#31 Arranged Marriages

Indian wedding invitation 2
Originally uploaded by niachan

A direct result of parents setting up a desi on a date.

For most cultures, the concept of an “arranged” marriage might be a bit alien but, for desis who are as far from the dating game as San Francisco is from Hyderabad, this concept is a manna from heaven. There is much to gain in an arranged marriage for all the people involved, including the bride and the groom.

For starters it is something that gives every desi a sense of assuredness.Desis who resist the charms of an arranged marriage eventually succumb to this very comforting sense later in life. Desis who accept their fate early on are well on their way to achieving their parents dream of becoming grand-parents before they hit fifty. Other advantages include helping desis concentrate on building their careers instead of going on useless pursuits of love.

When it comes to arranging their marriages, our otherwise very liberal and progressive thinking desi, must agree to marry a person belonging the same caste/religion. This has less to do with racism, and more to do with our solar system and some simple economics. To be a successful “alliance seeker” , one must enumerate all their positive attributes such as one’s visa status. Another simple rule to be successful is to create a profile on <insert region>matrimony.com. This takes care of most of the background pre-requisites and helps desis arrive at a quick decision (a general oxymoron in the desi context).

A trick question to ask a desi married couple would be whether their marriage was “arranged” or “love”. The really quick-witted ones might answer by telling you that their “love was arranged”.

#30 Parents

“Its all about Loving Your Parents”
Source: Wikipedia

If you believe Russel Peters’ version of how Indian parents beat their kids, you are bound to be misled. No amount of those beatings will deter a desi from arranging his parents pilgrimage to Niagra Falls some day when he has fully recovered from the trauma of it all (or not).

The desi kid’s sense of duty toward his parents is the complete antithesis of what a white kid goes through /feels . While the white kid will one day grow up and leave his parents house, the desi kid will one day grow up, have his own house and get his parents to live with him ( and get free babysitters). In other cases, he’ll just grow up in his parents house.

Disagreeing with their parents is completely out of question. For instance, a desi will never date because his parents might take objection. The only way a desi will date is if his parents set him up on one.

#29 Patel Snaps

Patel Snapping
Originally uploaded by kaysov

‘Patel snap’ is a desi neologism which means a picture of desi(s) in a nondescript point-of-interest, usually wearing a beaming smile. These nondescript points can be anything from restaurants, parking garages, tulip gardens or those Porsches and Beemers they do not own.

Patel snaps serve many purposes. They often carry a message to the folks back in India that the desi is having a fun time overseas. They also help in thorough stress testing of new cameras with several rolls of patel snaps, looking like successive frames of a video.

FOB curiosity for the new country, including nondescript fountains in the middle of nondescript apartment blocks, is another promising source of patel snaps. Many of the patel snaps usually end up on orkut and sometimes on matrimonial sites too.

Patel snaps are regularly ’spiced up’ by impromptu usage of fingers to make fake horns as illustrated in this prototypical picture.

If not for all the restrictions, desis would love to have their favorite patel snap replace dull portraits on driver’s licenses, green cards and passports as much as they love to have them on their web profiles.

(co-written with kayvjay)

#28 Sharing

In India, there’s room for everyone!
Originally uploaded by Dey

Desis take the virtue of sharing very seriously and are adept at applying it in most aspects of their lives. Sharing is fun,yes? But for desis, sharing is also about saving money which adds a whole lot more to the concept of fun. Sharing also allows them to huddle together and is a great way to check out what other desis are upto.

Casual desi sharing is always at display in restaurants with all things liquid (from soup to chai) being split two or even three ways. Then comes the more intimate food sharing process with every desi on the table sticking their forks into the plate of the person sitting farthest from them. This way the food and the plate, both get shared adding that extra something to the whole meal.

Sharing clothes is also a big hit with desis. While women often swap sarees and lehengas for special occasions (since repeating clothes can bring them into disrepute), a desi man’s entire wardrobe (usually under ten clothing items, excluding the essentials) is always up for share and could reach extreme levels of intimacy in certain cases.

Not only is the virtue of sharing used to save money but it is also used to save space. Desis achieve this by making sure that there is at least one more person than twice the number of rooms in a flat, at all times. This tenet , if followed properly, gives them enough reason to share bedrooms. If this condition cannot be met for some reason, then the desis will just move into a smaller flat or split up and help other desis in following this tenet.

#27 Desi Tax Consultants

Tax Return
Originally uploaded by NotInventedHere

Desis love reverse engineering and employ it in many walks of life including taxes. The first question a desi tax consultant asks you is “How much returns do you want (not expect, but want)?”

Say, you tell him $5,000. He then backtracks, checks off all the rules he can bend, all the loopholes he can exploit and charges you by the mile.

Buying a brand new La-Z-Boy recliner will be counted as expenses for setting up a new home-office; Subscribing to an 8 DVD Netflix rental plan shall be money well spent on education through documentaries. Used clothes to Goodwill will be written off as donations.

The desi math gene and free-time makes spouses especially well prepared for being part time tax consultants. Desis using TurboTax and those receiving a refund of less than $2,000 are considered losers.

The desi love for tax consultants is so strong that people often spend hundreds of dollars to fly to a renowned refund-maximizing consultant in a distant metropolis. This airfare is not only included as a claim but also shared among friends by efficiently batch processing their taxes.

Libertarian Milton Friedman would have been enormously proud of desi tax consultants for being able to put Uncle Sam’s hands off your dollars. If only more Americans knew!

#26 Tulips / Mustard Fields

Tulips and Windmill in Holland, MI
Originally uploaded by scott photos

Over the years, Bollywood movie directors have found innovative ways to entertain (or should I say, not-to-bore) audiences during long and recurring song-and-dance sequences. Use of tulips and mustard fields is part of the innovation.

Amitabh Bachchan’s Silsila introduced the tulip dream to Bollywood audiences. Blockbuster movie, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge striked a new cinematic high by playing a mustard variation on theme.

Ever since, millions of desis wanted to re-create those cinematic moments in their own lives, again and again. Every spring, scores of desis travel (at times, a 100 miles) to the nearest tulip festival and toil in the fields, until they run out of space on their 4GB camera memory cards.

Married couples nurture their love by reliving the cinematic glory, while single desi men forget themselves and pose for pictures amidst a sea of freshly bloomed tulips. These pictures are then uploaded to orkut after careful pruning, criteria being at least one representative photo for every tulip color.

…and guess what ? They live happily ever after !!!

#25 “I for India”

I for India
Originally uploaded by Eva the Weaver

When asked to spell their addresses or complicated Indian names on phone, desis are helpless in their choice of word for the alphabet letter “i”. It is always “I for India”.

Although, desis are homogenous in the usage, there are differences in how it is perceived. Some feel a little awkward for their unintended but spontaneous usage of “I for India”, while there are others who think it is their way of paying tribute to the country.

Like many other immigrant groups, desis have a deep rooted, lightening fast connections in their brains for the letters and the sound of India. Any print-appearances or conversation-utterances of “India” gain their immediate undivided attention.

Non-desis are advised to use “I for India” too, given the massively relocated call center industry. You’ll quickly learn it is magical, as long as you make sure not to reveal, you know it is an Indian on the other side.

#24 Chai

Afternoon Chai
Originally uploaded by Chitra Aiyer

The unanimous drink of choice for desis. Even on the hottest of summer days, a hot steaming cup of chai will go a long way in making a desi feel at home. Desis prefer to get their high on chai and so most gossip happens over a cup(s) of chai. In fact, all desi after-parties are almost always chai parties. 2 am chai is actually quite a hit. Heck, any- hour-of-the-day chai is a big hit.

In case you decide to host a chai party,here’s a friendly tip: buy lots of sugar becuase the sweeter the chai is, the sweeter the chai is. And tea bags are a strict NO. Devising a clean way to make chai is blasphemy. In the divine process of chai-brewing, desis treat the spilled milk as holy and the scattered grains of tea powder on the kitchen counter like sacred ash. Cleaning them later is your dharma.Cleaning them many weeks later will fetch you loads of good karma.

Be very mindful of the process taking anything less than an hour.Desis cringe at the very idea of bringing efficiency to the chai-brewing process. The chai must at least take as long as a three-course meal to prepare. As a result, a chai invite is tempting for a desi not just for the prospect of getting chai, but also because it allows desis to postpone the work at hand by a significant amount of time.

If you need a primer in brewing chai ask a desi who is a well acknowledged “chai expert”. Your lessons will include nuances like the number of time the chai boils over, the precise moment of adding sugar, the amount of milk to be poured, the kind of spices to add and accounting for the number of desis to be served (usually a bunch…). If you happen to ask another “chai expert” he’ll most likely tell you something completely different. In either case, contesting the “chai expert” on any count could make you very unpopular.

ps: If its a South Indian desi, simply replace chai with coffee and all else will still hold true.

## Stuff Desis Like Wins Recognition

Friedman sharing his thoughts…
Originally uploaded by Esthr

Berkeley, Apr 1: Popular amateur-anthro blog Stuff Desis Like (SDL) won wide ranging appreciation on the eve of its 12,000th visitor.

US Senator and Presidential hopeful ‘08 Barack Obama thought SDL is a remarkably progressive step in blurring the racial lines. Popular NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman said that SDL is a great effort in flattening the world full of people who are like Stuff White People Like.

Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh praised SDL’s role in raising investments in India by unifying NRIs & POIs. Former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Chandra Babu Naidu said that SDL was pivotal in fulfilling his Vision 2020.

Former cricketer Azharuddin commented that boys did a good job. Indian Railways Minister Laloo Yadav sprung up extemporaneously with a Bhojpuri haiku that this reporter found hard to translate into English.

Finally, popular Indian bloggers expressed their regret for not having recognized SDL early enough on their blogs. Readers of the blog also expressed their regret for not having posted enough comments on the posts.

 Update: April Fools

#23 ORKUT is…the Desi Hub

Orkut’s Debut to Indian Diwali - 2006
Originally uploaded by Brajeshwar

Don’t get too carried away with the title of this entry thinking that if you know a desis’ name you can easily track them on Orkut. Two major problems lie : a. Their name on Orkut is actually “HAPPY…….HOLI EVERYONE” or b. There are hundreds of other desis or communities with that name.

At the core of orkut is a vast trading network of testimonials and “fanhood”.Since desis excel at trade of any kind, they find orkut the perfect way to hone their trading and bargaining skills further.

The “Personal” profile brings out the best in desi humor with guys openly proclaiming “chests” as their best feature(!!!!) and “india versus australia” as their ideal match. Also note the subtle touch with the claim that “in my bedroom you will find” a “bed”.

Desi women usually have warning signs like “don’t scrap if you don’t know me”…..(you cheap, perverted, desi voyeur dude….). Married desi women usually put up a picture with their husbands as their profile picture or better yet of them with their babies . Single desi women are usually “here for” “friends” and have some warning sign in addition (like locked pictures). Single desi men (the suspected voyeur community) usually play it cool either with humor or with forthrightness or a combination thereof (”can’t live without:” - “food, air,water,sleep….& mom”…a dash of emotion goes a long way). If they are a rich testimonial trader, they play it ultra cool by just having the testimonials on their profile (also applicable to women).

Desi scraps on Orkut can be multilingual, single lettered, smiley based or even have some animation for that special touch. Not replying to scraps is probably the most hurtful thing you could do to a desi. In such cases, desis will not hesitate to email or call you reminding you to reply to their scrap. The only other possibly more hurtful act you can do is not join the orkut community started in their honor.

Given the desi population, it is logical for desis to believe that desis rule Orkut ( a potential source of national pride of course). But there’s a shocking twist to this tale for desis because they’ve discovered that there are more Brazilian users on Orkut than desis. This fact becomes even more disturbing when desis realize that they don’t have any of the Brazilians in their network.