Fobbylicious

I don’t know when it began. This love of indian music, food, language and religion. I have always accepted it, but recently there has been a disturbing trend that I keep seeing and hearing that just doesn’t make sense to me. When did it become OK to bash people who are from India?  Either calling them IT guys or wondering if they can speak English?  When did it become OK to look down on them?  What is it about other Desis that makes us so uncomfortable?  I just don’t get it.

OK, so the accents are funny sometimes, and dress sometimes more so, but as someone who spent 15 years in Little India. I don’t get the attitude that somehow because some of us speak English without an accent or dont watch bollywood or dont listen to desi music, that somehow we are better. But yet, most of our friends are desi. Just no desi music.  Just brown skin, please.  But nothing brown inside us.

Maybe I just don’t get LA anymore. Maybe, things have changed. The things that excite me like UK Bhangra, and hindi remixes or Asian Underground don’t matter anymore. Sure, Bollywood seems bigger, and seems to have incorporated a lot of the stuff that was clubby and underground before, but there is a large segment of us who just look down on anything appearing to be our motherland (yea I said it).

As if our parents language doesnt matter. As if our heritage, culture, music is something to be ignored, put down or disgusted by. I just don’t get it. Maybe I am just old. Maybe I am so out of the scene that what they say makes sense.  The thing is, they said the same thing to me 10 years ago. The scene is dead. LA sucks.  No one goes to parties.  Blah, blah, blah.

For me, desi music will always matter, and if I like something, and if I have the power to do something about it, I will it.  So hopefully, I will see you at the next event or maybe the one after. Maybe, just maybe, I am right.