In my twenties...

Never forget how you have come to be what you are. Well, this is an annoying feature in the present era...vanity, pomposity, foolishness! Yeah, I am being very caustic on this issue because I have been victimized to "vanity" shows in every other co-cultural meet in this foreign land. Well yes, we are in India no more. We are the privileged lot given that extra avenue to be ourself sans restrictions from the conventional Indian society. But its so unnatural that women, more often than men, seem to lose their identity in pretending to be a 'super'natural being adorning themselves with the skimpiest clothes (point to note: on a wrong weather condition; totally unsuited for the occasion and many times for the woman herself and clothes which when made 10 times as long would still be considered 'insufficient' by her family), beauty accessories with an unfamiliar spelling (and sometimes even the name), a hair-do which in a few months can malnourish the 20-30-year long well-groomed blackness (beauty trials on fine hair can never be made with recipes for coarse hair), fluenting a language that's way beyond an American's understanding. Well, its hard to describe how it works with men in vanity. But what is vexatious is why they hide their identity when it comes to meeting others of the same tribe and don on a self that's so alien. I am sure they are not enjoying it...it would be a lot of dramaticism, a lot of enacting and a lot of effort to get it rolling - the artifical self. And to talk about snobs?! I know nothing can be done about it...it probably would get worse but its annoying for those few people around who still walk sticking to the convention "Be a Roman when in Rome" and yet hold on to their identity - the only definition of me and you.

Well, its all in your thinking.

P.S. Vanity is not nationality-defined.