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1 on the need for good scotch tonight i miss my father most and his collection of scotch you re lucky if you live far away from home and on the night before one of your many transatlantic journeys you get to speak to your father and say i d like to keep that bottle of caol ila you re luckier still if he looks at you nods and helps you roll it into two scarves and one college sweatshirt no more is said but there s a lifetime of words communicated in that simple act of a bottle being passed from father to daughter one glass baton filled with pale gold always poured into lead crystal over two cubes of ice it s my father saying here take your next few years will be some fantastic mixed with guttural lows you will embarrass yourself you will say the wrong thing and miss opportunities you will get robbed you will choose the wrong people the wrong situation the wrong underwear for the wrong job interview there is no fairy godmother no charm to place under your pillow at night your mother will be upset and there will a birthday maybe several when she will not call he never had what i have now never had at the age of twenty six the luxury of sitting on a quiet summer night out on a dark balcony sipping his parent s twelve year old single malt out of a scotch glass cut in czechoslovakia my father is a great man and a self made one everything he is now he chose to be picking and choosing from observations and conversations his longest running teachings are as follows king makers are more important than kings sometimes you have to push sometimes you have to pull carry people with you sip your scotch respect is earned the longer you make a bottle last my father never had the patience to type luxury of typing out his thoughts either has a lovely block script he uses in all official letters and forms though but he depends on oral tradition when it comes to my brother and i and though i ve stopped faking exams to get out of these phone conversations with my father they still play a poor second fiddle to actually sitting and talking with him i delete forwards from him everyday he s in the smallest of g circles and used to leave comments on my facebook pictures when i was still on there but i miss experiencing conversation with him so goddamn much i imagine the talks we d have in person now him a little more mellow me just a little older i recall all his ticks all his mannerisms the way he starts to cough if he gets into a really hearty good laugh the way he closes his eyes if he s listening to floyd elvis or zeppelin the way i can always tell when he s too busy planning a response to listen to me the way he reads my sins without hearing a single confession and humbles me with his companionable silence instead of calling me out he s no saint my father he picked up cheap luggage from a relative who bought them at moore market in madras for my first flight into the us post 9 11 despite my protests he reacted badly to every boyfriend i ve ever told them about he insists women cannot have successful families and careers and once advised me to become a dentist because it meant good money but he s my old man the one who taught me how to hustle close to seven years have passed since i last lived at home and time seems to be passing faster than ever before it s incredibly presumptuous and maybe a little conceited to speak of mortality where i am right now i ve been relatively lucky in death the ones i have lost have come back to me some other way i ve no debilitating drug habit or illness i don t drive i m on the wrong end of my mid twenties and i have yet to do my big thing my parents are getting older but then again whose aren t i miss him everyday a two year whimsical study scholarship has turned into too long i miss his smell that father smell old spice and sweat and on some evenings good whiskey i miss the sound his chappals make the way he ties his lungi effortlessly the way he cools his tea i miss my mother too but my mother does not drink this changes things slightly these things this scotch brings up two doubles are enough salt doesn t hurt an islay whiskey the current distillery built between 1972 and 1974 in the same location as the original overlooks the sea i ll need a new bottle by the year s end at which time i think i ll go home this piece was the prototype of this piece which was published by bluestem magazine for their september 2011 quarterly it s much much better trust me posted by the wizard of odd at 9 17 pm 9 comments tuesday november 23 2010 outsourced this currycature aint funny no more mama an edited version of this piece appeared in tehelka magazine vol 7 issue 47 dated november 27 2010 please visit that link for the stripped down version of this ramble as sitcom viewers we hold some truths to be self evident for instance a majority of american sitcoms are made for easy caricature with the rare exception focused on social commentary salutations larry gelbart gene reynolds and alan alda m a s h changed the lives of everyone who plugged into the star tv episode re runs in the early 1990s then rediscovered it online a few years later corollary to this truth american sitcoms made for easy caricature either provide a generation with popular catch phrases or catches flack from a key demographic of the same generation for hackneyed writing image courtesy mamapop com american television channel nbc s outsourced which premiered on september 23 2010 and was picked up for a full season a few weeks ago has been rousing mixed reactions from just such a key demographic 20 30 something american viewers including indian americans and indians currently residing in the united states most viewers have sounded off on their dislike of the show s lack of timeliness and some of its casting decisions others have commented on the refreshing presence of indians and indian themes however dated playing a main role in an american prime time show the movie this series is based on was a perfect little fairytale much like mississippi masala did in its own time 2006 s outsourced captured a certain piece of the indian american reality in our recent history with sweet detail an eventful year 2006 contained the death of syd barrett bismillah khan and pramod mahajan several members of the viriginia tech campus were killed in a tragic homicidal shooting incident movie releases included borat pirates of the carribean dead man s chest rang de basanti krrish and lage raho munnabhai the july mumbai train bombings happened as did hurricane katrina and the hanging of saddam hussein the one thread that strung 2006 through in the united states was talk of american jobs being shipped abroad and call centers was as far as american pop culture got in 2006 with indian references apart from quaint films like the guru 2002 2010 is a very different time the past few years have brought us big bang theory s raj koothrappali and his non orientalist indian grad at caltech set of indian cultural references the entire cast eats indian take out once a week except for him he detests indian food and throughout the series the viewer is aware that the other characters are well educated about koothrappali s manners and mores as well as a range of realties regarding india and the us indian diaspora russell peters is now very old hat except for those of us whose parents are just discovering facebook there is or was the guy from lost sanjaya his hair and their combined appearance on american idol slumdog millionnaire bollywood dance work out classes bikram yoga metropcs s tech and talk ad campaign harvard s professional bhangra team adiga and lahiri are only some of the more recent additions to a plethora of indian authors making a name for themselves internationally and most importantly no self respecting pop culture pulse checker has mentioned call centers in about three years quick overview of the outsourced series plot an american novelties company fires all their american staff and then outsources the sales over to an artistic postcard representation of mumbai together with a young snotty white american manager named todd dempsey ben rappaport cue the mumbai employee list rajiv the machiavellian manager one beautiful young thing in love with her traditions rebecca hazlewood s complicated british accent attempting an indian accent attempting an american accent one sexually repressed bumpkin anisha nagarajan one of the happy surprises of the show one romeo with a heart of gold sacha dhawan one socially inept outcast parvesh cheena who plays his part brilliantly and together with nagarajan is responsible for some of the only nuanced characterization in this series todd is quick to realize he needs to pick up on indian cultural realities from navigating personal space to understanding gender roles to realising that there is no such holiday as jolly vindaloo day still awake the high yawn quotient of this tired done to death plot is to an extent because todd dempsey is unlikeable from the get go portrayed as he is as a close minded white boy who s terrified of losing his job security but the show s major flaws lie less in racism and more in lazy writing outsourced s pilot took hesitant baby steps as if the cast and crew were constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure they hadn t stepped on several million brown toes across the world can this be put down to all the backlash that followed joel stein s unintentionally incendiary piece for time or do we place the script in the context of some of the reactions mr boyle s oscar winning production garnered for itself after the deadly dull pilot things did mildly improve with the first few episodes the writers didn t descend to easy tropes like spontaneous bollywood dance item number inclusions even when it may have spiked their ratings arranged marriage references only began in episode three but outsourced s todd dempsey continued to interact with a mumbai that only exists in his imagination there are no decent burgers to be had no one has ever heard of halloween yet everyone seems to take to halloween costuming in episode six like kitty party aunties to an avon demonstration and rajiv is terrified of a tiger in episode four as madhuri shekar mfa student of dramatic writing freelance writer blogger for reality rocks and a marketing and communications assistant at the university of southern california said it s set in an india that is unrecognizable the thing that most offends me is the fact that they re trying so hard not to offend it s just not funny most of the time and there s nothing edgy raw or chaotic about a sitcom that s set in india you d have to really work hard to sanitize india do we blame the inability of an american creative team to engage with the at times sordid and wholly hilarious realities in india and a contemporary juxtaposition of american and indian socio cultural realities or do we blame ourselves for having portrayed to the world that as one entire nation indians cannot take jokes made at our expense well can we laugh at ourselves as we are now or can we only laugh at the happy two dimensional clichés of ourselves that we agreed to endorse over a decade ago or is it that we are so out of touch with what it truly takes to live in urban india today that we have to wait for a book like adiga s white tiger or any movie that anurag kashyap is behind to feel comfortable commenting on all that is real and gritty about us where are the jokes about recreational drug use alcohol binges relationship hypocrisy urban angst adult boredom economic woes and general twisted humor or do we pretend that none of this exists at home india us who are privileged enough to spend time having this conversation are we so uptight that we cannot even reckon with these realities let it be said there is some fun in the outsourced scripts some winning touches include the a team call center workers who return to india after gaining us degrees to work bpo gigs for apple and microsoft who have mastered various american dialects and cult slang phrases and use them against the american manager s loyal tribe of plastic vomit pushers dempsey and a fellow expatriate charlie davis diedrich bader dancing in an indian disco for the first time davis discussing access to yankee doodle american food like smuckers jam and jiffy peanut butter and the indian manager rajiv s desperately passive aggressive comebacks are all lol worthy the writers are beginning to push the envelope using the same sunny treatment that lee and walsh have perfected in other scripts characters that don t excuse or explain themselves their awkward situations or their dystopian behavior one only hopes that the writers continue to push the limit so as to explore ideas of indian comedy that go beyond spoofs stereotypes and slapstick what is particularly upsetting about outsourced is that it could have been brilliant it could have been a moment for keen social commentary on all us everyday people both in the us and in india us still living with our parents people us saving money on rent by living with strangers people us refusing to get into the family business people us still repaying student loans people us still single because seriously are you kidding people outsourced could have been a moment for writers and audience to have the gumption and the guts to look at indians for the first time not through the lens of stereotypes but to be honest with indian idiosyncrasies whether they be indians in the united states or in india it could have finally been that big cross over moment where we all acknowledge that with torrents travel between the two countries cable tv and the internet in general the supposed distance between america and india has moved on beyond delhi belly and tech support outsourced could have been a place on tv we could finally go for gritty realistic commentary on what it takes to earn and keep a job pay bills and stay relevant to our peers in an urban indian social circle perhaps authentic storytelling can only happen when writers in india participate in the production and scripting of such shows perhaps it is finally the time for stories about contemporary india that are told internationally to be crafted produced and invested in locally there is a market we are all already here posted by the wizard of odd at 11 10 pm 0 comments wednesday august 18 2010 s k when he s frunk and no one s listening don t give them a name don t associate a song with them especially the classics not the who not that one mother love bone song not joplin don t leave them voicemail don t take souvenirs do not dream do not dream do not dream and if you must write at all write words filled with bone shards so they ll be looking over their shoulder forever posted by the wizard of odd at 10 11 pm 2 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom friends writers countrymen and women sharanya manivannan sharanya manivannan long bio 2 years ago zigzackly this side now 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