In the name of decorum

Just a few of the things we are all forced to do in our lives ……………… in the name of decorum!

Love and marriage

1.  Listen to career and family details of a bride or groom someone in your circle has finally found.

2.  Look interested when the upcoming nuptials are described in glorious elaboration that seems to last three days (as will the ceremonies!)!

3.  Show up at weddings where the only person you know, of the 1000 plus people present, is the one getting married!

4.  Wade through pages of photos on Facebook / Picasa because you were sent the link “for your comments.”

5.  Show up with a bouquet of flowers because you were not really sure if the couple expected gifts but you did not have the guts to show up emptry-handed.

Social life

1.  Agree to try out a new restaurant when dining out with friends because they say “so-and-so said it is good” although you do not trust that particular so-and-so’s culinary choices.

2.  Sit through monologues while a friend describes to his wife the “exotic” ingredients in each “main course” listed under “Continental” in a multi-cuisine restaurant.

3.  Accept sharing dishes you know you don’t fancy simply to get the drawn-out “order-placing” ceremony over and done with.

4.  Nod understandingly as an older relative recounts some disastrous experience in fine dining for the “n”th time: he is 82 after all!

5.  Persevere as boisterous and no-mannered offspring of other diners find that the 15-feet radius around your table is the ideal place in the entire room to play while their shameless parents enjoy their own meals in peace and quiet at the other end of the restaurant.

Death and Dying

1.  Not go to work the day an aged relative passes away.

2.  Show up at the funeral of a neighbour one barely knew when he was alive.

3.  Have a shocked expression on your face when you hear of someone you did not care about “passing on”!

4.  Remember the death anniversaries of a lot of people you do not remember.

5.  Change any part of your routine during the fifteen days of “pitru-pandhavda” because you want your ancestors to be at peace …..wherever they might be.

More of these and other anti-social thoughts as and when they happen !

Et alors?

Lors d’une conversation téléphonique il y a quelques jours seulement, une amie a expliqué que puisque ses parents ne la comprenaient plus depuis quelques jours, elle voulait sérieusement déménager de la maison paternelle et se trouver un appartement en ville.
Et alors ? vous me direz !
Mais, voyez-vous, ce projet, aussi « normal », anodin et banal que soit pour la France, va faire fureur en Inde !
Oui, parce que cette fille, elle habite en Inde, et la maison où elle ne veut plus vivre, c’est la maison de son père ! Et, comble d’audace : elle n’est pas mariée ! Ce n’est pas avec un mari dûment épousé dans une cérémonie extravagante qu’elle voudrait partir, mais seule ! Je ne vous dis pas !
Cette question épineuse de l’individualité face aux situations familiales difficiles a toujours posé problème en Inde. Normalement, dans les familles dites « ouvertes » aux idées Occidentales, et dont les enfants sont souvent partis se former à l’étranger, les perspectives familiales ne sont pas les mêmes, elles sont par définition plus relaxes, plus détendues. Ces familles respectent l’individu, la personne unique avec sa personnalité à elle, ses opinions, ses réactions, son état d’âme ! Bref, cette personne en tant que personne, quoi ! Bien différente, bien à part des autres de la même famille !
Cependant, puisque les traditions indiennes n’autorisent jamais une prise de conscience individuelle à l’Occidentale, chaque individu est figé dans un réseau complexe de relations et de responsabilités ! Ce réseau, aussi invisible (et aussi tenace) que le lien familial qui conjugue l’individu à plusieurs autres individus, exerce sa maîtrise totale et absolue sur la liberté individuelle. Pour une fille, il est donc interdit de penser à oser refuser le mariage à l’âge voulu par les parents (et aussi pour un garçon, quoique les garçons aient plus de liberté et de choix). Sans argument, sans piper mot, de milliers de jeunes filles acceptent le mariage et ainsi leurs souhaits, leurs rêves, leurs avenirs sont coupés courts par l’union matrimoniale !
Dire que dans un pays qui existe dans deux, trois, voire quatre siècles en même temps, étant donné les situations de la société vis-à-vis des domaines différents, il est difficile de gérer, quand on est fille, les envols de son imagination qui risquent de la pousser à l’encontre de l’opinion parentale !
Ce qui compte, pour une fille, après tout, c’est de faire son devoir de fille dévouée, obéissante et modèle ! Oui, elle a deux diplômes universitaires (ce que voulait son père); oui, elle sait faire la cuisine (grâce à sa mère) ; oui, elle est pleine de qualités (encouragée par ses cousins) ; oui, elle est très habile avec ses doigts (ça, c’est de sa grand-mère), et elle a tout le nécessaire pour se tailler une belle carrière en affaires (là, c’est l’auto-développement !)!
En affaires, vous dites ?
Ben, non ! Pas question !
Elle n’a qu’à écouter ses parents une fois de plus et d’accepter le parti le plus prestigieux qui se présente cette année !

I wonder why ……………………………….. II

Perplexing questions I have sometimes wondered about ……on Sundays and holidays only, of course! In a series to appear on these pages as and when I give them voice!! Or keys on the keyboard!!!!

At breakfast this morning, I was stunned to hear that a lawyer friend, who rarely has time to meet friends of long date, has acquired software to make his workday short and his output large! His new gizmo listens to him speak and “types” the text into a .doc file! He has asked me to go his office and witness this technological marvel for myself! I shall, one day, soon!

But I could not help shudder in disgust at the thought of such an invention! I agree that the computer keyboard has already replaced the entire range of writing instruments I have grown up knowing, coveting (my sister’s Parker ’71, for instance) , and loving upon acquisition (the same Parker pen after my sister’s marriage in 1974 but she does not know it yet !)! In school, fountain pens and their distinctly down-market cousins, the ball-point pen, were objects of lust, envy, greed, and sheer sensuous pleasure!

Every June, I remember, new fountain pens were always part of the arsenal we acquired to be able to persevere through the academic year, along with reams of brown paper to cover note-books, labels with exotic designs to proudly identify oneself as the owner of all the latest additons to the scholarly arsenal, and other paraphernalia which made the long school day bearable and even fun! Students today will never know the pleasure of dipping the very end of the fine nib into a bottle of Quink ink and trying out its distinctive penmanship on a pristine white sheet of paper! You had to move it this way and that to find the “groove” into which the pen would later settle, much like an old, comfortable pair of slippers one wears around the house and refuses to give up inspite of their age and decrepit condition! Then, with tongue slightly sticking out at a slant from the corner of one’s mouth, head cocked like an inquisitive bird’s to ensure perfect alignment of letters on the page, one looked at the accompanying adult to nod confirmation : this, one seemed to say, is the instrument of choice to overcome the academic year’s challenges!

Of course, the enthusiasm for one’s new fountain pen could be short-lived! Generally, enthusiasm did not wane for a moment the length of a term! But the Christmas break usually intervened, and well-meaning aunts or uncles unwittingly tolled the death knell of the pen so proudly acquired in June! Colourfully packed packages yielded newer, brighter, shinier, softer writing instruments which were then carefully put through their paces before being drafted into the scholarly battery tucked away in Camlin compass boxes! Older fighters from the ranks, even those of recent June vintage, were put out to pasture, exchanged with unsuspecting younger siblings or considerate parents and grand-parents!

Maybe somewhere there is a graveyard for old fountain pens that either outlived their performing years or were discarded on a whim! Maybe they were replaced in childish affections by newer objects! Maybe the downmarket ball-point pens took over the world before themselves being stamped out by the ubiquitous keyboard!

Generations hence, the keyboard too shall join the ranks of writing instruments once revered and then left behind during our long march towards what we are told, is progress!