Do it Yourself

I had landed in America – the land of dreams – in the year 1994. It was perhaps not the right time to dream! I had just crossed 40 and in retrospect, I think why would anyone take such a risk? But then people have done crazier things. And I landed in the first week of January in St Louis, probably the worst time of the year to begin your life in a foreign land, especially coming from Chennai where my mother used to pull out her sweater if the temperature hit a low of 23 degrees Celsius!

The initial days were quite amazing. How can two countries be so different? A small thing like switching on the light was exactly the opposite – and it took a while getting used to. The vocabulary being used was different for even the normal things – like the signal became the lights etc. I really came to understand the meaning of XXXL size after meeting a few folks in the sprawling malls. And I realized why my US born nephews were a bit disappointed with the ice cream cups in India – I could eat a single scoop for days while my US friends ate double scoops in a jiffy. And for the first time, I saw people crunching ice cubes with their teeth! And later I came to know that dentists had a whale of time in the US! And why not?!

I was given a rental car and I started driving in a few days much to the amazement of some of my US friends. Had they driven in India they would have understood – everyone follows the rules unlike in India where if you follow the rule, you are dead. You need to be more skilled and more aware of the emerging scenario(s) while driving. I had a flat tire (that is how a tyre is spelt!) one day. A garage chap came in a flash and replaced the tyre in no time. I was astounded to see him use a power spanner to remove the tyre. My mind raced to the scene in India, where young boys literally stand on the spanner to disengage the tyre! What a waste of manpower.

Technology was all pervasive even then (what expression can I use for the pervasiveness today?!). Everything was process driven. I posted a mail to my friend who moved out of my apartment which we shared. After a few days, much to my amusement, I found the parcel back in my mail box. I took it to the post office only to be told that I should write the from address at the top left hand corner and the To address at the centre – and not as I had done – one on each side. The post office chaps scanned the wrong side and it was sent to the from address! I just imagined the letters being delivered in India – Mr. Mani, Behind Hanuman Mandir, Moradabad or the 9 line addresses that you commonly find in India – especially in Bengaluru with all the thousands of “palayas” and “nagars”. Like driving, our postmen also need a lot more skill and a mini google maps tucked in.

And I bought something from one of those huge malls – only to be given a “do it yourself” kit. At the gas station (petrol pump for the uninitiated) you need to fill in your petrol. And if you shift your house, you hire a “U-Haul” truck, load your belongings and drive down to another city and leave the truck there! What a great idea, Sir ji. No need for packers and movers and transport operators like GATI.

I soon realized that this was a country that believed in the supremacy of the individual, privacy, freedom et al. It was a culture, as Dev Dutt Patnaik says –“If you live only once, in one-life cultures around the world, you will see an obsession with binary logic, absolute truth, standardization, absoluteness, and linear patterns in design. But if you look at cultures which have cyclical and based on infinite lives, you will see a comfort with fuzzy logic, with opinion, with contextual thinking, with everything is relative, sort of–mostly!?!” And all of us know where we belong.

If this is so, I started wondering does the US have anything on “How to Live?” After all it is a “do it yourself” culture and there are manuals for almost everything – including how an operator has to answer his / her telephone at the Post office! But my search was in vain as I could not find anything remotely connected with the subject in question, though there were a multitude of self-help books by psychologists, authors on subjects ranging from “Your Erroneous Zones” to “Think and Grow Rich” and classics such as “How to win friends and Influence people?, “How to stop worrying and start living.” How could that be, I pondered. But is there a “do it yourself” type of book on the most important activity in life – “living” available anywhere? Am I being too naïve or stupid?