Globalization of the wrong kind

I was recently reading an article about a scandal in an Indian cricket league (known as IPL) involving corruption and politics at the highest levels. Political corruption is nothing new for India but what shocked me was the moniker this scandal got from the Indian media - "IPL-gate". India has a long and glorious history of corruption in both politics and cricket from which we could have garnered lovely names for this scandal and yet, the media chose to name this scandal the way America names its - by adding the 'gate' suffix! I am still trying to understand this. Is this because creativity sorely lacks in most Indian "creative" fields such as writing and music, as I have lamented before? or is it because Indians find it hard to appreciate anything Indian despite an illustrious history. (I have a theory about it that I'll save for another post.) The horrific Mumbai terrorist attack was called "India's 9/11" by the media. Even more troubling to me because in India dates are written in the dd/mm/yy format so if the journalists were being original they would have at least called it "India's 11/9". The same goes for the Satyam Computers scandal. That was labeled as "India's Enron". Intentional or not, it does seem like a cultural colonization of India is in progress and it is voluntarily being encouraged by Indians. Nothing is good enough, unless it can compare to America.

Asimilated yet Indian, continued....

A friend responded to my past posts about assimilation with this
"However, I think that in some ways it is important... bec one of the things that the kids will struggle with is definitely about how they fit in and knowing that they do somethings similar to their American classmates probably makes it is easier..... Who knows? I am just throwing this in the mix.... :))))

I was looking for a prayer that i could include b4 a meal...... We did one before school but not before a meal.... should look it up..."

This is the part that really becomes a huge dilemma. We want our kids to be assimilated, and not stick out like a sore thumb. But then if we just adopt the things that really were never part of our cultures, such as a prayer before a meal, then we won't be imparting a strong sense of identity either. I am sure, and rightly so, there are different schools of thought on this.

I, personally, feel that we should not adopt other traditions without giving some thought to why we are doing it and the long term impact of that decision. You know that old saying "nakal ke liye bhi akal chahiye". I take a lot of cues from the Jewish community. They have a much richer experience of being a minority, and yet maintaining their identity. For example, I noted that although Jewish holidays are not public holidays, most Jewish people don't come to work or school on those days. I like that idea so starting this year my family will take a holiday on Diwali. Kids will stay home from school and we will do something special together like making gulab jamuns and rangolis. I do buy sparklers and such on 4th of July and save them for Diwali. I also hang my "holiday lights" on Diwali and leave them on until after the New Year. This year instead of trying to squeeze all this in the evening after we are all tired form work and school, we will do it with more joy. Hopefully this will make Diwali more special in my kids' minds.

I so wish there was a big Hindu holiday during the so-called "Holiday season". That would make life so much more easier because I think one reason we embrace Christmas the way we do because there is a vacuum, and of course that jolly guy in the red suit that kids can't stay away from.

Assimilated yet Indian? Part II

Continuing on this issue and hoping to help other Indian parents learn from my mistakes, here is a post on what I feel is another important aspect of helping your children understand and identify with their roots - traditions.

Have you noticed books such as "The New Family Traditions handbooks" in book stores? Books teaching people how to make up traditions. You must have heard many Americans talk about their family traditions for Thanksgiving or Christmas. All this is because traditions or rituals are very important in keeping us connected and grounded. Often people make up traditions because they have long lost connection with their roots. Any parenting book will tell you that children thrive on routine. They like to know what to to expect, what happens next. This is where traditions fit in. Not only do they help kids understand what to expect, say, at mealtime or on a holiday, but they also often add a "ritual" to a daily mundane task such as mealtime. Traditions also help provide a sense of belonging in the family or heritage. My children taught me the importance of traditions by begging me for them. When my daughter declared that she wanted us to say grace at dinnertime I knew I better establish some traditions of our own soon!

Being Indian we don't need to make traditions up - we already have tons of stuff to choose from. So pick a few and stick to them. Regularity is important so do stuff that you like, think is important and enjoy. Over time I have started adding a few traditions to our life, mostly picking from things that I treasured as a child and my kids seem to like it. Here I will talk about a few things I do. I am a North Indian and hence the focus on Diwali and Holi.

As a child I loved to memorize poems and since it is a good mental exercise (God knows I need it!), I set myself the task of memorizing the Hanuman Chalisa. I have always liked the rhythm in Tulsidas's writing and I thought I already knew part of it, so it was a fairly low fruit to pick. After I tuck my kids in bed and turn off the lights, I sing them verses of Hanuman Chalisa. The plan was to add a verse a week, but I don't seem to get past verse 23, pathetic I know, but singing of Hanuman Chalisa at bedtime has become a tradition, even more so when I told my kids about the presumed power of Hanuman Chalisa in chasing away ghosts and monsters! I swear, I can use all the help I can get against those fiends under the bed. It helps that Hanuman is supposed to be the protective deity of my clan, and kids love stories about Hanuman - the original superhero, so I have a platform to build upon.

It is sad that my kids find Christmas much more interesting than any Indian holiday. I got all caught up in the Christmas fever during my early years in the US, so I haven't helped the matter much because we do put up a tree, hang stockings and kids get tons of presents. Of course, there is all the marketing around the time so it is pretty hard not to get caught up. I feel I shouldn't have gone so overboard with it earlier because if I try to scale it down now it will border on cruelty towards my children! My only other option was to add some more interest to Diwali. I refuse to corrupt Diwali with addition of presents but I do make sure that kids get and wear new clothes for Diwali. I take the day off on Diwali and keep kids home from school as well. I buy sparklers etc. during 4th of July and save them for Diwali. We also make Gulab Jamuns and rangoli together. I usually host a party with other Indian friends on a weekend right after Diwali, and do make an effort to decorate the house with candles and lights (that I leave on until after new year). If you have some friends or family close by, then you can formalize this a bit more. You could make a pact to get together on every Diwali, but rotate houses every year. The dinner can be potluck so no one person is stuck with all the work.

I do something for Holi as well. Definitely gulal and new clothes, and sometimes a party. Both I and my husband have lived in Gujarat so we try to make it to at least one night of dandiya during Navratri. I and my girls send rakhis to our male cousins, and I do make sure the girls are involved in the process and it is not just me sending rakhi off on their behalf. I even fast without water on Karvachauth, something many of my feminist friends frown upon. I view this as the holiday that celebrates family. When I was a child my family never had more focus and cooperation, than on Karvachauth where our sole goal was to keep my mother comfortable and sight the moon as early as we could. In my mind this has always been an important holiday.

I am also a big fan of some basic Indian values such a respecting elders. I have always touched feet when greeting my elders. I continue to do that and teach my kids this as well. I never say anything bad about our family elders in front of my children, and do all my bitching in private. I always cover my head on the rare occasion I go to a temple or pray to a deity, and teach my kids to do this as well. If they participate in a puja, I teach them the right way to sit, apply tikka, accept prasad and do not allow them to be insolent and ignore these basic rituals just because they are children.

I am still looking for some daily or weekly ritual to add to the mix, but need to find something that agrees with my spiritual beliefs otherwise I won't be able to keep it up.

Westernization or modernization

A friend commented on the last post "I especially felt for you being Indian and India becoming too Westernized. There's a lot of crap we import to the rest of the world and they love it. On the other hand, who understands entrepreneurship and business creation better than the US? It's the one thing that's really in our DNA to offer the rest of the world"

I would call it "modernization" rather than westernization. It was long overdue in India. I am definitely not hankering for the days of the closed economy. It is really wonderful to see the opening up of the marketplace, the wealth of opportunity it brings and the resulting affluence.

The west went through modernization first, they made a lot of mistakes and the results are evident for everyone to see. I feel it is completely unnecessary for newly modernized countries to make the same mistakes. We can just look over and see what decisions turned out for the worst, or what could have been done better. For that one needs leadership that is sorely lacking in the government. The legal system and government in India needs modernization too, to keep up with the times. There is hardly any consumer protection. Do children must go through abuses in childcare centers and be burned down in building made poorly, must people be poisoned by pesticides and other pollutants in drinking water before laws to protect consumers are enacted?

Parenting - here and there

I was bemoaning to a friend that I have seriously considered moving back to India because my children are losing touch with their roots, and how I wish had the support of my family and this was his response

"Definitely raising kids in the US is very challenging and hard work. At the same time, when my wife and I moved back to India for a couple of years, what we saw in a city like Bangalore made us re-think our decision. Things have changed so much in a city like Bangalore; everyone works like crazy. Most of the IT people don't seem to worry about spending time with kids. Everybody wants to make an IT career which was surprising and shocking! And lots of people don't even want to have kids because that would disrupt their careers!! I really felt that the value system was much better and intact in the US. Everything finally is a how you personally experience it but in general, Indian cities have moved ahead so fast and in some cases changed for the worse. What I was trying to get was the fact that when we were kids, the environment was different in India as compared to recent years and sometimes I feel bringing up kids in the US is much better. We are able to teach them good values and may be a little more of the Indian culture than they would learn when they are in India! "

There is a lot of depth here, and a few different issues that have been on my mind, as well. I will address the issue of parental commitment here, and leave the question of values for another post.

I left India before the boom, and never went back to live there. I have a distorted image of the place - the good old days, you know. Yet when I think about it, I too, am glad that I have raised my children in the US, especially during their early years.

Some, esp people in India, might find it surprising that in the US, the concept of family is very strong. Parents, at least the professionally educated ones that I usually come in contact with, take their job as a parent very seriously and strive to achieve a balance between life and work. They give serious thought to what their parenting approach will be, educate themselves about various ideas and discipline techniques and follow through. Yes, the focus is on raising independent kids and once children reach college-age they are expected to be independent, but in the sense of a bird finding its wing and leaving its nest, not in the sense of being cast-off as is the impression outside the US. In essence, most parents apply the skills needed for success in a corporate career, to the task of parenting. They are pro-active, keep long-term success in mind, educate themselves and take action.

On the other hand, most parenting I witnessed in India, and I am again talking about professionally educated parents, is passive parenting - they have excellent management skills in their career but often do not apply them at home. They often react to their children's behavior instead of shaping it. Moreover, In India, the pressure to keep up with the Joneses, is much more intense. The competition in the workplace is fierce. To keep up one has to work horrendous hours. The lack of good quality child care, and recurring problem with basic necessities such as water and electricity, make life more complicated. Working mothers have no choice but to leave their children in the care of uneducated servants. Children watch too much TV and are prime targets for advertisers, and end up seeing things like Indian pop music videos bordering on pornography, that are used as fillers between "family" soap operas popular with grandmas who are often in-charge of kids during the day.

In the US, I got to see a different approach to parenting. I am gainfully employed yet with very few stresses on my time, giving me the opportunity to focus on my children. And because we can easily afford the basic luxuries of life in one income such as cars and a house. I do not have the pressure to make more money so my life can compare to others. You have to experience it to appreciate the kind of freedom this gives you. Life of a mother, who has another job is not easy, no matter where she lives, but I do think it is easier in the US given the efficiencies in life here and the availability of high quality child care.

Lot of things have come a full circle in the west - we now are very aware of how corporations such a McDonald's have not only changed people's diets for the worse but changed the very ecosystem of the land. It is sad to see a whole generation of children in India getting hooked on McDonald's. The west already fell for that, and the damage caused is in plain view. Why can't India just learn from this and avoid taking the paths that have already proven to lead to no good. After years of deprivation, and isolation, who has the time to pause and think?

How many children?

Growing up in India, my neighbor had four daughters. It was obvious that they were the results of failed attempts to have a boy, and I thought it pretty backward of them. This is not what educated people did. This thinking was firmly planted in the heads of young minds, and correctly so, by a huge Government campaign to control the population. "Hum do. Humare do" went the slogan - "we two, our two." Encouraging people to stop after two children. It was a very sensible campaign, focused on educating people rather than doing this by force, as in China. It was also immensely successful if you measure it by the fact that it changed the minds of almost all educated individuals and having two children became the norm.

Now I live in the US, the land of liberty and plentiful resources where no norms apply, and have two children as a good Indian should. I am also very far away from all my close family. Even those that are not on the other side of the globe, are so busy in this modern life that we cannot meet them on a regular basis and for extended periods, as we did with our cousins when growing up. The result is that my children have no close family. When I imagine the distant future, after I and my husband are gone, my girls look very lonely in this huge world. All they will have at weddings & other celebrations is each other. I have known the joy of having a large extended family. You really have to experience it, and then be completely isolated from it, to realize its value. As I see it to be a good parent I have to provide for my daughters' future. Not only do I have to secure their financial future by investing, but I must also provide the emotional security of a large family. I can't really rely on cousins, aunts and uncles for that because who has the time in this hectic life to bond with cousins? Hence in these modern era, I have to take a huge step backward and embrace the Gandhian principle of self-reliance - create the large family on my own by having more children!

OK, so we have decided that there must be more but how many more? My two children are very close in age, and hence very close to each other. They play together constantly. Even if I were to conceive today there will be a six year gap between the baby and the youngest child. The girls will love the new baby, but I doubt they will ever have the patience to play with her. seeing the girls together now, and how amazing it is to have a playmate your age, it'd be pretty see a lonely kid in the house. This means I must have two more babies, and pretty close together. I have been through a stage where I had a baby and a toddler, and those were not easy times. I tell my kids that being brave doesn't mean not being scared, rather doing what you have to even when you are scared. Am I brave enough to take that challenge?

Over to the next challenge. I know that the instant I announce a pregnancy, since I have two daughters, the reaction would be "Oh she is trying for a boy. How backward of her!" I don't think I will have the energy to explain my reasoning to everyone. Do I have the gumption to withstand that criticism? Can I really say "I don't care what other people think"?

And finally what of money? Supporting four kids is no joke. Can I really give up on that dream house and exotic vacations? That leads to even deeper self-examination - understanding the true meaning of joy and completely believing that it does not come from material things. I am no yogi. Can I live without?