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.

Facebook etiquette

Facebook has more than 400 million active users and I am one of them. It is a wonderful way to stay in touch with far-flung friends and family. I view Facebook as a virtual world, where my wall is my home. Of course, many more people have access to it than my real house, but still they are all people that I would love to socialize with in real life, time and space permitting. It is a new enough medium that I find even people who are fairly comfortable with online media do things on Facebook that might be considered impolite, at least by yours truly. Here I present what I feel is proper etiquette on Facebook.

Don't be a peeping Tom. If you are regularly peeking into somebody's window, it would be considerably less creepier if you knocked on the door and said hello. That is to say, if you log into Facebook regularly to read your friends' statuses and see their photos, you should also occasionally leave a comment or a 'like' to indicate that you have been there. I find it very unsettling when I meet somebody in the real world, and they remark on something they saw on my Facebook page, and yet who themselves seem to be completely dormant on Facebook. There are people who are truly dormant and the only time they login is to accept 'friend requests', and this is not meant for them. However, if you have been looking around then please leave a trace.

Edit. Good editing always produces more pleasurable results. This has been proved without doubt by many films and books. Digital cameras give you the freedom to take hundreds of pictures of your recent vacation. That does not mean that all your "friends" want to see all 500 of them. If you are going to enthrall us with your vacation pictures, take an extra half an hour to select twenty or so that capture the essence of your vacation, and then label and caption them nicely. We will all think you to be a much smarter and considerate person.

Tell before taking. I post a video that you enjoyed and then you go ahead and share on your wall. Facebook makes it easy to do and I find it flattering that you enjoyed my post and found it worth sharing. Before you do, however, take a polite second to at least click the 'Like' button on my wall for that video or post a comment on it.

Don't ignore children. If your somewhat close friend posts a cute picture of her child, for heaven's sake, say something about it!

Do you think I can add anything to this list? Do you think there are people you would love to share these with. Wink, wink!

Children are so inconvenient, at least in America.

I read an opinion piece about how a CNN story about little children in airplanes kicked off a storm of arguments in the comments area on the CNN website. That piece got me to another blog post, written by a woman who usually writes about her cats, but took a break to whine about how her already terrible flying experience was ruined by an ill-behaved child, and how she wanted to punch both the mother and the baby. I wasn't even done being horrified when the post ended and I was in comment-land, and all the comments lauded the post as 'funny' and completely agreed with the fact that parents of crying babies ought to be put in jail or something akin to that.

We can, of course, argue about whether it is possible to comfort a crying child hundred percent of the time. After all, babies do unpredictable things such as crying uncontrollably and pooping in their pants. We can also argue about whether a mother is 'bad', if she is paying more attention to her child, and is more concerned with keeping her child happy rather than some snarky stranger shooting her ugly looks. We can definitely talk about the sense of entitlement one must feel to be thinking that her cats are worth telling the whole world about yet declaring that little children ruin her flying experience in the cheapest section of the plane.

I do a lot of international flying, and even my children notice how much friendlier people in other countries are towards them. At foreign airports, the security personnel smile, even joke, with my children as we pass through security. Flight attendants in foreign airlines carry my bags if I am carrying a child and help the children with their carry-ons. En route, if my children are asleep during a meal service, the flight attendants offer, on their own, to pack away a meal for the sleeping child so that she has something to eat when she wakes up. When my toddler fidgets, I get fewer nasty looks from international passengers on a twelve hour trans-pacific flight, than I do from Americans in a two hour flight.

What I am reminded of, again, is how child-unfriendly America is. We have the fanciest of malls and department stores here, and yet you will not find a child-sized toilet or sink in them. Look through housekeeping magazines, filled with pages after pages of pictures of beautiful homes, but you will not see a child or even a place where a child could feel comfortable. Children and their possessions are completely isolated in the child's rooms and you can get lot of advice on how to keep the children and all their stuff perfectly ensconced in that one room, and how to make rest of the house your 'sanctuary'. More and more houses are designed with a 'split plan' - parents' bedrooms on the opposite side of the house as the children's bedrooms so that you can get as far away as you can from your children, while still being in the same house. Images of adults having a good time are completely devoid of children; the message, that for a family to have fun, parents and children must be separated is repeatedly broadcast in ads and other media images.

I hate to promote a commercial venture, but you just have to step into a foreign-designed IKEA store to have this starkly put in perspective - they have a childcare center, child-friendly bathrooms and meals, and they sell their sofas with pictures of children bouncing on them. I dare you to find even one American furniture seller's catalog with a child anywhere near the living room furniture. A dog, maybe, but no children. As if, children don't live in American living rooms. The side-affect of all this is that, subconsciously our feelings of what a home, a vacation or fun, should be gets altered and then our life becomes unfriendly to children too. At such times I like to remember something my friend passed on to me "remember you are raising a human being, not managing an inconvenience."

Wisdom of the day

A long hike and a long run had many thoughts running through my head and then this one jelled. After a certain threshold, any further square footage of the house no longer nets any more happiness. In fact, there is a place between square footage and prosperity where the extra space eats up what you need for happiness - a few free hours.

Feeding children

Now and then I read some book on feeding kids, or watch a movie such as Julie and Julia, and get completely inspired to introduce my family to new, interesting foods to only be reminded of the reason why I keep making the same five recipes again and again.

Food is a very cultural thing which, of course, is no new revelation, but I am always surprised by how much our food choices are shaped by the culture around us. Most children growing up in India, see images of Indian foods everywhere - in ads, in movies, pretty much anywhere food is displayed. Even the ads for Lays potato chips stress their spiciness. The children subliminally start associating an enjoyable meal with samosas and choley. They go to a wedding or a party, and see paneer and chicken masala as the main course, with gajar halwa for dessert, and that for them defines a feast. When I take my kids back to India, and they attend a feast, they refuse to eat anything there because it all looks alien. Of course, it is instantly assumed that one, I have raised completely Americanized kids who have not been taught anything about their heritage, and second that my children find the food too spicy. Both assumptions are wrong. The simple reason is that in my girls' minds a feast will forever be associated with a big roasted bird in the center of the table with mashed potatoes and gravy on the side, and not little pieces of vegetables and meat floating in a savory sauce. An excellent dessert is a pie not grated carrots cooked in milk. They watch their American cartoons, and ads and subconsciously absorb that a fun, tasty snack to drool over is not a Samosa but a big juice cheeseburger. Although, I cook Indian food almost daily, given the context of our lives even my kids sense that, this is not what most of their friends eat.

I am also reminded of reading the book "What to expect the first year", and how everything in it made complete sense when I initially read it. If you always feed your kids brown bread, they will love brown bread and find white bread tasteless. Of course! Two children, and ten years later I have acquired enough wisdom to know that just isn't true. Oh yes, I fed my kids brown bread for years and yet, the first time they tasted a PBJ sandwich made with white bread they exclaimed how delicious it was, and declared that is how they want their sandwich from now on.

This week, out of sheer frustration arising from packing the same Ham & Cheese sandwich for lunch everyday, I once again embarked on trying to introduce my girls to some different foods, that could also be lunch candidates. The first dish I made was Polenta squares. This had been rejected before but I decided to give it another try. They loved it, ate quite a few for snack and I happily packed it for lunch the next day with some marinara sauce and ranch. It was brought home uneaten. Sigh. Apparently it tasted good only when freshly made. I tried a few more things for the rest of the week and all were rejected, and as I stood there wondering aloud what to make for dinner my older one suggested "let's make lasagna. I know it is delicious". It is important to note that this child has never had lasagna before and I haven't made lasagna since she was born! I had lasagna noodles on hand, and I scraped together enough ingredients to make a spinach lasagna. It was a great success! Now this defies all explanation.

Are TV chefs destroying home cooking?

Today I read a summary of Michael Pollan's new book "Food Rules: an eater's manual". One of the rules is "Cook" explaining that home cooked food is usually much healthier. Of late the word "foodie" has gained a lot of traction. We have entire TV channels devoted to food and cooking, and stores dedicated to specialty cooking gadgets and equipment. I don't know of any other country where there are so many celebrity chefs. And yet, fewer and fewer people cook at home in America.

Last week I went looking for a turner - a spatula with a flexible metal head to flip over omelet and pancakes. I was surprised how hard it was to find a spatula that was proportioned for the cooking I do. I usually make one or two egg omelet in a 6" pan, so I need a spatula that I can rest on the edge of the pan without flipping the pan or the spatula over. Most cooking equipment I saw was restaurant quality - heavy and large, not to mention expensive. Same goes for kitchens. More and more people have these gourmet kitchens where they cook less and less.

The problem with chefs teaching us how to cook is, that they not only make cooking look hard but elevate it to an art form making home cooks feel inept. Julia Child's Beuf Bourguignon has gotten a lot of attention lately because of the movie Julie and Julia. It is a complicated and multi-step recipe for beef stew. As this article points out Julia Child learned french cooking at a school for chefs, so her technique is what french restaurants use. The home-cooking version of the same dish is much simpler, and uses fewer steps and ingredients. Similarly, a home cook does not need the same kitchen or equipment shown in Iron Chef. Look at the array of corers and pitters sold on this website. A home cook isn't going to be hulling pounds upon pounds of strawberries to require a dedicated gadget for it.

The gourmet culture keeps expanding and I fear for home cooking - something passed down from mother to daughter. Take the example of soup - it is usually a way to use up leftovers that are not enough for a singe meal on their own. If you have some leftover chicken, and a few leftover veggies at the bottom of the bin before your weekly grocery shopping, you put them together, make soup, serve with bread and you have a meal. This art - to make a meal from what you have, not go out and buy the exact ingredients you need for a recipe, is something you can only learn from your mother. A mother who cooks often, so that growing up you eat infinite variations of the same dish and finally learn that Beuf Bourguignon is just a stew - not this multi-step masterpiece that you need to fret over all day! With fewer and fewer people cooking at home, those interested in learning to cook are turning to TV chefs. Would we reach a stage where a simple home cooked meal, presented in a simple style would no longer be appreciated, and you won't be considered a cook unless you went Bam! and artfully drizzled sauce around the plate?

Twilight revisited

I have written about the creepy aspect of this book before, but there is another part that has been bothering me even more over time, especially because the book is targeted at teens. Twilight is once again a story romanticizing the "bad boy". Edward Cullen, the hero of the book is charming, handsome, controlling and really dangerous. He could just crush Bella, the heroin to death, if he wasn't careful. He is, of course a vampire, so there are other ways he can hurt Bella too. He stops himself from hurting his lady-love by sheer exercise of extreme self-control, because he loves her passionately and wouldn't dream of hurting her. We all know too well that in such relationships, either the self-control or the love eventually falls by the wayside and the girl gets hurt.

Young girls in their formative years, and I have seen 10-11 year olds reading this book, can really get caught up and admire the father-figurish Cullen who protects and controls Bella's life. The parents of these girls however need to talk to their daughters about the inherent dangers of such relationships in real life, and how the dangerous and controlling types might not be the best choice for a partner. Otherwise the Rhiannas of tomorrow will keep going out with Chris Browns because we keep glorifying the "bad boys" and say nothing about young women making bad choices.