Vignettes

Summer was waited for eagerly here in Jersey. Sunday was June 21, the solstice day when summer is officially supposed to begin. Of course when you are from India you really don’t need a day in the calendar to tell you that summer has arrived. The first drop of sweat that falls from the forehead in mid to late March is enough. However, here, in cold and damp Jersey (it rained all of the last week with a thunderstorm thrown in between), they can be allowed to be romantic about the sun. Temperatures in the summer barely cross 30 degrees Celsius. For the American it’s warm, for an Indian its heaven. The one difference here though is the sharpness of the sunlight, particularly the post rain sun. I have been advised repeatedly to use a sun screen. Considering it too feminine, I desisted; was advised again and finally bought one from a Wal-Mart. Since then, only once did the weather and my work schedule given me the opportunity to apply it on the weekend.

Americans might end up screwing up wars and their foreign policy but the one thing they get right with deadly accuracy every day is their weather predictions. So much so that there is a dedicated weather channel, called ‘The Weather Channel’ (TWC). Newspapers carry detailed forecasts every day and TWC and its affiliate websites carry hourly forecasts as well. Most people are simply interested in knowing whether their weekends would be sunny. The weather guys may not be able to give sunny weekends but they do give the right forecasts. During all of my stay here, not once have they got it wrong. The weather channel in itself is an interesting concept. I caught a live telecast the other evening from Nebraska where a tornado/ twister was rummaging its way through an open field. The weather channel correspondent had found a convenient spot far away at the edge of the road and was shouting excitedly in the mike. Indian reporters get this excited only when the government has fallen or if they have seen Shah Rukh Khan. I wonder if anyone has thought of a weather channel in India. Give the multiplicity of floods and cyclones we have every year, there will be plenty to cover. The tragedy of the weather disasters may get lost on them but our channels would surely provide us with much comic relief.

If you thought that right wing fundamentalism and violence is an exclusive Indian phenomenon, then think again. Over the last month or so violent attacks by individuals attached to or proclaiming right wing conservative ideologies have seen a sharp rise. Last week a pro-Nazi, holocaust denying 88 year old barged into the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. and killed a security guard before being overpowered himself. A week before that a prominent doctor who ran an abortion clinic and provided late term abortions was shot outside a church in Wichita, Kansas. Abortion providing doctors in urban centers like Chicago have also complained of their clinics being picketed and their staff threatened with dire consequences (Abortion perhaps is to the American right wing what Conversion is to the Indian right wing). The Wichita murder drew applause from far right groups who are anti-abortion. Some of the leaders of such groups claimed that the murderer had served god by eliminating a ‘child killer’. These incidents had the saner television channels (excluding Fox of course that is more right wing than the right wingers themselves) debating whether America was tolerating too much of ‘Domestic Terrorism’. Part of the reason for the growing activism of the fringe groups is the current predicament of the mainstream political right wing conservative formation – the Grand Old Republican party (GOP). After its drubbing in the last elections in November, the GOP has stumbled from one embarrassment to another. It is groping for a leader and an issue to take on Obama. John McCain, perhaps the most balanced figure in their ranks, is now moving towards the sunset of his political career. The party has faced one embarrassment after another – today the Governor of South Carolina, someone who was close to clinching the Vice-Presidential nomination last year and was thought to be a potential Presidential candidate for 2012, came out after a week of absence. His staff had been explaining to the press that the Governor was out hiking on the east coast while the man in question was in Buenos Aires to carry out a clandestine affair. He is the second Republican office holder to come out in the open in the last couple of months admitting an extra-marital affair. The extent of the chaos in the GOP can be realized from the fact that their most public face these days is Sarah Palin. She has been seen at fundraisers, commemorative functions for Ronald Reagan (where she spoke a speech plagiarized from a text written by another Republic leader) and has been picking a fight with the late night host David Letterman for cracking jokes at his daughter. In many ways, the GOP is facing the same predicament that the BJP faces in India. There is the burden of an electoral defeat, lack of clear leadership and absence of direction.

America is a country of extra large sizes. The smallest size is large. At lunch I have to implore the servers to give me a ‘small’ serving. Half of the small glass of coffee or tea that I take goes waste because it is, well too large. Some of the sizes of the soft drink glasses at fast food outlets are obnoxious. I am not sure the Americans see it but outsiders do. My sister in law, a Canadian, was quick to point out the consequences of such huge servings, ‘That’s why so many people in this country are obese’. One place where the Americans understand the meaning of small are the hair salons. I only had to say three words to the barber, ‘Short, really short’ and I was out in 15 minutess with a very satisfying haircut. Only if they appreciated small elsewhere. 

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