Skip to main content

Telling Jokes

Interesting set of exhibits at the Museum of Failure. This politically correct doll from the 60s that managed to scare the little girls it was targeted to serves as a good reminder of political correctness can get to a point of crazy, stupid and even scary. This article about "xenophobic" jokes and being good neighbors in Europe is a great counterpoint to the culture of correctness. 

I grew up in India at a time when it was perfectly normal to make jokes about people from another state who spoke another language and celebrated holidays on a different schedule. It was equal opportunity and people got credit for making the most obnoxious jokes about each other. As a Bengali, it was expected that I would tell a good joke about my people so others could up the ante from there. There was a certain degree of pride involved it setting a high bar. We all strove to do that. 

I cannot recall a single time when any one of us was offended by these jokes no matter who told them - it was just good fun, self-deprecation and being called out on stereotypes that defined each group. None of the jokes were meant to be a personal attack on anyone. Being able to say them, made us feel comfortable with each other, appreciate what we had in common and forge strong friendships. It made us laugh at the stereotypes but also encouraged us to be improve ourselves. I cannot imagine us having to mind our manners, worry about offending someone - I don't think we would have the kind of easy, free-flowing relationships we developed over the years if there were such constraints imposed on our interactions. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more