Keep your drink, just give me the money

Do you ever have one of those conversations—when chatting with someone on a plane, traveling in another country, or talking to an elderly (read: socially conservative) relative—where you just stop giving your real opinions or reactions? Because you can’t be bothered to explain to this person why their whole world view is massively flawed? And then walk them through the refutations of all their inane counterarguments? And you feel some guilt about your Raskolnikov-esque intellectual arrogance and unassailable belief in the superiority of your world view? But, since your belief in the superiority of your own world view is, in fact, unassailable, there isn’t much you can do about it? And, plus, you just compared your liberal, anti-humanist, hubris to a Dostoevsky novel. So can anyone really doubt whose worldview is better thought-out here?

Being, as I am, a future PhD in political science [la-di-da tossing of hair here], I run into this problem at home when people start talking politics. But in India the problem is omnipresent because people’s social values are SO different from mine. It’s like I’m trapped at a six-month meeting of the Christian Coalition. Except with white guilt.

This has all been brought into focus recently because my sister Merideth is really into communicating with people. I have a long history of being less in favor of this than Merideth, going back to the days when I used to hide in our mom’s closet when strangers rang the doorbell. But I believe my position has become more tenable over time.

For example: two days ago, one of the neighbors from our building saw us at a coffee shop and sat down to talk. And asked us what our religious orientation is. Now, I have seen this man around the building before. And I blithely claimed to be a Protestant in order to avoid having a conversation. (I’ve given my landlord the run-through of my wedding. With Adam sitting right next to me. Like I’m going to have trouble lying about this?) But Merideth – bless her open-to-having-interactions-with-other-people soul – goes and confesses to ambivalence on this point. And then we have to hear his opinions. (He recommended we read The Purpose Driven Life. We could have been in Oklahoma!) Which, of course, spirals into him discussing his opinions of the moral degradation of the US in general. The part of me that has opinions gets prickly and defensive on this point and wants to argue that the divorce rate is probably unacceptably low in India. But most of me prefers to nod along.

And then there is the young chap who Merideth started talking to at a coffee shop a few days ago. (Without me. I wouldn’t have let this conversation start. I bought this ring for a reason.) This young chap primarily wanted to know all about American sexual practices. And why there were so many Russian women in “sexy videos”? Merideth apparently tried to explain that she found pornography objectionable. (Deaf ears, girl. Deaf ears.) And reported, in response to my concern, that the whole conversation had a big-sister-kid-brother tone to it. I told her I was sure that was how it appeared to her.

I feel vindicated by his persistent stream of text messages since that time. (Which, sensibly, are going unanswered). That is another problem with countries where people don’t date: the men have no idea (a) that the hurdles that must be cleared in order to have sex with a white woman are not quite so trivial as “sexy videos” might imply and (b) in which track league they should even think about trying to run the hurdles. And, naturally, it is really only men who approach strangers for conversations. Which makes it even more infuriating.

Would I be a bad cultural ambassador if my standard response to questions about my religious and moral views was “Have you even read Crime and Punishment?”