Valuating Validation (And How It Affects Pretty Much Every Indian I Know)
Something really weird happened today. I was on Youtube, and I came across a nice video about the in-built inferiority complex of middle- to upper-class Indians. Take a look:
To the creator, of FMF, good job. I agree with you and I give you special credit for making the video in Hindi (mixed with some English), because a lot of Indian content creators don't do that. Also, I just want to clarify that I said upper- and middle- class Indians because from 2015-2017, I did some work with economically struggling Indians and they seem to have bigger problems to deal with than what foreigners in the West think about them.
Coincidentally, I chose to check the stats on my blog. I usually don't check the stats because I already know that I'm not exactly a famous blogger and I don't need to keep track of the single-digit numbers I usually garner. But I randomly wandered to the stats section just five minutes ago, and this is what I saw:
Apparently, an overwhelming majority of my pageviews are from the United States. It's not a small difference of a few views, it's almost five times as many pageviews I have gotten from India. The discovery made me realize a few things:
1. I still really wish I had more pageviews because, like most people, I wish there were more people who cared about what I had to say. Even after eight years of blogging, I only have about 68,000 pageviews total, and that's not a very impressive number. In fact, the number of years I've been blogging would seem more impressive to most people (especially those who start blogs but don't keep up) than the number of pageviews. All in all, I don't have a very successful blog.
2. I keep blogging for some reason in spite of modest number of pageviews. And no, it's not because I believe in the miracle of small efforts, but because I continue to hope someone will finally care what I have to say.
3. If I am being honest, I think a lot of Indians would be so proud to have more pageviews from the United States than from India, but honestly, I don't care. I wish I had more pageviews from India because that's the country I mostly write about so I obviously think Indians would enjoy my content more.
I want to talk more about 3.
As far back as I can remember, I've wanted some degree of validation from the West, but I never really valued the validation that others got from abroad. The reason was that I didn't see how a few Americans giving their approval to someone automatically made them better, but I had an acute awareness of how it seemed everyone around me would value me more if I got into an elite American university or even managed to marry a white man (the second one is ridiculous, by the way). Business owners and respected professors in India seemed to have lesser value than 25-year-old working regular jobs in the States. Aishwarya Rai commanded inordinate amounts of admiration from the fact that she was in a few 'Hollywood' movies, even though all her ventures abroad failed, because for most Indians, it was enough that she'd been invited. Occassionally, I heard expats home for the summer talking about how nothing ever happens in this vast unwashed country, and their only qualification for saying so was the fact that they lived in America. Even my own family, God bless their heart, have often rationalized their arguments against our systems by saying, "This is not how they do it in Western countries."
I wanted the validation of people around me, so I thought I needed to get the validation of people abroad. Honestly, I'm not even sure I knew what 'abroad' meant. It was just the land of people where everybody was supposedly smarter than me, more beautiful than me, better educated than me, always right where I was wrong, people who upheld standards that I couldn't uphold no matter how much education I got. I was born inferior to some and would remain that way till I got some validation from people of a wealthier, whiter country.
The only issue is that right now, I am in America, making American friends, doing reasonably well in school with a full scholarship, and I have more pageviews from the United States than from India. And guess what? Nobody cares. And that's because validation, regardless of the source, only takes you so far. Nobody needs to be overtly patriotic, because, at the end of the day, nobody has any true control over which country they are born in. However, we can't let our desire for validation grow to the point where it actually starts to limit us. If we believe that there is a glass ceiling that is unbreakable for us, how can we ever be anything resembling the people that we admire, because I am pretty sure those people didn't doubt themselves. Also, it is important to note that more people have access to higher education abroad today then there were a few decades ago, and honestly, you don't really become special just by getting a degree from the US or the UK. If more educated Indians start businesses and venture into the fields of science and arts, which is now possible because of the Internet, maybe you could find yourself at a dinner with other educated Indians who've managed to find some self-respect and don't really care about your foreign exploits.
This is not a competition to become better than Western countries, because in a lot of important ways, India has a long way to become a devloped nation. It's more that on a personal level, seeking the validation of strangers is, at the end of the day, a flimsy thing to pin one's self worth to. It's even worse when we put divides amongst ourselves based on attributes that have nothing to do with the real merit of people. For example, today, 'broken' English is a bigger setback for many educated Indians than poor fundamental understanding of science, even though, if we are being honest, we do speak in our native tongue in the workplace. This is a conversation about reevaluating our internal biases regarding our own personal worth, and the worth of others around us. I don't want to be too political and say that an acceptance of our roots will change the world and guide future generations to a life of progress and prosperity, but I will say that an acceptance of who we are can relieve us of unnecessary stresses that we bear in our hearts while participating in a twisted pageant that has no real value, and this unburdening can free up our consciousness to be directed to more productive endeavours. Maybe it's time we start looking for other forms of motivation, not for the sake of our country, but for the sake of ourselves. If nothing else, maybe we can one day become the kind of parents that love themselves and don't pressure our children to enter the same rat race leading up to a foregin degree/job that many of us accused our parents of entering us into, and that, I think, is worth more than the validation of any First World validation we could get in our lives.
Coincidentally, I chose to check the stats on my blog. I usually don't check the stats because I already know that I'm not exactly a famous blogger and I don't need to keep track of the single-digit numbers I usually garner. But I randomly wandered to the stats section just five minutes ago, and this is what I saw:
1. I still really wish I had more pageviews because, like most people, I wish there were more people who cared about what I had to say. Even after eight years of blogging, I only have about 68,000 pageviews total, and that's not a very impressive number. In fact, the number of years I've been blogging would seem more impressive to most people (especially those who start blogs but don't keep up) than the number of pageviews. All in all, I don't have a very successful blog.
2. I keep blogging for some reason in spite of modest number of pageviews. And no, it's not because I believe in the miracle of small efforts, but because I continue to hope someone will finally care what I have to say.
3. If I am being honest, I think a lot of Indians would be so proud to have more pageviews from the United States than from India, but honestly, I don't care. I wish I had more pageviews from India because that's the country I mostly write about so I obviously think Indians would enjoy my content more.
I want to talk more about 3.
As far back as I can remember, I've wanted some degree of validation from the West, but I never really valued the validation that others got from abroad. The reason was that I didn't see how a few Americans giving their approval to someone automatically made them better, but I had an acute awareness of how it seemed everyone around me would value me more if I got into an elite American university or even managed to marry a white man (the second one is ridiculous, by the way). Business owners and respected professors in India seemed to have lesser value than 25-year-old working regular jobs in the States. Aishwarya Rai commanded inordinate amounts of admiration from the fact that she was in a few 'Hollywood' movies, even though all her ventures abroad failed, because for most Indians, it was enough that she'd been invited. Occassionally, I heard expats home for the summer talking about how nothing ever happens in this vast unwashed country, and their only qualification for saying so was the fact that they lived in America. Even my own family, God bless their heart, have often rationalized their arguments against our systems by saying, "This is not how they do it in Western countries."
I wanted the validation of people around me, so I thought I needed to get the validation of people abroad. Honestly, I'm not even sure I knew what 'abroad' meant. It was just the land of people where everybody was supposedly smarter than me, more beautiful than me, better educated than me, always right where I was wrong, people who upheld standards that I couldn't uphold no matter how much education I got. I was born inferior to some and would remain that way till I got some validation from people of a wealthier, whiter country.
The only issue is that right now, I am in America, making American friends, doing reasonably well in school with a full scholarship, and I have more pageviews from the United States than from India. And guess what? Nobody cares. And that's because validation, regardless of the source, only takes you so far. Nobody needs to be overtly patriotic, because, at the end of the day, nobody has any true control over which country they are born in. However, we can't let our desire for validation grow to the point where it actually starts to limit us. If we believe that there is a glass ceiling that is unbreakable for us, how can we ever be anything resembling the people that we admire, because I am pretty sure those people didn't doubt themselves. Also, it is important to note that more people have access to higher education abroad today then there were a few decades ago, and honestly, you don't really become special just by getting a degree from the US or the UK. If more educated Indians start businesses and venture into the fields of science and arts, which is now possible because of the Internet, maybe you could find yourself at a dinner with other educated Indians who've managed to find some self-respect and don't really care about your foreign exploits.
This is not a competition to become better than Western countries, because in a lot of important ways, India has a long way to become a devloped nation. It's more that on a personal level, seeking the validation of strangers is, at the end of the day, a flimsy thing to pin one's self worth to. It's even worse when we put divides amongst ourselves based on attributes that have nothing to do with the real merit of people. For example, today, 'broken' English is a bigger setback for many educated Indians than poor fundamental understanding of science, even though, if we are being honest, we do speak in our native tongue in the workplace. This is a conversation about reevaluating our internal biases regarding our own personal worth, and the worth of others around us. I don't want to be too political and say that an acceptance of our roots will change the world and guide future generations to a life of progress and prosperity, but I will say that an acceptance of who we are can relieve us of unnecessary stresses that we bear in our hearts while participating in a twisted pageant that has no real value, and this unburdening can free up our consciousness to be directed to more productive endeavours. Maybe it's time we start looking for other forms of motivation, not for the sake of our country, but for the sake of ourselves. If nothing else, maybe we can one day become the kind of parents that love themselves and don't pressure our children to enter the same rat race leading up to a foregin degree/job that many of us accused our parents of entering us into, and that, I think, is worth more than the validation of any First World validation we could get in our lives.
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