Racially Fair and Lovely

My sister in law was supposed to be married and we were beginning the process of considering prospective grooms.
I was in charge of creating the “marriageable resume”; in English of course.
I thought I did a good job till the time my father in law (henceforth denoted as FIL) happened to review it.
My FIL went ballistic for the resume had a fatal flaw.
Following is the snapshot of the exchanges we had:

FIL (with a loud chuckle): What have you done? This is pathetic.

I (puzzled): What is wrong with it?

FIL: See you have put all statistics correct, except the complexion one.

I: Why? I have put “fair” as her complexion. (FYI, Rashmi, my sister in law, is quite fair for Indian standards)

FIL: You do not understand. Fair means, she is dusky and make up will make her fair.

I: Then do you want me to change it to “very fair”?

FIL (frustrated) : This is not an English grammar class, very fair and fair means the same. You write “gori” in the complexion.

I (flipping out) : “Gori”?

FIL (as if explaining elementary geometry to middle school kids) : Yes write “gori”. Fair, very fair, milky white these things do not convey the fact that she is fair. It is “gori” that would appeal to the imagination of people better.

I (speechless) : ???????

So, Rashmi’s marriage resume said her complexion was “gori”!
“Gori” when translated to English roughly means “Fair Caucasian female”.
Which means, without the façade of make up and beauty products’ induced effects, Rashmi is as fair as a Caucasian female.
Calling her fairness “fair” would be fairly unfair and would not fare well for the welfare of her marriageable prospects.

Alright, so why everyone seeking marriage alliances is looking for gori-s? Why it is a natural logic that “gora-pan” (fairness) is the panacea of all beauty? Isn’t it ironic that the country with one of the richest reserves of circulating black money, black market, black magic still holds everyone sway with its maniac quest of fairness in complexion? This deep, insightful, intelligent blog would uncover why. So sit back and enjoy the ride and for better understanding keep a tube of “Fair and Lovely” handy.

My thesis is very simple. We, the Indians are definitely a racist community as a whole. Therefore, we react to fairness of the skin in a nakedly racist manner. Whether the fascination of the fair skin is something we imbibed in a century of colonial rule or not is immaterial, what is for sure true that we have this fascination deeply etched into our culture. We are indeed racist.

I know we like to believe that Indians are not racist and we have always fought apartheid with passion, stood behind the nations suffering from racial discrimination, voiced our concern with fervor over ill treatments meted out to native settlers in the hands of imperialistic/colonialist iron fisted rules and blah blah…. I agree, when it comes to taking international stands, we have a reasonably respectable track record. But, when it comes to putting matters straight at home, we look the other way.

For generations, we have treated racism as a celebrated exponent of our culture. “Oh no, we just practice casteism, untouchability, communalism, marginalization, alienation….but when did we become racist?” This is what we say in our defense of not being racist. The truth is we are worse, as a society, than the ones adhering to apartheid. After all the color of the skin is on your face and you can distinguish between a fair skinned and a dark skinned. But the mass scale discrimination we show to each other as part our cultural excess baggage makes us the most racial community in the world. And, we have been quick to learn the apartheid as well.

I was married in Patna. The marriage venue was on a road which was called Gardener Road during the British Raj. It was an Indian free zone with markers erected that warned “Dogs and Indians” not allowed. The years of oppressive British rule left India its scars. Most important was the psychological scarring.

India was ruled by foreign forces in the past as well, but no community left an impact as lasting as the British. The Moghuls and Turks conquered by force and ruled by force. It never made the people have this awed image of Moghuls and Turks because they had nothing much to dazzle the natives except for their superior military might. British on the other hand, not only had that military might but captured the imagination because of their superlative administration, economics, advances in science and technology, education, governance and vision. Result was simple. The colonial India did believe that British were a better race. And then, as a by product of this inferior psyche germinated the fascination for the white skin.

So, today how big is this fascination?
According to latest reports the brand “Fair and Lovely” grossed some 500 crores (100 million USD) last year and the total Indian market for fairness products is nearly three times this value, which is a whopping 1500 crores (300 million USD). So, it is fair to assume that fairness is big buck business. So it is indeed a million dollar question!

The corporate India, which sells these “whitening” products have cashed in to this psychosis. In fact it has at times deliberately flamed it to sell more units and made more money.

So, as long as we are ready to accept “gori” brides only and dream of someday landing in the land of the “goras”, poor SRK will appear for Fair and Handsome and we continue to have this unreasonable fascination. If you ask me, it is not going to end soon as I believe that we are truly a racial community.

Let me end this blog with another real life experience.

One day, I got a call from an ex schoolmate of mine. I am not naming him so let’s call him A. Following is the excerpt of our call:

A: Hey Manasij. I am getting married.

I: Congrats A. That’s great news. So, what does the lucky one do?

A: She works in my office. So it is a love marriage.

I: Great. So where is she from?

A: She is a South Indian.

I: Great. I think you ………

A (cuts me in the middle hastily) : lekin wo kali nahi hai. (She is not dark).

I (speechless) : ??????

I Won't Go Onsite..............

I am a frequenter on the various social networks.
Yesterday, I happened to open my friend list which displays the friend’s name and their location.

Pages after pages were people with locations like Richmond, Akron, London, San Jose, NY, Irving, Sydney, Bonn, Cambridgeshire…….
In fact my resident Indian friends are right now a numeric minority.
There are more friends in Texas than in Tamilnadu!

When I joined TCS after my stint at engineering, the first reaction I got from my mates was “You lucky guy, you will be abroad in no time”.
Yet after almost 8 years of work in the sunshine software sector, my passport has no stamps. I have worked in Trivandrum, Kolkata, Delhi NCR and Indore but never out of India.

The interesting part is, when I say this to any of my colleagues that “I have never been onsite”, I get comments that range from hilarious to outrageous, crazy to disgusting, hurtful to astonished. Here is a small assortment:

“Oh you poor thing, try harder the next time and your manager will surely send you abroad”.
“It is not easy, there are many with no capabilities languishing in India and dreaming about it. You need to put your act together.”
“This is unbelievable….are you telling the truth?”
“Threaten your manager with resignation and ask him/her that only way you stay back is if they send you out.”
Blah…blah….blah…………

Then of course there is the “uncle” kinds; you know the landlords, your fathers’ friends etc - I mean the kind with grey hairs and therefore the bearers of profound wisdom who feel the moral obligation to enthusiastically hard sell their advice to you irrespective of the fact the you have no need for them. They give you even better reactions:
“You know my son ABC, the moment he joined the company XYZ, they realized his potential and he was beseeched to join the workforce at US. I tell you, these multinationals have an eye for talent.” (Which means, you are a complete idiot and such a loser that no one thinks you have any potential).

Yes, I guess I am definitely a loser. Otherwise how do you explain that being in the software business for as long as 8 years, I could never go onsite? Everyone is sure that I regularly have wet dreams of landing at the Heathrow or at JFK with a bag full of rice, dal, papad, pickle, Indian spices, chavanprash etc and a eye full of dreams of getting myself clicked at the Times Square, Niagara Falls, Vegas, Big Ben and put them for public consumption on the social networks.

Social networks are great places for advertising your “oh you know what, I have been there” image with aplomb.
In fact a friend of mine had put a traffic ticket’s scanned image that he had “earned” while driving in Nevada! Beat this for creativity.

At workplace I see so many colleagues squabbling regularly for the coveted onsite posting. Political plottings, cajoling managers, dire threatening, massaging client’s egos, citing amazing and sometimes jaw dropping excuses to earn the prized ticket seems a way of life. Some of the really amazing but true excuses are:

The beseeching the manager kind: “I have a huge loan owing to my sister’s marriage; I need to make some bucks.”
The threatening kind: “I have worked in this project for 2 years; I think it should be me this time or release me.”
The jaw dropping kind: “I am finding marriage proposals turned down for my lack of onsite experience, so……”

So, what is this collective mania of going onsite/abroad which grips almost everyone at our workplaces? Why is it so that going abroad is an “objective” that has to be achieved, rather than it being a natural by product of working in the globalized environs?

I believe, we have this incredible racial notion of considering the fair skinned world a better place which may have been implanted generations before as a result of the indelible hangover of colonial slavery and later on passed on to us. That’s why I see people eager to travel to US, Europe and Australia (all fair skinned worlds) whereas very little interest is available in travelling to say Brazil (which is far ahead of India but of course not as much as say Belgium). Trips to Africa are certainly humiliating, akin to a proud bellicose Delhite’s transfer to Chennai.

This inferiority is so deeply ingrained that when I see the pics posted by many of my friends, I always find them with the known circle of Indian friends. Despite being in a macrocosm of cosmopolitan plurality very few of us seem to inculcate the same in their lifestyle. After all, the must achieve “objective” was to land in the white skinned land, not to mix with them or the least adopt the cosmopolitan outlook.

Yes, I have been a loser; been not clever enough that any management would think that without me functioning from the West the company would just fall apart; been a non-cosmopolitan desi who is too scared to go off limits; and now a sure candidate to be labeled a racist after having written such a blog, but whatever may I seem, I simply don’t want to go onsite.

Let’s end this blog with another real life case. I was getting a transfer from TCS Kolkata to TCS Delhi (which is a big deal mind you, because of the geopolitics). A colleague of mine from TCS Kolkata was onsite. His father met me and gave me an authentic Bengali K C Paul umbrella (FYI, generations in Bengal have shielded themselves from rain using K C Paul’s legendary umbrella) and a sealed tiffin box.
I was supposed to give it to a guy in Delhi who was also supposed to fly to the same location where my friend was. I could never understand the rationale of shipping an umbrella to London (a city where rains are everyday phenomenon) but then I thought may be it was his favorite brand that was not available there. But, guess what was shipped in the sealed tiffin box? His favorite brand of underwear!

No Sports Please….We are Indians!

Let’s begin with a local proverb from my motherland, Bihar: “Padhoge-likhoge to banoge nawab, kheloge-kudoge to banoge kharab”….. (Study and become the respected best, but play if you want to waste).

The reason why I chose this as my opening line for this blog was to argue that we, the Indians, are generally apathetic towards sports. Any average Indian would struggle to name ten international sports’ names, let alone the names of sportspersons. Our International sporting identity hinges only on cricket, a sport only a handful nations play and which was until last week an unrecognized sports by the IOC (International Olympic Committee). So, technically speaking, cricket and “Chor-Sipahi” (thief and the police running game), were of the same league in IOC’s reckoning! Bottom-line, we are ignorant of the term called International sports. So much so, that the Vancouver Winter Olympics, which is happening right now, finds no place in newspapers.

The question is how and where this ignorance set in and then hardened into a total apathy towards sports? The answer, to my belief, lies not in our years’ of lackluster display on the field but in our education system.

I did my schooling from a respected institute run by the Jesuit missionaries of charity. It had a huge library, a great computer facility, big colonial styled class rooms and two huge playing fields. It also had a leased facility in another sports ground just a stone throw away. We had all the different balls (no pun intended) like the football, volleyball, basket ball, the cricket ball (of course) and also we had a big swimming pool. So, technically speaking, the school was well equipped to nurture sporting ambitions.

However, I could never understand, that despite all the facilities and equipments why we had just one 40 minute “period” of sports in the entire week’s schedule. Mind you there were 5 days of schooling, each day divided in 8 periods of 40 minutes each. There was a games teacher, who was all too interested in queuing up kids and teaching some mindless calisthenics and yoga. And during the rainy seasons, it would inevitably rain the day we had the sports period. Seemed like the heavens were also against our sports period.

Finally, by the time I went to high school (Standard 9 and 10) it was decreed that we had too much knowledge to acquire for the upcoming board examinations and it would be in the best interest of the students to sacrifice the sports period. That was the end of sports for many of my friends.

Yes, there was the legendary “Sports Day” when suddenly four houses would spring back to life after almost a year’s hibernation and compete in some 20 odd disciplines with one house emerging the victor. But then by that time, the unsuspecting hapless kids, who had no reason to doubt the education system, were made to believe that all that the sports may get you is a medal and nothing else. I think the only better way this message could have been hammered home would have been: if our principal would have thundered in the daily assembly everyday that “Sports is injurious to career building” and had this profound wisdom goldplated and kept at a prominent place so that all can see it and assimilate it.

After school, came college where an even stiffer climb to engineering/medical/accounting/management was awaiting and at that time indulging in sports suddenly seemed like a sin. Every minute was to be spent in the pursuit of the career. We were comprehensively browbeaten to believe about the negative impact of Sports in our prospective career. Sports would not figure in the top ten of the list of priorities. One evening of after exam cricket was the only dosage of sports available.

Then I entered the work-life and all of sudden sports were permanently out of life. I do not blame the employers for the lack of sporting interest and the overall miserable fitness level of young Indians let alone the pathetic showing of team spirit and sportsmanship, so rampant in the workplaces. I blame it on our education system which believes the Hindi proverb at the beginning of this write up.

Our educations system considers each individual as an island. You plant books, you grow marks. You reap degrees, you get jobs. There is no place for sports. Since the formative childhood days never receive a dosage of sports, we happily ignore them as if they never existed and pursue the career with great zeal. However, does this make us great professionals?

At workplaces, I see people with no concept of team spirit, a pivotal quality required to produce great results. Every office is awash with scenarios elucidating utter lack of sportsmanship in conflict scenarios. Then again, you can add the un-sportsmanlike behavior of politicizing the workplace and all the dark arts of gaming wizardry which we despise, yet carry out and even encourage. And lastly, add the misplaced concept of weighing competition ahead of co-operation.

Could this be prevented? I like to believe, it can be.

You don’t need to have a Harvard MBA to understand that a game of football is won by the team with best on field skill and team spirit. The objective of sports is to rely on your partners and help them so that all of you reach the common goal of victory. Team first, is a must have quality should you need to win. High performance teams co-operate more than compete within its own boundaries. Weaving sports tightly in the fabric of education imparts this valuable lesson which people badly need to carve out a meaningful and happy work life with colleagues.

Sports teach a great concept of being fair. Not many instances are available where prolonged sporting success is achieved compromising the fairness. Later on, this helps a great deal in respecting others’ qualities at workplace and also by recognizing solicitations of unfair nature and swiftly dousing them.

Sports are a great teacher of pursuit of excellence. A singles tennis player or a boxer has to train extremely hard to get to a level of repute. The road to progress is solitary but requires a lot of focus and determination let alone the dedication.

Lastly, sports teach the most important lesson of respecting others. All sportspersons reach a pinnacle and then the inevitable physical decay makes way for a new champion. You learn the most important art of losing yet not losing it all. As a sportsman, you take to this transition with grace and not like a greedy politician who tries to stick to the power by indulging in unfair means. Extrapolate it to workplace and you will respect your juniors and would credit them and believe them and let them grow.

If, we the Indians, had more sports in our curriculum and they were pursued with a little more earnestness or with as much as seriousness as trigonometry was pursued with, I would put my money in seeing a better generation of workers and professionals. The places to work would probably be a tad fairer and of course I would not see so many unfit, obese and physically weak individuals in their twenties and thirties.

So, tomorrow I am off riding my mountain bike for my daily 40 km ride and hope I see a change in the attitude of my in-laws who are almost sure that I have lost my mind, for no real reason exists which explains to them why would their son in law wants to cycle the whole Himalayas when one can as well drive. However, one small problem persists, my in laws are Indians and we do not believe in sports as a way of life. No sports please, we are Indians!