Look Out, Kids! It's Kurt Vonnegut Madlibs!

We knew from all the [magazines] I'd read out loud in my squeaky [desk chair], often with [grammar], that beautiful [writers] had their [sentences] destroyed by passionate [sub-editors].

An Unsent Letter To The Editor

Re: 'The Kids Aren't All Right' by Anuja Chauhan - Tuesday, April 23, 2013

With respect, Ms. Chauhan's characterization of 'India's Confused and Troubled Youth' is simplistic and layer-less, to say nothing of her diagnosis of its disease—some sort of mass pathology due to which all Indians under the age of thirty are self-obsessed and in the grip of imported fictions of life. Most of us know that life is not an episode of How I Met Your Mother.  Are you aware you're not in Mad Men? Writing an impassioned, conscientious editorial in a daily paper won't transform the advertising industry, much less the Indian youth you are so cavalier about lumping together.

The Youth of India, in so far as it can even be considered one entity, is not homogenous. Not all of us are social media junkies. Not all of us watch American sitcoms. Not all of us speak English. Not all of us were spoiled as children. Some of us even remember our grandmothers' stories. Indeed, those of us truly at the mercy of "unemployment, marginalisation, oppression, corruption"  in the world we've inherited are probably not the ones glued to TVs and laptops. If you're measuring complacency in terms of status updates, your sample size is awfully small. Much like it would be if you were to measure it in newspaper editorials.

If we have body image issues, Dove will not cleanse us of  them. If our moral compasses are in a spin, Vedanta ads about 'creating happiness' won't point them north. Wasn't it you who told us that our dil maange more, and visualised that 'more' as dancing on top of eighteen-wheeler trucks in the middle of the street with big-big movie stars? Is that who you think we are? When Thums Up suggests we do something toofani aaj, why is it all helicopters and stunt-doubles? Why aren't we shown the storm brewing on Raisina Hill? Why does the Fair & Lovely girl have to become a glamourous cricket commentator? Why don't we see her shining brightly in an ordinary city on an ordinary night, coming home from another long day at her ordinary job or going out with her friends for ordinary fun? You want to sell us Coke? Fine. You want to sell us some wishy-washy nonsense about ummeed wali dhoop and sunshine wali asha? We're not buying.

We may not be the single, cogent force of transformation you were hoping for, but we might surprise you with our fragmented agency. Har ek friend might be zaroori, but Airtel will not responsible for our collectivism. Advertising is not going to start 'the revolution'. 'The revolution' will not be advertised.

Sermon of the day (with a half sandwich).

The true threat of social media is that it falls us in love with people we don't actually know. Its value lies in its inverse ability to disinfatuate us with those people (or ideas or things) we might've cared too much about had we known less. Quite egalitarian, really: fair, if mediated, odds of succeeding or failing at rendering oneself romanceable.

I'm just keeping an eye above the spectacle while I eat my tomato and cheese.

(See what I did there?)

Entry-level nothing

We're sorry.

There are no Junior Public Intellectual positions available at present.
Please check back with us in the fall.

Why I Am In New York:

"I am in New York to have a battle of wills with the apotheosis of civilization. (Or such like.) I am here to exercise a vague whim so it doesn't fester into a mid-life what-if. I am here because why the hell not? I am here to get big city life out of my system. I am here to take a last shot at being young and fun, and to find out what that even means. I am here because they speak Spanish and Urdu and Hindi on the streets. I am here because it is the epicenter of weird shit. I am here because it was as good a place as any. I am here to piss the city off with my ambivalence towards it. I am here for any number of reasons, none of which are really strong enough to hold the weight of my [nostalgia] for India, my love for Oregon and my desire for other places. But I am here, because it is an in between, a temporary, perhaps even a good story. I am here because on any given day, there may be a Mariachi band on the subway.

I am not here to Make It Big. I am not here to fuck a lot of bankers/models/heirs/suitjacketed douchebags. I am not here to wear high heels and short skirts. (Okay, perhaps SOME short skirts. But with Birkenstocks.) I am not here to become a New Yorker. I am not here for Times Square. I am not here to partake in a Nora Ephron movie. I am not here to be Carrie fucking Bradshaw."

[Excerpted, with mild modification, from my correspondence with one Jared Metzker. Yes, I did just quote myself.]

More talk of harmony and cultural understanding.

One Ms. Vijaykar has just made me aware that the reason Indians reacted so adversely to Joel Stein's July slice of bigotry-lite is because we're embarrassed of our "heritage". Because we supplant it with "bland American customs". Because we don't take the time to explain our culture to them.

Oh! That's why they call us dotheads and ask us if we own elephants and if we have roads in India and if we're 'promised to a landlord or something'. Because we do so little to "patiently illuminate them".

Tch. All this time I was just being defensive, when I should have been spending my time hosting "get-to-know-India" events. My bad.

Alright, New York.

I even brought my goddamn typewriter.

Let's do this thing.

"It's hard for me because I'm..."

If you have multiple oppressed identities, which takes precedence? Which is the most crucial? Put more simply, if you're brown, foreign, and a girl, which should you complain about in order to get offered the most number of Kleenexes?

Any bets?

Be warned, however, that if you choose anything other than "girl", you will immediately be accosted by a vast army of highly compassionate, educated, and noble women who will explain to you that female oppression is the most devastating and pervasive ill of all. They'll also say that it is far and away the most important to fight, and that you should put aside all other, relatively trivial historical grudges to fight it. This, they will promise, will liberate you.

That's when you call Saba Mahmood and ask her if she'd like a drink.

She, I trust, will remind you that the world is divided along multiple intersecting lines, and that the elimination of one may not get rid of the rest. Then, I hope, she will suggest that you review the details of your subscription to Liberation Magazine. You may be signing up for things you weren't aware of, and paying more for them than you thought.

Because here's the thing: if you really want to emancipate yourself from whatever you feel is trapping you, you must do it on your own terms. What good is it being saved by someone else if you're merely transferred from danger to dependency?

Think about what happened the last time we were offered salvation in exchange for conversion.

Slumdog Slamdunk.

While Slumdog was winning eight Oscars, I was in the library reading about Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Taliban, the giant military blunder to come, and what the rest of the world is thinking as the United States gears up for another round of "Doing Whatever We Bloody Well Please, Even If We Haven't Thought It Through And It Isn't Good For Anybody, Including Us."

So, having discovered this joyous news online, I suppose I should go and hide my head somewhere. And while I'm at it, perhaps I should subtly correct my casual opinion that the film's success has less to do with the film as a film, and more to do with the film as a cultural artifact in the current global context. After all, as so many educated young writers for the New York Times and such have pointed out, the widespread dislike among the Indian middle-class for the film is merely embarrassment and reluctance to admit to the terrible poverty they routinely ignore. And while I stew in my easily accessible, privelidged-Indian guilt at not being more compassionate and active about the evils consuming my fellow countrymen, I suppose I may as well ignore the something fishy in the global media's undoubtedly skewed focus on this little piece of poverty relative to the vast sea of which it is a part.

Too much perspective is never good, is it? It keeps you from feeling the guilt/shame/joy/sympathy/pity appropriate for a two hour experience of the world.