Mrs.Doubtfire and Maximum City

Suketu Mehta’s “Maximum City” is my companion. I received his book before leaving the US as a birthday gift. I halt my life to read most books. I have cancelled plans, bailed on friends, and pushed deadlines to finish a book. This book is different. I pick up the book, read a bit in the morning when I wake up or just before sleeping. I feel like I am listening to someone who shares an understanding with me, whose definition of home is many places and many people. I feel like some chapters offer insight into worlds I will not have ready access to and some feel like a pat-on-the-shoulder “don’t sweat this kid” relief. Since the trouble at this home has now settled down to a backburner issue, I flipped through the book and landed where the author and his family move to Bandra after their first year back in Mumbai. He talked about his wife’s Hindi getting better, they work with perceived inefficiency rather than against the grain, and their lives start to warm up with new and old people with whom they enjoy spending time. He called the money wasted- getting ripped off by most people that you encounter, higher prices attached to your accent, not being able to tell people off adequately, trying not to get sick by buying mineral water, adjusting even though you’re pretty sure a compromise was not reached only a sugar-coated demand obliged- a “newcomer’s tax”. Lately I have been paying that tax not just monetarily but in other ways too. I find myself biting my tongue when the answer I get for why we do not cover Africa news as much, is at best a superficial understanding of “the readership”. I bite my tongue when I notice people lie. Little, white, transparent lies, the purpose of which I don’t understand. I can always feel when I am being lied to, like an itchy bug bite. Most of the time the lies have nothing to do with me, but I am baffled by a lie every time. Most times there are at least two different conversations happening simultaneously. There is the textual- light, small talk; the subtextual-what the other gains from this exchange; the character sketch- who am I talking to. Then there’s the junk/ color- the lies that you forget about or laugh about down the road. So I turn to Suketu Mehta to elaborate on these communication differences for me. He gets how I think and he also gives me a plausible idea for what the folks in my latest environment may be thinking. India is an odd place for me to be I’m not totally on the outside of things but I am not on the inside either. You can apply for Indian citizenship even if your grandfather was born here and your folks were not. You have all rights except the right to vote. Someone that I don’t know well at all asked me if I consider myself Indian or American. I said that I am American, and then said well, American but some cultures of India inform my life in deep ways too. I think about this a lot. I realize that the images of Americans abroad are narrow indeed and depressing. Baywatch, the current administration, the OC, MTV, Disney, Pepsi, McDonald’s- all that is America- one boring, migraine-inducing, fun-in-small-doses face. What is missed is what makes America fantastic- so many varied stories, different faces, people from all over the world, some degree of socioeconomic mobility-all of what’s bubbling beneath the surface is glazed over with candy images. Hmm, it’s close to 3:30am and watching Mrs. Doubtfire sparked this mind-unwind. Go figure. My guess- a very long winded “I’m homesick”. G’night ;)