Boo boo in select company

Boo boo in select company
Something to say?

Monday 15 February 2016

What a Con!

We've fallen for it - Valentine's day, Mothers' day, Fathers' Day...  What next? Postman's Day? We, the yuppie Indians of today - take out our heavier purses and give our money to the shops. We buy junk, which will be thrown out with next week's garbage. The only winners are the shops and the ad-agents who have been targeting us relentlessly through the year.

   So much to learn from the West and we go for the maniac end! When I came to England, escaping from a bad marriage, no one asked me why I had left my husband. No one asked me, ever, how much I earned. No one here asks a bachelor why he is not married or a married couple why they are not having children. Blessed liberty to live as you please.

   Teaching Comprehensive school in the early seventies I was impressed with the sense of humour of my students. They laughed at each other and themselves. I admired their individualism, like Amanda who said she was going to be a long-distance truck-driver. At fifteen she knew that was what she wanted. She also knew she was free to choose.

   If a British person claimed Einstein was Indian or that Indians discovered black holes, his friends would laugh him out of the pub. Indians have enough to their historical credit to stop purloining from the rest of the world. No- lady Diana did not have Indian ancestors. For heaven's sake!

   As for our riches, we could just cast our eye beyond our own navels. All those beggars on the street corners, the children sleeping rough who will never own a book, the women who support drunken husbands and even more drunken sons. We could spare a tithe for them.

   I object to being commanded to, coerced, conned into lifestyles, which are surplus to need just to feed the rampant commercialism of any world.

   I'd like to go back to that time when Kerala bought a set of clothes for Onam (in September, after our harvest,) and a pound of mutton on Vishu, our new year's day. We had no 'shopping' culture. School uniforms were bought once a year. Beyond that, that one set of clothes for Onam was precious. For the rest we got just enough. That mutton was a luxury for a fish-fed family. That one pound of mutton would have to feed a family of six on Vishu. But did it taste good?

   Christmas was celebrated only by Christians and Ramzan by the Muslims. My Christian friend, Mabel's mother, would sent us a piece of fruitcake with almond icing at Christmas, and our neighbours, the Mukkatil people would send us delicacies made of egg and chicken on Id and Ramzan. Now our family buys Christmas gifts for every one every year and I would love to cancel that practice.

A day of meditation would be good.