Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Houses and Homes

I like living in New York, especially in comparison to Storrs. The obvious reasons you might think of are - I like fast paced life and the infinite possibilities offered by a metro like New York. Those reasons are not entirely off the mark but the most attractive aspect of living in New York for me is that the building I live in is made of bricks.

The worst thing about living in Storrs is the wooden houses. In my mind it has a sense of impermanence. A wooden house does not seem like a secure structure I can call home. It has nothing to do with fire hazard. My Indian mind does not think about risk to life so much.

A house made of wood for me is either a cabin in the woods you would visit once in a while or a temporary structure created till the actual home, office is built. More often than not, wooden house means a shack built by a family that comes to the city to find a living and does not have enough for two meals.

When Parag and I were talking about development index and how it is measured, we realized that, in India, an important aspect of development index is houses and roads being 'Kaccha' or 'Pakka'. Kaccha (literally half baked/ uncooked) w.r.t. a road is a dirt road in contrast to a pakka (literally, well made, well baked) which is a tar road. Kaccha houses are the ones which do not use stone, brick and or morter. They are supposed to be lower in index to the Pakka houses using stone, brick and morter. So judging with that ruler, Storrs, or for that matter any suburb in US, would be one of the developmentally challenged neigborhoods. ;)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Swastika Part II

As mentioned in the previous post, I have been trying to spread the word offline and online. A few of those efforts were met with encouraging reactions from some american students. For example, a TC student was happy to receive information about the Indian Swastika and the way we use it in daily life. She also volunteered to talk about it with a friend in the student senate so that it can be handled at a macro level. I also wrote a comment on the public scribbling boards made available during the unrest in TC in the main lobby.

I asked a question regarding spreading information about Swastika on Yahoo Answers. It received a mixed responce. Here is the link to the QA:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ate.S03nXLZHNxWLaKSoIxnsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071109171936AAsU3xV

I will keep updating this post as and when I get more feedback

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Indian Swastika and Hitlar's Hakenkreuz

The Swastika controversy is another issue that has been a huge part of my discussions, fact finding missions and such for the last couple of weeks. The controversy in my mind started with an image of a swastika in a brochure about hate crimes on campus and how to react to them. Unfortunately, the image of swastika they published was the straight faced Indian Swastika and not the tilted swastika of hitler showing 2 intelocked 'S'. It was a photo of the sign painted on a African American House sign so judgimg by the reference it was definately meant as a hate symbol. My first reaction was to laugh at it 'The haters didn't even know which swastika showed hate'. But what about the creaters of the brochure? Did they think twice before choosing this image as an example of hate crime?
The brochure was a 10 point ‘to do’ list. The first point was 'Rise Up'. A sentence in that section caught my attention "I didn't mean to hurt doesn't remove the hurt" "Rise up. The world won't change if people don't change it."

So I decided to rethink my approach/reaction to the way the word 'Swastika' is used in U.S. As an Indian, swastika to me is a symbol of wellbeing. The word (originating from sanskrit Swasti) literally means that. Swastika is part of an Indian's everyday life. When repeatedly swastika is mentioned as a hate symbol, how do Indian students react to it? I react by doing nothing or feeling nothing. The underlying thought process is 'they are not aware of my swastika. They aren't talking about the Indian swastika so I need not be offended.' I talked to a few Indian students and they had a similar reaction. 'we know better, just let it go.'

But is it right/fair to let go. Is it not offensive to hear repeated mentions of a symbol as a hate symbol when it is one of the most used auspicious symbols of a culture? Is it not unfair that an Indian cannot use his/her most auspicious symbol due to fear of being branded as fascist unnecesarily?

Some interesting stories came up when I was talking with the Indian students. The stories were about lack of information about the Indian (real??) swastika by westerners and the problems crreated by it. The stories were exchanged mostly as hilarious insidents. One of it goes like this: "An Indian student was coming to US to study. His father thought that it would be easier for him to find his bags if he had some kind of identifying sticker on it. The easiest available was the rangoli sticker used on the doorways which is very popular in Maharashtra. A rangoli sticker invaribly has a swastika in the center of the design. As I said before, swastika is a omnipresent symbol in India. He was arrested on one of the airports in Europe during the layover." I shared this story with couple other Indian students. The discussion invariably focused on 'how people who haven't travelled outside India do not have a sense of such things'. Why is the burden of knowing and understanding on the shoulders of an Indian? Is it because we believe in 'let go'?

What have we achieved by not reacting? Did we unknowingly support the abuse of the word/concept of 'Swastika' by not reacting? Will it make a difference if we educate people around us? Will it make a differnce if we protest against the use of the word 'Swastika' as a hate symbol and insist that the Nazi hate symbol be properly identified as 'Hitler's Swastika' or 'Hakenkreuz (hook-cross))'?

I am still debating in my mind about these questions. In the meanwhile I have also started talking about the issue with various american freinds offline and online. Resolving these questions for myself is going to take a long time. As they arn't really about swastika but about changing philosophy of life in a new environment.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

About Bitches and Witches

Last two weeks have been pretty intense for me. I went for this program - screening of the film BEYOND BEATS and RHYMES and a panel discussion afterwards . Quite an experience. The film looked at a lot of aspects of hip hop music but I wanted to note down a few things that struck me the most about portrayal of women.

The movie had a few examples of how women are portrayed in hip hop albums, I have myself read a few songs which talk about bitches and sex with them in horrible details. When     the women fans of hip hop music were asked (in the film) about this portrayal and how they feel about it they said something to the effect that ‘They aren't talking about us so we don’t take it to heart’. But looking at the way the male fans were treating these women I realized that one cannot ignore insults like that because one perceives it as not touching you. The men did take the lyrics and portrayals seriously and they did think the women around them were bitches and were groping them and harassing them.

Another comment that caught my attention was men differentiating between bitches and sisters. Even in India the modern male makes a distinction between 'female friends' (good for non-traditional fun and intellectual pursuits) and 'girls who are wife material' (traditional girls, submissive). La Bruha, one of the panelists, in this context, also talked about treating women either like a goddess or like a doormat. This also was something that reminded me of India. Indians tell the world that their culture treats women respectfully like a goddess. All that reads well in the subhashitas (sanskrit verses) and is good to show off greatness of our culture but basically putting somebody on the pedestal is like putting them in a cage. One who puts you on a pedestal is ready to strip off the status at the smallest indiscretion. I liked what the poetess La Bruha said, I don’t want to be on the pedestal because that gives you the power to pull me down, so I named myself ‘the witch’.

I liked that attitude. I should think of finding a name for myself that portrays what I feel about me and start writing my blogs under that pen name.