Walking past the TV while my mom is watching her favorite Indian serials is a horrible reminder of the extent to which the “brown culture” has decided to promote becoming a physician. There are so many commercials advertising medical schools abroad which require no admissions test (MCAT), promise “mainland training”, lower tuition, good teachers, etc. Now I wouldn’t have a problem with this except for the fact that you never see any other profession being advertised. No longer is medicine a choice of career – it’s almost an expectation portrayed by the media. If you’re not a doctor (or engineer at that), you’re not worth anything. You’re a philosophy major? You write? Or God forbid, you’re an artist? You might as well not exist.

People are going to extraordinary lengths just to get their medical licenses, and honestly, I can’t imagine a lot of them as physicians in the first place (a humble opinion as a non-physician myself). Being forced to follow any career goal by the media or your parents is a bad idea. After all, a real career is one which is more of a hobby than a job. In the case of medicine, not only will you hinder your own life but that of your patients and colleagues. It’s also not a profession you should try out with the intention of dropping out, yet a disproportionately large number of brown people do. I’m doing medicine because that’s what every respectable, brown male should do, right? I’ll try it, and if I don’t like it, there’s always option B, C, or D… though you may be frowned upon for not becoming a doctor.

Give me a freakin’ break!! This career is far too demanding to do off a whim. A lot of brown society is under the false assumption that medicine is a fixed life of prosperity and prestige. After all, how many people are ridiculed for being physicians? Yet they conveniently forget the arduous journey between college and becoming licensed in a specialty.

So for the brown people who don’t want to do medicine, while you may be going against the stereotype, don’t think you’re being a rebel. Do what you do best. Whether it’s medicine, journalism, business, engineering… whatever! But please don’t have the audacity to label those who have chosen this path, not because of the stereotype, parental pressures, or the media but because it genuinely is their life’s passion, as “conformists” without actually knowing what this career entails.

This post is a bit choppy, but I feel better now.

Now I’ve previously blogged about how baffled I am by vegetarians. I don’t care if it’s for religious reasons, for ethical reasons, or a combination of both… there’s no good reason to be a strict vegetarian. Unfortunately, my mom is such a person. So I had a chance to finally eat Indian chicken for the first time in months… and did I! Ten pieces of tandoori chicken, two full plates of chicken tikka masala, lots of rice and saag paneer, naan, and then some mango ice cream for good measure. Heh, all the time I’ve been spending in the gym must have really boosted my metabolism, because I was starving a few hours later.

As I was devouring all that protein, I briefly glanced around at my fellow restaurant-goers. Practically every single table had men donning their dress shirts and pressed Dockers pants attempting to have sophisticated conversations on God knows what. What I found amusing was the striking similarity between… everyone. Seriously, imagine a 5’8″ stature with a ridiculously small waist wearing khaki pants, a black belt, a button down shirt, and a tie. Have a mental picture? Well, that was what 95% of the restaurant, including the employees, looked like. Heh, so as they gazed at me (as Indian people tend to do), I contented myself with the possibility of snapping their six inch waists in half.

Now I’m watching the Rockets take on the visiting Cavaliers. It’s only the third quarter, but I really do hope the Rockets can hold onto their lead. Not only could this be their sixth straight victory, but if there was ever a doubt in our ability to succeed without Tracy McGrady, this game will quickly dissolve it.

Does your Pepsi lack pep? Is your Coke not the real thing? India’s Hindu nationalist movement apparently has the answer: a new soft drink made from cow urine.

The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, according to the man who makes it.

Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called “gau jal”, or “cow water” – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”.

“Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and will be tasty too,” he toldThe Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. “Its USP will be that it’s going to be very healthy. It won’t be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins.”

The drink is the latest attempt by the RSS – which was founded in 1925 and now claims eight million members – to cleanse India of foreign influence and promote its ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness.

Hindus revere cows and slaughtering them is illegal in most of India. Cow dung is traditionally used as a fuel and disinfectant in villages, while cow urine and dung are often consumed in rituals to “purify” those on the bottom rungs of the Hindu caste system.

In 2001, the RSS and its offshoots – which include the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party – began promoting cow urine as a cure for ailments ranging from liver disease to obesity and even cancer.

The movement has often been accused of using more violent methods, such as killing 67 Christians in the eastern state of Orissa last year, and assaulting women in a pub in Mangalore last month. It also has a history of targeting foreign business in India, as in 1994, when it organised a nationwide boycott of multinational consumer goods, including Pepsi and Coca Cola.

The cola brands are popular in India, now one of their biggest markets, but have struggled in recent years to shake off allegations, which they deny, that they contain dangerous levels of pesticide.

Mr Prakash said his drink, by contrast, was made mainly of cow urine, mixed with a few medicinal and ayurvedic herbs. He said it would be “cheap”, but declined to give further details about its price or ingredients until it was officially launched.

He insisted, however, that it would be able to compete with the American cola brands, even with their enormous advertising budgets. “We’re going to give them good competition as our drink is good for mankind,” he said. “We may also think of exporting it.”

Source: Times Online

So now I ask… is anyone thirsty?

1.) Within a movie or serial, you’re likely to hear two songs which are supposedly different but have the exact same background. After all, Indians do like to cut costs whenever possible.

2.) When Indian actors prepare for a fighting scene, they intentionally focus on missing their opponent. Little do they know that this does not constitute actual fighting. Rather, it makes them look like misguided imbeciles whose fists do a better job displacing air rather than showcasing violence.

3.) In Indian serials, half of each scene involves the camera capturing every conceivable angle of a “tense” moment. Zooming in and out, slow motion, changing the angle, and jumping in and out of parallel dimensions are just a few things you’ll see.

4.) If you’re ever contemplating how “hip” you are when it comes to your mobile phone’s ringtone, just watch an Indian serial. An entire department is appointed to making sure that the cast sports the latest cellphones and ringtones. Worried that you’ll miss out on what the exact phone and/or ringtone was? Don’t worry, the script states that actors should let their phone ring exactly 25 times and actresses should keep dropping their phones. This is obviously to ensure that the viewing audience receives a greater appreciation for how ridiculously pathetic a show can be.

5.) Indians wait for American game shows to fail, and then they reproduce them with a South Asian twist. Stealing shamelessly is in our blood.

6.) I – hate – saris. They look like bedsheets women wrap themselves in. And what’s this whole deal about a girl becoming a woman after she dons her first sari? That’s like saying that I became a man when I put on my first tie. (No, this doesn’t have any direct connection to “Indian entertainment”, but I wanted to express my hatred of saris).

7.) I don’t know about you, but I definitely walk around in public with a posse of males. All the Indian females I know also have their own posse… of females. And when a group of males and females comes across each other, a “leader” is appointed to represent each group. These two leaders engage in a series of romantic maneuvers involving trees, fire, and sometimes rain. Then, both groups line up behind their respective leaders and participate in a dance which they ALL “happen” to know ahead of time. Repeat this same scenario five times in every Indian movie, and you can see why the lack of reality makes me hate the industry even more.

I can’t believe we’re so terrible at an industry in which fakeness is the name of the game. We should just stick to becoming doctors and engineers and getting made fun of because of our accents, bodily odor, and extreme disregard for driving regulations.