Shifting parameters: the standards of “acceptable”

I am very fond of social networks.  I have already said why in an earlier blog, but apart from how it helps my work, there’s another, more voyeuristic reason why I like them. I find it interesting and entertaining to see what other people are reading, thinking, saying and count as important, and compare their preferences with mine. Not that it matters much, but it can be very educational.

For example, a teenager from the town I grew up in recently posted an open invitation to her friends, asking “who all want to bunk class tomorrow”? Many responses and comments followed.

I know times are changing and I also know some tuition classes can be mind-numbingly boring and that because sending kids to classes for extra help is like a contagious disease where I come from, students are often forced to attend. Parents, peer pressure, and a bunch of the usual issues.

 I too was at a place once where I had taken to giving a particular teacher’s classes the miss pretty regularly, because spending an hour in the same room as this man who thought everything else in a student’s life that wasn’t Chemistry was automatically useless annoyed me. And because he was extremely boring and I never had much patience for Carbon and its many avatars anyway.  I learnt more Physics and Chemistry from my Biology teacher, I swear. Mostly because she had a magical way of making equations and refraction interesting even to me. And I now suspect,  also because she would offer me samosas, my favorite Indian snack, when I would have to attend her classes directly from my dance practice and also allow me 5 minute breaks when I complained about having to solve too many Physics problems in a day.

 Eventually, thankfully, I saw good sense and officially stopped wasting time and money at the Chemistry teacher’s class. And I passed both Chemistry and Physics, thank god.  My best friend from school can take some credit for that.

Apart from my English tutor, who and whose classes were by far the best thing that happened to me while growing up (and here we are moving very far from the realms of just learning about Shakespeare), I think my Biology teacher’s was the only other class that actually made me want to attend.

Diversions aside, I have no complaints or judgment against this young girl at all.

But the fact that she can plan bunking classes so openly on a network that her elder brother also uses actively did make me wonder: would I have done the same if these networks had been invented while I was in high school? No one knows for sure, but I think not.

I also wonder, did her brother, who is a grown, married adult, notice this? If he did, why is the post still up?  

In my late twenties, I’ve been called “quaint” and more recently, "a vestige of a long-ago time" by friends, who insist they mean them as compliments. Frankly, because I know these people are fond of me in varying degrees, I quite like it. Plus, late twenties is old. Anyhow, despite my very strong resolutions about accepting things as they come, sometimes I am amazed by what we have come to accept as acceptable and how we react to the constant lowering of expectations.

The other day, I sent my girlfriends an article in the NYT that talked about how dating as a ritual was vanishing from the world because of online dating sites. You can look it up; it isn’t ahead of the curve in terms of trend-spotting, but like all things NYT, is written very well and makes some very valid points.

The point here being that because there are online dating sites,  young and single men (and women) know they have many options and hence they put in less effort when they’re asking people out. I’m not an active member of the dating club but my friends are, and I thought it would be interesting to know what they think. 

My pet peeve in here was/is that very few men actually know how to decently ask a girl out (ok, I’m not an active member, but I do have a social life. What, you thought I sit in front of my computer and rant all day?). Random, haphazard invites of “let me know if you are free sometime this week” do not make the cut, and I’ll never be free for you, even if I am. It’s not just about a boy asking a girl, I would think it is basic decency. Even when I ask my girlfriends out, the least I would do is pick a time/day. “Are you free Wednesday” is so much more compelling than “let me know if you are free at some vague time during the course of the week or month, for I don’t really care.”

What my very active-in-the-dating-club friend had to tell me, however, made me feel like a Victorian prude. Here’s what I learnt: texting last minute and open ended invitations that mean mostly nothing is de rigueur and perfectly acceptable.  I also had a sneaking suspicion the people I talked to have no idea they could ask for more. I’m going to make a broad generalization here and say I think my single and dating friends in India have it better than those here: there is still some flowers and dinner prevalent there. But we also rape, kill and harass our women a lot and brand people sluts if they sleep with more than one person, so it’s a tough call.

 But to each her own, and as a non-active member of the community, I don’t really have much say. I don’t have much say anywhere anyway, which is why I blog.

By the way, if you’re still with me through all the rambling, here’s a heartfelt thank you. 

I was in a bus some time ago, travelling from my parents’ house to Calcutta. Now due to some unfathomable reason, buses (at least in India) insist on screening movies that a) have a lot of raunchy humour that does not make me laugh at all (Victorian prude, I accept it) b) have what I think are sleazy songs with starlets shaking their booty in front of the camera . I love dancing and am a trained Indian classical dancer. I appreciate that Helen’s movements to “Yeh Mera Dil” and Katrina’s movements to “Mashallah” are very difficult feats to achieve. But there is a difference between dancing and randomly shaking your booty in front of the camera, please accept it.

There was this other family- mom, dad and kid – who were travelling with me. The bus screened “Rowdy Rathore”, which fits the play-on-the-bus bill perfectly and has a song that goes “Pallu ke neechey daba ke rakhkha hain utha doon to hungama ho.”  (I have a problem with this movie. If you’ve watched it, you’ll know why.)

While I could feel my ears turn red as I shifted a little uncomfortably as the song played on, kiddo stood up on his seat and started singing and dancing to the song with total abandon.  Mom seemed embarrassed; dad was not, or was making a good show of not being embarrassed and none of them were able to hush up the little boy. He knew the lyrics by heart, so it clearly wasn't the first time he was listening to it.

Other co passengers laughed, some even encouragingly. How did it become acceptable for a 10 (my random guess, he looked about 9-10) year old to sing these songs? But then fully grown men apparently blast “Aaja Teri Ch##t Maru” from their car stereos in Delhi, so who can blame a 10 year old? Women allegedly have come to accept it, they pretend they don’t hear. Because know what? If you react, you could get killed. Or if you are Sushma Swaraj, you’d say worse, raped.

It is also acceptable for the upwardly mobile and rich women and men to mistreat their partners openly at parties, even hit each other. For the gentleman to beat his wife because he’s “had a difficult day at work and just snapped”, for intelligent and smart young women living in the emancipated first world to accept that men can “rate” them at a club or call them “fat” and other names when they feel like it. For people to “go along” with relationships they know are dead just because they don’t want to tackle the entire world and their questions.

All acceptable. Even murder or shooting people randomly is. But if you’re in India, kiss in public, and watch the fun. If you’re in the US, you’re probably still wading through various versions of “let’s meet up…at some point”. More on that later.

It isn't "the times". It is us

Some time back, I was asked what age I would like to be born in, if I could choose. I picked the Renaissance, or India around the 1940s if I were to be bound by geographical limitations.

Yes, I’m the incurable romantic. My choices would have told you that. People like me, who some mistake to be naïve, tend to be swayed by quaint traits and things like “courage”, “chivalry”, “love” and “honour” more than others are. Such people are few to begin with in the first place, and convert rapidly as they hit their 20s and go beyond.

 Which is a good thing, for it won’t do at all to have a world full of romantics tripping over each other, especially as we balance grocery bags up the apartment stairs, or walk on super high heels to get strangers to pick up our tabs. (And yet they often don’t, these strangers!)

And while the world goes round in its rigmarole, the closest we get to any amount of greatness is when we manage to find some time to talk to our grandparents or other elders who have fought a war or survived a communal riot, or talk to the odd friend that chose to stay away from the lure of corporate jobs to work full time with a non-profit organization.

Only the truth is, we don’t “manage to find time”, we deign to. We are busy, you see; mostly working away at jobs that we don't even like.

So, we definitely don’t want more complications in our lives: having to decide what to wear to work or where to get lunch every day is annoying enough. And yes, we will sympathize and be sufficiently respectful when we meet “great men and women”, but that’s all we can do, thank you very much. Truly speaking, by the time the work day ends, we are so drained we can’t even find it in us to click on a link and make a donation towards a worthy cause. Where is the time?

We don’t want goodness; we will not even strive for it, not even give it a tiny shot. Greatness? What is that?

We will not teach our children the importance of being good and doing right by others. We are happy to not interfere, because if no one else is making an issue out of it, why should I? We will not help, love, be friends, just because we can. And honestly, why should we? Have you seen what happens to those that do that kind of stuff? They get passed over for promotions, cheated by friends and are made fun of behind their backs.

Why? Because everyone knows we can’t be good in this day and age. We have to earn money, be petty and manipulative, play power games and generally be dissatisfied in life because at the end of the day, we don’t have one thing that we are genuinely proud of to show. What, didn't you go to college? These just aren't the times!

No, giving away your bus seat to the older woman does not count.  Plus, do we do that regularly out of habit or only when we know we’ll get off in a couple of minutes and don’t care anyway?

But you see, it isn't the times, it is us. While we were busy window shopping or planning our next vacations or debating between the sparkling or still, a young girl of 14 was shot in the head for fighting for her and her friends’ rights to go to school.

She was 11 when the Taliban decided to stop girls in her locality from going to school. Instead of blaming the times and "adjusting" to her new fate, she wrote a blog for the BBC speaking about her life under the new regime, and was eventually shot at as she was returning home after a taking a test.

That happened this week, in these very times, which are not supposed to be meant to produce great or brave men and women.

In another instance, a fragile woman fought for a shot to bring in Democracy in her country, living under house arrest for 15 long years before she could walk freely. That change happened. The Arab Spring also happened.

And for every story we get to know about, there are many others that we don’t, shining examples of doing good in our own neighbourhood or among our friends, who we write off as “idealists”.

Know what? Standing for some ideals isn't that bad a thing. Not everyone can be a Suu Kyi, nor do we even need to be. But I can bet you anything you want (and I have) that none of us are too busy to make a little more effort, be a little more passionate, concerned, involved.

Do we really need to?

That is not for me to answer, for remember, I’m the romantic that still believes in rights and wrongs.

And listens to ghazals and reads shayari with alarming levels of interest.

“Kaise aakash mein suraag nahi ho sakta,
Ek paththar toh tabiyat se uchchalo yaron.”

(Roughly: You say the skies won't part, but have you tried hard enough?)

Why I Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg’s brain child now has more than 900 million monthly active users, and chances are it is there that you found this post as well.
900 million—an article I recently read said if that were a country, it would be the third most populous! At least, that is what the latest stats say.
For more details you can always Google the latest news stories or check their filings if you are that fastidious. Or else, you can just trust me and go with it! I won’t link a news article to this blog. Reason one being I think if you are curious enough, you’ll Google it. Reason two, I try to keep my work and blog posts as far separated as possible. As a reporter, I don’t opinionate. As a blogger, that’s all I do.
Well like with anything else, once the first blast of news is done hitting you in the face, people discuss it, and some, even in this day and age, actually try and attempt to go beyond the stats to understand what it means to the everyday man. Don’t pick on me for not saying “woman”, I am not your nitpicking, irritating-to-everyone-else-but-their-own-closed-group kind of feminist and I do have something of a dislike for them.
Anyhow, when some people I know asked me why I Facebook, and presented their ideas on why people should not, it obviously got me thinking.
Here’s this immensely popular social networking tool that seems to have made the world a much much smaller and well connected place than was thought possible. And yet, here are some otherwise very logical, thinking individuals who vehemently oppose its popularity and think it is rotting society in some way. In fact, I also saw billboards inviting people to attend a session titled “is social network making us unsocial?” at the Red line train stop.
I have no desire or will to go and attend that session, but think it’ll be fun to hazard a guess on what the non FB-ing intelligentsia’s problems with the lesser mortals are.
What will be the obvious complaints? “Kids” are always on their phones, FB-ing. Now I am your average working girl with no claims to anything extraordinary, so quite obviously I’m totally in with the multitude. I’m almost always on FB, I have my Blackberry to thank for that, and I have a clinical urge to respond to messages and posts addressed to me. Just like with emails.
And I would like to think it stems from some sense of courtesy. When people talk to you, or ask you something, or include you in a conversation, you respond. If you do not want to, you say “I don’t want to”, or “I think you are a moron, so leave me out of this”, but you still respond. Basic good manners, I say.
That and a bunch of other stuff like my daughter does not talk to me because of FB, I got hit by a truck because I was poking someone etc etc.
Well, here is the thing.
Your daughter does not talk to you because she thinks you are immensely boring, and because you have nothing interesting to say to her that will hold her imagination. Don’t blame it on FB. Don’t blame it on anything, really, other than yourself, because if you had that bond with your kid, s/he would respond. They still do talk to their friends, don’t they? Or to the “cool” teacher from school who is everyone’s favorite? Or the neighbourhood aunt/uncle all the kids love.
You get my drift? Trust me, if there was no FB, the kid would hide in a book, phone, or in anything that could rescue her if she has decided to give you the cold shoulder. The problem lies deeper than that, fix it.
And of course, if you got hit by a truck because you were poking/ commenting while on the road, you are plain stupid. No other words there. If there is one thing that we owe to ourselves, it is to be careful about what can hurt us and what is OK. That you still haven’t been able to figure it out, or are unable to teach your ward the rights and wrongs of life are hardly Zuckerberg’s fault. Just like when my class mate in junior school crashed with his motorcycle, it wasn’t Gottlieb Daimler’s fault.
Oh yeah, my mind has collected enough useless trivia over the years, as I realize intermittently.
Blame the addiction to reading. I remember, as a very young kid I even read the back of the shampoo bottle while my mom would wash my hair. Till she decided to ask me to stop it because I would get shampoo in my eyes while reading and the strange redness would creep her out. I would also cry sometimes, depending on the intensity of the wash.
But I deviate (hey, my blog, my memories!) and I’m sure no one finds an account of a precocious baby getting her hair washed that captivating. So, let’s return to my point.
Which is that, I think most of the so called problems that FB and other social networking sites have given us are really allegations that we can easily ignore. Indeed, if we are honest enough, we might even accept our own shortcomings here and agree that these sites are really not the villains they are often made out to be.
There is only this one “crime” charge that I am not sure I can totally defend social networking from. That of creating shallow bonds and making us lazy. And, of encouraging very bad use of grammar and language. OK, so that makes it more than one. But let me try.
My use of FB grew tremendously in 2010, when I was away from India for the first time, and was phoneless for about a week. FB was an easy and accessible way of keeping in touch with friends and family, and it helped them to know that I was safe and not dead/robbed/raped/dying/sick in some foreign country.
I have kept at it since, and have found many, many long lost friends and acquaintances through it.
One of those people I mentioned among the anti-FB group avoids social networking studiously because that person believes if someone really wants to talk, or cares enough, they will find a way to get in touch without help from a poke/tweet/comment. And say something meaningful in the process. It is a great thought, and as someone who loves reading long emails that are NOT forwards, I totally understand that demand.
But here’s my counter argument. If I really want you in my life, I will definitely find a way. But does it prove anything when you make my attempts more difficult by avoiding a popular platform that could make you more accessible to me?
And what guarantees that the people that do manage to connect with me beyond the shallow “likes” will, in fact write or say anything that is more meaningful?
I once had a teacher who was brave enough to encourage discussion in class. Not a common trait among people anywhere and less likely when your paycheck depends on finishing a syllabus that no one really cares about.
I learnt from him how important it is to hear other people out, and to try and give everyone a fair chance. It might not be the most perfect platform, but I would like to say social media does it. The number of arguments, discussions, conversations I’ve personally had on FB over countless issues that touch our daily lives is proof in itself.
All shallow, you say? How many people in your friends list do you really know about, you ask? Not all, sure. Do I want to be best friends with the girl from school I reconnected with after more than a decade? No. But do I still want to keep in touch and exchange occasional snippets of our lives and share her happiness when she puts up wedding pictures on her wall? Yes!
Would this be possible in an age before FB (or any other social media that you like, but 900 million commands respect. If you haven’t already figured, I’m using FB as the generic term for social media here. Like “Xerox” and “Maggi”)? Having lived in that world, I think we’ll all agree and say “no”.
So shallow bonds with many notwithstanding, it really helps to communicate. And you never know when an acquaintance becomes a good friend, right?
Now the bit about making us lazy—that people would rather wish friends ”happy birthday” on FB and comment on walls than pick up the phone and make it more special. And that people do not remember birthdays unless it is on your calendar.
Guilty as charged. I have done that at times, and I know it is not a good excuse to say I was tired and it was the middle of the night for my friend. But how about this—thanks to the websites, I could at least let my friend know that I tried but was not able to get through, when that was the case. Better than getting lost in a hole of non-communication, no?
So that leaves us with the bad grammar and bad language charge.
*I surrender*