The Profuseness of American Appreciation

The place never ceases to amuse me – the passage of time elapsed has still not taught me to not be caught off guard by the surprises this country throws at me.

All our life us Indians are brought up on a ‘fat-free’ diet of discipline and striving to get those extra crumbs of an appreciative nod or pat for our back-breaking efforts. But not here – welcome to the world of singing eulogies and showered praises as a prelude to the beginning of a task. How much of it is honest, the skeptic in me is still not sure but whether it serves as a trampoline boost to the ego is unquestionable.

It sometimes seems a scene straight out of a cross-over bollywood movie when the naive Indian taught to ignore her positives in the name of humility meets head on with the appreciative American frantically searching for something he can praise her for. Especially we Indian girls have grown up ignorant to the fact that a man can appreciate you without a latent motive. So when a guy in a in a party walks up, shakes your hand and says you are beautiful you start hoping that you suddenly become invisible or the earth looses its gravity and you float over to another galaxy but in the absence of all that your eyes desperately look for spots on the ceiling or your feet they can focus their gaze on while pretending you never heard his remark. Being called beautiful or pretty is still not as hard to handle as being called what we don’t say aloud in our part of the world –at least not to a stranger from the opposite gender. So handling someone calling you hot or sexy as if it’s just natural to call all women that- is an art that is worth learning from the members of our gender from this side of the globe. I still wonder what is expected as a reply to being called hot with a handshake – should I say ‘thank you and you are hot too’, or should I say ‘ and you must be blind’ or like a reflex action I should just look away and mumble something that seems like a reply lost in the music playing out loud.

It surprisingly does not end with a man-meets-woman in a party kind of conversation – fortunately or unfortunately it pervades all minutes of waking hours. So your trainer keeps screaming how good you are all though the workout session, or your professor keeps nodding in appreciation to whatever lame reply you give in the class – making you feel like a god’s greatest gift to mankind.

Guess the overwhelming praise on every trivial action is the source of the confidence oozing out of every single person here – something we need to still learn to make our children, peers and everyone else continually feel beautiful as a person.