My old school in Hindustan, dear old St. X., had a variety of teachers whose practices which were, well, decidedly peculiar .
Mr. S., for example, used to make delinquents crouch down in the native-shitting pose (known in torture cells around Hindustan as the murga mudra), and then march around the cricket field in the Delhi summer. There was the magnificent Mrs. M., who used to demand that all the lala-lets going to London for their vacations return bearing bras, since lingerie of the right proportions was evidently not available in India.
And, of course, there was Nagin, the snake-woman, who used to unbutton the shirts of her favored wards and slip her hand up and down their hairless chests, all the while recounting the tale of Nadir Shah’s bloody and rapacious sack of Delhi in 1739 (during which he stole the Takht-e-Taus, the Peacock Throne, as well as the honor of many an old-city lali, which, given the low-life halwais they are forced to marry, was probably a source of much joy).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I always imagined that things in Jesustan, with its concern for human rights and its faith in the innocence of childhood, would be different. It is – different, that is.
Last month an elementary-school teacher in St. Petersburg, Florida, put her five-year-old wards to work counting jelly beans, as part of a math exercise. One of her students started acting silly; the teacher responded by confiscating the child’s jelly beans. Not unnaturally, the child protested: she drew on the walls, then threw books and boxes, kicked a teacher in the shins, smashed a candy dish, and finally hit the assistant principal in the stomach.
You go girl!
At this point, or well before it, Mrs. Martins (she of the vilayati bras and the magnificent, all-desi udders) would have responded by whipping out her trusty 12-inch (no you perverted freaks, I know what you’re thinking and she didn’t use one, at least not in the classroom) cane and whacked the bejesus out of the brat. There would have been some yowls of agony, and that would have been that. Mr. S. would have frog-marched the little fuck in the mid-day sun. Nagin would have… well, let’s not go down that road.
In Jesustan, they are civilized and do not do not engage in this kind of vile and violent behavior. Instead, the staff of the Fairmont Park Elementary school called 911. A police car arrived, and Florida’s finest promptly dealt with the situation. Handcuffs were placed around the ankles of the child, and zip-tie plastic restraints around her wrists. [Parents of small children and sexual deviants are advised that that this maneuver must only be executed by highly-trained professionals].
You Don’t Go, Girl.
Now, the odd thing is that no one in Jesustan seems to think there is something a little, well, ahem, demented about a school and criminal justice system that handles five year olds in this way. The child’s mother, in particular, seemed to believe that the whole problem was that the Fairmont Park elementary school had nothing better to do than conspire to put her brat behind bars. “She’s never going back to that school”, Inda Akins said, “they set my baby up”.
Set her up? There you have it; at least Jesustani parents stand by their children. The day I had to have rabies shots after a savage dog bit me, my mother claimed I had probably done something to deserve it. I was very irate, because she was right: I’d thrown a stone at the dog.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
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.
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.
Monday, April 11, 2005
All About Style
For reasons it alone understands, the venerable Washington Post has been carrying news of the trial of that well-known mirasi, Michael Jackson, in its Style section, along with news about Italian couturiers, French hair-stylists and left-wing academics.
Now why, I ask, would a newspaper do such a thing? After all, the alleged rape of a small child is something that would, in my part of the world anyway, be handled by crime reporters (the lowest of low breeds, the shit-shovelling caste of the media world) not fashion columnists (Brahmins).
Actually, let me rephrase the question. The fact is that none of the Washington Post’s readers seem to think there is anything odd about the trial of a child-abuser featuring in the Style section. The problem of comprehension is, quite clearly, mine alone. Jesustanis are perfectly comfortable with the idea.
For the Jesustani, it would appear, Jackson’s activities are exactly as the Washington Post would have it: a style, a choice, a fashion statement. Jackson uses the enormous loot at his command to have his skin bleached, his hair straightened, his nose reshaped – in other words, to look more like a true Aryan, a member of The Master Race. Jackson also uses a part of his loot to bugger little boys. It is all a question of style.
Now, there is a catch here. It is not as if the Washington Post condones Jackson’s style choices. No one in this land can afford to do so; for all its eccentricities, Jesustan is a highly moral land. Here, as an ancient Greece, Socrates would have been forced to drink hemlock – not, of course, for his ideas (Beloved Leader would have quite approved of some of them) but his sexual choices. As is well known, Jackson and much of ancient Greece had this much in common, except no one in ancient Greece was in a position, so to speak, to hurl the first stone.
Thus, there are morally-acceptable choices – for example psychoanalysis, homosexuality, miscegenation, high-fibre salads – and morally-unacceptable choices, like child abuse, leaving dog-poop on the sidewalk, and red meat. Some choices are borderline, like shagging small furry animals, as long as they are not cats or dogs, both of which are revered by the Jesustanis. Marmots and ferrets are, as far as I can make out, permitted; the loss of one’s virginity to a buffalo, a practice favoured by strapping young peasants in saada Punjab has not yet been ruled upon.
Saala style maar raha hai, is what, I suppose, the Washington Post is telling us. It is all very odd, but there it is: The Master Race has style; I, sadly, do not.
Now why, I ask, would a newspaper do such a thing? After all, the alleged rape of a small child is something that would, in my part of the world anyway, be handled by crime reporters (the lowest of low breeds, the shit-shovelling caste of the media world) not fashion columnists (Brahmins).
Actually, let me rephrase the question. The fact is that none of the Washington Post’s readers seem to think there is anything odd about the trial of a child-abuser featuring in the Style section. The problem of comprehension is, quite clearly, mine alone. Jesustanis are perfectly comfortable with the idea.
For the Jesustani, it would appear, Jackson’s activities are exactly as the Washington Post would have it: a style, a choice, a fashion statement. Jackson uses the enormous loot at his command to have his skin bleached, his hair straightened, his nose reshaped – in other words, to look more like a true Aryan, a member of The Master Race. Jackson also uses a part of his loot to bugger little boys. It is all a question of style.
Now, there is a catch here. It is not as if the Washington Post condones Jackson’s style choices. No one in this land can afford to do so; for all its eccentricities, Jesustan is a highly moral land. Here, as an ancient Greece, Socrates would have been forced to drink hemlock – not, of course, for his ideas (Beloved Leader would have quite approved of some of them) but his sexual choices. As is well known, Jackson and much of ancient Greece had this much in common, except no one in ancient Greece was in a position, so to speak, to hurl the first stone.
Thus, there are morally-acceptable choices – for example psychoanalysis, homosexuality, miscegenation, high-fibre salads – and morally-unacceptable choices, like child abuse, leaving dog-poop on the sidewalk, and red meat. Some choices are borderline, like shagging small furry animals, as long as they are not cats or dogs, both of which are revered by the Jesustanis. Marmots and ferrets are, as far as I can make out, permitted; the loss of one’s virginity to a buffalo, a practice favoured by strapping young peasants in saada Punjab has not yet been ruled upon.
Saala style maar raha hai, is what, I suppose, the Washington Post is telling us. It is all very odd, but there it is: The Master Race has style; I, sadly, do not.
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