Inexplicable Firangi Obsessions

There are no greater chroniclers of the self than the white professional classes, so any thoughts on them are more or less superfluous. Don’t bother for they have already thought of it.

Nevertheless some of the culture here is so bemusing to me that I thought I would post on it anyway. A purely random list that is entirely incomplete follows.

Like going to yoga class and finding that it’s not sufficient to turn up in your old salwar kameez as you may do back home. No there is gear to be bought - sans lady fitting lycra and de rigeur mat you are like a fresh off the boat rustic. And the conformity of the group is such that the salwar kameez doesn’t even provide a respectable cloak of authenticity. Authenticity is also not helped by the fact that most girls are better than you at yoga. Of course even before you get the gear, you have to choose from a smorgasbord of yoga types (what, bending myself into an odd shape is not enough?!). My favourite comeback to people who do super heated Bikram Yoga is oh, that sounds like an ordinary day of yoga in Mumbai. No one has ever laughed at that witticism.

Fact is everything in this world is a competition sport. Or an expression of individuality. Take cycling. Attire is important. You can choose between yet again lycra (serious cyclist who will mow you down) or hipster gear (more leisurely but likely a cycle snob). You have to decide on the kind of cycle you want to ride. You have to choose where you wish to buy it. There will be bicycle magazines. They will feature pretty bicycles. They will also feature people who will claim bicycle repair is an art and run boutique shops providing “restoring” services. You have to enter some run or the other. Ride to raise funds! Ride to have a good time! Ride to wear tweed and pretend it’s the 1920s! In fact the white professional classes pretty much organise a run at the drop of a hat. And importantly you have to talk about it; everyone should know you are different because you ride a particular kind of bicycle. Just like a million other people yes but they aren’t doing it in your own quietly superior way.

Coffee snobbery warrants a book, someone somewhere is no doubt writing the nth definitive guide to coffee drinking and letting you know the type of coffee bean you should consume only on pain of death or expulsion from the group - which are one and the same.

But the award for the most inexplicable snobbery goes to the hoo hah over fonts. Why would anyone object to Comic Sans when it is more legible than most people’s handwriting? Why would anyone obsess over what the most fashionable computer font is? Why would anyone think a font says anything at all about a person? But as it happens you do. There is nothing more tedious than the tyranny of typography.

The snobbery of the class is however best expressed in its musical tastes. There are a bewildering number of tags (electro/pop/funk/rock/metal/ trance/folk/jazz/blues etc. etc. all of which can also be happily combined to generate an infinite number of tags) so that you can pigeonhole yourself into a category and then go on to diss every other kind of music. Of course the music should be dark and ironic, sunny ditties rarely enter this realm though twee is admissible. Discovering an obscure but great band/singer is a holy grail and belonging to such a band is a guaranteed ticket to white folk heaven.

Inexplicably no such criteria are required to be applied to books and movies. It is enough that you read or watch a work based on cartoon network/video game fare, nothing else is expected of you. Preferably you eschew books for graphic novels. You can however write an essay on such a work to establish that you have a proper adult appreciation of cartoon network and games. You are however allowed to read Hunter S Thompson or Charles Bukowski.

The enthusiasms of the class vary but this approach remains the same. You either have to break some made up record (hullo surf dudes) or it has to be that single thing that defines your class, pronounces your elevated taste and separates you from the barbarian hordes who surround you (hullo taxidermy).

The class also likes to wear its heart on its sleeve. There is no greater badge of honour than to have been to some third world country and “made a difference”. And if you aren’t making a difference, at the very least you have to be travelling somewhere and penning wistful, quirky books on finding yourself in some suitable location. Paris and Italy remain perennial favourites. Then of course you write a book on it. In fact writing a book or a blog is almost like a rite of passage for the class. The book can either be life-affirming or dark and ironic. The latter is much preferred because the class prefers its life lessons to be laced with dark stuff, typically broken homes, addictions, mental illnesses and the like. The impatience this arouses in me is of course demonstrative of my own class (hey you want to see real dark stuff, come to India!).

Then there is stand-up comedy. Ostensibly this is a lot of funny folk getting up on stage which sounds like a good thing. Invariably it is not. Most often it is a lot of unfunny people regurgitating the same “this is a white person’s life and isn’t it so funny and aren’t we so cute” shtick. Sitting though a comedy festival – the scripting, the sheer effort involved in non-stop comedy that is essentially banalities on the banal life - will without doubt make you turn to dark and depressing thoughts.

At which point you may wish to spork your eyes out. Except that phrase is pretty much the cutesy slang endemic to the class and will come complete with its own statement T shirt.