Warwick Diaries

Its been a full year since I wrote anything! And like always, the long gap makes me all the more conscious of what I write in this 'comeback' blog post!
Anyway, this one is about being a uni student in UK and it wasn't until my friend from India asked me 'How's life in UK?' that I thought of writing it...
Well....its fun and nice...and given the number of Indians around, you may actually forget you aren't at home.
But there will always be these little moments we'll miss when we go back home:

1) Going shopping and mentally converting all the prices to INR and then uhh...leaving a few things behind.
2) Its freezing cold and you have like a million layers on but drunk British girls walk by wearing practically nothing, screaming and puking all over the streets of Leamington Spa.
3) The waitress at Costa Coffee glares at you for not ending each sentence with a 'Please' or a 'Thank you'.
4) The fire alarm going off at 3 am at night (Seriously, why does somebody always have to try smoking in their rooms at this unearthly hour?!)
5) The cleaning lady comes knocking on your door the only day you decide to sleep till late.
6) You crave golgappas, namkeen, papad, maggi and all those things we so take for granted back home.
7) When vegetarian food tastes sucky, has no salt (of course!) and comes with fat and oily fries.
8) The Costa Coffee guy stares at you when you ask for 8 sachets of sugar (8 is normal!)
9) When the shops close down at 5 and you have nowhere to go :(
10) When u finally start cooking by yourself, discover there's always been a chef hidden deep inside you and start bragging to your family members back home (come on...I'm sure you do that too!)
11) That feeling when that essay is due the next day and you haven't begun writing yet.
12) It being sunny when you are about to leave home but raining when u do ;)
13) And when you do go back to get your umbrella, the wind ensures it is turned upside down and broken and you are drenched..
14) When you and the Tesco delivery man are down to first name basis.
15) When you feel handicapped if you don't have access to the internet (*shudder*) for even a minute!
16) When its summers and the sun just doesn't go down and there are girls in itsy-bitsy shorts everywhere (:D)
17) That moment of realization when water no longer means just water. It means either one of- tap water, still water, spring water, sparkling water, mineral water etc etc...
18) When you start categorizing the world into Chinese & non-Chinese (sorry, but true!)
19) When the pound rate starts going up just before the fee instalment due date... :(
20) And finally....when chips become 'crisps', college becomes 'undergrads', beer becomes cheaper and dissertation becomes a pain in the neck!

Proud to be Indians??

We Indians excel in a lot of things. One of them, (and one in which few other countries even come close) is the art of self deprecation.. Not only do we love everything western/phoren/firang, we also love to hate everything (well...almost!) Indian.

When Hollywood celebrities love to visit India for all its 'Indianness' and charm (Madonna), get married here (read Katy Perry), shoot here (Angelina Jolie- who even contemplated adopting an Indian child) and even name their kids after it (I don't recall who but some Hollywood star has a daughter named "India"), we Indians love to run to distant shores at the drop of a hat. And no...that doesn't mean we have already seen all places there are to see in India. Most of us still haven't. And we take all chances we get to complain about the traffic, the slums and the poor infrastructure in the country.

You still don't believe in the self-deprecation bit, do you?

Well. Take the Commonwealth Games for instance. While the whole world got to see pictures of soiled bed linen and dirty washrooms in the games village apartments, few of us got to see the pictures of the clean and well kept stadiums and the venues. And every country around the world knew exactly how many ceilings had collapsed in the run-up to the Games. Thanks to the Indian press. Why, in the words of my third year MFM teacher, the 'step motherly' treatment to the "We are proud to be Indians" side of the coin?

Take movies. While on average, H'wood movies are better produced than B'wood ones, we are no longer as bad as we believe and H'wood also has its fair share of shoddy movies. Lately, I have seen three English movies and they were very' storyless', to say the least. I saw 'Closer' (shudder!), 'New York I Love You' (shudder shudder!) and the much hyped 'Before Sunrise' (excessively slow and bland..). But we never talk about these movies. And we love to compare sub standard Indian movies to H'wood blockbusters.

That is the way we are. And that is how we will continue to be (hopefully not). It is, I guess, a part and parcel of being an Indian...

And the best part is, we never fail love to stand tall on every patriotic occasion in the calendar and sing the national anthem. We even do that on KBC.

Made in China

That Chinese items have flooded the Indian markets over the last few years is no news... From toys to electronics to mobile phones to crackers- they are everywhere. In the beginning we took them to be synonymous with 'low quality' product dumping and later, it simply became a way of life. Hell. Even Bajaj bikes, Maruti car parts and Yamaha synthesizers now come with the omnipresent 'made in China' tag..
It was all fine until I visited Burra Bazaar a couple of days before Diwali and was appalled to see idols (yes...our very own Indian gods- Ganesh and Lakshmi- made where else, but of course, in China..) Can we not even produce idols of our very own gods? Must we rely on foreigners to decide how goddess Lakshmi should wear her Sari and what colour Ganeshji's dhoti should be??
Do they even know why we pray to them and what they signify?

What really surprises me is India's (lack of) an assertive stance on the issue. Despite lodging complaints about the dumping of lower priced Chinese goods in India with the WTO (which was, btw, eventually followed by anti-dumping duties on Chinese steel and tyres). While India cannot (apparently) compete against low cost rubber or steel or other strategic raw materials from China, can it not, at least, prevent China from making a profit out of our religious sentiments?

What next? Indian food 'made in China'??