India-US relations: cooling and warming up (merged thread)

[Madhu]

Omar:

Maidgate is the desi Bonfire of the Vanities:

Wolfe deliberately set out to make The Bonfire of the Vanities capture the essence of New York City in the 1980s. Wall Street in the 1980s was newly resurgent after almost the whole of the 1970s had been bad for stocks. The excesses of Wall Street were at the forefront of the popular imagination, captured in films like Oliver Stone's Wall Street and in non-fiction books like Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Barbarians at the Gate.
Beneath Wall Street's success, the city was a hot-bed of racial and cultural tension. Homelessness and crime in the city were growing. Several high-profile racial incidents polarized the city, particularly two black men who were murdered in white neighborhoods: Willie Turks, who was murdered in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn in 1982 and Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Queens, in 1986. In another episode that became a subject of much media attention, Bernhard Goetz became something of a folk-hero in the city for shooting a group of black men who tried to rob him in the subway.
Burton B. Roberts, a Bronx judge known for his no-nonsense imperious handling of cases in his courtroom, became the model for the character of Myron Kovitsky in the book.[1]

1. Class (not caste, non-desis, get this straight for a change).
2. Diplomatic ineptitude, Indian and American.
3. Corruption (A desi fiddling with visa paperwork? Say it ain't so).
4. Cops treating an upper or middle class person like they treat the poor or minorities? Hey, the upper and middle class only care about police behavior when it affects them, okay? Everyone else is going to get treated like cattle, that's the Homeland Security-ization of America!
5. Election season in India.
6. Indian politicians thinking, "hey, this might get the unhappy electorate off our backs for a change. Don't look at us, look at them!"
7. Desi thin-skinnedness: "we will give them such a slap on their faces, they will never know what stings!"
8. Cable news screws up everything everywhere, you know?

And so on. I will know that the American Desi community has reached full maturity when it can satirize its own faults as well as others. And there are plenty of faults on both sides. Oh, wait, we are so beyond that. You know someone like Anna John will have a field day with this....

Maybe I should try and write the novel....haha, like I could stick to anything for that long with my ADHD....

Journalists read this site sometimes, amiright? Please use my Bonfire of the Vanities line. Please....