How do you recognize an Indian?

Yes, it was yet another of those e-mails that claim to have comprehensively captured the essence of an Indian. But the check list (36 items on that list, mind you, so the guy who came up with it did have a sense of the relative complexity of the task) that got passed around in this morning’s e-mail irked me big time. And it didn’t help that this was a Monday morning. And that I ran out of milk and cereal and that the ATM machine was kaput and that all horrible things happen on Monday. So, I wrote this rebuttal. Let me know if any of you agree.

“…

Let me do this, if only because this is a soporific Monday afternoon and I can’t seem to be motivated to think about this week’s experiments. For every generalisation about India/Indians, there are a million exceptions (or more –remember although the Indians invented the concept of zero, algebra and geometry, they aren’t that keen on statistics).

Shashi Tharoor (former undersecretary general to the United Nations and a very well renowned author on India) said "India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype”.

So let’s see how many of the following will hold true if we look not at the stereotyped immigrant Indian but at the cross section of Indians from across the country/globe.

1. Everything you eat is savored in garlic, onion and tomatoes – There are at least 40-50 million Jains and Brahmins in India for whom garlic and onions are forbidden. Most south Indian preparations have no tomatoes. But I swear that I will die if I have three consecutive meals without either one of them.

2. You try and reuse gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminum foil- I am trying to think of a exception beyond me but then, that’s tough. Besides, that’s what the entire world is doing at the moment – recycling. We were just doing it when it was terribly unfashionable too.

3. You are Always standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the Airport- It is true that Indians have a penchant for good things in life that includes food and dress in general. But there are 313 nomadic tribes in India that translates to about 60 million people who roam around with their entire set of belongings in a bag.

4. You arrive one or two hours late to a party - and think it's normal –It is imperative to arrive late to a party in most Asian cultures. Don’t mistake a Philippine for Indian based on this one!

5. You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp -This is the land of e-mails and web chats. Postal stamps? Lets see – that was ten years ago! See point 2

6. You recycle Wedding Gifts , Birthday Gifts and Anniversary Gifts- Wedding gifts, I agree -what do you do with 20 coffee flasks and 50 pressure cookers? But Birthday gifts? Is someone smoking grass?

7. You name your children in rhythms (example, Sita & Gita, Ram & Shyam, Kamini & Shamini.) - In bollywood films. Yes. In real life? Come on! You have to be a poet to name all 8 of your kids in words that rhyme. Remember 1 billion?

8. All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere close to their real names- this is true of Punjabis and Bengalis and suburban Americans-(firangs not the Indian immigrants) -honey, darling, sweetie etc!- as far as I know.

9. You take Indian snacks anywhere it says 'No Food Allowed' – most of us would love to. Which person who has grown up with at least a thousand choices for snacks wouldn’t when the only snacks you can buy at the movies is popcorn and taco and the rest that smell and taste of nothing but MSG?

10. You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house- Time goes around in cycles for most of us. This means that I can be standing at your door after lunch and who knows I might be invited back for dinner if I hang around long enough?

11. You load up the family car with as many people as possible - There was an ad for ambassador car in India. “Adjust kar le yaar”. The idea being -What’s a car for if it is not for people? You don’t pay to carry air do you?

12.You use plastic to cover anything new in your house whether it's the remote control, VCR, carpet or new couch – I cannot think of a single person I know who does this. Yet every novel written by/about immigrant Indians speaks of this. I wish I could sneak into Jhumpa Lahiri’s home to see if it is true.

13. Your parents tell you not to care what your friends think, but they won't let you do certain things because of what the other 'Uncles and Aunties' will think– See point number 12

14. You buy and display crockery, which is never used, as it is for special occasions, which never happen – See point number 12

15. You have a vinyl tablecloth on your kitchen table – See point number 12

16. You use grocery bags to hold garbage – Again a single great truism about India is its inability to throw things away. This is why we attracted over centuries muck of all sorts from the Turks to the Hans to the firangs. We simply are unable to throw them away and so we “recycle” them- see where the English language got us for example. The best of the bookers belongs to an Indian-born who had simply recycled the language!

17. You keep leftover food in your fridge in as many numbers of bowls as possible – Another great truism but for the fact that about half of the billion odd people don’t own a refrigerator.

18. Your kitchen shelf is full of jars, varieties of bowls and plastic utensils (got free with purchase of other stuff) – because whoever has a kitchen, should use it to cook. And Indians in general don’t like to keep stuff in the condition in which it is bought. It is a great assault on our creativity you see.

19. You carry a stash of your own food whenever you travel (and travel means any car ride longer than 15 minutes) – see point number 9

20. You own a rice cooker or a pressure cooker -See point number 12

21. You fight over who pays the dinner bil-It is wrong. You see most people simply don’t understand the internal rules of an Indian society. You pretend to fight over the bill but ultimately, you know that the one with the loudest voice pays. So the fight is just to explore the aural and vocal capabilities of each other

22. You live with your parents and you are 40 years old. (And they prefer it that way) –All of us prefer to be spanked once in a while and who better to do it than your folks?

23. You don't use measuring cups when cooking- Measuring cups are for amateur cooks. Not for all those who a) don’t own a cup b) never cook in their lives c) know how to cook

24. You never learnt how to stand in a queue – One must know the spelling of a Q to be able to stand in it. It is absolutely imperative. One simply won’t stand in a Q if one doesn’t know how to spell it. Got it?

25. You can only travel if there are 5 persons at least to see you off or receive you whether you are traveling by bus, train or plane- Apart from the fact that about half of the billion odd among us have never taken the bus/train or the plane, this is absolutely true.

26. If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in knowing whose daughter has run with whose son and feel proud to spread it at the velocity of more than the speed of light –Makes me wonder if the one who has written this watches desperate housewives at all? Or any of the thousand other American soaps? Because, if one does, one needn’t even ask if this tendency of middle-aged women is limited to the subcontinent.

27. You only make long distance calls after 11 p.m – The era of STD/ISD booths was history some five years ago what with the boom in current operators. Last heard, India is the third largest market of tele-communications next to the USA and China. It costs –get this- one rupee per minute to make calls across India today. Incoming calls are no longer charged in India (they still are in the USA). 11 PM? Wake up!

28. If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight – Yes this is true in most cases unless 1) your mother never cooked when you lived with your parents 2) your parents are vegetarians and you don’t mind relishing all parts of either the sacred cow/forbidden pork or both 3) you have married outside your region/state/country

29. You call an older person you never met before Uncle or Aunty' – And so do Singaporeans, Japanese, Thai, and Chinese…

30. When your parents meet strangers and talk for a few minutes, you discover you're talking to a distant cousin – We all came out of Africa remember? And so we all are cousins –welcome to the universal cousin-hood!

31. Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs when making foreign calls – You are talking of our great-grandfathers sir? Most Indian parents are comfortable using a cell phone/computer/google talk and skype too. I think you missed a point here. In general, Indians don’t believe in whispering. We are loud- now that would have been a truism, if there was one. Not “being loud on the phone”.

32. You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty – This is bang on. Also, we don’t use the same shoes that we walk on the roads, cafes, bars, toilets and whatever else with in our home and on our sofas and beds. Plus, Jhumpa Lahiri’s parents must have suffered from Xenophobia of firangs who don’t wash their hands after visiting the loo.

33. It's embarrassing if your wedding has less than 600 people – Get this straight. Most Indians are weak hearted and only get married once. Plus, how will you manage all those rituals by yourself? So, yes, this too is bang on.

34. All your Tupperware is stained with food color-It’s the fault of the Chinese. Can they not make steel Tupperware for heaven’s sake?

35. You have drinking glasses made of steel- So did the rest of the world when steel was a rage. And try breaking an Indian’s habit. Btw, it is fashionable to have wine glasses made of pewter, so please!

36. You have mastered the art of bargaining in shopping- I would have held on to this belief that Indians are great at bargaining had I never visited the south-east Asia. Now, I know, we are not the best. But admittedly, we are better than most. That is given that almost half of the one billion among us exist hand to mouth.

You needn’t look at all this to identify an Indian at all. There are two unifying qualities of all Indians – irrespective of which strata of the society we belong to which easily betray us in any company.

We are a bunch of nonconformists. And we love to argue.

So, there!