November 23, 2006

Hindu vs. Hindi: a PSA

This is a public service announcement regarding some basic terminology about India's major language and religion.

The word Hindi refers to India's most widely spoken language. Not everyone in India speaks it, but it is the language spoken or understood by the largest percentage of India's population. As with so many things India, the analogy of India to all of Europe comes in handy. Consider how you may be able to get around many places in Europe — especially the touristy places — with basic English (okay, let's ignore for a moment the disdainful looks you might get). It is quite likely that you'll come to a region within a country where English is completely unknown and English speakers may number only in the single digits. Still, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that English is the language that larger percentage of Europe's population understands than any other, including as a second or third language. The situation is similar in India with Hindi.

The word Hindu refers to someone who follows India's largest religion, Hinduism. Although India has the world's largest population of Hindus, they also live in several parts of the world where there is a significant Indian diaspora, such as the Caribbean, Mauritius, Fiji, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Hindus don't have to be Indian by ethnicity; indeed there are many Caucasian followers of Hinduism in the U.S. A related word, Hindoo, was used in the Western world historically to refer to people of Indian descent, but is now obsolete, if not offensive.

Hindus may speak Hindi but they don't have to. Likewise, not everyone who speaks Hindi is Hindu — they could be Muslim, Sikh, Christian or even Jewish (all these religious groups exist in India or places with Indian diaspora to varying degrees)! But above all remember -- Hindi is a language and Hindu is a person.

I frequently see people (U.S.-ian or otherwise) mistaking Hindu for Hindi or vice versa and thought I'd do my bit to clear the matter up. In fact, I've even made a T-shirt about it, along with a few other India-themed T-shirts. Buy them for yourself or your friends and spread the word!

Posted by Vishy at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2006

The Indian vegetarian's rant

Like several of my fellow countrymen, I don't eat meat. I don't make a big deal out of it, but I get questions about it all the time.

Most of the time these questions are sincere -- the asker is just plain curious. Sometimes though, they are just a thinly veiled way of expressing contempt at the 'philosophy' of vegetarianism (can anybody tell me what that is? I didn't get the memo) and on some days, this bugs me. Giving the asker the benefit of doubt, I always answer them as I would a sincere question.

For a while now, I've meant to write up something that addresses all the questions I get, sincere or otherwise. I get so many different lines of questioning that I am going to present them all here as one conversation. For the purpose of this post, I'll invent a fictitious person with whom I am having this fictitious conversation. Let's call him, oh I don't know, Cosmo, taking inspiration from Kramer's annoying, no-holds-barred way of asking questions in Seinfeld. If he seems to lacking in, um, social graces and general awareness, it is intentional—he is the figment of my imagination conjured up precisely to ask me all these questions about vegetarianism, including the annoying ones.

[Cosmo is a friend of a friend. We've just had a long night of club hopping. I am sitting with him and a group of friends in a diner, looking over our menus.]

Cosmo: Hey, let's get some buffalo wings and calamari for appetizers.
Me: Can we get mozzarella sticks too?
Cosmo: What's the matter man? What's wrong with the ones I picked?
Me: Oh, I am vegetarian.
Cosmo (resisting the urge to roll his eyes): Oh! I didn't know. How about we get some fish and chips?
Me: I don't eat meat or fish.
Cosmo: Wai-duh-min-nit. Don't some vegetarians eat fish?
Me: There are some that call themselves pesceterians, but they are not really vegetarians. Vegetarianism is a more restrictive diet.
Cosmo: All right, all right. I guess we can get mozzarella sticks instead of the calamari.
Me: Great, thanks!

[We order the appetizers.]

C (suspiciously): So. You're vegetarian huh?
M: That's right.
C: What does your family think of your decision?
M: Well, everybody in my family is vegetarian, so I guess they must be supportive.
C: Wow, so is that for religious reasons?
M: Well, I was raised vegetarian for religious and cultural reasons...
C: All Hindi people are vegetarian?
M: You must mean Hindu people. Hindi is a language—in fact, India's most common language. So yes, I was raised in a Hindu family. Even though I am not that religious anymore, I never really found a reason to start eating meat. It has become a part of how I live.
C: Have you tried meat?
M: Not really, no. I have eaten it one or two times by mistake and when I found out later, I didn't really care for it that much anyway.
C: Dude, that's really too bad. You're really missin' out on a lot of good stuff.
M: Maybe, but it doesn't bother me. Let's see... are you straight, gay or bi?
C (indignant): What the hell man! I am totally straight. I don't need any of that gay stuff in my life.
M: Well, if you're not bi, does it bother you that you're missing out on half of all the sex you could be having?
C: All right, all right. Point taken. But how can you skip eating meat after its delicious smell hits you?
M: Some meat does smell good to me, but most of it doesn't smell too pleasant.

[The wings and mozzarella sticks arrive. The waiter is taking entrée orders.]

Me (to the waiter): I'll have a mushroom-spinach omelette with muenster cheese. Can you get me a strawberry milkshake as well? Thanks!
C: Wait a second. I thought you were vegetarian. And you just got a cheese omelette and a milkshake?
M: I am vegetarian, not vegan. Vegans eat no animal products whatsoever—it's they who skip dairy and eggs. Suffice it to say, they have a slightly harder time at diners like this.
C: Oh, cool. So you're actually somewhat normal. But doesn't it bother you man that we're eating wings?
M: No, of course not. Why would it?
C: I don't know man. You said you don't like the smell.
M: Oh, don't worry about it. I have no problems if someone else at the table is eating meat. Most of my friends are actually not vegetarian.
C: But surely it must bother you that we're eating these poor delicious chickens?!
M: Not really, no—that's your choice. Like I said, I was raised vegetarian. I never decided to 'go vegetarian' when I was 12, to save the animals, so I tend not to be ideological about it. Just like you are not forcing me to eat yours wings right now, I would never require you to be vegetarian.
C: Okay, to each his own I suppose. But you must surely run into all these health problems?
M: I've had absolutely no health problems because of my diet.
C: But you can't get all the nutrients your body needs by being vegetarian! Where do you get your protein?
M: Actually, studies show plant foods alone can supply all the essential amino acids the body needs. What's more, as you just saw, I eat eggs and dairy. I get all the protein I need from all these sources.
C: Dunno how you keep it up. Hey Elaine, weren't you vegetarian too at some point?
Elaine: Oh yeah, for a summer, when I was 15. I was the only one in my family who decided to stop eating meat. I started eating a lot of junk food and actually put on some weight. Then one night soon after Labor Day, my mom made this amazing meatloaf. The smell filled the house and drove me mad. That's when I realized being vegetarian was not for me. I ate meatloaf that night as if nothing had happened before and then never looked back. It's a distant dream now.
C (with self-satisfied grin on his face): See? Told you so.
M: If you keep telling yourself you're missing out by being vegetarian, it's not very surprising that you can't keep it up.

[Cosmo's Philly cheesesteak sandwich arrives.]

C: Mmmm... you sure man that you don't want a bite?
M: Thanks but no thanks. I don't eat beef or any other meat.
C (mouth full of beef, bread and cheese): Yeah, but this cow didn't eat any meat either! Heh heh, heh heh heh... just kidding.
...
C: So let me ask you this, do you eat shrimp?
M: No, I don't eat seafood either. One rule of thumb is, if it has a face I won't eat it.
C: Aha! Then what about oysters? They don't have a face. They probably don't feel any pain when you cook them either.
M: But I think they stink to high heaven. The if-it-has-a-face rule is only a rule of thumb. It's not like you eat all animals either. In the end, I decide if I want to eat something or not.
C: Have you tried caviar? It's not exactly an animal.
M: I haven't tried caviar mostly because I haven't wanted to try it badly enough. It does involve cutting open 'pregnant' fish, so it is not generally considered vegetarian. I dunno, perhaps it might be interesting to try someday, with some good champagne.
C: Wait a minute—I thought vegetarians don't drink? I had a friend from Pakistan who didn't drink.
M: Your friend probably didn't drink 'cause he was Muslim. Also, if he was from Pakistan, I doubt he was vegetarian.
C: Are all Indians vegetarian?
M: Hardly! In fact, most Indian households are not vegetarian. There is a subtle guilt complex that some Indians have about eating meat, but if that were a big problem then most of India would be vegetarian.

[It's time to pay the bill and leave.]

M: Hey, here's $12 if we split the bill evenly among the six of us.
C: It's okay man. Your food cost only $6. Just put in $8 so it includes tax and tip.
M: Thanks man. See? Here's one mixed blessing about being vegetarian. Your food costs less but if you just split the bill evenly, you end up overpaying.
C: It's the tax you pay for being weird.
M: Hey, 6-10% of Americans say they are vegetarian, which is about the same percentage of college-educated Americans who couldn't find the U.S. on a world map. Have a good night!

Posted by Vishy at 05:46 PM | Comments (1)

January 04, 2006

How come India is five and a half hours ahead of UTC? Isn't that not allowed?

To set the record straight, such as it needs to be, a country's timezone relative to UTC (I am too much of a geek to use GMT) is what the government of the country decides it should be. There are no international conventions or regulations that require the difference between a country's standard time and UTC to be a whole number of hours.

Now to the separate question of why India chose its timezone to be UTC+5:30 rather than UTC+5:00 or UTC+6:00. India's geographic extent spans two timezones but it chose to go with one 'half' timezone rather than two 'whole number' timezones. I am unable to find a normative reference as to why but have encountered two reasonable theories that try and explain this unusual choice:

a) The 'Head' Theory: Picking the median of the two timezones means that India does not have to implement Daylight Time. Although it's a bit of a stretch in India's extremities--especially the far east--it can pull off maintaining the same time throughout the year by picking the median of its putative standard timezone and daylight timezone. Daylight Time is in wide usage throughout the world but retains its notoriety for being the source of confusion twice a year. Presumably the standards-makers of India enacted this timezone for the convenience, or perhaps they did not want to impose the complexity of switching time twice a year on a population (then) embattled by illiteracy, poverty, hunger and other problems more fundamental than keeping time.
b) The 'Heart' Theory: India underwent a painful Partition in 1947, when it and Pakistan were granted Dominion status by the British Crown. After such a cataclysmic, nation-rending event, the government did not want to divide the country along yet another parameter.

Perhaps in the spirit of compromise advanced by the latter theory above, for what it's worth, Indian Standard Time is defined to be the local time at the Allahabad Observatory at 82.5°E, which is exactly five and a half hours ahead of UTC. Allahabad (known sometimes as Prayag), while not along the exact center-line of India, lies well in the Indian heartland. It has had a long history as a culturally sacred site and has been significant as the hometown of the Nehru family, which produced many of India's early heads of government.

If you thought India was weird in its choice of timezone, try Nepal, which maintains standard time at UTC+5:45 (no, really). India's choice of timezone also introduces weird discontinuities in standard time because the parts of India east of Bangladesh (UTC+6:00) still have a standard time of UTC+5:30. Oh, and by the way, Myanmar (UTC+6:30) and Central Australia (UTC+9:30) also have half timezones.

Posted by Vishy at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2005

FAQ: Why do Indians not eat beef?

[This post is by request of Stephen, a friend and former co-worker, who was pondering this question as he chewed on BBQ ribs in Texas.]

India probably offers the highest number of variations on dietary habits, outside of food allergies. There are lactovegetarians, ovolactovegetarians, nonvegetarians and radicexcludarians (a word of my own invention for certain groups, such as Jains, who don't eat anything that grows below the ground). Some dietary habits even vary with time, such as in the case of people that are vegetarian on certain days of the week but are omnivorous on others. It is understandable for the average outsider to be overwhelmed in the face of such astonishing dietary diversity. Even so, there is one rule in which an outsider can find solace, when trying to understand Indian diets -- the no-beef rule.

Most Indians do not consume beef, beef lard or any bovine-derived products other than milk. It is fair to say Indian meat-eaters are about as squeamish about beef as Indian vegetarians are about any meat. The no-beef rule has had a tangible impact on Indian history. For quite a while, discontent had been festering in the ranks of Indian royals, who had been rendered powerless by the expansionist and divisive policies of the British East India Company in the 1850s. The British played one regional prince against another, assisting whoever it was convenient to assist at the time with native Indian troops fighting under the British banner. These Indian troops weren't too thrilled about being ordered to make war on their own people by a foreign power. The general feeling of discontent against the British reached a fever pitch when rumors spread among British-employed Indian troops about the ammunition they were asked to use during combat. Cartridge covers, which had to be torn off by mouth before loading a firearm, were reportedly adhered to the cartridge using beef and pork lard. Cows were sacred to Hindu soldiers and pigs were profane to Muslim soldiers. The resulting emotional inflammation led to Indian soldiers defying their British commanders in Meerut, starting a localized conflict that grew into the War of Indian Independence in 1857, the first (and only) armed Indian rebellion against British rule.

The cow eats paltry meals of grass, kitchen refuse and a lot of other things humans wouldn't dream of eating. Yet, in an extremely selfless act, it gives of its milk plentifully to nourish humans. Bulls also make their own contribution by helping the largely agrarian Indian population plough its fields. Ancient Indian scriptures exalt the status of the cow because they were written by a largely pastoral people, who had a significant nomadic history before settling in the Indian region. When living a nomadic lifestyle, it makes economic sense to conserve cows, which may be inconvenient or impossible to procure for long stretches, by imposing taboos on their consumption. The most commonly cited reason for avoiding beef is that the cow attains the position of a surrogate mother by giving plentifully of its milk to humans. Just as humans don't kill their own mothers for food even in dire times, so too should the cow be revered thus. It is interesting to note that the status of cow as mother may be further reinforced by the rather striking fact that the gestation period for a cow is the same as that for humans, 9 months.

The ancient taboo against consuming cows presents itself in modern Indian polity in the form of anti-cow-killing laws, enacted at the behest of political parties that place the Hindu faith as one of their central tenets. In most of India, cows are protected by law, thus leaving them free to roam the streets and contribute to one of the Western world's lasting impressions of India. However, Indians really do respect their cows even in this high-tech twenty-first century, which is why they track them with RFID tags. Some nonvegetarian Indians in the United States adhere to the beef taboo. Others start eating beef, sometimes by accident, and hope that their folks back in India never find out. I hope this writeup clarifies the no-beef rule a bit. I will go into a similar explanation of Indian vegetarianism in the future, so watch this space.

Posted by Vishy at 02:16 AM | Comments (1)

March 16, 2005

Are all Bollywood movies musicals?

Short answer: no, not according to me. You may disagree, depending on what the word 'musical' connotes to you.

The Indian film industry is commonly thought to be the world's largest producer and consumer of movies, certainly by the number made, if not in absolute dollar terms. Indian movies hold great sway over the population not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and in other South Asian countries. They are also an appealing way for Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom, United States and the Caribbean to keep in touch with their cultural roots.

Indian movies have been ignored by the West for several years now. However, due to the recent emergence of India as an economic juggernaut and the recent spike in the Indian population outside India, its sphere of cultural influence is also growing. Several movies have been made targeting audiences outside India. Most notably, Lagaan comes to mind among recent movies in this category. An Indian movie is hard to miss. The conventional wisdom in the West is that Bollywood movies are all musicals. Characters are thought to break out spontaneously into song and dance, destroying the flow of the movie when the audience has already been sucked deep into the nuances of the plot.

The word 'musical' can connote different things. It could simply mean a movie with a few songs in it. Or it could also mean a series of songs and a plot that embellish each other, produced specifically to showcase the abilities of both singers and actors.

In the first sense of the word mentioned above, Bollywood movies would qualify as musicals. Bollywood movies and Indian movies in general feature songs integrated into the plot of the movie. This practice arises from Indian dramatic tradition which predates Indian cinema by a fair bit. Dramatic art forms like Nautanki and Kathakali tightly weave song and dance sequences into their main narratives, resulting in a production not unlike modern Western opera. Major plot points can occur during a musical or dance segments just as often as during plainer, more recitative segments. This tradition carries over to Bollywood movies, where it isn't uncommon to see plot points happen in the midst of a song. Even if a song doesn't contain plot points, it usually carries some thematic significance or relates to the mood of the character or movie. In other words, songs in a Bollywood movie usually carry meaning and give insights into the plot or the characters. The Indian film industry measures the success of a movie in two ways -- its sales at the box office and in record stores. Some movies, such as Dil Se and Bombay did not impress at the box office, but will still be remembered as great movies because of their music.

In the second sense of the word mentioned above, a movie and its songs may well exist independently of each other. In this case, songs become superfluous distractions that strike you with the incongruity of Julie Andrews breaking into These Are a Few of My Favorite Things in the middle of the von Trapps' escape from the Nazis. More often than not, I have heard 'musical' being applied to Bollywood movies in this slightly derisive sense. Reading over the comments for Bombay at imdb.com, I saw a comment questioning the appropriateness of making a musical about the 1992 religious riots in Bombay. I would counter that assertion by stating that all the songs had relevance to the plot and not one tried to denigrate the seriousness of the riots. I have tried to figure out why songs in a Bollywood movie seem superfluous to a Western audience. The best I can come up with is that the song segments in a Bollywood movie frequently do not have subtitles. To a Western viewer dependent entirely on subtitles to understand the movie, the song segments appear to be incomprehensible blobs of celluloid entirely unrelated to the rest of the movie. Even when there are subtitles, the poetry and cultural connotations inherent in some songs just don't translate very well into subtitles.

As a caveat-emptor, I should mention that Bollywood movies are also sometimes made specifically to showcase music, dance or costumes are also made. In many cases, this showcasing is worked into the movie's setting. For example, a movie made to showcase songs may have a musician as its main character. Given the sheer number of Bollywood movies produced, there are also bad movies where songs are pathetic pieces of duct tape used to buy time and cover up massive plot holes. There are superfluous songs that have the following lyrics, roughly speaking:

I was walking on the street
Eating bhelpuri (a roadside snack)
I was taking my girl out
If a spicy morsel knocked me out, what am I supposed to do?

I was walking on the street
Singing some song
I was flirting with people
If my grandmother died, what am I supposed to do?
There are also Indian movies without a single song. Fire and Black are recent movies of this sub-genre that come to mind.

Music is an integral part of the culture and tradition of Indian film. Much like spices make Indian food rich and flavorful, songs add zing to an Indian movie. As such Indian movies form a distinct genre -- a fact implicitly swept under the rug by applying the term 'musical' to them. To make the generalization that all Bollywood movies are bad musicals with superfluous songs is tantamount to saying, for example, that all Italians are alcoholics just because they commonly have a glass of wine with dinner. Mamma mia -- how's that for a musical?

Posted by Vishy at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2005

The Aunties' Network

One of the questions I get asked most often is, "Vishy, are you going to have an arranged marriage?"

I am not going to answer that question in this post (apologies to the 100 million or so beautiful eligible women out there -- you are just gonna have to hold your breath). Neither am I going to say if they are a good or a bad thing because cultural phenomena always seem weird in a different cultural context. However, I am going to try and explain the wonderful and awe-inspiring mechanism by which thousands of young Indian men and women are arranged to live happily ever after.

This is a slightly edited version of a write-up I did for Everything2 earlier. Your comments, as always, are much appreciated.

The Aunties' Network (SM) is a wide-area, distributed, reliable, multiply redundant and highly efficient peer-to-peer network of middle-aged ladies of Indian descent that stretches across India and any country with an Indian Diaspora. (Note: A middle-aged lady in India may generally be called 'aunty', in a context of respect and endearment. This term has nothing to do with other aunties of the Far East, who may be engaged in the world's oldest profession). It exists with the sole purpose of bringing together eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in arranged marriages. It is probably the world's earliest implementation of a Friendster-like system, where parents act as proxies for the actual individuals to be married. Some, who abhor the concept of arranged marriage, may even call the Network an international conspiracy, in the same league as the Illuminati, the Freemasons and The Matrix.

Young gentlemen and ladies generally get "plugged into" the Network when they finish their higher education. Whether explicitly informed of it or not, the ladies get plugged into the Network in their early 20s. The gentlemen are usually plugged in during their mid 20s, thus allowing them some time to earn some money, stature and a foothold for themselves in the grand scheme of things. A side-effect of this plug-in lag is that the groom in an arranged marriage is usually a few years older than the bride. With the recent mass exodus of young Indian gentlemen to faraway shores, their median age of entry into the Network is falling for two reasons:


Once an eligible individual has been plugged in, search messages are trickled along a wide Network of Aunty peers until a suitable match is found. Once a suitable match is found, a thorough background check is conducted to see if there could be a match. Matches may be verified using alternate connection paths in the Network until a reliably positive opinion of the individual in question is reached. The Network is powered entirely by goodwill and a genuine desire to find the best possible member of the opposite sex (can't imagine a Network for gay marriage anytime soon) for someone whose interests are close to your heart.

While there are few general-purpose strategies that ladies can follow to put off being plugged into the Network, gentlemen may engage in time-consuming and ungainly pursuits such as graduate school to postpone the day when they have a viable source of income and an automatic ticket into the Network.

Am I plugged into the Network? If you're so curious, be so nice as to ask me in person or drop me a personal email.

Posted by Vishy at 09:38 PM | Comments (2)