Calling people names

I had one of my nicest and most interesting projects to do at work today.

Got a call from one of our managers up in Auckland. She wanted a favour from me. And guess what it was? She was to be MCing a function that evening. And she had a lot of Indian/Middle Eastern names to get through as part of the MCing. So could I help her with the correct pronunciation?

I was totally impressed with her attitude. But still I had to ask her. Why?

Well, I would hate it if anyone pronounced my name wrongly (mind you, most people won’t as her name’s quite simple and straight-forward). So I guess it’s the same for everyone, she said.

How simply and succinctly put.

Do I need to add that I put my best efforts into getting her pronunciation right? He he. She even got my name right!!!!

Well said, Shilpa. Am so glad she didn't apologise and I think what she said was sensible too. Simply because I think this is ridiculous, to say the very least. I am, of course, talking about the big fuss about Richard Gere kissing Shilpa – and that too, only on her cheek. What is wrong with that? For starters, Shilpa herself didn’t mind. Why should any one else then? She seemed pretty happy with it, going by the pics. But was the kiss un-Indian? Oh yes, it surely is. We worship women as ‘mata’ in India, remember. But it’s perfectly ok to drool over the same women on screen – take even Shilpa for instance. She’s been prancing around in some pretty skimpy costumes for a while now, just like most of our heroines. Or to nudge or pinch or finger the same ‘matas’ in crowded buses and trains. Or to go onto porn sites via the Internet. Or to take sick pics on cellphone cameras..or to…..the list goes on and on. But all that is ok, because it’s all done by us desis. The minute a phirangi Gere comes along and goes something like this, so that’s totally wrong, isn’t it? Our cultural police swing into action because he is insulting Indian culture. Talk about double standards. And I didn’t really notice Shilpa protesting much. The way our movies (and our culture) is going is so Western. Our clothes are western, our speech is western and even our film actors look and talk Western. Heroines no longer have a pan-Indian look – they go for the pan-European look (a la Italian, Spanish etc). They even try and talk English with a Yank accent. Heck, they even kiss like the Western movies nowadays… But something small like this happens and we act as though we’re all dressed in saris and dhothis and talking only Hindi (or whatever) and as though Partition and Globalisation haven’t happened. As though it is now 1907. Talk about dumb and dumber…
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And then there's the Abhiash wedding...God, what an overkill!! The media’s becoming worse that the UK tabloid press. Reckon we’re making up for all the lost time with a vengeance.

All of a sudden

Someone must have been listening when I mentioned that bit about doing up a blog on my grandparents. Suddenly on March 16, got a phone call from my mom in Chennai saying my grandmother had been admitted to ICU. And the next day, I was on a plane, enroute to Chennai.

Back in NZ after a tumultous two weeks during which my family here somehow managed with a lot of help from good friends ( I went to India alone). My grandmother's now back home. But she's been afflicted by senile dementia. And all my fears are for my mom, who is now handling it all alone there on a permanent basis. With as much help as my brother (& his family) and a cousin (& her family) can give her. But unfortunately, they are both unable to be in Chennai on a daily basis and also have their own problems to handle anyways.

When human help fails, you can only look to the Divine.