a post about culture

 

a few days ago, a question was asked on a radio station - does growing up in a multi-cultural environment come with its advantages?

responses to this question were solicited via whatsapp text message and voice notes.

i was driving so by the time i got to recording my voice note, the show was over.

but the question stayed in my head. especially because i’ve convinced myself into believing that i’ve grown up in a multi cultural environment.

on the radio show, the question was meant as one in which multi culturalism broadly meant living with many religions around oneself given that religion shapes most behaviours and behaviour shapes culture.

ever since the question i’ve tried to take my mind as far back in time as possible. i now have some flashes of 1990, a few grainy but long visuals from the early 90s, some well formed acts from the late 90s, and some very vivid acts from the 2000s.

Let’s get the flashes from the 1990s

A culture of contentment

it’s 1990, i am 8 years old and an only child. we have moved to a new apartment complex and in my first week in, my father takes me to a small group of boys playing indoor cricket close to our apartment. to my horror, he then also introduces me to them. not only should he know that interrupting a game of cricket is hazardous, but also that his son doesn’t really know how to play cricket by then. after that day and several other occasions, life has made it clear to me that parents seldom make wrong calls.

the boys welcomed me with open arms (as i later realised they didn’t have enough players) and thereafter began my journey with cricket. The friends I made on that day, are still with me as friends and if it weren’t for that introduction, pragati vihar of new delhi wouldn’t have gotten in their midst a seriously good all-rounder!

this apartment complex that we had moved in to was one which was only meant for government ‘servants’. so each and every kid there belonged to a house where almost 100% of the household income was coming from working in a job for the government of india.

so in a way we were all paying for each other in that apartment complex. which also meant that no one ever purchased or indulged in anything that wasn’t affordable for the others! that’s a point worth explaining - except for those homes where both parents were working with the government, most homes had similar if not same incomes. apartments are allocated by the government based on designation so the higher up one is, the bigger is likely to be their home. in this apartment complex, ALL units were exactly the same. all 792 of them were exactly the same in size and design.

we all went to similar schools, had similar cars (maruti 800), and behaved in a way that shaped culture in that apartment complex. it was frugal but never wanting, it was tight knit but never invasive, it was competitive but never cut throat.

power cuts were common and invariably brought everyone out and together. the ones at night were even better as they allowed the kids an hour of hide and seek while the parents chatted about inflation, their commute and a strong desire to buy a personal computer.

as children, we were shielded from conversations on religion, crime and negativity in general. it was possible, hence it was done.

this was culture too, and i call it a culture of contentment.

…Some well formed acts from the late 1990s

A culture of desire

life, in it’s simplest form, is our ability and willingness to balance the triad of needs, desires and wants. One look at your credit card statement and your bank statement and one already knows which way the balance is tilting. Last month, did you have more desires than you should?

The 2 people this article will get read by, will be from people who will know that the economic liberalisation of the 90s had a large part to play in the consumerism that enveloped urban india. And our apartment complex wasn’t shielded. Although as kids we went to similar schools, which happened to be the best schools in new delhi, the schools were also attended by other ‘rich’ kids some of whom came in cars, some walked to school and the others came in the same school bus but received pocket money which they lavishly spent in the school canteen.

I, for one, didn’t have that luxury. While we did have uniforms to which we had to adhere to strictly, however once in a while some kid would come in wearing their latest nike sneakers because they were either in the basketball team or because their shoes tore on the way to school.

Nothing adds up like desire, especially when it flashes in front of you every day of the week in some way or another. Adding up soon turns into bubbling up, and in a teenager it’s a lethal combination that can show up a variety of ways. One of the ways is upward pressure on parents to buy you the sneakers, the t-shirts and somewhere slip in a recommendation to your father that he needs to buy a car!

This was also the time that I turned from an only child to a sibling. So needless to say, the upward pressure on my parents doubled considering we were two boys, 8 years apart and the same toys won’t work for both of us!

My father was doing well for himself. He got himself a Ph.D, was now being sent overseas to learn and come back so the government of India could benefit. He made trips to Australia, U.K., Singapore and all the places which at that point in time were names on an atlas for me. The 2 people who will read this will know what an atlas is so I won’t need to add in explanatory notes.

When my father returned from a trip to the U.K. he got me a pair of sneakers by the brand name of Ascot. It’s been 26 years to that day and I remember the name, which to me is still obscure, because it was so obscure! I was very courteous in saying thank you to my father on seeing the shoes but behind the courtesy was absolute disgust for the shoes because Ascot didn’t look or sound like Nike, or Reebok, or Adidas. I couldn’t say that to my father. Watching Bollywood movies from an early age teaches one to act well in everyday life.

This was culture too, it was the culture of desire

…Cut to the vivid acts of the 2000s

the score card culture

for me, the decade of 2000 contained in it a cut-off which for every individual is the start of an era. That’s the time when one begins to work. Unlike the days of growing up, which was the decade of 1980s and 1990s, life was a straight line on which one ran. Off and on, there are some hurdles and hoops to go over, but one gets by with a little help from friends and family.

The first half of the decade of 2000 was a good preparation for me.

It started with that first step into university. It feels as if one has stepped on to a pedal, which has transported you into a different world. In the blink of an eyelid, there’s a concoction of power, freedom and elation that gets injected into your bloodstream and all you can see is blue sky. When you realise that you’re lying flat on the ground after a speeding cricket ball hit you on your balls while batting in your first cricket match on your first day of university, the embarrassment can be damaging!

Prying eyes, judgement and calculation starts on that day. I was fortunate that a bunch of my close friends from school were in the same college as me so we eased ourselves in and didn’t have to confront a whole new world of people on the first day. However, we had to on the second day.

It’s only after finishing Delhi University that I realised that scorecard meant more than the marks you secured in Std 12. That from day one of entering Delhi University, or for that matter, any/many universities, your worth is relative to someone else’s.

By and large, the factors that play in to your scorecard – how you commute to university, the clothes you wear, how you spend your Fridays and very importantly the language you converse in. Thankfully none of the friends I ended up making, cared for these factors. All we cared for was getting high, on minimum attendance.

Every time I think of my time at Delhi University, I have flash of some extreme memories that I feel have shaped me. In the first few weeks of university, I recall being invited to a night out by one of the new friends I had made. This was new to me. Not because I didn’t know what it was about but the fact that it wasn’t any more one of those things you did 1 day out of 365 days in school. This was going to be the way life was going to be. And that meant permissions (from parents), preparations (you had to look good and not look like you were trying hard) and back up plans in case anything got out of hand. I was cautious on the first one which happened to be at a 5 star hotel in Delhi. My friend picked me up from home, as we were a one car household and I had restricted access to that car.

Our friend, of course, had a Toyota with a driver. I remember having nothing to say to any one of the people I met at that dinner. Through the 3 hours I spent there, I uttered a total of 13.5 words. My scorecard was sub-zero and without hope.

I am thankful I didn’t lose any of those friends that took me to the party in the first place. We bonded over cricket and basketball which turned out to be the antidotes!

This was the time we finally moved to a larger apartment. Once which would house the ambitions of 2 boys – one stepping into teenage (my brother) and the other stepping into the slippery surface between adulthood and pretence of adulthood. More about this slippery surface later.

New apartment brings new neighbours..

Not in our case.

Housing provided by the government of India, ensures that as you move to a new housing complex, one way or another the same people that you lived with are bound to be around you. So when we moved in to the new apartment complex, more than half of our neighbours were from our previous life. This apartment complex and the apartments inside were bigger, and when anything becomes bigger it tends to start holding within itself much more than it’s supposed to.

In this case, more and better televisions – now that the age of satellite TV had dawned on India, and new TV channels were being launched almost every other day.

Better refrigerators, microwaves, airconditioners – back in early 2000s, these told you if the breadwinner of the household was actually winning.

This was culture too, it was the scorecard culture. A score card of what one had done.

 

Enough and more has been said about Delhi, a city that I love and belong to. Making the switch to Pune was life changing for me. The 2 years I spent in Pune prior to starting work in Gurgaon, were the best years of my life.

Worlds collided in those 2 years. The worlds of Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Calcutta, Goa, Hyderabad all collided under one roof. The battle was not about where biryani and street food is best, but something more complex.

There is a slippery space between adulthood and pretence of adulthood in which all 18-22 year olds play. During this time, you either need blinders or a pair of shoes with an amazing grip. If one has both, one can bypass this slippery space and just enter adulthood straightaway. However a handful of people possess both.

I will not speak about whether I carried a set of blinders or shoes or neither. To me, my time in Pune opened my eyes and my mind. Until the Pune chapter, life had been about moving from contentment, to desire to keeping score. All looking at the present, and relishing the past. It was during and after the two years in Pune, that life would become about potential, and about the future. Much like the time when you’re learning to ride a bicycle – the first few times there is someone to give you balance, however there comes a time when you know that in the next 3 minutes you are on your own.

Our class was +70 people strong and had the sharpest people, with a point of view on almost everything and the courage to say it like it is. On one occasion in the first week of joining, as we all rotated people trying to find the group where we all could make friends, I took a walk with one of the guys. By the end of the conversation, he told me I was arrogant. My first reaction was of shock, disbelief and in defence I said I was not. He told me not to interpret his statement in the strictest definition of arrogance. It doesn’t always need to come with negative connotations. If one makes others feel good about themselves while also coming across as arrogant, what is the harm? Being true to one self is what matters most.

This was culture too, it was the culture of truth. Of what is and what could be.

The trigger to this post was a simple question on radio and it took me back almost 30 years. The beginning of this post was typed on a mobile phone as it came to my head, and subsequently finished on a laptop. It’s important to document this too, to remind myself to do this more often.