Snarky Repartee

First of all, apologies about the broad generalization, but this something that has been bugging me for a while and I just want to vent. I love to eat all types of food and love to try out new things from different cultures. So far I have spent about six months in the US and have enjoyed being able to buy jicama and rosemary and miso and steaks and fish sauce all in my local supermarket. I’ve also enjoyed exploring wonderful restaurants both in a big city and a small one. I’m back home in Chennai now for a three week or so vacation. Yesterday the extended family and some friends went to lunch at a local Indian restaurant. Observing me attacking the food with gusto, my uncle asks "So _______, enjoying the food after all the inedible stuff in the US?" It was a rhetorical question so no answer was required, thankfully. Seriously, is it so hard to believe that there are good things to eat outside the Indian subcontinent and that Indians don’t have a monopoly on being able to cook?

This attitude is pretty pervasive. If you were to randomly sample a number of Indians about what kind of food they preferred, by far the most common answer would be Mom’s food. Which is all fine and dandy, I’m glad you love your mom’s food so much. But the flip side of this is that Indians are very suspicious of foreign food. I remember once when my parents and I were thinking about booking a trip to Europe or South America with a tour group. The big selling point of these tour groups seemed to be that they would provide "Indian meals" for lunch or dinner and sometimes both. I mean, WTF? Why would you want to travel halfway across the world only to eat the same dal-chawal you would have back home? But I honestly feel that this would be thought of as a plus by most Indians, who absolutely hate to have unfamiliar foods presented to them. The same uncle and his wife travelled through Europe with a rice-cooker and a case full of pickles and powders and that was what they mainly ate.

Despite having a fairly conservative population when it comes to food (and other matters too, but that’s another post), Chennai manages to sustain a handful of excellent non-mainstream restaurants that cater mainly to the expat community. For example, an amazing Japanese restaurant — Akasaka — and a wonderful Korean one named In Seoul. I have tried to persuade my non-vegetarian friends and family to come to Akasaka in the past, with me footing the bill. Their attitude is almost invariably something like "Raw fish!!!! EEEK!" I then explain that they really don’t have to eat the sushi and sashimi if they don’t want to and that there’s plenty of "cooked" food that they could eat there. Still no luck. The other day my parents, I and some family friends went to In Seoul for dinner. One of them announced loudly that he was not eating anything and reacted with disgust to every offer of food from what we ordered. It was more than a little irritating.

This may seem like a small thing to get worked up about, but it saddens me to see the self-righteous way in which most Indians insist that that Indian food is the best of all. Why even try to experience other foods, when we’ve got the best right here? I don’t even think that it’s a particularly South Indian characteristic, witness this hilarious and all too familiar post on Jabberwock. The whole post is wonderful but I’ll just quote a particularly juicy excerpt:

“Frankly speaking,” the chap then said, in the tone often employed by people who use that phrase (and “to be honest” and others such) as if they are about to bestow a hitherto undisclosed Indubitable Truth on the world, “nothing can compare with our Indian food. Even people who come to India for the first time from other countries forget about their own food after tasting our home-made cooking.”

All of this would be perhaps bearable if I weren’t also subjected to the self-righteous moralizing of people who refuse to be open to new food. There is this weird assumption that certain kinds of food are unclean and that the people eating them must be unclean too. I remember my shock when I heard a classmate of mine dismiss all Chinese people as dirty panni-eating (pig-eating) creatures. Since I happened to love eating all forms of pork products, I couldn’t help but take this personally.

Maybe such an attitude shouldn’t come as a surprise after reading this fascinating little article in the Hindu about the Indian responses to the 2007 Global Attidudes Survey recently carried out by the Pew Foundation. Respondents were asked whether they agreed with the statement, "our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others." Perhaps, Indians topped the list in agreeing with this statement, with a staggering 93%!

The comments by Madaha here brought back a couple of math-related memories that I want to share here. So flashback to the 11th grade again, in my new hypercompetitive school, where I’m taking a while to adjust and not doing great in the weekly exams etc. At the same time though, I’m learning an immense amount and am in some ways enjoying this really challenging environment. Now the state we lived in put out a magazine meant mainly for math teachers and school students where they showcased interesting theorems or techniques. It was a fairly low-budget affair but quite enjoyable. So my then best friend (and later ex-boyfriend) N and I decided to write a small article for the magazine because we believed, in our naivete, that we had found a new way to prove Euler’s formula.

However misguided this may have been, the article we submitted generated enough interest on the part of the editor of the magazine that he decided to come down and speak to us at the school. So of course he contacted our math teacher — let’s call her U. Now U was a perhaps well-intentioned person, but her way of teaching was to terrorize everyone she believed was stupid, while those who were deemed intelligent enough were often given a free pass on homework. N was one of U’s favorite students. After being contacted by the magazine editor, U asks N to come meet her after school and they have the following conversation:

U: So I see that you and ____ have decided to write an article together.

N: Yes, ma’am, we did.

U: So why did you decide to write the article with her? Is she really that intelligent? (Notice too the subtle way in which U dismisses any possibility that the idea for the article could have been mine.)

N(slightly shocked): Yes, ma’am she is very intelligent.  

U: Hmmph. Well, there’s no point in being intelligent if no one else knows it.  

Once N got home, he called me up and recounted this conversation to me. I don’t recall my reaction to it exactly, except that I felt quite angry and told the whole thing to my parents, who were quite as angry as me about it.

Fast forward one year and it was time for the annual Olympiad examinations. While I participated in all the Olympiads, I’ll just discuss the Math Olympiad here. I had written the Olympiad preliminary examinations the previous year but had not understood most of the paper. It was a testament to how much I learnt during that one year that what had seemed gibberish then now seemed quite understandable. Now to understand this anecdote you also to have understand the complicated structure of the Math Olympiad examinations in that state. At the very highest level we had the International Math Olympiad with participants from all over the world. Below that level was the Indian National Math Olympiad with students from all over India. In order to be allowed to write the INMO one had to get a high enough rank in the Regional Math Olympiad. There were two ways in which one could be allowed to write the RMO: 1) There was a preliminary examination held at school — let’s call it Exam A. Students who did well enough in this exam were allowed to write another exam — let’s call it Exam B. If they did well enough in Exam B, they were allowed to write the RMO. 2) Schools were allowed to nominate 4 students who would be allowed to write an Exam C. If they did well enough in Exam C, they would be allowed to write the RMO. Whew!

So all the interested students from my school sat down to write Exam A. I immediately noticed something interesting about the scoring structure. Each question had four multiple choice options. If we got a question right, we got 1 point and if we got it wrong 1/4 of a point was deducted. It doesn’t take a lot of math to figure out that if we were to randomly answer every question, we would get 1 question right out of every four = 1 point - 3(1/4) points = 1/4 point for every four questions. That doesn’t sound like a lot but I decided that my best strategy would be to ignore that there was negative marking at all and just answer the exam as though there were no penalties for wrong answers. The questions were mainly interesting number theory problems and geometrical questions. I really really suck at geometry. I decided that my best bet, since I was planning on answering every question anyway, was to use a piece of paper to approximate the lengths that we were supposed to figure out and whittle down the number of possible answers and then guess.

Well guess what? My strategies/dirty tricks paid off and I found that I had been selected to write Exam B. So had three other students, all boys. Now it was the custom of the school to nominate whoever scored the highest in Exam A to write Exam C. But surprise, surprise, this year U decided to break with that tradition and nominated N to write Exam C instead of me. I was really really angry. I think I would have made a bigger fuss than I did (which was none at all) if N had not been my best friend and hadn’t been preparing for this exam for years. In any event, I managed to clear Exam B, so was allowed to write the RMO, while N did not manage to clear Exam C. Ha to you, U. Preparing to write the RMO was an experience in itself — the school got a local math prof to give us preparatory classes. He informed me that in all his years performing this function I was the first girl to reach this level. Well no wonder really, with people like U making the decisions. I ended up not doing that well in the RMO (one the reasons was that the RMO happened to be held on the same day as our school’s fairwell party and I had to write the exam wearing a sari — not recommended). But I’m still glad I got that far.

I have to say, I really really liked the movie. I was pretty apprehensive going in, knowing how badly most good books are translated into movies, but was pleasanty surprised. The acting was superb — I read something about Lyra Belacqua not being as headstrong and fearless in the movie as in the book but I actually thought Dakota Blue Richards was a very convincing Lyra. Nicole Kidman was a chilling Mrs. Coulter. The special effects and cinematography were breathtaking. I had only one major problem with the movie.  

(SPOILER ALERT)

One of the really wonderful things about the book is how no character is completely bad or good. The movie manages to do away with this welcome ambiguity. In the book, the Master of Jordan College is shown trying to poison Lord Asriel, while in the movie the poisoner is an agent of the Magisterium. The book’s portrayal of Mrs. Coulter is also more nuanced than the movie’s. My boyfriend, who has never read the books and who watched the movie with me, was flabbergasted when she saves Lyra in one of the closing scenes of the movie. I don’t recall feeling any such surprise while reading the book, because it was made clear that however a evil a person she might be, she truly loves Lyra and never treats her with anything but kindness. There was the occasional scolding, but nothing like the manhandling of Lyra’s daemon shown in the movie. Finally, Lord Asriel himself. I’m not sure why exactly they decided to omit Lord Asriel’s betrayal at the end of the book, but I suspect it is to give the movie a happy ending. This may also be why they decided not to show the Master of Jordan trying to poison Lord Asriel, because this is one the first clues that Lord Asriel may not be as good as Lyra believes him to be.

 The movie felt a lot more rushed than the book did, but that is an inevitable result of trying to condense such a complex book into a few hours of family entertainment. I think they actually did a pretty good job of explaining the twists and turns of the plot. My boyfriend had no problem understanding the movie and seems to like it as much as I do.

 I’m truly surprised at the poor ratings this movie got. The books are a tough act to follow, but this movie was beautiful.

This question on Ask Metafilter really struck a chord with me. Brief synopsis of the situation (though you should really click through and read the whole thing): The question-asker is an American woman with a boyfriend who comes from a traditional Latin family. She and her boyfriend are invited to spend Thanksgiving with the boyfriend’s family. Boyfriend tells her that in his family, on Thanksgiving, it is traditional for the women to get the men’s plates of food before they get their own. He wants her to do the same in order for him to not lose face with his family. She also says that he has sometimes said that he would like her to do the cooking when they eventually live together, but that since she loves cooking she hadn’t been very bothered by it.

I was really surprised and a little shocked at the kind of responses this question elicited. While there were plenty of people who realised the slippery slope nature of the situation, many people seemed to think it was no big deal — after all, what’s the big deal about getting a plate of turkey for your boyfriend? I think I could even have understood this attitude if the boyfriend had said something like, "I think this is a really stupid custom, sweetie, but could you please just do this, just this once?", but there seems to be no realisation on the boyfriend’s part that this is a degrading tradition at all. There were several people who felt that were the situation reversed the boyfriend would have had no problem getting her plate of food for her. But honestly, these are not analogous situations — women getting food for the men before their own says something about the attitude of the family, and perhaps the boyfriend, regarding the domestic roles of men and women. Add to this the fact that he seems to expect her to do the cooking when they live together and a lot of alarm bells are ringing for me. It’s also worrying that the boyfriend values not being embarrassed in front of his family over sticking up for his girlfriend and her values. That says a lot to me. The other thing that seemed to come up again and again was that the women in the culture that the boyfriend comes from don’t mind doing this for the men in their life and that we should respect their traditions. First of all, how do you know? Have you asked them? Very often the most vocal members of a culture are the men, who are perfectly happy to see the misogynistic traditions of their culture upheld. That really doesn’t mean that every member of that culture feels the same way. I hate it when people regard a foreign culture as a monolithic block. Secondly, the woman asking the question is not of that culture and however the women of the boyfriend’s family regard the tradition, it is clear that she not comfortable taking part in it. Why should anything else be relevant?

One of the things that I have always loved about my own parents’ relationship is that they present a very united front. If my dad’s parents were to ask my mom to do something like this (though they never would) my dad would make it clear to them that this was not acceptable. In fact, my dad’s family (apart from his parents themselves) is a pretty traditional one. At family gatherings it’s pretty usual for all the female relatives to go away to the kitchen and cook the meal, yet I have never once seen my mother do this, nor have I ever seen a fuss being made about it. While this is probably mostly due to the fact that they’re really polite people, I’m sure it’s also because my father’s first priority is my mother (and vice-versa). He would never ask her to do something just to save face in front of his family, especially something she considers demeaning.

I’m sure just about everyone has heard about this by now, but here are James Watson’s recent comments at the Royal Society in London:

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

This honestly comes as no great surprise. Ever since reading about the shabby way in which Watson treated Rosalind Franklin in Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, I have had scant respect for him. I am tired of seeing him defended as someone who is willing to make politically incorrect speeches. I really don’t get this. Saying that black people are unintelligent and women who are carrying babies who have a "homosexual gene" should be  allowed to abort them is somehow courageous? Reinforcing biases that already exist about groups of people is in no way courageous. He has made similar comments about the intelligence of women in the past, but apparently people aren’t as terribly shocked by that notion, for they received far less publicity. The worst thing about such comments is that the fact that he’s such a respected scientist validates these ideas. There are plenty of scientists working in the field who are far better qualified to comment on these ideas. I fully support Watson’s freedom of speech to say whatever he wants, but I disagree strongly that he should have been allowed to keep his job at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. There’s no way to know what unsaid assumptions most people in such positions of power hold, but now that we know what Watson thinks I really feel that he shouldn’t be in a position to affect the lives of people whom he seems to hold in such contempt.

Via Feministing, I learnt that this year, girls won the first prizes in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, in both the individual and team categories. That’s really awesome news. So there, Larry Summers. It always irritates me when guys try to use innate differences between men and women to explain away the huge gap between the number of men and women pursuing academic careers. Whatever such differences may be, they are completely insignificant compared to the far fewer opportunities women are offered and the pressure on them to be good wives and mothers above all else.

All this reminds me of my own experiences in high school in India, trying to establish myself in a new school full of very conservative, highly intelligent, extremely motivated students. Until the 10th grade, I went to a very easy-going school, where studying for about half an hour before an exam was enough to do well.  To be suddenly plonked down in this new school, with a different syllabus altogether, and a very different breed of student, was not at all an easy experience. I would do it all again though, because it gave me the confidence to know that I could survive no matter how difficult the environment and taught me the math and science skills I draw upon every day today.

Things were really bad at first. I bombed on the exams that whole first term and I am sure that most of my teachers were convinced that I was a dunderhead. The gender dynamics in that school were really screwed up. Boys and girls rarely talked to each other in school. Even at that age, the boys studying science far outnumbered the girls, while the reverse was true for accounting and finance. While teachers valued and praised the boys who were whip-smart and could solve a problem before anyone else, the only girls who seemed to be held in any sort of esteem by teachers were the "good" ones, who were docile, did what they were told and could be relied upon to babysit the class on the teacher’s day off. 

I remember the day I first heard about the Intel Science Talent Discovery Fair. Of course the school being what it was, I did not hear about it directly, but a rumor passing around the class that our chemistry teacher had asked two of her favorite students to prepare a project for entry in the fair. These students were, of course, boys. She even had the project they could do all picked out and had arranged with nearby institutes of higher learning for her students to conduct their experiments there. I remember seething inwardly at the unfairness of it all. Who was my chemistry teacher to decide who was worthy of creating such a project? I remember the biology class we had that day very clearly. Biology was by no means my favorite class at school. My biology teacher was a well-meaning and good-natured woman whose idea of teaching a class was to read from our textbook in a droning, monotonous voice. In this class she went up several points in my estimation, by first telling us about the upcoming competition and asking us to come and discuss any ideas we might have with her. Finally, someone who was willing to take a chance on us poor stupid people.

I wish I could say that I thought about possible ideas for a long time and carefully considered all the alternatives before plumping for one project. In reality, the day before the deadline for project proposal submission my dad and I came up with the idea of measuring pollution levels using some sort of bio-indicator. Some frenzied Googling later, I had decided upon my project. A few weeks later we got the happy news — my project, as well as three others from my school had been selected to proceed to the next stage of the competition — the regional finals.

I had a lot of fun doing that project. Peering through a microscope at tiny little pollen grains, travelling around the city to collect samples from the various pollution monitoring centers around the city, taking photographs, making a poster. In the end, both I, and another of the students our biology teacher had mentored got to go onto the next stage of the competition, the national finals, while the team that our chemistry teacher had handpicked did not make it. I’ve always seen it as a vindication of my biology’s teacher’s methods — offering guidance to any student who wanted to participate, not making the whole competition a semi-secret hush-hush thing and allowing students complete freedom to choose what the wanted to do. In the end, both I and the guy who also made it lost in the national finals, but the whole thing generated enough cred to make school much more bearable from then on.