Sunday, April 13, 2008

Addendum

In the light of some of the comments the "Don't call me desi" post below has inspired, I feel the need to appoint a counsel for the defence.

Check out this interesting video of Sanjeev Bhaskar talking about being Indian and British at the same time.

Incidentally, his saying fish fingers when he was asked what he had for tea reminded me of one of my father's stories about going to a Jesuit school in Mangalore. Since most of his classmates were Catholic, he and his brother always claimed to be Catholic when it came to stating religion. It was as much wishful thinking as wanting to fit in.

And what Sanjeev says about the dichotomy created by not being into Bollywood films that much but rather The Beatles, Stanley Kubrick and their ilk, reminded me of some of my classmates. Mine was a rural school, so many came from very, very conservative backgrounds. The kids' "westernised" tastes in music, movies, books made them a sort of fault-line generation in their families, with all the discomfort that entails.

Not belittling the difficulties of growing up straddling two cultures, I would still say that it brings me back to what I said in my earlier post about some things also being human concerns, not just Indian ones.

9 comments:

Krishnan Menon said...

Stirring up the hornets I see! As long as your neice doesn't grow up thinking she is a combination of Indian, chinese and singaporean, I will be pleased! I thought she made a sound that sounded like 'la' yesterday.

Gargoyle said...

Oh God I forgot about the niece! Actually all three of them, all budding PIOs. As for la, there's no hope what with the Chinese nanny too, har har.

Gargoyle said...

What are you doing up so late? Is that the niece as well?!

Anonymous said...

eh? Hmmmmmm....

Anonymous said...

that's a great vid. and this got me wondering about other foreign born desis andhow they turn out. are us abds the worst of the lot? any japanese born indians or a brazilian born ones out there? krishnan, how about all of "us" in singapore? are they "confused" too?

Anonymous said...

Norway speaking! Grandparents were immigrants, dad was born here, mom came from India. My fiance's Dutch. My genes are Indian. I'm Norwegian, with a large extended family in India who accept me as such. It helps that I don't have dubious support groups to whip up my nonexistent desi angst. Gargoyle, stop getting dragged into that weird sh*t on SM. Go back to blogging your usual random world views.

Anonymous said...

yeah shilo-gargoyle what's with the Indian thing suddenly? get off it this minute.

Gargoyle said...

Thanks for reading Fjord Ganga! Have to admit I've been very curious about the regular visitor from Norway :)

IBCG - my humble apologies. I will correct this tendency at once. My next post will be on that thing you're confused about. Watch this space.:D

Anonymous said...

Hey desi_in_aussie,

What a relief. The SM gang take themselves SO seriously, it had me a little worried. A bit of self-deprecation is a beautiful thing.

Blog Archive