Chetan Bhagat [By Which I Mean His Books]

So a large portion of my time in India has been spent reading. As I [sort of] mentioned in a previous entry, I used to read ravenously during any and all school vacations all the way through high school. Then, some time after I began college, my thirst for books began to wane. I'm not sure what caused the change; perhaps, tired of reading and analyzing so many novels for my classes, I preferred to veg out in front of the television during my free time. Or maybe I decided that a college-age English major decided to read more literature and less chick lit, and I just couldn't muster the same kind of reading fervor that The Princess Diaries series elicits in me for books like Emma. I'm not saying classic literature can't be great to read, but it definitely slows my reading pace. (Case in point: I read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, definitely the most literary of the books I brought to India, for the first two weeks of my trip here. In contrast, I read three of Chetan Bhagat's novels in five days this past week.)

Anyway, all of this was to say that one of the best parts of my trip so far has been the rekindling of my obsession with books. I owe a fair amount of this rekindling to the works of Chetan Bhagat, author of four novels, the titles of all of which I only just realized begin with a number:

1. 5 Point Someone
2. One Night @ the Call Center
3. The 3 Mistakes of My Life
4. 2 States

It seems that all of his books have inspired Bollywood movies, though the only one I was aware of was 5 Point Someone, upon which the recently released blockbuster 3 Idiots, starring the ever-charming Aamir Khan, was based. I had actually heard of this novel two years ago, the last time I visited India, but didn't read it until just now. For a quick rundown:

• 5 Point Someone is about 3 male protagonists and their time at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, AKA IIT Delhi, pretty much the most prestigious engineering college in this country. The guys screw up in every which way. One of them falls in love, one tries to commit suicide, they struggle with familial pressure and academic pressure, and somehow manage to forge an incredibly strong friendship, all while drinking and smoking weed quite a bit. The book is funny, dark, and at times rather incisive. In fact, these three descriptors can be applied to all of Bhagat's novels.
• One Night @ the Call Center is about, well, one night at a call center, this one in Gurgaon, a borough, I believe, of Delhi. 3 men and 3 women working together see themselves and their lives sort of unravel over the course of one night's events, and emerge on the other side of the darkness--with the help of a mysterious call from God--with renewed senses of themselves, their hopes and dreams, and assurance of the paths they must take in order to reach their goals. This book was pretty inspirational, and also dark, funny, and incisive. The only part I didn't like about it was the rather blunt and sweeping characterization of Americans as stupid, paranoid, and smug. Nationalism and patriotism are all well and good, but I don't think they need to be pursued by demonizing or putting down other nations.
• The 3 Mistakes of My Life is the most unlike the others of Bhagat's novels, because it is set in the old part of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and is about three boys who are not very financially privileged, unlike the main characters in all the other novels. Also setting this one apart was the examination of religion, politics, and cricket (the sport), and how the three affect daily life in India. Bhagat was definitely trying to push a certain agenda in the novel, making his villain part of a religious political party and his first-person protagonist disinterested in politics, but as I didn't disagree with the views he advanced, I wasn't bothered. I may have liked this one the best of Bhagat's novels.
• 2 States is subtitled "The Story of My Marriage," and it's basically just that: Bhagat is Punjabi, and his wife Anusha, whom he met at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIM-A), is Tamil Iyer (incidentally, just like me). The protagonist of 2 States is a male Punjabi student at IIM-A who falls in love with a Tamil Iyer girl. The bulk of the book details their struggles to gain their families' approvals before getting married. This was the first of Bhagat's books that I read, and I found it funny and fresh. It was especially humorous to see my own culture from the vantage point of someone outside of it but trying to find a way in.

Bhagat's books definitely have some grammatical moments that I take issue with, but I think it might just be a matter of different kinds of grammar being acceptable in India than those that are considered correct in the US. I really like that Bhagat seems to be trying to do something with his novels. He's not just telling stories; he's saying things about India, about the schooling system, the linguistic pride that divides the country, the dangerous mix of politics and religion, the disenchantment of the youth, and the hopes of his still-infant nation. He's the best-selling English language novelist in Indian history, and I feel this distinction is definitely well-earned. A few more things about Bhagat's books:

1. All of his protagonists are having sex with their girlfriends. Are most young people in India sexually active before marriage? The idea inspires both horror (ew are my cousins doing that? [Somehow I doubt it]) and surprise. Growing up in the States, I, like most other children of Indian immigrants, have been exposed to a sort of fossilized version of Indian culture, courtesy of my parents. In my mind, Indian people never have premarital sex. But I mean, some of them must; otherwise Bhagat wouldn't put it in each of his books.
2. All of Bhagat's protagonists are first-person male. This is rather refreshing, because I most often read books with female protagonists. Much of the comedy in his books comes from his protagonists' candid descriptions of heterosexual boys' reactions to girls and their physical attractiveness. Also, the male point of view allows for some level of incisiveness that may be lost with a female protagonist. For instance, in One Night @ the Call Center, the protagonist [rather insightfully] notes that "only women think there is a reason to thank people if they listen to them."

Not much else to report on the topic of Bhagat's novels, except that they're definitely worth a read. All four managed to make me tear up at times, which is saying something, because though I'm kind of a crier, I hardly ever respond to books, a trait that sometimes makes me wonder if I'm an emotional rhinoceros. I wonder if, in keeping with the numerical theme, Bhagat's next novel's title will begin with Four...

Diglossia

Disclaimer: I totally am not a linguist and don't really know anything about diglossia (or the Tamil language) on a scholarly level. I'm just venting a little here.

I wish I could write an exciting entry about all of the cool things I've been doing here in Chennai, but I've honestly not done that much cool stuff. More than anything, I'm sort of wrapping myself into the fabric of my extended family's shared life here. I eat lunch with my grandma, tiffin with Akhil, and dinner with the rest of the family. I'm reading quite ravenously (books by Chetan Bhagat, author of Five Point Someone, upon which 3 Idiots was based, for now; I'll write an entry about his novels once I finish the last one I have by him), surfing the internet, and learning a sloka (prayer) in Tamil from my grandma. Which brings me, actually to the title of this entry: diglossia.

Diglossia is defined as "a situation where a given language community uses two languages or dialects," "the use of two varieties of a language by members of a society for distinct functions or by distinct groups or classes of people," and "the existence of two official languages in a society." And it's one of the characteristics of Tamil, my mother tongue (a phrase I believe only South Asian people seem to use...). What diglossia does to my world is mess it up. While Indian Americans whose mother tongue is Hindi can [with some effort] understand Hindi song lyrics, and Hindi poetry, can read a Hindi newspaper or watch a Hindi newscast and understand what he or she is reading or hearing, I can't do the same with Tamil.

Of course, I'm simplifying this a little: you'd have to be pretty proficient at Hindi to really understand a newscast or newspaper or poetry in the language, and I can definitely pick up words here and there in Tamil film songs if I try hard enough. But really: because I've never studied Tamil, only learned it through speaking to my family, I'm largely unaware of the true forms of most of the words I speak in this language. For example: if I were to say "it's raining" in Tamil, I would say "mazhai peyyarthu." But if I were to write it (or if the same phrase were to appear in a song, say), it would actually be "mazhai peygirathu." [And don't even get me started on transliterating Tamil; something as lovely as "moonlight caught in a bowl" looks a little ridiculous when you have to spell it out as "vennillaa velicham kinnaththil vizhinthu"] In short, the spoken form of my native language is kind of like AIM talk: abbreviations and shortenings galore. This would all be fine and dandy, if only I had been aware of this some time before I was around twenty years old. But I wasn't. So I went through a fair chunk of my life bemoaning the fact that I just didn't get Tamil. I could understand Hindi film song lyrics, for crying out loud, but lyrics in my own language, the first one I ever spoke, went over my head. What's wrong with that picture, right?

Thankfully, finding out about diglossia served to relieve me of my slight inferiority complex/identity crisis. It also, though, makes me feel a little cheated. Wouldn't life be so much easier if I were a native Hindi speaker and didn't have to work so darn hard to decipher my own language? I feel a bit like I'm being cheated of some sort of linguistic birthright. I mean, Tamil has a proud literary tradition: It not only predates Sanskrit, but has outlived it as a spoken language. But I find myself on the outside of much of its beauty, simply because I never formally learned it. I was hoping to learn Tamil in earnest (from my grandmother, a retired schoolteacher; she taught music in school, but she definitely knows Tamil well enough to teach it) during my time here, but I kind of lost interest somehow or other. Maybe I should do what I can in my last seven days. When all you're doing is reading novels and playing on your iPod Touch and bumming around, I'm sure you could squeeze lots of learning into the time that would have been whiled away otherwise.

To that end, I'm going to go chill with my grandma now.

Born Confused

The title of this entry is a reference to the book, by Tanuja Desai Hidier, of the same name, and not a descriptor of me. If anything, I think I was born utterly confident of myself and my place in the world (the expression on my face in various baby pictures attests to this). It's now that the confusion has begun to settle in.

I borrowed this book, along with two others, from a friend shortly before leaving for India, and brought all three with me to read while I'm here. So far, I've read three books in toto: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin [itself borrowed, funnily enough, from the aforementioned friend] and 2 States by Chetan Bhagat. I thoroughly enjoyed all three, though the first was definitely the most literary, if you will, of the bunch. The other two were good stories, and I read both in two days flat. They're the sort of books people in India would call good time-pass: not exactly life-changing, but entertaining, and not a bad way to spend a few hours of your life. Especially when I was reading 2 States, and now while reading Born Confused, I found/ind myself looking up from the pages of the books groggily, having forgotten that I'm still in India, or that the day has progressed around me while my nose was stuck in a book. I can hardly remember the last time I used to feel this way.

During my elementary, middle, and high school summers, my sister and I would go to the library every two weeks (or whenever our books were due) like clockwork, to return the read ones, renew the unread, and select a fresh new pile of books to delve into. Somehow, that ritual became more and more diluted as I entered college and neared its completion, so that the two-week stretch I still have in Chennai, with little else to do but read books during all my free time, feels almost like a foreign concept to me. But I'm beginning to remember and love the way I used to feel about books, when they were just stories to dive into and not literary masterworks to analyze, as I began to see them in college.

All of that, though, was a preface to the real topic of this entry, which is Born Confused. I've known of this book's existence for quite some time, first becoming aware of it around that time somewhere during high school when books about young adults searching for their South Asian identity became all the rage. I never read it, though, because I was a bit disillusioned by some of its kindred spirits, which portrayed petulant children of immigrants who just didn't get "it"about their heritage and somehow managed to find "it" by the end of the book. I thought this one started out a bit the same, but as I'm getting further into it (it's rather long for a book of its genre), I'm beginning to relate more and more to the protagonist. The poor girl (Dimple) is completely lost about Indian culture, and somehow seems less Indian at all junctures than her very-much-white best friend, a "friend" who manages to outshine her, ignore or not notice her feelings, and steal the spotlight away from her whenever possible. It actually really makes me angry. The boy that Dimple's parents think is perfect for her (he being super-Indian and all that), the boy that she never thought she would like but actually ends up falling for, is also the boy that her best friend decides to set her sights upon, oblivious to the fact that Dimple still likes him. (Though, to the best friend's credit, Dimple never comes right out and says so, which is both infuriating and completely relate-able; she doesn't think anyone would ever prefer herself to her best friend, so when the boy seems to like the friend [though any non-idiotic reader would see that he likes Dimple], she doesn't speak up for herself, because who wants to put herself on the line like that?)

Anyway. I'm really not liking the best friend in this book. And though the book has its cheesy made-for-immigrant-kids moments, it still has strong imagery and some rather lovely phrasings, not to mention characters that really do jump off the page. I'm thinking Dimple will end up with the boy her parents think is perfect for her. Or at least I hope so. Let's see.

[Interesting aside: Something Borrowed, borrowed from the same friend who lent me Born Confused, also features a protagonist whose best friend has always overshadowed her--and always been allowed to do so. Interesting that my friend called both of these two of her favorite books. I wonder if there's something to the similarity of the characters that speaks to my friend's own personality.]

Coming Attractions

I really want to blog about my time here in detail, and do it right with photos and everything, which means I probably won't get to do so until I get home (which is approximately five weeks [OMG five more weeks] from now). So that I don't forget the things I wanted to write about, and so that I actually write about this trip instead of just posting pictures on Facebook, here's a list of topics I want to cover in future blogs:

1. Mahaballipuram (really amazing historical city on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Tamil Nadu)
2. A Primer on South Indian Temples (because I've visited so many while here, and have been taking pictures as well)
3. What Once Was and What Might Have Been (my parents' history here and musings upon the life I might have had had my father not been recruited by an American company--and thank goodness he was)
4. The Ugly Truth (about the unpleasantnesses of India as I experience it, encompassing things as specific as my family here and general as the widespread lack of soap in public restrooms, a state of affairs that makes me want to use this smiley: -__-. What's the point of washing your hands without soap?!)
5. Narayana Tirtha Aarathanai (this is the weekend music festival, held in the village [and I mean village] where my mother grew up, that I attended this past weekend. It's one of the main reasons I left for India as early as I did and am staying for as long as I am.)
6. The beauty of the Indian countryside

Those are the only posts I've thought of so far, but I'm sure I'll come up with more as time goes on, and that miscellaneous items will begin to coalesce as my trip continues. I've been in Thanjavur, the town where I was born, for 8 days now, and I'm leaving with my family for Bangalore via train tomorrow night. From Bangalore, I'm heading back to Chennai on March 2, and the night of March 17 will see me on a plane to Singapore!

And There'll Be Sun Sun Sun...

I feel almost guilty [almost, but not quite] that I'm enjoying temperate, sunny weather in Chennai, India while my friends back home shiver in 40-degree weather. Then I remember that I'm covered in mosquito bites (and getting more by the minute) and I don't feel so guilty anymore. This, my friends, has been the [happy] refrain (happy refrain, that's from some song I think...anyone know which? "And we will sing this happy refrain..." something like that) of nearly all the postcards I've written so far--and I've only written ten out of the 28 or so I'm to write from India. Funny story: the postcards, which feature scenes only from South India (in fact, I think, only from Tamil Nadu--which makes me happy because yay South India!) cost 6 rupees each. Postage for each one to America costs 15 rupees each. To be expected, but it's still pretty funny.

Other news:

1. My cousin who picked me up at the airport is a pretty darn good driver, which is saying something because driving in India is insane.
2. I made enchiladas for my two cousins here in Chennai for tiffin yesterday. (I love the word tiffin. Tiffin tiffin tiffin.) They rather enjoyed them, but now I have lots of refried beans and tortillas and enchilada sauce left in the refrigerator. I'll have to get my aunt and uncle to eat an enchilada or two later today.
3. Yesterday I showed my cousins (Abhi and Akhil, so I can stop writing "my cousins" all the time) the video for "Down" by Jay Sean on my iPod Touch (yay iPod which has proven so useful on this journey so far!). It was rather an interesting moment, just because there I was, Indian by birth but thoroughly American, showing my Indian-Indian cousins an r&b song by a British-Indian guy. They didn't really say whether they liked the song.
4. I bought myself Indian shampoo on the first day I got here. I'm really fascinated by the concept of beauty products and cosmetics made solely for Indian women. Foundation that's actually brown? Yes, please! (Okay fine, you can get brown foundation in the States, too, but it's different here. It just is. Plus, cosmetics are a bit cheaper here.
5. I won't be leaving India for another five weeks, but when I do, I'm going to go crazy buying Indian packaged food. We've been to the grocery store twice already to buy enchilada supplies, and I've begun to scope out all the types of noodles and sauce mixes and soups I can buy to fill up my soon-to-be-emptied suitcases. Yay empty suitcases! Speaking of which, when I was unpacking the things my parents had bought for our extended family here in Chennai, I found that it brought me great joy to begin clearing out my suitcases. It generally bring me joy to throw things out or get rid of things: papers, old ticket stubs, and so on. This is not really a very good thing, I'm afraid, because it's nice to hold onto objects that carry sentimental value. But I've never been very good at that.
6. There's a store near my uncle's flat that sells fresh chips. Kind of like a donut or bagel shop, except with chips. There are chips made of all sorts of vegetables and tubers: plantains and potatoes and lots of other Indian vegetables that I don't know the English names for (or the Tamil names, come to think of it...). I need to hit that place up soon because chips in India (even regular potato chips) are FTW.
7. I'm planning to get my nose pierced this Saturday. I'm pretty nervous about it, not so much for the impending pain, but because I really don't know how I'll look with my nose pierced. Truth: it could turn out really terribly. Also truth: I don't really care that much. I've wanted to have my nose pierced ever since I was a little girl. My mother has her nose pierced, like my grandmothers and most of my aunts. It's just something Indian women do. So hopefully the next time I blog I'll be able to tell you what it's like to get one's nose pierced in India. Let's cross our fingers for a no-harrowing experience!

All in all: I haven't had coconut water or roasted corn or mangoes or palm fruit (my mom says it's probably out of season, which breaks my heart a little) yet, nor have I gone to any temples, but I'm having rather a good time here so far. It's nice to be here A) in February, when the weather doesn't have me sweating constantly; and B) alone. I'm not being dragged around by the whims of my parents (my dad is usually fun when we're in India, but my mom goes insane, talking incessantly about how there's not enough time to do all the things she needs to do). Being here alone makes me feel grown-up, in a good way, and truly participatory in my experience here. I get to suggest what I'd like to do or where I'd like to go. Accordingly, Abhi and Akhil are supposed to take me to a coffee shop today, which should be a trip.

Being here is nice. I just hate that I'm missing such a big chunk of my life back home (seven weeks is a long time!) while I'm away.

Note: Entry title comes from "5 Years Time" by Noah and the Whale, which is a fantastic and fun song.

Fear of Flying [Things]

Seeing as how I'm leaving on a long international flight tomorrow afternoon, it's pretty darn good that I don't have a fear of flying. I associate a certain level of discomfort with flying, (I have gotten airsick once or twice, and being in the air for that long does weird things to my body) but I rather enjoy the important and excited feeling I get when I'm wheeling bags through an airport. Flying, therefore, doesn't really bother me.

Flying things, on the other hand, are a different story altogether. I've known for as long as I can remember (or as long as I've been articulating fears) that I'm afraid of moths and butterflies. They're so fluttery and fragile and you can just run into them at any given time. Something about those creatures really freaks me out. I didn't realize until I was about ten or eleven years old that the same kind of fear translates to birds. Again, something about their fragility and the fluttery way they move. I don't really think they'll harm me. I just don't like them near me, and I think it's because I'm afraid I'll hurt them. Anyway, I've recently begun to wonder if I'm as afraid of birds as I once was. I mean, I'll admire the occasional bird when I'm out running, and tropical birds are rather beautiful in pictures. And I've been wondering lately, in general, if the things we call our personalities aren't just cleverly constructed versions of ourselves that rigidify with time simply because we like the way they look and sound. By which I mean maybe I just think I'm afraid of birds, when really I'm not anymore. This morning, though, that theory was proven wrong. There was an unusually large contingent of blackbirds in the parking lot when I drove onto campus, and I only noticed them once I had already stepped out of my car. I walked around to the passenger side door to grab my backpack and purse, and was horrified to discover one of the birds sitting on the roof of my car once I looked up. As it flew away, I definitely shuddered and said "Oh my God" at least once or twice. So the answer is clear: I'm still afraid of birds. And probably always will be.

In other news:

1. I'm officially going to be a medical student at Baylor next year. I've broken the other medical schools' hearts by withdrawing my applications to them, and I've put down my deposit. I couldn't resist the siren song of the Texas Medical Center, even though I'd love to get out of Houston for the next four years. I keep telling myself that I'll leave for residency. I will. I will.
2. I'm leaving for India tomorrow afternoon, and will be carrying quite possibly the heaviest purse known to mankind (containing 2-3 books, a journal, a portable DVD player, two MP3 players, and my wallet, passport, ticket, etc...since when did I become such a wired, pampered American?) cleverly disguised within a backpack. I hope the airline will allow me to carry it on along with my rolling carry-on. I think I should be okay.
3. I'm having breakfast at EIGHT AM tomorrow with a friend who used to live in Houston but moved to Tennessee last fall and is in town for the weekend. I'm really excited about the seeing her part, but rather horrified at the fact that this makes two weeks during which I've had to be somewhere at 8 AM on Saturday. What's up with that?

Here's to a wonderful trip and blogging from Asia!

A New Beginning

I've officially defected from Xanga and come over here. I've been thinking about doing this for quite some time, (a bit idly, I'll admit) but I was hesitating because I always develop attachments to the things I use often--cameras, computers, glasses, cars, and also blogging sites, apparently. I felt a bit like I would be betraying my little ol' Xanga were I to start a new blog here. But since I haven't posted regularly in my little ol' Xanga for ages, I don't feel so guilty anymore. Besides, the Xanga had too much of my teenybopper past attached to it; perhaps that's why I haven't blogged much recently: it was slightly buried in the remnants of the past. Anyway, though, here I am!

Having graduated a semester early, I'm spending this spring semester working in my lovely plant genetics lab on campus (You're sure to hear more about it as time wears on. Lots of fun stuff happens in lab.) and going to India (to visit family) and Singapore (to visit a friend) for seven weeks! Which is a long time. Which brings me to the reason I felt like posting in the first place. I know the trip could be really good, if I went at it with the right attitude. I'm sure there will be many memories to be made, lots of fun to be had, much soul-searching to be accomplished [check it out--countable and uncountable nouns in that list, woot!] in both India and Singapore. Yet I kind of don't want to leave home. I feel like being gone for such a huge chunk of the semester will lose me the opportunity to watch my friends do a lot of interesting things--not to mention to do a lot of interesting things (i.e. go to Chicago over spring break, do random stuff in lab that both annoys and entertains the postdocs, linger obnoxiously long over lunch in South Servery, do movie nights and celebrate 21st birthdays and on and on) with my friends here at home. And I know I'll get homesick in India; I always do. Plus I've never actually gone there by myself before, so I'm slightly nervous about lugging around my bags and making my way through the airport and actually knowing what I'm doing.

All that being said, though, if this trip isn't going to suck, I need to get myself excited for it. So to that end, here is a list of things I am looking forward to doing during my trip to Asia:

1. Drinking fresh coconut water (eleneer; how the heck do you transliterate that?)
2. Eating palm fruit (or so I think it is; all I know is it's called nungu--again, how do you transliterate that?--in Tamil)
3. Eating roasted corn (suttu solam!)
4. Seeing Singapore for the first time!
5. Visiting the temples I love
6. Writing lots of postcards to friends back home
7. Getting to know my cousins better
8. Going to Pizza Hut in India; yay for paneer on pizza!
9. Making enchiladas for my cousin in Chennai
10. Buying clothes and shoes and earrings and other nonsense in Pondy Bazaar and elsewhere
11. Seeing parts of Chennai I've never seen before (hopefully this will happen)
12. Writing in my little green journal and maybe even conceptualizing a new piece!
13. Reading lots of books in my spare time

Right, that's a pretty good start, I'm thinking. But if I want to actually get on the plane, I need to pack, which means I need to get off the computer and get my day started, which I am loath to do, but I guess I should just suck it up. Hopefully I'll be able to update this once or twice while I'm in Asia so that I can show you guys what I'm doing over there. Here's to happy blogging!