Global Shlobal

When it comes to content, only “English-speaking countries” are king, whatever the heck that means. Don’t ask me, ask Helium. The company, which recently changed its policy regarding non-US contributions, gave the following explanation after they ejected most Indian writers from their website:

Since our goal is to become the top-quality content site on the web, we realize that, as a US-based company, we cannot accept writers from countries where English is not the primary language.

Because we all know that every US citizen speaks and writes in better English than every Indian citizen.

(But… but… please Helium? I’ve studied English since I was five years old. Won’t you pay me pennies per click for all those years of effort? I is write well, I promise!)

But it’s not just Helium that thinks demonizing Indians, regardless of their caliber of writing, is fun. For kicks, The New Haven Advocate hired unsuspecting professional Indian journalists (one sucker actually had the galls to demand $1 per word!) and published their content with a “Made in India” stamp. I’m guessing that wasn’t meant as a compliment.

As Suneetha B says, “I get the frustration they have over their jobs shipped overseas and their rightful reaction and objection to this. But was there a need to ridicule a group of professionals who do the same job as they do, just because they live in another country with a different economy and currency conversion values?”

Here’s an idea: instead of targeting people who have no control over what these companies do and are simply trying to make a living, why don’t you go have a conversation with the people who actually make these decisions. You know, like, er, the management?

In the meantime, please go ahead and get your jollies by ranting against Indian writers. Because everyone knows Indians as an entire nation of people aren’t professionals and don’t deserve to be treated that way.

Goodbye USA, Hello India!

I’m now in India. Actually, I’ve been here for almost a week, but it’s only now that I’ve got a moment to get back into the day to day of things.

Three deadlines this week, then I’m off to Nepal.

I’ll be blogging much more regularly from next week.

New York, New Jersey, New Delhi

I’ve been waking up every day with the biggest smile on my face.

In December last year, Sam and I decided that it would be better for our personal lives if we moved to New York and lived there for the next three years. As much as we both love India, there’s no denying that as an Indian woman dating a British man, there are constant annoyances such as disapproving glares from middle-aged aunties who don’t even know us, bad service at restaurants, and ignorant people who assume that because I’m with a white guy, I have no moral values. There are the bigger problems, too, including complete rejection from family members and friends, most of whom have now come around and started taking us seriously.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been planning, saving, researching, and talking to people about setting ourselves up in New York. Sam gave up his apartment in India, got a five-year journalist visa, and I hired a lawyer and started looking into how much all this was going to cost.

In the three months leading up to March, I was very excited. But I was also very nervous. Could we afford this? Where would we live? It was not lost on us that while we both make a good living and would be able to live comfortably in New York, with the same money in India, we could buy a home, think about investing, and travel frequently.

Other questions came up as well: Would we ever go back to India? Would I really only be able to see my parents once a year? Could I even get a work visa for America as a freelancer?

And more importantly, what the heck was I going to write?

Friends say it is glaringly obvious but that they didn’t want to say it at the time: my passion lies in working in the developing world. That’s not to say that there aren’t important stories to be told here in America, but they’re not my stories to tell. That’s not what drives me. Even as we were discussing New York, I kept talking about the reporting I would do in South America, how I could fly back to India every year, and the concepts I had in mind. I spent days in mourning after having to turn down a potential book deal about a story I’ve reported on in India.

While I was super excited about moving to New York, I was not excited about the work I would do there.

Two weeks before Sam was scheduled to arrive in New York, he called me early in the morning and told me to get online for a video chat.

“Are you happy about New York?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“What about India?”

“Er… do you want to stay in India? You can tell me.”

“Um… yes. I do. I want to stay in India.”

“Oh, thank God! Me too!”

(That’s the simplified version. The complicated version included a long conversation that ended with us jumping up and down. Well, one of us, anyway.)

So I’ve been lining up work, speaking with editors (“No, that’s right. New Delhi, not New York”), and collecting assignments. I got a few this week, which means I’ll be traveling around the country again almost as soon as I arrive in Delhi in May.

I’m going back home. And I’ve been waking up with the biggest smile on my face.

Middle-of-the-Week Progress

3 down, 5 to go.

Work is coming along nicely, and an editor did write to me yesterday saying she’d love to continue working with me, and that the piece I submitted is “excellent.”

Just what a writer wants to hear.

I’ve been really lucky in that editors, not just those I’d worked with but also those who’re new to me, have trusted me with jobs that require a good understanding of America, even though most knew I was here briefly. I’ve now written about American politics, the American education system (which was really interesting, because I come from a country that’s on the other extreme of the spectrum), immigration reforms, and the health system. And not surprisingly, they’ve enabled me to take a deeper look into the policies of my own country.

When I go back, this is going to be extremely helpful, because there’s going to be that frame of reference. So far, when I’ve spoken about issues, I haven’t really delved into the politics of them and certainly haven’t made international comparisons, and that’s one of the things I’ve learned how to do well here in Berkeley. To look closely at the policy level and see if there’s anything there. To take that leap from simply critiquing culture to critiquing culture within a political and historical framework, as my friend says. (Boy, how academic do I sound?)

I’ve also learned how to explain the nuances of India to non-Indians using comparisons that they’d more easily identify with. That’s been one of my biggest weaknesses, as an Indian trying to write for global publications. Until now, I hadn’t completely understood my readers, and this has caused at least one editor to bang his head against a wall repeatedly. And now finally, to his delight, I get it. (I think.)

I’m really excited about the next phase of my life. Leaving Berkeley is going to be very emotional; it’s already become so with everyone counting the days we have together and how we can make the most of this time. But I’m also really looking forward to the next step– getting back into full-time work, traveling for extended periods for stories and for fun, and taking on long-term projects once again.

I’ll miss you though, Berkeley.

Things I Love About America Part II

1. People, journalists and non-journalists alike, can really take criticism of their country. I love that. Maybe it has something to do with the last eight years, but no one gets defensive when I offer my sometimes-blunt commentary. Indians, on the other hand, get all riled up. (I’m guilty of this.)

2. On the Santa Barbara trip, we were talking about what we each love most about America. The words that kept coming up included “freedom,” “inclusive,” “opportunity,” and “equality.” No matter who you are and where you come from, you have a chance at succeeding.

3. Black President. Come on.

4. Actually, I like it more that his family is a melting pot. As someone who knows her children are going to be in equal part, eastern and western, and will be dragged from developed to developing world on a yearly basis, it’s encouraging to know that this is an advantage and not a problem.

5. I can’t get behind most feminism in America. I’ve noted before that even in America, women have a long way to go, but most of the feminist talk, in my opinion, is creating gender wars where there are none. (Hate mail goes to mridu (at) mridukhullar.com.) What I do love however, are the ways in which people are willing to fight for what they believe is right. There’s no chalta hai (anything goes) attitude that exists in most of my own country.

6. School. I hated school in India and would never have returned. I love it here, and would recommend it highly to everyone. The standard of tuition is fabulous, the Professors are colleagues, and everyone wants to see you succeed. Very different from what I witnessed back home.

7. Difference is respected, even valued. You aren’t expected to be a certain way, be a certain person, or follow certain rules. People just assumed I’d either grown up here or gone to school here, no matter my skin color. I fit right in. As does everyone I know, regardless of his or her accent or heritage.

Before You Speak, Shut Up and Listen

For Valentine’s Day, my friends and I went to my favorite Indian restaurant in Berkeley, and of course, no one was surprised when asked how spicy I wanted my food, I replied, “As spicy as is humanly possible.”

Even by Indian standards, my tolerance for spicy food is very high. When I was in school, my mother used to make potato chips at home. While everyone else simply wanted salt on theirs, mine were always covered with red chilly powder. My friends were equally fond of the stuff. We’d often eat out, getting the spiciest food available in the Indian cuisine, and then gulp it down with bottles of water. It was our version of fun.

This, of course, did mean that every time the three of us got together, we also got sick. Sore throats, stomach aches, and eventually, orders from each of our doctors to cut down.

Our mothers would stare at us in fascination. My mother often wondered about the sanity of eating something so spicy that you needed two glasses of water to wash it down, but she wasn’t surprised. I am my father’s daughter– a man who eats raw green chilli (the very hot kind), because… well, because it’s tasty. Don’t look at me. I just inherited the weirdness.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been missing India so much it’s almost a physical pain. Which is funny, because I actually do love my life here in America.

For several days though, there’s been a lot of India going on in my world. I’m working on a presentation for Thursday on women and sexuality in India. I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire and just finished writing about it. And I had to refrain from getting into a verbal war with journalists who managed to, despite their best intentions, completely offend me with their comments about India.

That’s probably the one thing that has surprised me most about America. I have on several occasions now been asked questions like, “China’s not a democracy?” and my personal favorite, “Is Delhi cleaner than Berkeley?”

Funny as these statements are, they become downright painful when someone proclaims, after returning from India, that they’d watched Slumdog Millionaire before leaving, but Oh. My. God. they were not prepared for the poverty in India. Maybe, oh I don’t know, because poverty isn’t glamourous in real life and doesn’t end after two hours?

It offends me greatly when after spending two weeks in a tourist part of town, people paint all Indians as lying, cheating scumbags. And that they’re shameless enough to actually say it to my face.

A Chinese-American friend says she no longer views it as ignorance, but as a refusal to see that what works in one culture or country, may or may not work in another.

Like most people, my views on Chinese policies and government are based on Indian, American and British media’s portrayal of it. Because I have been researching Chinese politics for almost two years (I hope to live there someday), I was very excited to see many Chinese-American students and five Visiting Scholars from China at Berkeley.

One said to me the other day that if significant changes were made to the human rights conditions and freedom of speech, she’d actually prefer the current system to a democracy. But that she will probably never say this to anyone here except me because she’s afraid of people jumping down her throat, telling her how wrong she is, and then assuming that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

And I will never forget how two people personally thanked me after a presentation in the J-school, in which I was the only person in the entire session who made a case for why a boycott of the Chinese Olympics would have been a mistake. It was a surprise to most in that room when I said having the Olympics in China was, in my opinion, a “good idea.” The Chinese students thanked me because until then, they had only seen me as a journalist who was a vocal critic of China and wrote about Tibet.

It is the same appreciation I feel when journalists come to India, and instead of applying Western ideals to the culture, sit back and try to understand it first. It’s what I did when I first arrived here. I didn’t feel comfortable reporting, so until December, I continued writing about India, and just assimilated. Now I’m writing about the Bay Area for American readers, and I feel confident in my ability to not offend.

There are a lot of things I have learned and continue to learn in Berkeley, but the most important one is this: Before you speak, shut up and listen.