Creating new stereotypes
(Second post in the Why Does This Irritate Me series)
Kerala.
Houseboat.
Smell of curry.
Bollywood.
The voice at the other end of the line:
- when your Internet connection went down. Or when you upgraded your system software and your PowerPoint files wouldn’t open. Or when your @*#%! PC wouldn’t talk to your &^%$*^@ printer.
First-ever love marriage in the family (the Western way).
And the lesson:Krishna wore black jeans and a football jersey, and he took a “snap” of me, as he called it, with the most tricked-out camera-phone I’d ever seen. His bride was a touch more traditional: She was dressed in a stunning salwar kameez, a pants-dress of blue silk, and walked three or four paces behind us, letting her husband do the talking. When I tried to bring her into the conversation, she flashed a shy smile and deferred to Krishna.
Next time I’m on the line with tech support, I’ll have a face to go with the voice — not specifically Krishna’s or Meenakshi’s, but someone just like them. And no matter how frazzled I am, no matter how badly I want to put my fist through the computer screen, I’ll be calm and polite.The whole thing here.I shouldn’t have had to travel halfway around the world to discover this, but that voice on the other end of the line belongs to a real person with a real life. In fact, he or she may even have just celebrated their family’s first-ever love marriage.
Do you think it was actually Shashi Tharoor who wrote this article?
He has more time now, we all know this, but I ask because everytime I hear him, I ask “Where have I heard this voice before?”
[Lord Curzon?]
Comment by Amitava Kumar — March 31, 2007 @ 5:24 am
Heh :) But then the woman would be wearing a sari.
Comment by Uma — March 31, 2007 @ 12:20 pm