Talking of tradition

Let us talk breakfast tradition. For me breakfast was something mom cooked everyday - things such as whole wheat breads with locally-grown fresh vegetables, cracked wheat or chivda cooked pilaf style.

When I visit India now, kids often seem more interested in, and their moms happy to feed them, highly processed and sugar-loaded industrial breakfasts such as Kellog's Chocos, Ramen-noodle type things or pancakes made from store-bought mixes which are nothing more than white flour. Relatives ask me to bring some fancier 'pancake mixes' from the US so that they can feed their kids healthier things. This new breakfast tradition has been fueled by ads comprising of smiling moms and kids, placed in urban middle class settings, proclaiming the benefits of vitamins and minerals in these new breakfast products. Ads also teach kids how to be 'healthy', thus associating their product with health in little minds and shaping a generation of junk-food eaters.

It is worth noting that it is not the convenience factor of cereal that is the attraction here. Busy middle class moms, the kind pictured in the ads, have servants.

I don’t know if anybody has even noticed this slow erosion of healthy traditions. but, hey, if few women ever enter a pub, watch for the culture police to descend in full force!

Slumdog Millionaire

I have to admit that I am quite embarrassed by the excitement among the Indian community about the Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar wins. Do we really have the right to feel any sense of pride about that movie? Agreed it was shot in Mumbai, and has a cast of Indian actors but what else would you expect in a movie about a boy from Indian slums – Regis hosting Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Angelina Jolie as the love interest, shot in Vancouver? The movie was written, produced and directed by British – they made the movie and hired Indians as appropriate. It was not an Indian creation. It shows the worst of India – the slums, exploitation of children, the filth and lack of proper sanitation facilities. I found the film quite depressing despite its happy ending.

The only silver lining was the win for A. R. Rahman's music. He is a talented musician and combines various genres with ease and always produces beautiful music. I was happy to see his talent getting wider recognition and reaching more people.

Can good sense be taught?

I was recently watching this special report on CNBC about how we got into the current economic mess. The cause of the mess seems to be basic human flaws – greed, lack of judgment and jumping on the bandwagon. If Tom was making money flipping houses then, Jerry wanted to too. People knew they were making bad loans but they still continued to make them. A factory worker never stopped to think "can I really afford this house, ever?".

I felt this anxiety during the housing boom too – the prices are going up, we should buy soon. My husband, however, kept saying that the house prices are rising too fast and don’t make sense, and held off on buying a house then. And I used to think the best decision in life he made was by marrying me! I am really impressed by his judgment, skeptical mind and the fact that he never felt the need to do what everybody else was doing.

Now I wonder, if judgment can be taught? Can we take active steps now to teach our kids, and not just mouth the words but actually instill the fact, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Can we teach them that we don't have to keep up with anybody, and buy a fancier car just because our friends have one? Or is it just nature - some are born with it and some are not.

China building fire

The leading internationl news today was about a high rise building completely burned by a fire in China. One reason the building couldn't be saved was because the fire fighters did not have equipment that reached beyond the twelfth floor. I was immediately reminded of all the new construction of very modernistic high-rise buildings in Bangalore and Gurgaon . Do the fire departments there have equipment to extinguish a blaze on higher floors? India is no stranger to enthusiastic and unsafe fireworks use during Diwali season.

Religion does poison everything

I came across this story in the New York Times about girls being attacked in a college town in India for visiting a bar. That college town is ‘my’ college town so the story hits close to home and brings back memories of somehow being made to feel guilty because you got molested – “Well, why were you out after dark? Probably to meet your boyfriend. Heh heh” Even if that is the truth, how does that give anybody the right to molest a woman?

For all the globalization in India, the only progress seems to have happened there is in the consumer culture – there is more stuff to buy and fancier pubs to visit. The reverse logic of blaming women for the crimes committed against them and that of suppressing women continues. Rapists are not brought to justice, and most women are still scared of going to the police to report a crime. The political parties continue the ‘talibanization’ of the culture by recruiting a moral police – a way for insignificant men to feel powerful. Women drinking in a bar is against the 'culture', but, pray, tell me what kind of culture condones assaulting women? No wonder these men call themselves 'Lord Ram's army', the very same Ram who went to great lengths to rescue his wife from a kidnapper, and then denounced her and eventually abandoned her in a jungle while she was pregnant, because she had been with another man, namely, the kidnapper. It was all about Ram's honor - when rescuing his wife and when abandoning her. By the way another traditional name for Ram is 'Best among men'. Sigh. As Christopher Hitchens says – religion does poison everything.

Homemade pizza lunchables

My kids are fascinated by Lunchables. I cannot stand them and refuse to buy them but I do like the concept. So I set out to make my own version of a pizza “lunchable”. We use Laptop lunchboxes which inherently lend themselves to the lunchable concept by providing multiple containers to attractively package this. Most of it is easy – shredded cheese, homemade or store-bought pizza sauce, olives and other toppings, and of course, a treat. It was the crust for the pizza that presented a challenge.

I experimented with my basic pizza crust recipe – rolled it out, cut in it about 3” circles using a steel bowl, and baked them. The result however wasn’t satisfactory. Pizza crust baked without any topping on it came out too hard, and tough to bite into. Little pita breads might have worked but I haven’t found them in local stores where I usually shop. Then a friend suggested I use the flat bread served in Olga’s Kitchen restaurents and provided the recipe. I made a batch - some large ones for dinner, and many little ones for my lunchable experiment. This worked wonderfully! The crust had a soft, chewy texture. Kids loved it, and have been taking “pizza lunchables” to school once a week. I made about 30 little crusts, and froze them. Along with homemade pizza sauce that I freeze in cubes in ice cube trays, lunch is very easily put together.

I will make a few adjustments to the bread recipe the next time around. For one, I will omit the honey because I found the sweetness out of place in a pizza crust. Secondly, I will probably replace some of the white flour with a combination of soy and teff flours.

Personal responsibility

So I was talking to a relative who is on her first-ever visit to the US. She was amazed by the cleanliness. "There are neat little garden in front of every house and they are all so well-maintained. All houses have identical roofs and even the roofs are so clean!" she gushed. "The government must either be really good at maintaining everything or the laws about keeping things clean must be really strict, no?" She added.

I didn't say anything because I was not in a mood to lecture, but no, it is not the government. There is no "cleanliness police" going around cuffing people the instant they litter. Things are clean because littering, and people who litter, are frowned upon. It is the culture of the place - people like to keep their houses, their yards, their streets and their neighborhood clean, and do it themselves rather than waiting for the government to do it.

I had met another family member in India on my recent trip, and mentioned that my daughter was playing soccer in a league. She remarked "see that is why they have America is so good in sports, the government has such good sports programs." I had to point out that the government has nothing to do with it. The soccer league is organized by parents and for most part is managed by parents. The coaches are all parents that volunteer for the job and coach in their spare time.

That is when it struck me. The reason why India hasn't developed, (it hasn't, you ask. I can go into that in another blog or a book!) and still looks like a 3rd world country is exactly because of that mind-set. Complete ignorance of personal and civic responsibility and the expectation that the government will and should take care of everything. If we had more people such as my friend V, India might be a different place. When she sees a luxury car throwing litter out of its windows in the street of New Delhi, she chases down the car and tells the occupants what they just did. Unfortunately, many don't take her seriously, or say "what difference will another water bottle make" and never once feel a need to change their habits. You know, government is supposed to keep the streets clean!