I Cheat Therefore I Am

To the comments of ahmirza, you sound pretty naive to me. Please don`t critize for the sake of writing something or anything. If you don`t feel part of the `desi` group, then you aren`t. And the name mentioned is an alias. get it? Names on the net don`t mean anything, as there can be no confirmation. Why are you still stuck up with the notion of names? Still slave to the idea of `names` and their importance in society?

As many have mentioned, this piece only points out some very common incidents, that happen all the time in western geographic location `Desis` reside. It has its exeptions, but still this article is not totally untrue. Living in a university, and then a desi concentrated area of Chicago, I have witnessed many myself.

For eg. Does any one know why credit card calling is banned in Devon/Rogers Park neighborhood of North Side Chicago? Take a guess!

Two thumbs up dude! I see many of your readers are

pretty angry. I`m not in total agreement with u but taste of a reality check doesn`t bother me too much and I`m not insecure enough to start yelling at you. Keep it up.

I think everyone needs to ``chill`` as they say. What Suds has written is merely an exaggerated truth. A writer should get at least that much literary freedom. Regardless, I think all of us are mature and intelligent enough to draw our own conclusions, no?

As for Desis and cheating, I think enough of us have witnessed examples of what is mentioned in the article. To be in denial means to never address the problem.

Witty piece! And Suds, we have a Honda Odyssey if you wish to take a test drive :)

All the best,

Futema

Poor article. Apparently written without much thought. A jumbled representation of his/her confused mind.

``Buying a car under the invoice price is orgasmic for us``

May have been more interesting if it was written in the first person singular.

What kind of name is Suds Jiff?

See the problem is the concept of being a DESI. It comes with the territory. From the time you are born, in a society the one which exist around us you are forced to ``survive`` rather then ``live``.

The society exist and whose fault is it is unclear. Every body can blame any body. When you are forced to survive rather live you do not think about the nice values and other fancy concept. Your parents have to feed you by any means what so ever. It is not so easy to survive, but is rather very easy to blame.

Scorpion

I trust Suds is speaking for himself and does not presume to speak for the billion-plus good people of the sub-continent.

Thats it..!!! I am selling my Nissan Quest..!!

Glad you said it not me. Loved your comment about deodarent! Hilarious, yaar.

Can I be a Desi too?

Re: ZZ009

Ooooo ... I`m shaking in my shoes. Sounds like a self-righteous desi in complete denial. Do you lift weights? Then I`d be extra-scared. I better hop into my Honda Odyssey (my dream minivan folks) and cruise away ....

Re: Pat Shah

Yup, you are right about me committing ``slimy things``. Penance? To who? You? Hahahaha!

I DO NOT agree with this fool ``SUDS`` coz you cannot generalize all the desis just by considering only a few of them. I know many Goras, Kalus, etc pulling the same scams and stuff. And I do not appreciate you, dissing desis on the net. Personally if i knew who you are and if I see on the streets..... I will WHOOP your ass boy!!!!!and this aint no joke.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, but I did get the sickening feeling that the author actually has done a lot of slimy things. Yuck! Hope you know how to do penance!

Just a suggestion:

Buy a Nissan Quest and you will automatically be awarded the desi status.:)

Very Negative thoughts. There might be few desis who are cheating but a great majority are hardworking and intelligent. I totally disagree with the author.

-Asfand Yar Siddiqui

Re: AD #104

Gandhi`s call for civil disobedience, etc, were completely irrelevant in that the British left because they were exhausted after WWII and the new Labour government was much more concerned with building its version of a modern welfare state in England. The British Empire, at least the metropole component of it, was completely exhausted and virtually bankrupt.

The entire gold reserves had been transferred to the US during WWII and the home country owed the US and the white dominions a massive war debt. Between the casualties of WWII, its cost, the debt burden, and the general exhaustion, India simply was not worth the bother. Don`t forget, basic rationing of food items continued all through the end of the 1940s in the UK and some items were rationed as late as the early 1950s. As late as the end of the 1950s, large-scale bomb damage was still visible in large parts of London: that is, the capital of the greatest empire history has ever known was still not fully repaired ten years after the war was over.

As far as Churchill is concerned, he was not PM when India was given its independence. Perhaps if he was still PM, i.e., Labour had not won in 1945, in 1947, then things might have been different. But don`t forget, there were mutinies among the BRITISH troops in India (the RAF, I believe) when their transfer back to the UK was delayed by a few weeks. The British had simply, for a time, lost the will to keep their empire. All they wanted was to be shed of the British Indian Empire as fast as they could. It is less than edifying to our colective self-esteem but our, and your, ``Freedom Fighters`` did not win our Independence from the British. The group of Britishers then in power decided that it was not worth the trouble.

If the British had decided to stay on in power and rule by force, I have no doubt that they could have managed. The key to the situation was the Army and the Army, being Punjabi, was loyal as long as the Punjab was loyal. During WWII, out of 2.5 million men in the Army, the largest all-volunteer force in history, about 2/3 were, I believe, Punjabi (Sikh, PM and Hindus). Things only got bad once the British made it clear to all and sundry that they were indeed going to leave. Then, loyalty to the Raj became pointless.

I once asked some uncles of mine who were in the Army in WWII what the Army would have done if the British had decided to use it to put down rebellions/civil-disobedience in India. Their unanimous response was that as long as it wasn`t used in the Punjab, the loyalty of the Army would not have wavered.

So sorry to disillusion you old boy, but no go. The freedom movement was not the key factor in Indian independence.

Suds Jiff, you`re all right.

I should`ve realized from the original nature of your pseudonym that you`re not just ANY Chowk writer with a pseudonym - the creativity conveys a sound mind. I don`t disagree with your responses. Russians are probably the real desis. BTW, if you`re ever in the mood, walk down Mem drive and cross Longfellow bridge to MGH; there`s a lovely Turkish cafe on Cambridge street that serves the best adana kabab. The meal will be on me.

Osama:
I appreciate your lengthy response, but what are you really saying ? If it`s not genetic and it`s not environmental, what is it then that makes us so ... desi ?

saad shafqat

Another hasty, caustic and insubstantial reply, Mr. Shafqat.

First off, no one is saying that desis are genetically pre-disposed towards cheating. Nor that they are the ONLY ones doing it. Nor in fact is the author looking down on desis for cheating - by his own admission he does not mind at all being exactly like that. Where is the Self-hate? Nor could I discern from this essay that the author is a liberal (``for the anally politically correct`` sounds a very Republican sentiment to me). You may be basing that judgment on his other essay but then that simply makes it an irrelevant jibe.

In ponderous words, you have repeated en-masse the arguments being made elsewhere here: that it is circumstances/environment (historical./present) etc. that contribute to these tendencies. And that these same factors contribute to the other third-worlder`s similar behaviour (vs. first world citizens).

Now most of us have NOT grown up in PIB Colony on Honda Bikes but we still have a lax attitude towards rules/systems/civic sense/ethics. Most of the cheating desis have not known the abject and oh-so-admirably-ennobling poverty you talk of - certainly not first-hand. For many it is a thrill to find a loop-hole, break the system even when the gains are minimal. No, it certainly is not as simple as: all desis had to do this to survive and now they cannot break out of this habit. And no, your hypothesis that a gora tranferred to PIB would do the same, is not spot on. Put the Gora in Defence or KDA or PECHS: the result may not be as predictable as you state.

I Grant that even the more fortunate from back home have lived surrounded by - if protected from - an unjust/impoverished environment. To escape the injustices/inconveniences, we had to at times beat the system. But it was not (at least not constantly) a survival issue. Yes, our society has a lot to do with who we are now (what a revelation!) But so do we and our next of kin.

And that is what you are missing from your ``analysis``. You are making it out to be an epidemic unwillingly LEARNT from our system, our experiences in that environment. But it is NOT limited to that. It is also what is TAUGHT in that system. And more than that it is also what is NOT TAUGHT in that system.

We and our families are not purely helpless victims of our gora-oppressed, impoverished and wicked society. We ARE capable and so we are culpable. Our parents and relations and friends are also culpable. When you temper plagiarism with a smile - when you dont even recognize plagiarism on seeing it. When you find humour in ``kisee ko bay waqoof banaa na``. When you place far more stress on rituals and histories than on values and ethical codes. When you dont believe in the bind of a verbal promise. When you respect (out of fear) people who have power and not those who have integrity. When you mock idealism. When you pretend to understand world economics. When you foster petty competitions by complyingg with or setting up petty social stratifications. When you savor one-upmanship. Hypocrisy, laziness, superficial label/power/name/glory chasing are not tools indispensable to survival; these are personal traits and personal choices that we pass to our children.

Suds article correctly described the symptoms and never declared with a swagger that an analysis was included. Your reply did and you came well short.

On the question of anonymity (on which point, you, with admirable courage call the author a coward) for most on Chowk, Suds is as anonymous or revealing as Sid or Saad or Saeed. There are not many people here on Chowk who know another Chowkwala in real life. To that extent all are anonymous here no matter what their name sounds like. As far as taking responsibility for your words goes, that does not require a real name or a false, real-sounding name. It simply requires one name, one avatar. Cowardly hiding behind anonymity is when you use 3 or 4 different personas and express insincere opinions from behind whichever one makes more sense.

Using your real name is your choice. It tells the handful of people who know you and visit Chowk what you think. They may laud you as brave and courageous. To the thousands of others, it makes you no braver or more craven. Similarly those who dont want to reveal all beliefs to their Chowk-dwelling acquaintances are, to the rest of us, no more brave or cowardly than those who make themselves know to their private off-line circle.

There are a few who are capable of bold, original thinking (much of the present company excluded). That talent is dangerous. It would not be brave but fool-hardy to use your real name when stating such thoughts. Those of us who do not have such a capacity don`t have any sympathy for such a dilemma either.

By the way, most of us do not have to get within a 100 miles of a business school to know that ``to understand a flaw you must seek why it exists``. The problem is that even after spending 100`s of days within a business school one may not have learnt how to reliably/fully trace out the true causes of social phenomena. But thank you for the Maoism: I will always remember that ``to understand (why) a flaw (exists) you must seek why it exists``.


Osama Ahmed

PS: Btw, thanks Suds (or Sids or Saads or whatever your names is) for a good read.