EXcursion

On Sunday I went on a little cultural excursion with my parents – in Mississauga. Culture? ‘Sauga? Oxymoron, right?! No, it was the so-called South Asian Festival with my parents. Basically the Tamil equivalent of the CNE with vendors hawking saris and shalwars, a mini-Midway with rides in an industrial parking lot, and some karaoke and dance and magic and circus performances thrown in. Huge turnout too – attendance in the mid-thousands.

Having lived in Waterloo, Connecticut, and then back in Waterloo the past 12 months – where there are like no people of my background – I feel I’ve grown distanced from the Tamil community, and I took this as an opportunity to get in touch with my people. But what it instead did serve to highlight was the growing rift I feel between myself and my parents, and the Tamil community at large.

When you’re 21, you’re really at the cusp of adolescence, but not quite really at adulthood, and you start to view things from a more adult angle. You’re also going to these public events to check out girls. And you’re also going to compare yourself to the boys your age to see how you measure up relative to the guys there. What I observed is that most of the guys in my age group like to hang in packs, are loud and raucous, and are a bunch of thug wannabes in their FUBU, Phat Farm, Sean Johns, oversized plaid shirts, and Ecko jeans. I slightly felt out of place there looking very clean-cut and genteel in a grey Calvin Klein crew neck top and Banana Republic jeans – clothes that actually fit.

I actually had a guy on my floor last term ask me what my background was, and then ask me why a lot of Tamil guys act like their black guys from the 'hood. I basically relayed to him what one of my good buddies in high school thought (a Chinese guy) – that it has to do with a lot of these guys just looking black. Most middle-class white and Asian kids would shun this subculture as crass and low-class, but Sri Lankan guys can get away with being posers and not look too ridiculous.

This squares with the observations Eddie, Steve and I made as we strolled through Milliken Mills Park a couple of weeks back – basically a bunch of mostly brown guys loitering in circles of 3 or 4, just standing around, not playing frisbee or tag football or baseball as a group of guys usually do at the park. That and with the poor landscaping and all the litter strewn about, Eddie remarked that it was like the opening five minutes of Coolio’s Dangerous Minds.. And it was a stark contrast to the pleasant environs of Main Street historic Unionville, with mostly WASP and Chinese couples and families – young and old alike – in a very idyllic, well-maintained park, free of garbage and Scarbage.

Any how, upon getting home I relayed my reservations about the appearance and lack of civility of the young guys at the function to my mom, and I was a little surprised when she didn’t immediately share in my indignation. “Did they bother you?” Well they didn’t bother me per se, but I was bothered by their raucous behaviour. Then my dad pipes in - “They're just kids.” Kids?! At 17, 18, 20, 22 – they’re my age!

I think this is symptomatic of lax parenting and the “boys will be boys” mentality that I think may be all-too pervasive in my community (though not in my household - neither me nor my brother are like that). I also didn’t see much intermingling between girls and guys, and I think this is a cause. When a group of guys get together, there’s much greater propensity for rowdy behaviour. But this is less likely when women are present because women have a civilizing, pacifying effect on young males.

I think this lack of intermingling is a really unfortunate remnant of British colonialism, and the uptight 19th century Victorian prudish priggishness that infected the indigenous Hindu culture to the core – a culture that, at one time, gave the world the Kama Sutra and features carvings of buxom deities fornicating on its temples. Fortunately Britain and North America evolved out of that, but the subcontinent is still populated by repressed puritanical conservative tightwads – like the guys that burn Valentine’s Day cards, or threw a hissy fit when Richard Gere laid a smooch on a Bollywood actress. (Having said that, Buddhist Sri Lanka and the southern half of India isn’t too bad; the repression gets worse in the north and Pakistan because of purdah and the influence of puritanical Islam.)

But I also wonder how much of their behaviour is a function of attracting girls. To the broader public their appearance and behaviour may appear at times ridiculous, at times threatening (Sivji once remarked to me that it seemed to him that Tamil guys had permanent-PMS which was kind of funny, but has a ring of truth). If these girls like these thugged-out guys well... a girl that’s attracted to that, I wouldn’t be attracted to anyway, so I’m not missing out. I think this is partly why I like conservative Asian girls – they have style, and they also carry themselves with a certain class and a quiet grace and refined feminine elegance, like French-Canadian women. And they’re smart.

I guess I may have just tarred people of my background with a broad brush, and this shouldn’t be construed as an expression of self-loathing; there are good and bad apples with any group. But I have a desire to see my community looked upon with a certain begrudging respect and admiration – as we privately acknowledge with certain communities – and I have yet to see that. And such behaviour is symptomatic of that, because 1 bad besmirches 10 goods. And maybe my motives are not always altruistic and have more to do with what preconceived judgements people will make when I say I belong to x ethnic group; as much as we’d like to judge everyone on their own individual merits, we don’t always do that.