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Rohini Balakrishnan Ramanathan

The 'frothies' and me

I am really not one of those Indian-Americans who have knee-jerk reaction to the "all that's fit to print"( The New York Times' slogan) that gets printed about India in the US newspapers or broadcast on other media. I shall focus just on the print medium for this particular column.

I suspect I'm in the minority. Most desi folks I come across froth at the mouth reading reports about the treatment of widows in India; the high incidence of AIDS in India, the female feticide; bride-burning (the usual response to this is, "Oh, c'mon this is such a small number they are talking about" as if this makes it all okay); the traffic nightmares there; the potholes and cracks on roads; the lack of a proper network of highways for a nation that is an IT leader; about sisters committing suicide en masse by hanging for fear of being a dowry burden on their mothers... I must say I've never detected any froth around my mouth. Not that I'm not sensitive but I'm more disturbed that such horrible things happen in my country of birth.

The "frothies", if I may so call these folks who get hysterical over such reports, however, like to read about India's IT revolution, even as they cringe while reading about Narayana Murthy cleaning his own bathroom. Their constant complaint when they read not so pretty stories about India's seamy side: Why can't the Times write about the beautiful things about India? Its great culture, its gorgeous homes along Marine Drive, its tolerance towards all minorities (never mind these minorities are part and parcel of the country. So where does the question of tolerance come in is a bit puzzling) and many such "sweet" things.

Never mind we ourselves are not quite fully convinced of our "great" culture. Nor are we that well enlightened about our own literature or the arts. Then again, since so many Westerners have said so, it must be true.

It's very interesting that we yearn for the Westerner's stamp of approval but disapprove of their reporting of anything "unpleasant" about India. We like to hear them talk about the wonderful things of India yet we hate it when they pick on the seamier side. Why this double standard? Guess this is one reason why I -- a non-believer in double standards -- have refused to get all worked up.

Having distinguished myself from the "frothies" I must however confess that there are things that even I have a problem with. The one that irks me to no end is the way some Western reporters, including highly esteemed ones from highly esteemed papers like The New York Times, call the dhoti a loin cloth. The latest sighting happened in the Times report by Celia Dugger on the kidnapping of the famous Kannada actor Rajkumar. This is what the NY Times bureau co-chief in India writes: He [Veerappan] then picked up the elderly actor's spectacles, tucked them into a pocket and led him away, dressed only in loincloth, shirt and sandals.

I'm not quite sure if it was the matinee idol Rajkumar who sported a loincloth or it was the formidable Veerappan. For purposes of this column the wearer is of no consequence, only the garb is.

The picture that flashed before me when I read this is that of a kaupeen (Hindi) or komanam (Tamil) wearer amounting to being only half-dressed. A kaupeen or komanam is the piece of cloth that covers a man's private parts, sort of like a skinny diaper. So this amounts to the wearer being just in his undershorts. Somehow even a ruthless kidnapper like Veerappan, methinks, would have allowed his prey to dress more decently before whisking him away. He was after all, thoughtful enough to carry Rajkumar's spectacles!

I do not understand why by now the dhoti (Hindi)--oops, even as I write this I locate this word in my Webster's--or veshti (Tamil) has not found its way into the common English vocabulary like so many other Indian words have.

Some reporters more sophisticated than the reporter of this Times story call this garment a sarong or at least sarong-like. Hey even this would do, but no loincloth please, when to the best of my knowledge sophisticated people like Rajkumar will not be romping around in a loincloth, especially when they were expecting VIP company like Veerappan's.

A few other things that annoy me are, any time an Indian sports a single name (like let's say Jayalalitha, Veerappan, Rajkumar, et al) the Western reporter invariably points out how this person goes by only one name. Wow, how hard can it be to notice this? And anyway, what's so terrible about this? Somehow, in my mind, highlighting this fact seems to suggest people with single names are bastards.

Moving down the line, referring to the Indian government as Hindu government also irritates me like a grain of sand caught between the arc of my sole and my shoe. How come in a secular democracy a government ends up being a religious one? Never understood this epithet. In that case is the American government a Christian government?

Last but not least, one more thing that bowls me over is how a person's caste is almost always mentioned in most of these stories even when such knowledge has no bearing on the understanding of the story. Very often it feels like these reporters are secretly wishing that somehow the Indian castes would be wiped out because this classification doesn't fit the West's sensibilities. By no means am I condoning (what a fool I'll be to) discrimination based on caste, religion, creed or skin color or gender but, when a story's focus is not particularly this issue, it makes no sense to mention the caste of those featured in the story.

Much as the Westerner may think caste is a daily reality in every aspect of an Indian's life, somehow this is not what I recall growing up in India the first 18 years of my life. There was free socializing among all castes even in my own fairly orthodox family, although it's true that not all the household help will sit with us at the table to eat with us. They usually ate after we finished. In some families so did the mothers for that matter. These had more to do with customs than any rigid caste-based discrimination.

Honestly the only time I saw a strong attempt at caste rules being imposed was in diet and marriage. Yes, vegetarianism was the cuisine of caste-based choice in my family and yes, in arranged marriages, which mostly they were, matches from only the same caste/community were sought. Even these began to change with the later generations.

In all fairness, however, just like I have my threshold of tolerance when it comes to what I'm willing to read about India in the Western media, the "frothies" have their own thresholds, too, I guess. Of course, I fume too each time I read about female feticide because as a female this is very close to my heart. Was I just lucky that I survived an abortionist's scalpel?

But I don't get frothy when Celia Dugger and her colleagues in the Western media write about this and not about the palatial homes that the Maharajas used to live in at one time as often as they write about the ugly underbelly. I hope that shame -- including my own -- will eventually translate itself into action and ensure a change for the better.

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