The Art of Whinging

One major problem with life in Jesustan, my friend B. recently pointed out, is that there is very little to complain about.

B., sadly, is right. The countryside is beautiful; the cities relatively clean. Water flows from taps on demand, and the electricity never goes out. Food is cheap and plentiful and public health standards are so high that one researcher I know of at the Smithsonian Museum has been reduced to studying the incidence of malaria among rare birds in Hawaii. It is horrible.

Moaning is a key part of the Hindustani zeitgeist. Of course, there is plenty to complain about. The town of Vellore, from where B.’s ancestors hailed, has been immortalized in Tamil poetry for its notable attributes: a river without water (the Palar ran dry after they built a dam upstream); a temple without a god (Tipu Sultan swiped the idol) and women without beauty (also men, if B. is representative). A sublime lament!

So what does a Hindustani in Jesustan do?

Default-mode whinging, favored by computer engineers who live in San Jose simply transplants home-country cribbing to Jesustan. If only Hindustan had go its act together, they insist – if only it had super-highways and soft toilet paper – they could have been happily sitting in their verandahs sipping a cup of tea after a happy half hour of morning exercise, thrashing their wives. Instead, they have to put up with some bitch who has got all sorts of ideas in her head after she started watching The Oprah Winfrey Show and now threatens to call 911 if you as much as mention nylon saris and kerosene.

If you’re an English-medium desi, you turn to Mother Jones and Arundhati Roy to find things to whinge about. English-medium desis howl about the inequities of Jesustani capitalism, the conditions of the poor, the appalling treatment of habshis, the fact that Beloved Leader is a moron, environmental degradation, and the deplorable habit of the natives of sending out expeditionary forces to obscure corners of the world on expeditions of rape and pillage. The problem is, all of this true of Hindustan as well: we’re well familiar with Field-Marshal Lootson-Maarson, and the less said about our home-grown outrages on the poor and dispossessed, the better. As such, this form of whinging is vaguely unsatisfying, like saying ‘shit’ instead of tatti, or going to Tai-Chi classes instead of throwing a stone at the nearest dog.

B. has, after considerable research, hit on a new line of attack. Having visited the recent Cherry Blossom flowering in Washington, DC, B. notes that this event arms us with a genuine reason to complain about life in Jesustan. Cherry blossoms, he notes, have no scent. By contrast, the mallipoo gives off magnificent fragrance, strong enough to even mask the unfortunate odor of Arnica hair oil, which Thambins insist on plastering on their hair. Cherry blossoms have no color; in Hindustan, even the vilest shit-bearing nullah gives birth to exquisite-pink lotus blossoms. Jesustan might be a great power, B. has made clear, but its flowers suck. A Solomon! The scoreboard? Hindustan 990283746502938475 Jesustan 0.3. The stakes are low, I admit, but still, a win is a win.