Little India Vs india
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
I'm blogging from work. Yes, I decided it wasn't worth it losing one day's worth of pay just bacause I was down with something. Not that I'm being irresponsible cause I'm wearing a mask. I'm At work but I'm browsing through the Louis Vuitton Stephen Sprouse collection. I'm going to be paid a little more this month so i figured, Why not? It's better than getting one of those fake ones. I don't know about you guys but fake always makes me feel uncomfortable and guilty. Haha. I'm digressing again. I came to blog about something that i read about in the newpaper. Ex Miss Vasantham and local artiste, Ms Shobna Sukumar recently posted on her Facebook page that Indian expats are "arrogant" towards Singaporean indians. They also say that Singapore is nothing and that they're here because they are needed here. I can't say that these expats are entirely wrong actually. I mean, their skills are valued greatly by our own government. Maybe that's why they feel entitled to say such things. Maybe, it's also because they feel that our country respects their skills more than our homegrown ones. The issue of the Singaporean Indian vs Indian Expat has been a long standing one that has seemed to create a lot of tension within the community. The expats accuse Singaporeans of being unwelcoming and the locals accuse the expats of being stuckup and it goes on. Honestly, being a Singaporean Indian myself, I agree to what Shobna said. It's true that they're stuck up. They're difficult to get along with simply because they don't have the same attitude towards us as we have towards them. I can safely say that we(sg indians) are not unreasonable to the extent of hating people for no apparent reason. I live in a HDB estate in a pretty prime area and lately, quite a lot of Indian nationals have been moving in to the estate. Before about 3 expat families moved in, my family used to be the only Indian one in the block. We get along well with everyone in the block. When the first expat indian family moved in, we were pretty neutral about it. Afterall, we thought it'd be nice to have some indians to mingle with. Right? Wrong. They barely smiled when we smiled at them and at some occasions, refused to take the same lift. Like Wtf is your problem? You come to our country and you treat us like crap? They treat the other races the same way too! I'm at a point where i don't bother holding the lift for them anymore. Simply because they're not a pleasure to be with. They keep complaining that we don't take the effort to get to know them etc. Being the foreigners who have come to our country to work, they should in fact be the ones taking the effort to make friends. Isn't that the natural thing to do? Singaporeans are generally easy going and it's not like we won't smile back if you smile at us. I'm not saying that the Indian expats aren't taking the effort. Frankly, I've never seen them take the effort. I work in an organisation that hires these expats for IT related work. There's a whole room full of them on my floor. My first day here, I held the lift for one of the expat guys who was running to catch it. When he entered the lift, I smiled at him and asked him which floor he wanted to go to. In return, that arrogant idiot totally ignored me and pressed 1(which I had already pressed) and stared at the ceiling. Like, what the fuck happened to your manners man? Saying THANK YOU shouldn't be too hard for some chim system analyst whatever whatever right? Now you guys see where Shobna was coming from? And to the idiot who wrote in to The Newpaper to condemn her views, why don't you myob? Why do you have to write in to the new paper to make it an issue? At least over FB, the matter would have been a passing cloud. Now that it's out on TNP, the matter's probably going to become worse. You just attempted to ruin one woman's career and reputation over her personal view. Maybe you already did. This "singaporean indian" woman wrote to TNP expressing her concerns over what Shobna had said on her FB page. She's married to an Indian expat(expected) and she brings in students from India to study in Singapore. This woman, is clearly just trying to salvage her business. Quote this fool, " I'm so embarrassed..because people might think that we(Singaporeans) all think like her." So suddenly this patriotic Singaporean is speaking for all of us? I'd just like to correct her. Not all of us agree with you woman. At least I don't. And since I don't, it doesn't make it all anymore. You may think what I'm saying is insignificant but really, you have no idea how everyone else feels about this issue so you should stop "speaking up" for us collectively. We have our own voices and the fact that I've typed all this in a place people can see it already shows that some of us are more than willing to share our views. I do disagree with Shobna on some points like the sexual promiscuity part and all. Those issues are not for us to talk about because it's their personal choice. It's general respect for a person to stay out of their private lives. But then again, it's her personal view. There's no racist attack here either. Both parties are Indians. So what's this stupid woman all riled up about? Take your rant elsewhere seriously. You calling up TNP and complaining to them about Shobna's FB page and all was just plain stupid. I'm going to end off this post with one thing. I'm not saying that these Indian expats are not welcome by the Singaporean Indian community. I'm just saying that they'd be more welcome if they took the effort to be friendly and outgoing.
Sorry it's such a long post. The newspaper article really fired me up.
LoveLots,
Ragini(:
