Why Indians Complain But Never Act

During a recent visit to my home town to visit my parents, I faced a familiar situation. Seeing me around my mother was emboldened to start complaining about my father. My father is docile, harmless, hiding-behind-newspaper, badipanthulu (school teacher, actually a retired professor from local university).

My mother was ranting about how my father doesn't give her enough money to run the household, that he doesn't help her around the house, that he is so lazy and knows only how to read, yadi yadi… This being a ritual every time I visit them I tried ignoring it for a while.

My mother, unlike my father hasn't passed her 10th grade but she is the most and may be the only creative person in our family and most hard working. She wakes up early to make a perfect cup of coffee for my father while my father is busy reading his newspapers. She is an excellent cook (so is everybody's mom) and truly appreciated for her culinary skills and experimentation. She has a mild version of Obssessive compulsive disorder because of which she keeps her house clean and to the extend that she will starch my underclothes and have them ironed. She has melodious voice and sings very well. She introduced music to all her children. Even with her eye sight failing she continues to stitch for her grandchildren and daughters-in-law. I am sure she must have painted at one time in her life.

My father has none of these. He can only teach and once he retired he was absolutely useless at home (most men of that generation are like that). Can't cook, can't keep the house clean, can't run errands. His passions are reading and gardening. His obsession with books is legendary in our house. He never throws any book he buys and keeps them even when they are eaten away by book ants. I once found a book on gardening that is 80% destroyed by ants that he refuses to discard. When once my mother and I discarded a box full of useless books from his collection, he dragged them back into the house.

So to continue my story, my mother, for some reason wanted to extract a pound of my father's flesh that day and kept egging me to do something. So I dropped my newspaper and listed the expenses of running their house. She pulls out an old accounting book where she keeps track of her expenses and helps me. My father continued to ignore us with a smile on his face (something that he knows that I don't). After an hour I come up with a magic number and tells him that he needs to hand over to my mother Rs x at start of each month and she will run the household with this money. Anything she saves from this amount will be hers.

My father agrees with no resistance. My mother was surprised that she won so easily. She expected a fight but there was none. I was about declare victory when she threw a curve ball or a googly - That my father has to accompany her every time she goes grocery shopping!!

My father like me doesn't enjoy shopping. He said, "I accompany you to grocery shopping now because I have to pay the bill, but when you are getting the money as we agreed, why do you need me? Go in the car with the driver". While I watched with aghast, my mother walked out of the room in a huff and saying she doesn't want any money and that she will continue as before.

While I looked at my perfectly negotiated plan fall apart, my father peeped behind his newspaper and said with a twinkle in his eyes, "your mother never wanted to solve the problem. She only wanted you to listen to her, nod in agreement and move on. You, like a typically NRI, want to jump and solve at every problem you encounter". I realized that my father has one more characteristic in addition to reading and gardening - he has wisdom.

While I travelled back to Hyderabad on the train that evening, I thought about the incident. I learned something about India. Not every problem that we see from western society tinted glasses is a problem for Indians. They like to complain but they don't want a solution to it. If there is a pothole on the road they will curse and go around it but never fill it. If there is power shortage they will vent the anger in the house but they will "adjust" and live with the candle lights. Rarely do they go out and protest. They complain about corruption but who are those corrupt people - they are their uncles, neighbors, friends. (they will vote out the very people who try to root out the inefficiencies and corruption in the system). India produced many leaders who fought corruption but they never survived long. Indians don't want to disturb the status quo, just like my mother. They are afraid of the unknown. They would prefer to live with the known devil than the unknown saint. That is why, in my opinion, the common Indian never fought for independence against the British or wanted one had it not been for handful of british educated intellectuals.

This characteristic of India is both its strength and weakness.