The state of things
Yesterday I spent the day with one of my cousins and her family and it was an awesome day. Her and her family have recently shifted from USA to India and it was insightful getting their views on settling back into the Indian society. My cousin has given me a couple of low budget telugu movies that I intend to watch sometime this week to catch up on the local film industry scene. I loved spending time socializing with her and her family and it made me wonder if I should actually spend more time socializing when I am back in New Zealand. Over the past few years I've cut down on my socializing heaps so that I have more time on my hands to focus on movies but that leaves a social void and I guess I need to find a balance between work and social life.I watched 1 and half bollywood movies over the past couple of days and I enjoyed the one I actually finished completely but didn't really care much for the one I left half way. The one I liked was 'Taare Jamein Par' and I would've loved it if there were no song and dance sequences plus for the better part of the movie the acting was understated. The other movie I tried watching was a remake of an old hindi movie called 'Don' and the new one looked slick but the acting was over the top and there was no cohesiveness to the storytelling and I couldn't really see any point in the remake since there was no unique point of view.
One of the things I've noticed here is that most people tend to go on huge diversions/detours while talking. You'll be having a conversation and mid-sentence the topic would change randomly to something not even closely related and after sometime the conversation would again veer back to the original conversation, somehow. And during the entire period, you are expected to know exactly what everyone is talking about. It can be slightly disorienting and my coping mechanism is that I phase out of the conversation till it comes back to the one I was following. :-) The other thing is people don't like introducing themselves when they call up. They expect you to recognize their voice and again it is very disorienting - especially when you can't recognize their phone numbers. It is fine if it is someone you've been talking to on a regular basis or someone you've talked to recently but calling up after ages and then expecting to just know who you are talking to is rather presumptuous.
Andhra Pradesh is a strange state in the sense that the government is promising unsustainable welfare schemes for the masses like offering rice for Rs.2 a KG {about NZ$0.05 per KG} with a limit of 20 KG's per person - for people living under the poverty line. Mind boggles when you think that at retail the rice goes upwards of Rs.25 per KG in India and in New Zealand - it is more like NZ$2-NZ$3 a KG. The price differential is borne by the state government and the burden of which ultimately falls on the middle class - which gets taxed more to cover the financial shortfalls. As it is there is global food scarcity and with populist and unsustainable schemes like this you have to wonder how much lower can the politicians scoop to stay in power.
A different aspect of the state is that the work ethic in general is poorer than other Indian states - people like to make a quick buck and don't even want to work for it. Hyderabad boasts of major multi-national software firms having their offices in the city but that does nothing to change the imbalance of work culture leaning towards inaction. Once you scratch the surface there are so many things you see that you don't like and in general the Indian intelligentsia doesn't like those faults either but the system is too big and too flawed for anyone to even try and fix it. Small steps can change the course of things but I am not sure if that'll ever happen in India - even in a global economy as the balance of trade is shifting towards emerging markets like China and India where whoever enters the market gets assimilated into the local way of thinking and functioning in order to make profits.
I might be sounding negative about the way things are in India - I am not - I am perplexed, surprised and at times outraged at the state of things but this is not my fight. Sometimes I wonder if New Zealand had a similar population explosion and scarcity of resources would people be the same as people are here in India - good natured despite all their flaws or would we see an uglier face of humanity? I wonder.
Amit
posted by Amit @ 7:16 PM
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