Tag: culture

One City, many versions

Elsewhere on this blog I’ve talked about race, social class, and the various nationalities in the country where I live – like any country – where people gravitate towards their own. There are always many versions of the cities we live in. If you visit Washington, D.C. and never go beyond the capital area or Georgetown, you’ve missed most of the city. Same of New York, or Doha.

This is perhaps best seen in Qatar during Ramadan. The Muslim community rejoices at this time of discipline because it isthe holiest month of their year (hence the tagline Holy month of Ramadan). They don’t eat or drink during they day but the evenings are full of socializing, visiting, and feasting. Many speak critically of the lavishness of the modern day meals post the breaking of fast iftar, or footor, as it’s know in the Gulf. After the dates and laban to ease the empty palate, there is a spread of food that seems far from the poverty and poor that Ramadan calls people to reflect upon.

In the non-Muslim community the reaction is usually an awareness of lack because all the restaurants, eateries, and entertainment outlets such as movies and bowling alleys are closed in solidarity with the community. No alcohol is served in the country, even at the hotels which normally function as evening waterholes. The line at the QDC, the national liquor vendor, snakes through the parking lot to the main road as drinkers prepare for a month of closure as though hibernating. Expats grumble about the traffic, about the lack of a secular culture which keeps conveniences closed to them

All of these sundry complaints I contemplated during my first Ramadan in a Muslim country (Ramadan, Alchol, and life in a Muslim country"): http://mohanalakshmi.livejournal.com/2097.html)

This year what strikes me are the different attitudes to the shortened workday – six hours as published by the state – are also telling. Many of the Western professionals do not take advantage of the fact their companies have to abide by the six hour work day.

"I have too much work to do," is usually the reason.

"Meetings would get scheduled at 4pm and then what?" is another.

The facts don’t faze people in these instances. Two less hours in a work day can not grind down the forward motion of civilization, can it? Isn’t this time we normally spend on Facebook or gasp, reading blogs, buying books on Amazon.com or eating lunch?

Those who are hardened by what I can only surmise as the Protestant work ethic are chained to their desks despite the fact this is only for a month, not a life style. Such trained contributors, they can’t pry themselves way.

More the pity them.

Because of me, those two hours are spent catching up with friends who are otherwise too busy in the course of the year to stop and chat, or writing, exercising, or any number of things I put off because I’m too busy.

This year during Ramadan as the entire country pauses in a matrix of cultural, social, and religious reflection, a friend and I challenged each other to write that one genre that we admittedly find beneath us but generates big bucks for other authors without such standards.

For me, I’m delving into romance. For her, chick lit.

You now know how I will be spending my extra two hours.

 

Loose Lips

Imagine my surprise last evening when despite having said eight times, "I’m sorry" did not placate the individual who was upset by a verbal slight earlier. That an off hand remark could cause someone so much anguish was news to me — particularly because this was in a professional context and what I had said was not an insult but merely a conclusion based on miscommunication.

For a moment during this protracted back and forth I was angry at the fact my company doesn’t have anyone but me to fall back. I was very aware of my own frailty and the reason why teams of one — although at times productive — are never a good idea. I roasted in my own guilt because the individual was so upset his eyes were teary, his connection to logic undermined, and his blatant refusal to accept my apology underscored by his insistence that he was insulted.

I ran it through my mind a couple of times. What else could I have done? Nothing, besides having kept my mouth shut in the first place which is always a hindsight is 20/20 mind numbing moment.

"Loose lips sink ships," my father said often during my childhood, a lover of cliches.

Truly rattled I shared the incident in private with another individual at the event, puzzling out what else I could have offered.

"They would have never brought it up if you weren’t Indian," she said, a fellow Indian, like me, like the two men in question. Her comment was a crystallizing moment for me because I knew that there was something else going on during the twenty minutes we tried to resolve the perceived insult that I couldn’t quite get my finger on.

This morning, another friend, an Australian this time, confirmed the prior night’s diagnosis. And I realized how trapped we can be by our cultural expectations, whether we want to or not, whether we acknowledge them or not.

I kept reflecting because I couldnt’ let this one go. The men had been just too upset – as though I had questioned their faithfulness to their religion. Gender could have been a possible added layer: they were male, I was female. My offhand comment may not have been the issue at all but the timing of it: he approached me in front of a table of women and I had said "You’re late."

This was the offending phrase because he wasn’t late, apparently, but thirty minutes early according to the time I’d  advertised but unbeknownst to me, on time according to someone else’s request. Twenty minutes of apologies later, he would not be assuaged and I nothing left to say (which I said as much).

I gave them two options: accept the apology, or move on. Really it was a combo offer, I suppose.

They did neither – they left.

For the future I will both keep my mouth shut and also make sure we are clear as to what time people are expected to show up.
 

A new character.. but will he be lovable?

Elsewhere I’ve posted about writing and this is the month I’m getting really serious about my novel. This is the fifth and final draft. It’s true what everyone says: with your first novel you keep tweaking it because it keeps getting better.

Last week, just when I was about to give up in despair, I had a helpful coffee with a fellow writer friend. She helped me add some complication to a plot that was sounding as staid and boring as tomorrow’s soap opera episode: Insert title of American, Egyptian, or Turkish soap here.

I haven’t yet written the scenes so I will keep it under wraps for now. But suffice to say this article in THE INDEPENDENT confirmed the introduction of my new character/plot line!

Have any thoughts of your own on English men and romance? Am fact piling….

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/english-men-are-useless-ndash-and-heres-the-tv-series-to-prove-it-838879.html