A co-worker and I were joking yesterday about how it would be funny if people wrote press releases about their lives, and posted it on their blogs. I thought that was a fun idea. I think though, that journalistic writing lends itself better to the sort of fun pieces I’m interested in. Thusly, I present the first fake news-story–
From left: Shonai (Mishri’s sister), Mishri, Mrs. Tonse, Mrs. Someshwar
The Amchi Girl Dilemma.
An excerpt:
Few people know of the Amchi community. It’s a small coastal community in southwestern India, known for its distinctly lyrical language, and high consumption of sea-food. But what started out as a small impoverished community at the start of the 20th century has fast become one of the more prosperous Indian ethnic groups. Amchis have spread across southern and western India, and across the world. Many of them have advanced degrees in engineering, and medicine and the odd one in communications (Aka Mishri Someshwar).
But amchis are a fast dwindling bunch. There are only 250,000 of them left. And girls like Ms. Someshwar aren’t helping.
“I want to get married before I’m 30,” Someshwar, 23, notes. “But I’m not sure I want to marry an amchi.”
No amchi marriage= lower likelihood of amchi babies. Community size dwindles. Sound the alarm bells.
I meant to write this post a few days ago. August 15th. India’s 60th anniversary of independence.
A few days ago I was talking to my superviser. She said something along of the lines of “you’re moving back to India eventually, right?” And I think I stuttered something about only moving permanently if I was dragged there kicking and screaming. It’s not that I hated India. It’s that it possesses factors that make it impossible for me to contemplate living there long-term.
Then I very incoherently explained random, instinctive, sensory things that make me uncomfortable in India. “People stare at you!” I blurted. Then I mentioned the soul-crushing poverty, the fact that I don’t speak ANY Indian language, that I don’t really know my way around and the fact that when you go to an English-medium school and are resistant to Indian things, you become a Anglicized non-Indian Indian. This is not true for everyone’s experience in the average English medium school, obviously. Most of my friends are multilingual well-adjusted Indians.
I don’t remember who I was telling that living in India reminds me of being a child. I feel helpless, uncertain and a little bit scared. I know the streets of Washington better than the streets of Bangalore even though I spent four times more time there than here. I can go to work in the States by myself, find an unknown destination by myself (and with the help of Wmata.com and Mapquest). No such options in India. Or rather, it would be doubly intimidating for me to figure it out.
There are several things about India that are likable. Such as that it isn’t a war-zone. Funny, I know, but when you consider the number of postcolonial countries currently in some state of war, civil war or political and social disarray, it makes you feel grateful. It makes me feel that way. I know that I could go to India at any point and not worry about being shot. Sure, we have riots and corruption and dowry.. but we’re 20 times better off that Sierra Leone or Eritrea. I mean, those country’s expats must feel even more bleak, albeit for different reasons.
I’m glad we’ve remained a democracy, even if on occasion it was mostly DINO (Democracy In Name Only). I don’t know why we held it together and Pakistan couldn’t. Goes to show that even if you share the same religious, you can still find ways to divide yourself.
Other things I love? The food, my family, my friends, the insane amount of cricket on television.
It’s funny how my moods change on this. When my parents came over for my graduation, I was going through a challenging period in other aspects of my life. The combination of having them there, and getting through that made me convinced that I had to go back and live there for a couple of years.. not because I love the country, but because I miss my family. Also: the food. Also: the fact that I secretly believe that my friends in India are happier than my friends here. Don’t ask me for proof, because I can’t really offer any. Is it because they question things less? I don’t know.
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I still love my country in the most abstract way you can fathom. I love the millenia-old cultures that form it. I still get thrilled when we win a significant cricket match or manage to squeeze a favorable treaty out of the States or when I watch Charlie Rose or Bill Gates talk about India as an emerging power.
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Even though this is unrelated to the “why does Mishri not want to move back forever” question, I might as well answer this. How do Indians feel about the English? I think that Indians in India have mostly moved on. New era, new sets of rules, they need us as much as we need them, if not more. We’re more confident than previous generations, more aggressive, and less intimidated by people whose skin is 20 shades lighter than ours. That said, I think Indians overseas, especially those who moved here in the 70s, are more likely to have that nationalistic fervor.
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I don’t know if this incoherent jumble of thoughts means anything. But I figured I might as well throw them out there.
I’ve read for some time now about the changes coming to the New Republic. But I have to say that the impact of seeing the actual magazine far outweighs reading descriptions of it. I’m not a subscriber, but I have seen older issues, and this one is definitely an improvement. It’s amazing how something like better-quality paper and more illustrations can enliven a magazine. That’s certainly what’s happened here.
The problem with magazines, of course, is that in general, their markets and staffs are shrinking. Certainly this is the case in the United States. The reverse is true of India, my home country. Magazine publishing is booming there, as this Time magazine article attests. It’s ironic that I came here to study about journalism and publishing when the real boom is actually taking place in India.