Keep it in the Family (2)

I've written about the 'rage clan a couple of times, most memorably in the aftermath of Modi-less Midtown. After that post, Saurav gave me a shout for "trying to organize" my diasporic family. I definitely wouldn't go that far, at this point, but I do see how I have been trying to influence my cousins slowly. I also see how my periodic outbursts about family, which I am sure many others share (see here for a particularly funny outburst - trust me, I consume more than DDA, but it is pretty filling on its own), are connected with the love that I feel for my kin. The frustration that I feel is more of self-measure: if I can't convince those who will actually give me some time to air out my opinion, what chance to I have with the world of strangers?

So I'll try to break this down. With my cousins:

1) The first challenge is turning the conversation from the usual domestic chitter-chatter. If they haven't seen me for some time, their concern and interest is in the minutiae of life with my partner, the inevitable personal-timeline questions with which they can easily measure my progress on the life-o-meter. Now that I'm in a committed relationship - they have made the enormous leap in life decision and judgment and decided that it is now time to hint about expanding the family. "Hint" is a very weak word for the outright extortion that we experience at some of these events. But the years of pre-marriage talk have enhanced my endurance and given me reliable tactics to maneuver from even the tightest spots.

So I have to find ways to drop in references to current events - "yeah, we are still getting used to a household of two... but it's really crazy that the Senate GOP may use the nuclear option to neutralize the final resort of those crazy Dems, isn't it?"

2) Usually, I have to go with the issue that someone else brings up. If you are around certain folks long enough, they are bound to say something that will tick you off and give you a door through which to begin some re-education. I find that with my family, it is usually around race or religion. Like many desis, they have had limited exposure to other communities in the United States, remaining fairly insular (my immediate family, due to the suburban environ and the preference to socialize in English, had "Indian" friends, but many other folks stick to their own ethnic group). So at some point, I'll hear a comment, intentional or not, about one or more third world communities, to which I choose to respond, at least so that they stop and think once in a while about the ignorance that they may be passing to their children.

But my favorite has to be about "Americans" - or in other words, white people. Never a disparaging remark (except perhaps about their melanin-deficiency? Wait - that's me), I hear many a comment about "he's an American" or she married "an American", and wait for some qualifier, with none to be found. This used to drive me up the wall, and I'd state "I'm American," which would have some impact, but usually would result in the uncle or whomever assessing my Indianness based on my language-ability, my impetuous lack of respect, and my limited discipline to choose a "sensible" career. "American" in this context is not a good thing.

As the club scene in Bombay explodes, Valentine's day is all the rage (on either side of the Hallmark holiday), and Bollywood films continue to distort hypersexuality in some bizarro version of an MTV that I've never seen, the older NRI community laments "Americanized!"

I've since become more nuanced (or perhaps just more academic) in my approach to my American identity. First of all, the United States is not the only America. On top of that, do I even want to be identified as "American" anymore? And was I ever truly "American" in the sense of what American is supposed to represent? Can we not pledge our "patriotism" to ideals rather than nations? Must we identify our individuality with the rigid (and shrinking) American definition of what that should be - when I also believe in group identities that the United States can't even begin to deal with? Let's all move to Canada, where canucks can actually dream about recognizing Punjabi as an official national language.

3) Two weekends ago, though I was having a good time, I felt the need to exclaim to no one in particular "Good thing that Modi, that nutcase, isn't coming here" in hopes that my uncle would take me up on the challenge. Sometimes, that's a tactic that I have to resort to, but it makes me look feel like an idle American rather than someone trying to plant tolerance and more expansive thinking in my family tree. D called me out on it, and no one else heard me. Back to the drawing board. I guess picking ideological fights at family functions is not the best way to "organize" the family.

4) But it is not all about confrontation. For example I was touched when, as I walked into the space for the family event, one of my cousins and her husband came to greet us and said that they'd been talking to their son about me just earlier. They said that he should speak with me for five minutes, and he would learn a lot. That is a pretty hefty compliment, though the boy did not seem equally impressed by it. I guess somewhere along the line, particular cousins of mine are listening more than I give them credit for. When I think about it a little more, I realize that there have been a handful of times when I've been able to help them out with questions concerning services (especially for a couple of women friends and distant relatives) trying to escape batterers. I thought that was all forgotten, but I guess that it isn't. And in some way, those emails that I keep sending out to my family do sink in to some level.

I just have to keep my own level of propaganda generation (and forwarding) to some reasonable level. However, the last note for now on this whole concept of "organizing" (or even just engaging) my cousins around issues that they are either already have a conceptualization of or that they know nothing of is that I find small ways to subvert otherwise harmless exchanges. Our many cousins receive an email every Diwali that someone starts to wish well upon everyone. This time around, Diwali coincided with the end of Ramadan, so in my reply to the mass email, I wrote "Wishing you a peaceful Eid and a Happy Diwali". The reactions were interesting. Some of my cousins actually wrote back something similar. Some were clear about the "Happy Diwali" part and gracefully ignored the rest of the message. At least they didn't get into a flame war with me. Progress?

This spring, a message about Holi went around. Not to skip a beat, I responded with "Happy Easter, Happy Holi, and Happy Phagwah"... with a hyperlink on "phagwah" for those who may not know the parallels and generations through which the tradition has crossed oceans and seas and found a permanent home in Richmond Hill. Macro-diaspora and my family's micro-diaspora crossing neatly over the information superhighway. I love the power of the internet.