Excellent! ;-) Its "Telugu" by the way. If you need to learn any swear words, let me know. ;-) What is your question from way back?
> first, what's the scoop with jokes and complaints about india's
> corruption.
> i've never heard that before, but V talks about it a lot... i kind of
> figured it had to do with the disparities in wealth and the influx
> of money
> into the country from call centers which, as I understand it from a
> radio
> program, is really changing things, challenging social mores as often
> happens with capitalist development.
Corruption in India is pretty old (old relative to India's short history as an independent nation). It's fairly thoroughgoing and my shallow summary is that it is a combination of the abuse of the extensive bureaucratic system (inherited from the British), in response to poverty, and a domination of the political leadership by opportunists and thugs.
The recent affluence and growth, many hope, is the right antidote to the political corruption. So there is a lot of support for corporate hotshots who pillory political leaders. There is a semi-conscious distancing from the explicit moral/social[ist] programme to a sort of US style corporate/capitalist development (minus the welfare state).
> a second q comes us re: the historic animosity between india and
> china. i
> assume there's one given the frequency with which my workmates make
> disparaging comments about the chinese. is there an anti-socialism
> thing
> oging on there, too?
Not as far as I know. It's more a direct consequence of the war the two countries fought in the early 60s which resulted in quite a bit of humiliation for India.
> also, any books that you'd recommend so i can learn more about
> history and
> culture of india. is there like a handy guide ...
Sorry, do not know of a handy guide, nor do I have a particular book to recommend regarding Indian history. I guess you could say Indian histories! The classic within India is (in my experience) Nehru's Discovery of India. It's not a bad book.
> so i can be better about
> translating my american slang or even understanding things like, oh
> yeah!,
> physicality. i've noticed that, when we work together, we're all very
> touchy and the guys (I call them Vishna and Khalid) tend to
> 'invade' the
> american zone of personal space.
These are younger guys I assume, so I am probably out of touch with this stuff ;-), but the above would be quite the opposite of what I would expect of Indian behaviour. There are multiple Indias... the southern part (which includes Andhra Pradesh, where Telugu is spoken) is more conservative than the north (my Punjabi mother-in-law likes to joke about the time she hugged my brother-in-law, who is from Tamil Nadu -- she mentioned that he was surprised by it, especially since its probably been 40 years since his own mother last hugged him ;-)).
> Also, on a related note, is there a fascination in India with white
> women's
> hair? Vinesh is so fascinated, he touches my hair sometimes and
> remarks on
> it. Believe me,there's nothing special about my hair. But we've got
> a joke
> going now where he admires my hair and says he's going to dye his
> hair to
> match mine. is this a cultural thing?
White women's hair... not sure. What colour is your hair? That might give a clue. Or of course its possible your Indian buddy is just trying to be flirty! My wife works with a tall outgoing blonde woman who was once married to a Tamil guy from a remote village in southern India. She often amuses us with the stories of her visits to the village, involving bullock carts and the fascination (only part of which was admiration!) of the local with this ridiculously tall (close to 6') woman with the pale skin and pale hair. But of course, your friends are probably a lot more exposed to Westerners than the villagers (no strangers, entirely, to white people, themselves) in her past.
--ravi