Another one!

This is a response to Anand Giridharadas's article on The International Herald Tribune. Man, I'm so pissed these days!

Hypocrisy is the mother of all evil!

 

Is this supposed to be humorous? Because I, for one, find this highly offensive. Before dig at us Indians, look at why your America is such a deep crapper right now. We don't live frugally. As one of the commenters noted on his website, there’s a huge difference between being frugal and being extravagant. We spend on things we need and not on things we want to throw out. We know what we have and spend based on our needs and requirements. Letting your hair down has caused your problem. Borrowing more than your capacity and capability has been the reason for two of your worst recession in the last half a decade. More so, your (ofcourse, I mean the Americans) lack of common sense is the reason that credit card companies thrive and millions of people are in a huge debt right now. Indians realize that there's nothing called a free lunch. Majority of us do our homework before taking out loans and buying homes.

 

 There's a fundamental cultural difference between the Indians and the Americans. Your idea of letting your hair down is not the same as ours and is by no means superior to ours. Your Idea of going to watering holes is not our Idea of how to let our hair down. we socialize differently and we are not tipsy when we make "friends".

 

Wearing our money: While you spend your money on shoes and cars, we spend it on jewellery. you show off your mustang by driving around while we show it off by wearing them. Oh yea, your hippies have pierced noses and belly button and other places and have cheap metal ornaments on them. I'm still surprised how they don’t get infected when these cheap stuff rusts over a period of time. But you don’t realize that we are also investing money on gold that has proven to be one of the safest forms of investment! Of course we have the cars and shoes too. You spend your money on Versace dresses that are mostly made from nylon/polyester which you don’t realize is one of the cheapest of materials available. Again, we get value for our money because our gold thread has tangible value, while you get only a piece of cloth that says Versace on your apparel.

 

Ha-ha, the fundamental reason why you call on your cell phones is because you get a minimum of 500 minutes per month and also because your incoming as well as outgoing calls are charged! For example, how many americans text? Compare that to the Asian number. Americans don’t text because they are usually charged per message (of course, texting is very cheap in India compared... That’s another issue...).

 

The restaurants: Ok, we share our soups and food because we don’t want to throw away our good money and also because we dont want to eat stale food. I feel one of the reason why Americans waste food is because they are grossly overpaid and they dont know the value of their money. Also, the Americans pack their leftovers from the restaurants and eat them the next day. We Indians like our food fresh and not stale.

 

Ha-ha, you talk about cheap plates? You were the ones who started the disposable plastic plates! Which is cheaper? At least we are not pretentious, we eat with the same set of plates when we are on our own or when we have guests! And how many of you use the expensive china that you bought for your wedding everyday?

 

Crashing weddings are a way of life in India? I do believe you have your head up your rear. Well, you might think that because there's usually a huge crowd at wedding. But in 99% of the weddings, everyone who comes in is an invited guest. We Indians like to share our big occasions with our extended family and friends. We welcome everyone and we don’t need people to confirm whether they are going to attend the wedding and surely we don’t bunch up people with other they know at the dinner table. This is how Indians socialize. I do believe, Indians are the most social human beings.

 

Yes we recycle gifts, but that’s because we don’t go around asking people to give us gifts. Oh yea, I’m talking about gift registries. People give gifts that they think mean something to us. You don’t force them to give you something that you want. This is one reason why you don’t recycle gifts.

 

Yes, we do use shopping bags as garbage bags, but the last time I checked, Target bags suggest we do that exactly. And besides, what’s wrong with that? Again, we know the value of a hard earned rupee.

 

Yes, agreed, we might buy peas in the winter and freeze them and then use them in summer. I don’t know if you realize this, but you are getting the same winter frozen peas from your Safeway/ Walmart in summer at twice the price we pay. It’s the same frickin old winter peas. Instead of frozen at home, its frozen by someone else. This is not being frugal. It’s applying some common sense.

 

Children as Equities: Why do you think the Asian Kids consistently outperform their American counterparts in all academic departments? That’s because their parents can think rationally on behalf of their children while the American parents are busy fighting custody battle in courts. And most of all, in India, children respect their parents. And certainly, there are people studying art and history. It is not as much as the engineers, but there are students.

 

At least we have the brains to squeeze out savings by stripping out some features, but they are all optional features. Pay more, get them. Oh, and the speedometer. Ummm.. I don’t exactly see digital speedometers on all the cars in America. Many of the newer models still have the analog readouts. Oh and if you didn’t know, the differences in the readouts are only above 100 kph, which is almost the max speed of the vehicle. Between 0-50 kph, the analog speedometer is as accurate as the digital speedometer. Get your facts right before you start writing. Maybe you should take a journalism class before you start writing again.

 

I believe you should understand the culture of the place before you go criticizing it.