For example, if you invite a desi to your place for, let's say, a 6 PM dinner, and you expect them to come on time -- well then you'll see this kind of scene play out:
You (able-bodied, well-intentioned caucasian): Gee, where is Raja (your friend's name is actually Indira, but you can't be bothered to actually remember funny-sounding foreign names so you throw in the title of the tiger from Aladdin)?
(phone rings, you pick up)
You: Where are you? It's 8:30!
Indira: Yeah, exactly, man, it's 8:30. That means I still got an hour!
You: But I invited you at 6:00!
Indira: Well, I'm getting here by 9:30, so by desi time I'm still at least a half hour early.
You: Bu-
Indira: What more do you expect? Don't sass me, whitey.
You: Yes you're right, I apologize. ;_;
Something like that, anyway.
So M. Night Shyamalan, America's most famous Indian director, has come out with a new thriller, The Happening. His flick was skewered by the critics, scoring a 19% over at Rottentomatoes. The film was derided as having akward acting, a contrived plot, and a weak, anticlimatic ending.
The comments on the popular movie-hub IMDB.com were scathing. One user wrote, "The script was just bad. Some of the lines were pretty laughable...Its really dissapointing considering this is by the same guy that wrote the Sixth Sense."
As a proud angry desi myself, I have to reply to that by saying: exactly. The aforementioned user is raging because he or she expects more from the writer-director of The Sixth Sense. Therein lies the genius of the desi race. We are completely fine with making one great achievement -- for our moms to brag about at dinner parties -- and then just sitting on our ass and expecting the world to love us for it. Don't believe me that this is The Happening was so underachieving? Check out this interview with M. Night Shyamalan. In it, Shyamalan admits that he set out to make his new film a "b-movie." A b-movie is a low-budget, low-quality film, that usually is a result of bad directing (it's not intentional).
But Shyamalan is fine with putting so little effort into a movie intentionally. He doesn't have to put very much into it for it to make a hefty profit -- more than 30 million in its opening weekend, as a matter of fact.
So, Shyamalan, continue to be the lazy desi who continues to reap the profits that come from the name-value of making one really good film and then not even trying later on. It's exactly what you were born to do.
Lazy and proud, Indian-American director-writer M. Night Shyamalan
