Comfortably Numb

I was reading Chad Fowler's blog entry (cuz Jared Richardson told me to in his brand spanking new blog) about being in India and the kind of poverty that surrounds India. He felt that it was easy to become numb to the suffering that goes on in India. I saw a few of the things he did when I was there. A kid carrying a younger kid. I suppose that should have shocked me, but few things do, and I took it as a matter of course as much as the locals do.

Here's the interesting part, and it's going to seem awfully callous. Indians seem to react to the begging much the same way we react to the homeless. Of course, we might feel justified ignoring our own homeless. We say to ourselves that they use the money to buy alcohol or to get drugs. I have a friend who used to offer to buy them sandwiches, to guarantee they wouldn't use the money in this way.

There aren't many people that make India their final destination. The US is plenty multicultural. We have African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans of all sorts. Heck, the population at UCLA or Berkeley might seem positively Hong Kong or Singapore by many standards. I've talked to Indians who tell me that they have visited places in the US where it feels like they've never left India. They can get feeds from the home country and watch cricket matches and hoot and holler with their neighbors to the north (that is, the Pakistanis).

While there's a fair degree of mobility within India (a great deal of Keralites have relatives in Dubai) with Northerners and Southerners moving around, not too many emigrate to India. Indeed Indians are likely to emigrate to all parts of the world.

When they see a foreigner like me (and I look Asian beyond that), they think rich foreigners. They can sometimes engage in what they consider a scam. They charge you ten times more than they would a local, but you think it's a complete bargain. I bought some postcards (10 or so) for like 40-50 rupees. This is like a dollar. My companions said I was being ripped off, that I could get it for some amount less.

Another person suggested I not tip my driver lavishly. I paid him about 60-70 US dollars for driving me around. He was already being paid, and I could have easily doubled his salary or more for that same time. I felt guilty, but one Indian advised I shouldn't have done this, lest they try to rip others off in the same manner, and become expectant on such largesse.

Indeed, for as generous as Indians are, they are also pretty frugal, which comes, I think, from a bartering system. Once you can barter for anything, you wonder why you have to pay a tip. There's plenty an Indian coming to the US for the first time that feel ripped off to pay a tip. Indeed, I was told to tip very little in India, if at all.

I once was at a restaurant where three guys wanted some kind of soup, which they asked the waiter to give "two by three". What they meant was to take the quantity of two soups and divide it three ways. And they do it too! Imagine that in the US. They couldn't even deal with the math!

Chad Fowler could give plenty of money to Indians he sees. It's his money, and he can do with it as he pleases. But it's interesting to see that even the Indians find this problematic. They find the same reasons to be annoyed, even if alcohol and drug use are far less common, and food is comparably cheaper.

He could complain that the caste system is awful. Or that women in villages get stoned sometimes because they were raped by others. These are shocking to Americans. Even educated Indians find this totally shameful, and attribute this to backward ideals of the village. Still, these attitudes can't be completely discounted. Many Indians still head back to their village where they grew up, trying to reconcile with Western ideals that advocates alcohol, drugs, premarital sex, dating, a female being alone with a male, public displays of affection.

India is a country in transition. Even as we sometimes look at India and stare aghast at the poverty, yet marvel at how much family means to Indians, and how technology is transforming the country, much like Japan, they are struggling with morality. It's funny how Christian conservatives lament the moral state of America, blaming this on a lack of Christian faith, and yet, Hindu India shows far more consideration of family than Americans.

Bhimrao Ambedkar, one of the members of the untouchable caste, fought against the caste system, which leads to Indians segregating. While the country has fought against it, there are still many conservatives who forbin marrying outside the caste, let alone marrying outside the religion. Indeed, caste ideals are still profound. A Gujrati who works at my company says that his people are businessmen. Castes were often divided into occupations. Brahmins are the educated caste, and our team consists of about half Brahmins.

Are castes that the root of some of the disparity in India? Chad Fowler could give money, and it could locally solve the problems of one here or two there, but there may be underlying issues that will take a generation of attitude changes, and even then, there is likely to be resistance.

Consider Richard Gere's kissing of Shilpa Shetty. Public displays of affection are frowned on. Although the taboo of on-screen kissing has been broached, Indian actors still make the worst kisses, afraid of passionate kissing despite passionate story lines. While a vocal minority found this reprehensible, it was nevertheless something that bothered some Indians. Educated Indians sometimes find it sad that their countrymen act this way, but their countrymen may find such attitudes correct, believing the sexual freedoms of Americans are bad for Indians.

It's a difficult situation, made more interesting because the world of India seems so near, and yet so far.

By the way, it's amusing that one of the comments refers to "Comfortably Numb". Of the Indians that are educated, Pink Floyd seems to rule.