised this because of two signals sent to my brain, reporting a certain nervous disorder. One was the pain. The other one was visual. Hard as I clenched my fist, the ring finger was defiantly dismantling itself from its fellow fingers and stretching itself outward as if after a good night's sleep for a nice big yawn.
Obviously, I screamed. I'm not sure whether it was in pain or in shock of what I saw. My brain was going bonkers. And as usual, when it does so,( every so often) my eyes, nose and mouth wail.( This does ease the brain out a bit. So wailing helps me be the proud owner of this healthy brain).
I was almost going to ask the nurse to give up, but if I didn't, it was because of one plain reason. Fear. Fear that I might upset our nurse into a terrible mistake. For she looked determined to have my blood after all the shame and panic she had felt. And I was, after all handicapped with only one leg to hobble around. She was all powerful with her syringe and her two good legs. From this vulnerable position, I had to coax her into an easy way of getting that darned blood out of my vein by being cooperative. Never mind the set backs of the previous attempts on the fore-arm. I was used to it. Nurses do find it hard to reach my veins. Experience told me that when they found it hard, I should let them try at least three times.
I timidly pointed out to her the abnormal behaviour of my ring finger, wishing it was instead the middle finger at least! (lol)
For which she replied, "Oh, I must've pulled a nerve, instead of a vein ! oops, sorry!"
That was some nerve ! Don't you think ?
At this point, I must've passed out. Or at least I pretended to have. And when I came to myself, my beaming nurse held my wrist with a test tube filling in with the scarlet liquid ever so slowly.
And then the big time wailing began. I mean the conscious one when the brain sends out signals to feel sorry for yourself. The womanly wailing. The booo hooo stuff. Boogie woogie stuff requiring the whole box of tissues.
Now my nurse sat there not knowing what to do and feeling very sorry. And I sat there feeling very sorry too, licking my wounds.
I was sorry for my nerve. (Or was it for the lack of nerve?) Sorry for being alone. Sorry for the grey skies and the torrential rain. Sorry for the fracture. Just sorry for everything under the sky. I also have a brain which when it reaches the Pandora box of woes, it pulls them out one by one, as I pull out the tissues to wipe out the boogie flow. And after a while, a long while, all boxes were emptied and the grey skies cleared.
My nurse still sat there and explained how something like this had never happened to her before. Something went wrong, she said, not knowing what possibly could have. Bewildered, she was.
My wailing too was a little unusual. A little too overwhelming. Where did my damn brain wander away, for just a slight nervous disorder?( Having said that, I still have trouble wearing a ring because of the discomfort caused by the nerve.)
Bewildered, we sat there, made peace between ourselves and drank a hot cup of tea together to sooth our nerves. We mutually felt that something had gone wrong with the two of us.
Though I hated my nurse for a short time, we became friends later on, after many a chatting sessions. Now I'm not sure Claire would have hit me to get a sample of my blood. See I can even say her name now ?!
Well, if I choose to tell you the story today ( Saturday, May 19th) it is because a few strange things took place on that Monday in December.
It was a full moon day. Though until now this seemed to have no relevance to our state of mind, many disturbing things seemed to have happened on this day.
Case N° 1 : C******, a young newly married, unemployed father of a girl going on her second year, did his early morning meditation, did his X'mas shopping with his young wife, bought himself a book to read, went for karate classes and before the end of the class, without getting dressed, took his bicycle and made it to a bridge over the railway lines and threw himself on a train from the bridge and checked out.
It was on the same Monday.
Case N° 2/3/4 : X,Y,Z checked themselves out in similar weird ways without any understandable reasons on the same day.
The doctor at the mogue had to report that many suicides just for the small suburban town I live in on one single day.
Case N° 5 : B**** (one of C*****'s friends in the meditation and karate class) sent an email to all her friends narrating her blissful experience early that morning, after meditation on the same Monday. Unable to sleep, she enjoys the full moon, strolls into her garden and narrates a very longy poem of her state of beatitude & rapture into which she enters, so disconnected from the reality, plunging her into a state of blissful, ecstatic void made of light and euphoric well-being, that she decided to splash colours in her workshop and invites her friends to go and take a look at her "amazing creation".
Well, I met with C****'s parents, who desperately try to find an answer to all this.
Two questions arise in my mind :
If meditation is a way of creating void in your head, could it be that when you do experience that so-called bliss, would you not be tempted to check out to reach that nirvana ?
Has the moon got anything to do with our wellness ? Our state of mind ? Did I wail like a wolf because of the moon?
I bumped into Claire, who is also a little shaken up after the eerie happenings in Pessac on that loony Monday.
Well, if you've got any answers about the Loony meditation, please write up. Please do throw some light if you can !
That's all folks. No more loony tales.
samedi 19 mai 2012
mercredi 25 janvier 2012
The politically incorrect. All beautiful people.
"The politically correct" was a new boundary set up to limit the wildness of our words, an outgrowth, our parents in their days, could enjoy. Those were times when a white man was a white and a black man, a black. They would just call a blind man, a blind man and an old man, an old man. And those were times when it seemed that no one really took offense for being called white, black, old, fat or thin. At least, so it seemed. I am still wondering if in those days, people just accepted being what they were or were they as hurt as anybody today if they were told they were fat or black, however true that may or may not have been.
The whole neighbourhood seemed to laugh over Mr Midget. They could go to the extent of saying what would seem cruel today: " He was so short that when called, he could come running under the table to meet you, instead of going around it", was one of the jokes that made every one laugh, even Mr Midget. The ‘rat-tail aunty’ was a nickname given to that unfortunate lady whose plait got thinner by the day to the point of comparison to the rat's tail. Rat-tail aunty seemed to take even more care of her weeny little plait, the more people mocked her hair growth. Fat aunty and pot-belly uncle were that lovely cheerful couple, who kept laughing all the time. Call them fat, call them pot-belly, they could laugh it off with you and look mirthfully beyond their over growth of fat and belly. They even seemed to rejoice in it. Yes, there was a time, not so long ago, when fat aunty was not so fat and uncle's belly was not so potty and rat-tail aunty had luscious, long, black hair and Mr Midget was a beautiful toddler.
All these people, Mr Midget, Mrs Rat-tail, Mr Pot-belly and Mrs Fat had become part of a whole picture, living in the same neighbourhood. I'm sure they all had some Christian, Hindu or Muslim names, but no one seemed to care. All that mattered was the mirth around their new identities. Fat aunty took as much pride in her fatness as her husband in his belly. He even stroked it tenderly, from time to time. Mr Midget just darted from one end to the other of the room, as if to prove that his neighbours were right about him. Rat-tail aunty spent hours plaiting those ridiculously thin strands of hair till the very tips and proudly let it hang down, instead of putting it up or chopping it off. Each one of them seemed to nurture their own trademark, as if this new identity they had grown into had to be lived up. After all, everybody had something to grow into or live up to. The blind old man next door, had just become the blind old man and nobody knew since when. He too was an extraordinarily beautiful baby when he came out of his mother's womb, one day not so long ago.
These were people who lived by their trades, their values and their means, whatever that might have been. They did not seem to be reduced to these new identities that they themselves least expected to grow into one day. They could have all done better with more or less growth of different parts of their bodies. But these differences made them unique and earned them their nicknames. They meant to keep them by even overplaying these new identities. And yet they never were reduced to just being these differences. They were just names, like any other and did not define their entire being. Of course, they could do a lot more things other than just being short or fat. Most of all, they could afford a lot more sense of humour than we can boast of, in our "politically correct" times today.
These differences were a part of their genetic heritage. And they simply chose to deride their own genes that they can hardly be blamed for. It did not seem to be a matter of serious reflexion to call upon surgery to fix these terrible genetic failings. In today's rat race for winners, there seem to be a set of rules by which we shall be measured and rated : A social manipulation leading us to believe in how we should look. And if you can afford it, you can to a certain extent, buy some "good looks". If you choose to be a winner, you would! Because you will have the power that comes with the money to be able do so. You could get yourself some hair transplant, get your belly sliced off, your fat sucked out, your skin colour changed, your nose reshaped and so on and so forth. The possibilities are endless on your way to looking like today's Barbie dolls.
My baby girl brought me one of my greatest moments of joy, when she was born. I still find her fascinatingly beautiful. I guess all mothers feel that way towards their children. We just love them, don't we? She came up to me and asked if I thought she was fat. I said, 'yep, way too fat next to Barbie! In fact, I'm going to call you fatty from now on! So that has got to settle in and we can deal now with the rest called life.'
On our way to becoming Barbie dolls, we have not only banished all the so-called flaws, but also the words pointing out at them, by being politically correct. Instead of laughing them off and eating and drinking merrily our way through life, we have become robots of perfection hoping for longevity and everlasting youth.
Having said that, I do believe that there are still a lot of us, not wanting to be those winners, laughing off our so-called imperfections, having given up our strife towards reaching robotic perfection… Are we losers then?
I should add that according to statistics, people had splits of laughter on an average of over 25 minutes a day compared to today's under 5 minutes of laughter per day! Does that surprise you? Perhaps, we shall all be uniformly monotonous and boringly stupid Barbies and Kens to the joy of our equally stupid mirrors and onlookers. Is that a modern pursuit of happiness? Who wants to be benched with me and watch them run the race and have some politically incorrect fun. Oops, I'm sorry.
lundi 16 janvier 2012
The politically correct. A caste system without a name.
After all the tension caused by serious topics of the past two blogs around language, identity, ideology, history, heritage, I feel the urge to lighten up things a bit. There must be something that has driven me down this serious road. When I look back, it was pretty much a joy ride on a bumpy road, quite a bumpy French road I must say, or was I a bad jerky driver, fumbling with my gears, while steering up the rungs of the social ladder?
With a foot fracture that takes time to heal, I'm sitting here comfortably in my living room with my feet up, looking at the dirty floor and wondering which of my kids' turn it is to vacuum clean and dust the house this weekend. Yes, as Matt reminded me, I've come a long way. Never mind the dirt and the dust, we are comfortably settled in a French suburb house with our two adorable (French? Indian? American?) children.
The French adventure started when I had earned the French Government Scholarship that was lavished on me to do a Master's in French, in Grenoble. I already had an University teaching position in Chennai, into which I could not quite settle. I dreaded going to work in a saree, for one. Then, I was only twenty-two and I hadn't seen the world yet. Whoever wants to feel settled at that age ? If I had just stayed on in that job, I would have probably been married off to some nice guy. It's nice to be optimistic. Arranged marriages don't always end in disasters after all, not any more than the so-called love-cum-arranged marriages of Meetic or e-Darling or the purely all-flame love marriages, the 'veritable coup de foudre'!
Coming to think of it, there is a considerable amount of comfort in an arranged marriage. First, the entire family approves of the union, parents, grand-parents, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers and all. It is a family affair. A reasonable affair in keeping with caste, creed and traditions. The married couple gets everybody's blessings and then hopes to live happily ever after, like anybody else. A nice fairy tale too ! The other comfort comes from skimming through the catalogues with pictures of groovy and less groovy guys who can be easily approached by the family. Choose the most gorgeous guy with the fattest pay and assets, in the grooviest place in the world and sail away babe ! Let your parents figure out if they can afford this nice big catch. If you can overlook the small discomfort of the dowry that your parents will have to go through, it's all yours.
I guess I was just too proud for that. I wanted things to happen my way. I love to be behind the wheel. Peaceful sailing is nice. But I seem to be drawn towards the excitement of a rough roller-coaster ride. Here I was set off to France, yelling, " yippie ! the world is mine!" It was a year of fun, a month in Paris and then the year in Grenoble, with enough money to backpack to a few European cities. With enough time to goof around with this International get-together of students from all over the world. A party year it was. I wished this year never to end. But it ended. And I also had enough time to fall in love. Fall I did. A nice long dreamy dizzy free fall. Until one day, I woke up, next to my husband, on a mattress on the floor, with a garden table and chairs in a tiny little apartment in another French suburb. Now what ?
As soon as we had moved in, people were looking me up and down with a look of silent shock. Though the first time you cannot see it, the pattern ultimately falls into place. It took almost twenty years for me to pin down this expression on their faces. Though you may say I'm a slow learner, I must add that I do feel like a mentalist now. You can pin down this expression, only if you have travelled a bit and if you see the world from behind this gorgeous copper skin I can flaunt. I can now see at the passport check points what awaits me in the country that lies behind. Just a glance. Just that small suspicion. A resentment betrayed by a twitch ever so slight and yet so frequent that it cannot be missed anymore. After a lifetime of experience, each cell in my body warns me of that tiny detail that betrays them and yells, "Steer clear, honey ! rocky shore!" Most of these entries I made into new territories were with my blond husband beside me with an identitical French passport. Needless to say that the officers greeted him differently in some countries, only in some. Grown out of doubt somewhere down the line, I can now write with a conviction that comes from patient learning and observation. Back to our story.
The apartment complex was very pompously called, 'Résidence Le Parc'. Right in the centre of a small town, a very small town of mostly middle class workers in the paper mills and other small industries around. But there were other trades thriving, as best they could, catering to the employees of the mills. There was a doctor in our building and his clinic on the ground floor, a plumber, an American pastor, a cleaning woman, who was also the janitor of 'Résidence Le Parc' and the others were mostly workers from the surrounding mills.
A group of women would gather around the benches in the park, behind the buildings to gossip atleast three to four times a day. Some of them used to gather at the entrance to the building very often and sigh to one another, when I passed them by : "This place is not what it used to be !" This was a caste of people who couldn't do with just a subtle twitch. They had to drive it home. This, from some explanation I got from friends, meant that they did not like nor did they expect a coloured person to be in their Résidence le Parc, one day. They had after all bought their flats with the sweat of their brow. They had moved into the town center, upgraded their existence by even living next door to a doctor! And here I come ! A third world immigrant! Spoiling all the fun. Didn't these immigrants get partial rent waivers when they went to the 'tours' (ghettos) at the edge of the town? That's where they were expected to live ! One of these women even suggested that I get some information about that. These were the years when nobody from these castes greeted me and they all looked at me suspiciously when I was getting warm hand shakes from that doctor and the pastor, wondering what that doctor and the pastor could have to do with that 'café au lait' immigrant.
I still wonder how much worse it can be, if I were to be married to another 'cafe latte' like me. My husband is white. The typical Caucasian. A blond six-footer with blue eyes. To some people in France, this is God himself (he actually enjoys this treatment in many parts of the world and in India too! And I have to keep knocking him back to the ground so often, which may explain why he went bald this poor chap!) They seem to crave so much for blondness in this part of the world, that understandably it results in dumbness, if blonds fall into the trap and let themselves into believing that blond is beautiful to the point of reaching the blissful void.The 'Black is beautiful' slogan is a revengeful claim, but 'blond is beautiful' is unfortunately very often a self-satisfied claim of having reached The Ultimate, when it comes to beauty and vanity in France. Some are born blonds and many become blonds and some have blondness thrust upon them. They can hardly be blamed for this, though I am skeptical about those who choose to become blonds. God save those stars who have blondness thrust upon them! Whatever!
So, many of them wondered why this God (my husband) would stoop so low to the rung of a third world immigrant. Some even drove it back home in different ways. In a grade list, they rated the blond-haired, bleu-eyed, six-footer at the top and the cafe latte, somewhere above the blacks way down on that list, somewhere beneath the fairer skins. It's easy kinder-garten calculation after all. What could this blond God possibly find in me? This led on to the conjecture that he was only keeping me until his next catch. Some said that I must be so good at those bestial details that draw us closer to animals, if you know what I mean. The darker your skin, the closer to animals, we are ! That is again another easy nursery rime. After all, I had kept my maiden name, so, it must be a lie ! They're not married! They're just having a good time ! Talking about good times....
Our son was born. We had furnished our flat to keep up the standards of the 'Résidence Le Parc.' We needed a second car. We are not car fans, though we love to drive around on bumpy roads! With our family growing, we thought we'll buy a nice big family van and the tiny Peugeot 205 was really not big enough to hold the stroller, the tricycle, the toys and the many number of bags, with diapers, baby food, sterilisers and what not. So, one day we came back home after a nice long drive and parked our new second-hand van in the parking lot of the 'Résidence Le Parc.' And something new happened from that day onwards. All these women and some men too, started greeting me with a strange mixture of respect and resentment, with the austere 'Bonjour'! Good times hey !
Then our daughter was born. We had to move into a bigger house. Our new house was under construction in the poshest neighbourhood of that small town, of a very small town. When the news went around, the same women and many more men and women joined in and started greeting me with quite some respect and even some reverence with the austere, 'Bonjour Madame!'
Then we moved into our new house. I must admit we designed and built a house that stood out like a sore thumb in this small town, a very small town. I still don't know why we could not see that this house just didn't fit in that location. We were the house owners of this fabulous American styled house. People came around just to take glimpses of our outstanding house, though we didn't mean it to be so bling bling. Now the austere greetings were upgraded to wide smiles coming our way, begging for recognition, 'Bonjour Madame Camou (though this is my husband's name, it simply doesn't sink into the average French brain that you can be married and keep your name and identity). Comment allez-vous? J'espère que... bla bla bla...' My children in elemantary school now, came back home thinking they were some royal blood, with all the good humour going around them, about being the residents of that posh house.
And then I got through one of the competitive exams and became a Professor. As much as the lack of greetings can be disgusting, this new cringing attitude towards us was nauseating. The whole town knew us now. Thanks to the walls of this beautiful house. That's not hard, given the scope in this town! But yet, we were the zamindars, les notables, the Lords.
And then we made our first trip to America. And then the second trip to America. Though, we had travelled maybe four or five times to India, during our stay in that small flat, in these people's eyes, that didn't seem to count as much as our trip to the States. Our children were dangerously growing up believing they were Lords. It had to stop. Other Lords of the town were now willing to let us into their realm. Here was a caste system without a name.
Looking back, I know I have broken away from the comfort zones of my country, my caste, my creed, my family. These were my protective confines. Breaking away meant a roller coaster ride in which everything had to be sorted out from scratch. Building our house was in a way building new protective boundaries and holding up a new banner with an unnamed caste. Here was a new caste system which went hand in hand with cars and wealth. Wasn't it the same thing in India, built up over many generations with not so duck-backed boundaries, as it is claimed to be? The endogamic caste system in India is as much a myth as is the purity of French blood. There may be people out there dumb enough to believe in this. But I just need to take a look at myself in the mirror to know that I was not born out of pure blood, nor a pure caste. I am mixed. So are the French. So is everybody. Even the blonds.
Back home, we had neighbours who had become doctors and engineers, though they were born into lower castes. Positive discrimination drove so many of us out of the protective frontiers of our comfort zones to explore the world with all its powers to frighten us. We have built our new castes or bought them with the money we earned, stayed our grounds, created new boundaries and blurred old ones. Our new castes can be measured, counted and rated. Yet, they have no names. Naming them would be politically incorrect. But is a rose, any less a rose, when it has no name and a shorter span of life?
.
With a foot fracture that takes time to heal, I'm sitting here comfortably in my living room with my feet up, looking at the dirty floor and wondering which of my kids' turn it is to vacuum clean and dust the house this weekend. Yes, as Matt reminded me, I've come a long way. Never mind the dirt and the dust, we are comfortably settled in a French suburb house with our two adorable (French? Indian? American?) children.
The French adventure started when I had earned the French Government Scholarship that was lavished on me to do a Master's in French, in Grenoble. I already had an University teaching position in Chennai, into which I could not quite settle. I dreaded going to work in a saree, for one. Then, I was only twenty-two and I hadn't seen the world yet. Whoever wants to feel settled at that age ? If I had just stayed on in that job, I would have probably been married off to some nice guy. It's nice to be optimistic. Arranged marriages don't always end in disasters after all, not any more than the so-called love-cum-arranged marriages of Meetic or e-Darling or the purely all-flame love marriages, the 'veritable coup de foudre'!
Coming to think of it, there is a considerable amount of comfort in an arranged marriage. First, the entire family approves of the union, parents, grand-parents, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers and all. It is a family affair. A reasonable affair in keeping with caste, creed and traditions. The married couple gets everybody's blessings and then hopes to live happily ever after, like anybody else. A nice fairy tale too ! The other comfort comes from skimming through the catalogues with pictures of groovy and less groovy guys who can be easily approached by the family. Choose the most gorgeous guy with the fattest pay and assets, in the grooviest place in the world and sail away babe ! Let your parents figure out if they can afford this nice big catch. If you can overlook the small discomfort of the dowry that your parents will have to go through, it's all yours.
I guess I was just too proud for that. I wanted things to happen my way. I love to be behind the wheel. Peaceful sailing is nice. But I seem to be drawn towards the excitement of a rough roller-coaster ride. Here I was set off to France, yelling, " yippie ! the world is mine!" It was a year of fun, a month in Paris and then the year in Grenoble, with enough money to backpack to a few European cities. With enough time to goof around with this International get-together of students from all over the world. A party year it was. I wished this year never to end. But it ended. And I also had enough time to fall in love. Fall I did. A nice long dreamy dizzy free fall. Until one day, I woke up, next to my husband, on a mattress on the floor, with a garden table and chairs in a tiny little apartment in another French suburb. Now what ?
As soon as we had moved in, people were looking me up and down with a look of silent shock. Though the first time you cannot see it, the pattern ultimately falls into place. It took almost twenty years for me to pin down this expression on their faces. Though you may say I'm a slow learner, I must add that I do feel like a mentalist now. You can pin down this expression, only if you have travelled a bit and if you see the world from behind this gorgeous copper skin I can flaunt. I can now see at the passport check points what awaits me in the country that lies behind. Just a glance. Just that small suspicion. A resentment betrayed by a twitch ever so slight and yet so frequent that it cannot be missed anymore. After a lifetime of experience, each cell in my body warns me of that tiny detail that betrays them and yells, "Steer clear, honey ! rocky shore!" Most of these entries I made into new territories were with my blond husband beside me with an identitical French passport. Needless to say that the officers greeted him differently in some countries, only in some. Grown out of doubt somewhere down the line, I can now write with a conviction that comes from patient learning and observation. Back to our story.
The apartment complex was very pompously called, 'Résidence Le Parc'. Right in the centre of a small town, a very small town of mostly middle class workers in the paper mills and other small industries around. But there were other trades thriving, as best they could, catering to the employees of the mills. There was a doctor in our building and his clinic on the ground floor, a plumber, an American pastor, a cleaning woman, who was also the janitor of 'Résidence Le Parc' and the others were mostly workers from the surrounding mills.
A group of women would gather around the benches in the park, behind the buildings to gossip atleast three to four times a day. Some of them used to gather at the entrance to the building very often and sigh to one another, when I passed them by : "This place is not what it used to be !" This was a caste of people who couldn't do with just a subtle twitch. They had to drive it home. This, from some explanation I got from friends, meant that they did not like nor did they expect a coloured person to be in their Résidence le Parc, one day. They had after all bought their flats with the sweat of their brow. They had moved into the town center, upgraded their existence by even living next door to a doctor! And here I come ! A third world immigrant! Spoiling all the fun. Didn't these immigrants get partial rent waivers when they went to the 'tours' (ghettos) at the edge of the town? That's where they were expected to live ! One of these women even suggested that I get some information about that. These were the years when nobody from these castes greeted me and they all looked at me suspiciously when I was getting warm hand shakes from that doctor and the pastor, wondering what that doctor and the pastor could have to do with that 'café au lait' immigrant.
I still wonder how much worse it can be, if I were to be married to another 'cafe latte' like me. My husband is white. The typical Caucasian. A blond six-footer with blue eyes. To some people in France, this is God himself (he actually enjoys this treatment in many parts of the world and in India too! And I have to keep knocking him back to the ground so often, which may explain why he went bald this poor chap!) They seem to crave so much for blondness in this part of the world, that understandably it results in dumbness, if blonds fall into the trap and let themselves into believing that blond is beautiful to the point of reaching the blissful void.The 'Black is beautiful' slogan is a revengeful claim, but 'blond is beautiful' is unfortunately very often a self-satisfied claim of having reached The Ultimate, when it comes to beauty and vanity in France. Some are born blonds and many become blonds and some have blondness thrust upon them. They can hardly be blamed for this, though I am skeptical about those who choose to become blonds. God save those stars who have blondness thrust upon them! Whatever!
So, many of them wondered why this God (my husband) would stoop so low to the rung of a third world immigrant. Some even drove it back home in different ways. In a grade list, they rated the blond-haired, bleu-eyed, six-footer at the top and the cafe latte, somewhere above the blacks way down on that list, somewhere beneath the fairer skins. It's easy kinder-garten calculation after all. What could this blond God possibly find in me? This led on to the conjecture that he was only keeping me until his next catch. Some said that I must be so good at those bestial details that draw us closer to animals, if you know what I mean. The darker your skin, the closer to animals, we are ! That is again another easy nursery rime. After all, I had kept my maiden name, so, it must be a lie ! They're not married! They're just having a good time ! Talking about good times....
Our son was born. We had furnished our flat to keep up the standards of the 'Résidence Le Parc.' We needed a second car. We are not car fans, though we love to drive around on bumpy roads! With our family growing, we thought we'll buy a nice big family van and the tiny Peugeot 205 was really not big enough to hold the stroller, the tricycle, the toys and the many number of bags, with diapers, baby food, sterilisers and what not. So, one day we came back home after a nice long drive and parked our new second-hand van in the parking lot of the 'Résidence Le Parc.' And something new happened from that day onwards. All these women and some men too, started greeting me with a strange mixture of respect and resentment, with the austere 'Bonjour'! Good times hey !
Then our daughter was born. We had to move into a bigger house. Our new house was under construction in the poshest neighbourhood of that small town, of a very small town. When the news went around, the same women and many more men and women joined in and started greeting me with quite some respect and even some reverence with the austere, 'Bonjour Madame!'
Then we moved into our new house. I must admit we designed and built a house that stood out like a sore thumb in this small town, a very small town. I still don't know why we could not see that this house just didn't fit in that location. We were the house owners of this fabulous American styled house. People came around just to take glimpses of our outstanding house, though we didn't mean it to be so bling bling. Now the austere greetings were upgraded to wide smiles coming our way, begging for recognition, 'Bonjour Madame Camou (though this is my husband's name, it simply doesn't sink into the average French brain that you can be married and keep your name and identity). Comment allez-vous? J'espère que... bla bla bla...' My children in elemantary school now, came back home thinking they were some royal blood, with all the good humour going around them, about being the residents of that posh house.
And then I got through one of the competitive exams and became a Professor. As much as the lack of greetings can be disgusting, this new cringing attitude towards us was nauseating. The whole town knew us now. Thanks to the walls of this beautiful house. That's not hard, given the scope in this town! But yet, we were the zamindars, les notables, the Lords.
And then we made our first trip to America. And then the second trip to America. Though, we had travelled maybe four or five times to India, during our stay in that small flat, in these people's eyes, that didn't seem to count as much as our trip to the States. Our children were dangerously growing up believing they were Lords. It had to stop. Other Lords of the town were now willing to let us into their realm. Here was a caste system without a name.
Looking back, I know I have broken away from the comfort zones of my country, my caste, my creed, my family. These were my protective confines. Breaking away meant a roller coaster ride in which everything had to be sorted out from scratch. Building our house was in a way building new protective boundaries and holding up a new banner with an unnamed caste. Here was a new caste system which went hand in hand with cars and wealth. Wasn't it the same thing in India, built up over many generations with not so duck-backed boundaries, as it is claimed to be? The endogamic caste system in India is as much a myth as is the purity of French blood. There may be people out there dumb enough to believe in this. But I just need to take a look at myself in the mirror to know that I was not born out of pure blood, nor a pure caste. I am mixed. So are the French. So is everybody. Even the blonds.
Back home, we had neighbours who had become doctors and engineers, though they were born into lower castes. Positive discrimination drove so many of us out of the protective frontiers of our comfort zones to explore the world with all its powers to frighten us. We have built our new castes or bought them with the money we earned, stayed our grounds, created new boundaries and blurred old ones. Our new castes can be measured, counted and rated. Yet, they have no names. Naming them would be politically incorrect. But is a rose, any less a rose, when it has no name and a shorter span of life?
.
mercredi 11 janvier 2012
The French paradox.
The previous blog leads me on to this one about how much a language is part of the political ideology of a group of people. And if you speak the language, beyond the correctness of its grammar and vocabulary, you see the world through this ideology. The paradox is that you can speak it only if you are a part of this ideology. If you refuse to share the same ideas, it is a language you speak only superficially to get around in everyday life.
Having said this, France's adamant ideology of wanting to include only that which is acceptably "French", is reflected through its language as well. When you swear in to be a French citizen, you also swear in to be "French". You not only swear into being a law abiding citizen of the land but you also are required to accept being "laic"(secular) and many other things that go unsaid. You are expected to blend in as much as possible and even more. But that is another topic altogether. You will be asked at a point of time, if you desire to change your name or atleast make it sound more French. All Moustafas are warmly invited to become Michels or Jeans. It is almost a rebirth, giving up your past for an unknown French future. But you can choose not to. And even when you name your child, when still at the maternity ward, the representative of the State will see to it that the name is acceptable to the French ear. Well, if you choose not to change your name, when you swear into French citizenship, not even the spelling, it will be massacred, each time your name will be called.
In the same way, the French language feels the need to translate and make words sound French. 'A computer' had to be translated into 'un ordinateur', the concept had to be retraced in its own history for a very French sounding word to be found, instead of blending into the universal 'computer'. I wonder how the verb 'to google' is going to be translated into French.
Being French is an exclusive matter. You need to be exclusively "French" and leave behind what is a part and parcel of your being at the door step when you walk through that door. This inevitably leaves a huge number of immigrants defying and challenging the French ideology, every so often. As much as France adamantly refuses to blend into the global world, its (mostly non-European)immigrants stubbornly refuse to blend into what is acceptably "French".
In my opinion, if a country can be open to new colours and sounds added on to its landscape, so will its language. This can only enrich the country and eventually its language, thus making it grow and live. Resistance to novelty and change can only lead to decay and decrepitude. It is high time France stopped being a charitable country, 'France, terre d'accueil', where immigrants are presumably (economically) poor (and beggars, and beggars don't choose, do they?) and wanting help from its wellfare state. It has to start looking upon immigration as a way to enrich it in every way. And no immigrant is going to feel any richer by being exclusively French, even when he shall be well-fed and his health well taken care of. The art of being an immigrant is, ever including other ingredients to make the broth, a never-ending, dynamic process, wherever you live. Migration goes hand in hand with globalisation.
It makes me so sad and angry that a recent American movie, "Cowboys and Aliens" had to be translated into "Les cowboys et les envahisseurs" in French. Much as the country alienates its immigrants, so do they keep 'invading' it, I guess. How is it that an immigrant in the USA feels so patriotically American, only after a few years after swearing in, as to hold up the stars and stripes with pride and joy and France only manages to alienate most of its immigrants ? Or is it just me ? If it is just me, forget the whole thing.
Having said this, France's adamant ideology of wanting to include only that which is acceptably "French", is reflected through its language as well. When you swear in to be a French citizen, you also swear in to be "French". You not only swear into being a law abiding citizen of the land but you also are required to accept being "laic"(secular) and many other things that go unsaid. You are expected to blend in as much as possible and even more. But that is another topic altogether. You will be asked at a point of time, if you desire to change your name or atleast make it sound more French. All Moustafas are warmly invited to become Michels or Jeans. It is almost a rebirth, giving up your past for an unknown French future. But you can choose not to. And even when you name your child, when still at the maternity ward, the representative of the State will see to it that the name is acceptable to the French ear. Well, if you choose not to change your name, when you swear into French citizenship, not even the spelling, it will be massacred, each time your name will be called.
In the same way, the French language feels the need to translate and make words sound French. 'A computer' had to be translated into 'un ordinateur', the concept had to be retraced in its own history for a very French sounding word to be found, instead of blending into the universal 'computer'. I wonder how the verb 'to google' is going to be translated into French.
Being French is an exclusive matter. You need to be exclusively "French" and leave behind what is a part and parcel of your being at the door step when you walk through that door. This inevitably leaves a huge number of immigrants defying and challenging the French ideology, every so often. As much as France adamantly refuses to blend into the global world, its (mostly non-European)immigrants stubbornly refuse to blend into what is acceptably "French".
In my opinion, if a country can be open to new colours and sounds added on to its landscape, so will its language. This can only enrich the country and eventually its language, thus making it grow and live. Resistance to novelty and change can only lead to decay and decrepitude. It is high time France stopped being a charitable country, 'France, terre d'accueil', where immigrants are presumably (economically) poor (and beggars, and beggars don't choose, do they?) and wanting help from its wellfare state. It has to start looking upon immigration as a way to enrich it in every way. And no immigrant is going to feel any richer by being exclusively French, even when he shall be well-fed and his health well taken care of. The art of being an immigrant is, ever including other ingredients to make the broth, a never-ending, dynamic process, wherever you live. Migration goes hand in hand with globalisation.
It makes me so sad and angry that a recent American movie, "Cowboys and Aliens" had to be translated into "Les cowboys et les envahisseurs" in French. Much as the country alienates its immigrants, so do they keep 'invading' it, I guess. How is it that an immigrant in the USA feels so patriotically American, only after a few years after swearing in, as to hold up the stars and stripes with pride and joy and France only manages to alienate most of its immigrants ? Or is it just me ? If it is just me, forget the whole thing.
lundi 9 janvier 2012
vendredi 6 janvier 2012
Writing. Mustangs in Montana.
The paradox of life
vendredi 6 janvier 2012
Writing. Mustangs in Montana
Prologue : The first time I might have had to get some help from a shrink was when an overwhelmingly oppressive feeling took over me and very soon I was bursting into red itchy patches all over. Although I couldn't see that the oppressive feeling was even remotely related to those red patches, a shrink saw it. Thanks to shrinks. Seeing a shrink is always a challenging decision. You have to admit that something is not spinning around in the right way in your head, resulting in a flaw in the weave... You're not 'normal' anymore. Maybe a 'loser', ‘off the rocker', the snapped fibre not made of sterner stuff, or even a mad person fit for the psychiatric ward... I’m still thankful for those rashes and the shrink.
In retrospective, I'm able to give a logical sequence to it all. But, when I saw the rashes on my skin, I marched off to see our family doctor to get it fixed with some ointments and pills. I must be allergic to something, the strawberries I had yesterday or was it the new soap? Well what followed was an eye opener to a whole new phase in life. A word from the doctor triggered a terrible upheaval of self-pity and a torrential flow of tears and sobs, which the doctor thought best not to dam in. He gave me a box of tissues and walked out of his consultation room with a pretext of having to look for something he had forgotten in his car.
When he came back, he diagnosed that I was a perfectly healthy young woman if I could cry so much. He looked at the waste paper basket with raised eyebrows and a congratulatory laugh. He sent me home with another appointment for the next day. 'We've done enough for today. See you tomorrow at 10am.' This feeling of having fallen apart in front of someone else was new. I picked myself up and strolled back home in a daze, feeling lighter and relieved. I knew I was in distress and someone else knew I was in distress too. I had given myself away. So what? I was not alone. I went back home and hit the bed and slept almost until the next day's appointment I was looking forward to.
I was calm and collected the next day. My doctor was brief as always. He was a man of few words, very professional and yet so friendly.
"We need to figure out how to deal with it now..." He went on, always keeping a close eye on my reactions. "This is all part of growing up. We never stop growing up. Everyday makes you grow up a little bit more and we do it, all by ourselves, without help from others... We don't have our parents with us anymore to help us along. We all feel betrayed by all those promises that life hasn't kept up...We were all made to believe that it was going to be beautiful. You as a parent will also have to let your children believe in those promises...and we all get jolted back into reality once in a while though."
I looked up at him and wondered why he was giving me all this speech about having to grow up. I thought I was a grown-up already. Wasn't it stupid to admit that I was still growing up, when I had growing up children myself?
Now that he had finished with his diagnosis, I knew that my sickness was something to do with 'growing up'. What was it yesterday? Oh yes 'a perfectly healthy woman'!
What was the therapy for this?
Here’s what he came up with. "Now, if you want, I can send you to a real shrink who will probably charge you an arm and a leg so that you can cry over your sickness on his couch! But you can also stay home on your couch and cry, for free. What I suggest is that you write down everything you'd want to tell the shrink. Ask the questions the shrink might ask you and answer them. And if you really need someone to read you, bring your creation to me." He winked and carried on. "Or, you could just throw it off into the waste."
I looked up at him bewildered. Now, how is that supposed to rid me of my eczema?
"Now you go home and try this and if it doesn't work for you, you come back. You are a smart, beaming young woman, full of life. I'm sure it'll work and you're going to be okay." (Do we know that compliments could be excellent placebos?) I strutted back home, feeling tall but a little puzzled about the rashes.
Back home, I took my long nap thinking of my doctor's therapy for my rashes. But he did not once speak about those damn rashes, or did he? I woke up at sundown and set about writing after a nice little cuppa....
In retrospective, I'm able to give a logical sequence to it all. But, when I saw the rashes on my skin, I marched off to see our family doctor to get it fixed with some ointments and pills. I must be allergic to something, the strawberries I had yesterday or was it the new soap? Well what followed was an eye opener to a whole new phase in life. A word from the doctor triggered a terrible upheaval of self-pity and a torrential flow of tears and sobs, which the doctor thought best not to dam in. He gave me a box of tissues and walked out of his consultation room with a pretext of having to look for something he had forgotten in his car.
When he came back, he diagnosed that I was a perfectly healthy young woman if I could cry so much. He looked at the waste paper basket with raised eyebrows and a congratulatory laugh. He sent me home with another appointment for the next day. 'We've done enough for today. See you tomorrow at 10am.' This feeling of having fallen apart in front of someone else was new. I picked myself up and strolled back home in a daze, feeling lighter and relieved. I knew I was in distress and someone else knew I was in distress too. I had given myself away. So what? I was not alone. I went back home and hit the bed and slept almost until the next day's appointment I was looking forward to.
I was calm and collected the next day. My doctor was brief as always. He was a man of few words, very professional and yet so friendly.
"We need to figure out how to deal with it now..." He went on, always keeping a close eye on my reactions. "This is all part of growing up. We never stop growing up. Everyday makes you grow up a little bit more and we do it, all by ourselves, without help from others... We don't have our parents with us anymore to help us along. We all feel betrayed by all those promises that life hasn't kept up...We were all made to believe that it was going to be beautiful. You as a parent will also have to let your children believe in those promises...and we all get jolted back into reality once in a while though."
I looked up at him and wondered why he was giving me all this speech about having to grow up. I thought I was a grown-up already. Wasn't it stupid to admit that I was still growing up, when I had growing up children myself?
Now that he had finished with his diagnosis, I knew that my sickness was something to do with 'growing up'. What was it yesterday? Oh yes 'a perfectly healthy woman'!
What was the therapy for this?
Here’s what he came up with. "Now, if you want, I can send you to a real shrink who will probably charge you an arm and a leg so that you can cry over your sickness on his couch! But you can also stay home on your couch and cry, for free. What I suggest is that you write down everything you'd want to tell the shrink. Ask the questions the shrink might ask you and answer them. And if you really need someone to read you, bring your creation to me." He winked and carried on. "Or, you could just throw it off into the waste."
I looked up at him bewildered. Now, how is that supposed to rid me of my eczema?
"Now you go home and try this and if it doesn't work for you, you come back. You are a smart, beaming young woman, full of life. I'm sure it'll work and you're going to be okay." (Do we know that compliments could be excellent placebos?) I strutted back home, feeling tall but a little puzzled about the rashes.
Back home, I took my long nap thinking of my doctor's therapy for my rashes. But he did not once speak about those damn rashes, or did he? I woke up at sundown and set about writing after a nice little cuppa....
Words, words, words...and more words flowed out. I filled lines, pages, books of them words. Though never published and almost always sent into that waste paper basket, writing has never stopped being a therapy for a sickness, called growing up.
My children are almost grown-ups now. And I'm going to let them believe in the promise of life. No matter how absurd the lie, they will have to believe in it. That is the only truth. If you stop believing, you might as well drive a bullet into your head. But if you choose to live (many people do!), you have to keep the faith, even if the planet Earth is about to be sucked into a black hole.
Epilogue : Well, this is a family secret, don't tell anyone please! My daughter will kill me.
I stumbled upon my daughter's story-writing files while cleaning up my computer, written when she was going on ten. The timing, not so strangely, coincides with our parental refusal to letting her have a horse in our backyard. My girl's story is about rearing horses in a ranch inMontana
Oh I almost forgot... I had eczema for those two days (was it eczema at all ? whatever!). I stopped feeling itchy on the third day. Ever since, I've been itching to write. And I've been going back to the waste paper basket, a Pandora box of sorts, picking up those crumbled balls of paper, reading them, rewriting them, playing with words and enjoying the power of words Writing can bring a satisfaction denied by the frustrations of reality. From not obtaining the permission to rear a horse in your backyard, you can go on to rearing mustangs in a beautiful ranch inMontana
My children are almost grown-ups now. And I'm going to let them believe in the promise of life. No matter how absurd the lie, they will have to believe in it. That is the only truth. If you stop believing, you might as well drive a bullet into your head. But if you choose to live (many people do!), you have to keep the faith, even if the planet Earth is about to be sucked into a black hole.
Epilogue : Well, this is a family secret, don't tell anyone please! My daughter will kill me.
I stumbled upon my daughter's story-writing files while cleaning up my computer, written when she was going on ten. The timing, not so strangely, coincides with our parental refusal to letting her have a horse in our backyard. My girl's story is about rearing horses in a ranch in
Oh I almost forgot... I had eczema for those two days (was it eczema at all ? whatever!). I stopped feeling itchy on the third day. Ever since, I've been itching to write. And I've been going back to the waste paper basket, a Pandora box of sorts, picking up those crumbled balls of paper, reading them, rewriting them, playing with words and enjoying the power of words Writing can bring a satisfaction denied by the frustrations of reality. From not obtaining the permission to rear a horse in your backyard, you can go on to rearing mustangs in a beautiful ranch in
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