Descend into the Maelstrom

Millions and maybe billions of men around the world wake up each morning, tie a long and thin piece of fabric into a knot, and slip it tightly around their necks.  No, they are not attempting to hang themselves in a mass suicide; they are putting on neckties for work.   Over the last few months, I have joined ranks with the legions of men who participate in this bizarre ritual.

Legions is the appropriate word indeed.  Neckties have a long and interesting history, originating from warfare.  They were and still are used by soldiers as part of their military uniforms.  Chinese warriors wore neckpieces as they sliced people up on behalf of the first Emperor of china, Ch’in Shi Huang-Ti.  The Croat horsemen rode around the battlefields of the Thirty Year War from 1618-1648, cravats poetically swinging from their necks.  The tradition continued for military purposes, with ties serving as a distraction to gunmen attempting to get a good clean shot at the head.  From the battlefields of France, their popularity spread among civilians like wildfire.  By the time the Industrial Revolution began to take hold in earnest, in England and other Western societies in the latter part of the 19th century, neckties became a mainstay of the workaday "white-collar" uniform. And a popular garment for brandy-soaked evening supper parties.  The European colonial powers brought the tie heritage throughout Asia, South America, Australia, and Africa, to the point where a business meeting in any country is likely to be attended by heads attached to ties of various sizes and colors in different knots.

When I put a tie on these days, I feel different.  It’s not merely the discomfort of something tied around your neck, trapping body heat and sweat around the torso during the long New York summer; there is also a sense of self-respect, seriousness of intent, and professionalism that just isn’t there without a tie.  A nice tie draws compliments from people, from the office copying machine all the way down through a midtown happy hour.  Knots that are too small, or an exceedingly long or short fit are noticed immediately. We are conditioned to think that ties done right make you look good since childhood.

Speaking of childhood, there was another era in my life when I wore a tie every day- to school.  I was in 4th Standard (roughly equivalent to 4th grade) in Udupi, India at the Indrali Primary English Medium School, where a cream collared short sleeve shirt, a red tie, tight red shorts, black socks, and black shoes were the uniform for all boys from kindergarten onward.  Go ahead, laugh all you want, I couldn’t make that up if I tried.  Indian private schools took cultured formality seriously in a British colonial sense: only fountain pens for writing, no pencils or even ballpoint.  Ties all around.  I must admit that it lent an air of intensity to the classroom.  I can imagine officers of the British Raj having a beer after their polo match at the country club. "Cheerio.  We’re going to teach these brown blokes to tie these Tudor knots just like we do, what say you Rutherford?"   

Coming back to today, and my attempts to look good, appear professional, be taken seriously, and all that.  I don’t understand it but there’s a mysterious transformation that occurs when you wear a tie often.  Considering that I just recently re-learned how to tie a halfway decent knot, I feel like a wonderful new world has opened up.  When I pass by a store I actually study the tie on the dummy in the window (no, not my own reflection…).  I find myself having conversations about tie/shirt combinations and the relative merits of same-color tie/shirt schemes.  I now subconsciously size men up based on the constitution of their ties, just as I used to measure up mens’ arms as an athletically-obsessed teenager ten years ago and compare my own biceps to theirs to determine a type of superiority.

The dot.com era threatened to burst the bubble of neckwear, no doubt sending a shudder down the spines of executives at tie-making companies.  At Google it’s cool to show up at a meeting with clients in a T-shirt and sandals and make billion-dollar decisions about profound binary stuff.  Those geeks in fact pride themselves on it. Along with other basic business principles, the tie culture was not defeated after all, at least not very far out of the San Francisco Bay area. 

So what is the point of all this reflection?  On a very basic level, ties disturb me deeply.  I will admit that, like jewelry, a tie makes one look better, maybe a little bit trimmer or something.  But it doesn’t serve any real purpose in the cubicle world.  Nobody (recently) has had reason to shoot me in the head.  Underwear, socks, shirts, shoes, pants, belts, all this stuff makes sense to me.  Without a belt my pants move up and down my waste awkwardly.  Without my pants on I’d be, well, without my pants on.  Shoes protect the feet.  What does a tie do, besides the aforementioned discomfort?  Enemies of the tie over the years have bitched about its lack of utility, as well as its aura of conformity among corporate cogs, bowing to the Man. 

My answer is different and simple, and this is why wearing ties disturbs me. Towering above all other concepts in my brain related to ties, from looks to seriousness to professionalism to conformity to corporate ladder-climbing, is the dreaded ‘a’ word: adulthood.  Ties, to me, symbolize more than anything else in existence the notion that now, since I wear one quite often, I have to be a man, or at least act like one all day.  Damn it.

India has recently grabbed global headlines for disturbingly horrible reasons.  Some publicity-mongering Indians have been all too happy to get the press to share their ignorance with the rest of the world.  These people are fools, and I am not afraid to say it, even though I am myself an Indian-American.  They give me and all Indians everywhere a bad name, and it embarrasses me to no small degree to read about this stuff in the media. 

And now, although it pains me to do so, I am publicizing the three events in question: (1) Gangs of Indians, angry at the national cricket team’s opening loss to Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup, proceeded to riot in cities throughout the country, burning effigies of the players, and destroying the house under construction of cricket team wicket-keeper Mahendra Singh Dhroni, who played poorly in the match.  (2) Holier-than-thou Indians create a national uproar because Richard Gere, at an appearance for AIDS awareness in India, grabs Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in a tango hold and kisses her on the CHEEKS.  Indian court issues an arrest order and creates an international incident.  (3) Holier-than-thou Indians create a national uproar because British actress/model Liz Hurley married some rich Indian guy in a Hindu wedding ceremony that wasn’t done perfectly right according to some Hindu fundamentalist clowns.  The case is, of course, brought to court and sets off another international shit-storm.

I honestly don’t know which one is worse.  It’s as if some combination of Hindu fundamentalists and nationalistic zealots have nothing better to do than keep their eyes open for some harmless act that they can scream and get violent over, or at least take to court and appear on television to delplore.  Cricket team lost?  Destroy the wicket-keeper’s house! He deserves it.  An American actor kissed the cheeks of one of our own?  The horror- arrest him!  A British actress marries one of our own boys in a Hindu ceremony?  Blasphemy- take them to court!   While these  people do not represent sentiments of all Indians, their opinions are prominent enough that more reasonable voices do not drown them out and expose them for the village idiots that they are, advanced legal degree or not.  And of course, the media eats their crap up.  Nothing like a little drama to sell the papers.  And here we have it: Indians with their inferiority complex on display for all to see, shit-scared that their religion and culture, and even athletic prowess are under attack from the rest of the world.  Where is the local outrage against this outrage?  You can’t have enough.

Many people in India dread the influence of foreign movies, fashion, and music taking over the minds of the country’s youth.   While this may be valid,  there are probably other priorities the society should have other than public displays of cheek-kissing.  Such as, doing something about the corruption that eats at Indian government from the highest level to the lowest.  Or the 70% of the population that is starving to death- what good does freedom from Hollywood movies do them?  How important can culture really be when your body is wasting away from preventable dysentery or AIDS?  The moral majority frequenting the corridors of the Hindu power structure should stop bitching about whether Liz Hurley’s wedding was performed correctly or not, and do something about the AIDS problem- which is exactly what Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty were trying to do.  I understand many tenets of Hinduism, and central to the Hindutva philosophy is acting rather than talking.  Acting to make sure the people in the community have enough to eat is far closer to achieving Hindu dharma than attacking the white visitors who are adding thousands of dollars into the Indian economy.  What do you think Hinduism says in regards to taking care of your guests? Guests are to be treated like Gods. It does not say to arrest them or sue them, I can guarantee you that.

Of course, nothing will change.  To understand why, we will get to the bottom of it all.  Indians like to think of themselves as world players, especially with the recent boom in the IT industry and nouveau riche Indian billionaire businessmen arriving on the scene in their private jets, better than everyone else.  Indians like to think that their way is the best way.  I’ve got news for you: India will continue to be an ass-backward place as long as politicians continue to fuel sectarian hatred and violence at the cost of what is best for the country.  Religious and political leaders, out to expound on themselves rather than really help people, are the ones who rile up the masses in protest of the cricket players, or the activities of foreign celebrities, or increase the Hindu-Muslim divide.  The poverty rate is rising, not falling; the IT industry, even if it continues to boom exponentially, can only employ 1% of the adult population.  India  cannot afford to be a one-trick computer pony, ravaged by anti-foreign sentiment and religious fanaticism.  Indians need to stop blaming everyone else for their problems (especially the Brits who left 60 long years ago), and start working to solve them.  Nobody else is going to do it for them.  With the way Richard Gere has been treated, I wonder if others like him will simply not bother to help, and rightly so.