Delhi and the Queer Scene

To be completely honest, I did not expect Delhi to have a queer scene at all, given how invisible non-heterosexual identities (or something along those lines – “identities” may be too western a take on it) are in this city.
However, recently I got an email telling me that Delhi’s first Pride Parade was happening on Sunday, June 29. That’s exciting. And even if it’s only a group of no more than a few dozen odd people, symbolically it is still huge. It may not even be a spot on the Capital Pride parade in DC that I feel so resentful about missing (why, oh why must it be in June?) so far as the flamboyance and extravagance is concerned, but to me, this is a hundred times more significant. For one, this is my city, my country, my people, and things here are just so wrong right now. Section 377 needs to go (or be modified at the very least!). The invisibility needs to go. The stigma, the social pressure to be married to someone of the opposite sex, all of that needs to go!
Then, a theatre group that a friend is involved with is putting up a production of the Laramie Project (just in case you don’t know what it’s about: it’s based on the aftermath of the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student, who was killed by two homophobic assholes. Sorry, I was trying to give a reasonable description but that’s all I can come up with. You have to see it to understand). Now, Shepard’s story doesn’t necessarily resonate with Delhi folk because there isn’t very much obvious homophobia (because as I said before, homosexuality is mostly invisible), but I think it’s great that these folks are doing this reading.
Now, I can’t claim I am actually familiar with the queer scene in this city (ok, to be completely honest I am not familiar with any queer scene anywhere outside of my college – and that too, only to a limited extent) but these, and some others, seem to be encouraging developments. A week or so ago, the “Lifestyle” section of one of the major national dailies ran a page on whether Delhi residents could accept homosexual relationships (in light of the legalization of same-sex marriage in California, of course) and while the general consensus was one of disapproval, at least this is working towards removing the invisibility aspect. I hope. One can hope, right?
Though Delhi does not have any gay clubs per se, there are night clubs that have been running gay nights for years, I believe. Tuesday nights at Pegs and Pints are the most famous. A well-known night club in GK 1 also hosts queer nights on Fridays, but that is apparently a lot newer and lesser known right now.
But whatever little I have found out about the queer scene in Delhi through the internet and through other people seems to revolve around gay men. Well, this city itself revolves around men, but still, it bothers me. There has barely any mention whatsoever of lesbian or bisexual women in all the stuff I have looked at. Let’s see what the turn out at the Pride Parade is like – how many women are there, and how many of those women are actually queer and not just fag hags (though technically, I suppose I am a fag hag too, in a major way).
I guess I am just talking about the “scene” for upper middle class folk here, and the reality is much different for other people, that do not even use these labels to define/describe themselves. But then, that is something I am so unfamiliar with that it would be too presumptuous of me to try and say anything about. But whoever, the people are, I hope things change for the better soon. After all, if South Africa can go from homosexuality being illegal to same-sex marriages being legal in as little as twenty years, one can have some sort of hope for India. Then, maybe, when it comes to my (hypothetical) kids’ generation, not only would they not have to face pressure to marry someone of the opposite sex, they might be able to marry someone of the same-sex should they so desire.

Delhi and Racism

Delhi and racism don’t seem to be immediately connected. At least, I never really saw the connection until I encountered Diepiriye’s fascinating youtube videos (look them up, if you like). I can’t say I took his videos too seriously at first but they did lead me to observe things.
The first observation was not one I made in Delhi. It was a little incident that happened back at college. I was coming back to my dorm from the lounge I study in around 4 am, around finals time. The (African-American) guard at the entrance desk looked really tired, so I just decided to say hello and engage in conversation. After a while, he asked me if I were Sri Lankan. I replied, no, I am Indian. To which he said that he was surprised because Indians were usually not friendly at all. Now I don’t if that reflects on our race consciousness or on our class consciousness, but whatever it is, does not reflect well on our society.
The next was on the very first day after coming back to Delhi. My grandparents wanted to talk to me about America and they were eager to share their experiences from the early nineties as well. They asked me if I had encountered any racism and I said, no, not really (because they obviously expected me to encounter obvious racism?) Then talk somehow turned to crime in DC and how New York City is so unsafe and my grandmother said something about all the Negroes cause all the trouble there. That’s probably not a very different attitude than that of several Americans but it’s still disturbing to hear something of the sort coming from a family member I had always thought was very intelligent and open-minded. I think I must have made one of my usual justifications and got that out of the way somehow. Then, yesterday, again, my grandmother asked me if I had any black sahelis (Hindi equivalent of amigas/amies/friend(f)). Now, I don’t think I actually have any female friends of African origin but I do have male ones so I nodded anyway. Then she had the gall to ask me, “So what is their IQ like? Can they do well in their classes?” Oh my gosh! This was just unbelievable. Thankfully my grandfather quickly jumped in and asked her to not generalize in such a manner.
So, there end the actual observed events. Now for some commentary.
Indians have a definite post-colonial hang-up and that is something most Indians would admit, some readily, some with more shame. We, as a people (though really, I think I mean North Indians, rather than Indians in general), are obsessed with white skin (and as a corollary, fairness) and consider white skinned Caucasians superior to all others (don’t believe me? Come watch Indians fawning over any, and I mean any, fair-skinned person). This could be explained as a remnant of our colonial past, when Indians were made to feel strongly inferior to their British administrators, but I somehow doubt that theory. Anyhow, I am not a sociologist so I don’t have an explanation for our worship of white skin.
Not unrelatedly, Indians can be the most virulently racist of any other people towards people of African origin. A close friend’s father, who was a post-doctoral fellow at Duke University in the 90s, spoke of how his Indian colleagues refused to sit next to or even speak to African-Americans. It is easy to imagine how alienated and unwelcome any person of African origin (no matter what country s/he is a citizen of) would feel in this city.
A group that frequently encounters rampant racism in this city are the people from the North-East of the country. The fact that their racial and ethnic heritage differs from that of the North Indians (most of whom would not hesitate to tell you that they are Aryans) apparently makes them fair game for racial slurs of all sorts. Insults like “chinky” are liberally thrown around in every direction.
Another unfortunate aspect of this is that North Indian men (who are really not well known for their woman-respecting ways) tend to view white women and Northeastern women as “easy”. This, of course, means that these women have to suffer even more sexual harassment than your average Delhi girl (exceeding which, in itself, is a considerable feat).
Now, most Indians will not be willing to acknowledge that they are racist. They will however be willing to say stuff like my grandmother did and think that it is the gospel truth. Indians certainly have strong regionalist tendencies (Punjabi vs. Mallu vs. “Madrasi” vs. Marathi), and I think everybody that knows anything about India knows about casteism. To this delightful mix, I think we can safely add racism as well.
Naturally, different forms of exclusion and discrimination are not unique to North Indian society, but where we take everything several steps ahead is in our hypocrisy when it comes to facing the truth (seriously, go read the comments on Diepiriye’s videos). Oh well. I’ll write on Delhi-ites and their great powers of self-delusion later.

Delhi... and WEDDINGS!!!

All right, so tonight, my mother dragged me to the wedding of her friend(acquaintance)'s daughter. I did not expect to know anyone there, and certainly did not want to go, but my mother wants met to "socialize" (why she won't let me do that with my own friends is beyond me!) so she forced me to tag along.
Anyhow, to my surprise, the mother of the groom (my mum knew the mother of the bride) turned out to be my ninth grade math teacher. Which meant that I "ran into" a lot of high school teachers and had to exchange the usual pleasantries (the "where are you going to college?", "what course are you studying?" "Do you like it there?"... just the usual). Thankfully, it was much better than I would've dared to imagine in my head. I suspect my mother already knew that the groom's mother had been my high school teacher, which might be really why she dragged me here (because she knew I was not likely to visit my high school and the teachers; but I just want to put that phase of life behind me. Anyhow).

So, Delhi weddings (I think most North Indian weddings, Punjabi ones in particular) are spectacles in their own right. This one was fairly regular by Delhi standards: the Punjabi food, the Rajasthani food, the "South Indian" food, the "Chinese" food, the chaat, the several different types of desserts and hors d'oeuvre (though no one here calls them that) , the over 500 guests, most of them only vaguely known to the hosts, the loud music. And did I mention the girls? Oh man, the girls were just so gorgeous. And there were so many of them, the pretty ones, that is. The bride looked spectacular as did her younger sister and a lot of her friends. Certainly reason enough to have stayed there much longer than I did, but I can't really use "I want to ogle at pretty girls" as an excuse to get my parents to stay longer, can I?

Now, one very interesting thing about Delhi weddings is how people dress. Winter weddings, which are much more common than summer weddings, are all right, because the weather is usually bearable (though sometimes it can be frigidly cold). However, summer weddings and the way people dress becomes a total disaster. Women will be decked out in heavily embroidered saris and salwar-kameezes and chaniya-cholis, with pounds of jewelry and more often than not, inches of make-up. How glitzy one's outfit is, is supposed to be some sort of status symbol. Such a shame. The men go to the other extreme. There were men at tonight's wedding dressed in sports coats, Hawaiian shirts and eve ratty jeans t-shirts! Seriously, faded jeans at a wedding that is not Harley-Davidson themed? That's definitely wrong! How difficult is it to be appropriately dressed even if ti is a million degrees Celsius out? The least they can do it wear a wrinkle-free linen or cotton dress shirt. And plenty of deodorant, for goodness' sake!

Anyhow, the wedding brought up the topic of my own wedding in the car. Because, of course, the daughter is now almost 19, and needs to be married in the next six or seven years. Now, I have already clearly told my parents that I will not have an arranged marriage, though they did not take me seriously. Besides, I am beginning to think an arranged marriage may be the best option for me (for my American friends, in case you want to understand this phenomenon of arranged matches in its entirety, ask me) since when it comes to a love match, I do not foresee the notion of my wanting to marry person I could only marry in six countries or two US states (at present) going down very well with my parents, if you get the gist of what I am saying.

Well, marriages are complicated things, but the wedding ceremonies are usually fun events. Too bad that I don't want a ceremony at all (though, really, there is no way around it -- my parents simply must have a grand celebration for their only daughter's wedding due to social obligations). Oh dear, Delhi's great middle class and its social dynamics. Sigh.

Delhi/Gurgaon... and corporate offices

I have a summer internship at a multinational consulting company. Now, because Delhi doesn’t really have a culture of undergraduate summer interns and I know nothing about accounting, I don’t have much to actually do. So when I am not reading fanfiction, or looking into colleges to transfer to, I observe things.

It is fascinating to note the sort of work culture that this place has. It’s quite different than anything I would have expected, because on the one hand I think of sloppy government and bureaucratic offices in Delhi and on the other hand I think of corporate offices as somewhat cold, mechanical places on the other. However, at this company’s office, and I am made to understand that the case is not much different at other corporate offices around here, there is a whole different atmosphere. People work quietly at their laptops, yes, but it is not entirely unusual for some folks to just sit together and chat or gossip. And they talk about anything, though the most frequent topics seem to be GMATs and business colleges in the US. Hmm… what does that say about why people are here in the first place? Yep. You got it. So that they can get the requisite “work-ex”, as it referred to here, and then go to the US for their MBAs, which will naturally lead to bigger and better things in the future. Aha! So the American dream lives on? Not quite. If you listen some more, you’d realize that while they are all for getting their degrees at US colleges because of the brand value such degrees hold here, they do want to come back and “serve their country”. Except if you listen some more, it isn’t that they want to serve their country, but to exploit the fact that they can easily have chauffeurs and domestic helpers and all sorts of other things to make life easier for them, that they could not have afforded in the US or in a western European country due to the much higher costs of labor. So that’s what this is about!
Also interesting to note is that though the place has a little gym, hardly anybody uses it. Which is not unexpected, of course, but I just wonder why it is there at all.

Another thing interesting about the workplace here is, that despite the fact that this is the office of a company based elsewhere, the office itself is distinctly Indian. And by the office I mean the people, not the office building. This is quite an odd thing to observe – that the office building is so un-Indian. It is all glass and concrete, which is astounding impractical for a hot country like India, and centrally air-conditioned, naturally, which makes it an absolute environmental disaster. Besides, central air-conditioning and buildings that are meant to be in a temperate climate just don’t work here on so many levels. One of my biggest grouses with them is how little ventilation they have. You need to smell the kitchen area to know what I mean. The smells of Indian spices and masalas are overwhelming to the point of being nauseating!

I guess I can’t really provide much more than a surface look at the corporate offices here though, because I don’t have insight into the how the higher echelons work or anything of the sort. Maybe that is a topic to be discussed later, or for you to tell me?

A chhotta sa introduction

Since my summer vacation is so boring, I thought maybe I could entertain myself by blogging about random observations I have been making about this city, and how nine months away, immersed in a different culture, might have changed my perspective of my city and its people and cultures.

I will probably blog about one thing a day, or many things in one day, or not blog at all some days (ok, basically be an erratic blogger) but there will be updates. So if you like something, have something to say about something, go on and read it, and comment on it, and subscribe to RSS feeds.

Chalo then, let’s start!