Hardik Rajgor

“W hy did you fail in Geography?” the questioning would begin, with me in the hot seat like  Mark Zuckerberg . My parents and relatives were everyone else, taking turns to destroy me. “But dad, what about the fact that the entire class  failed ?” I would ask. I had no clue where oranges were growing in  Maharashtra  but even as a 10-year-old, I had mastered the classic Soviet tactic of “whataboutery”, or deflecting the problem by raising another problem, that the New Yorker labelled as “a strategy of false moral equivalences”. If everyone failed then it became acceptable for you also to fail. You don’t have to deal with the larger problem of being poor in the subject if you can raise suspicion over the evil Geography teacher itself. How could she fail everyone? Make no mistake, I wasn’t the only one in my  family  doing it. We engage in whataboutery every day, all the time. The other day I was pointing out how dad’s stock investments were tanking like...

“S ir, is your name… Hard-dick?” By the age of 14, I had lost patience to correct every person who got my name wrong, so I just nodded at the immigration officer at Jerusalem  airport . She showed my passport to her colleague sitting nearby and they both shared a giggle. I thought the horror show was over but I soon heard my name pronounced incorrectly again. This time, over the loudspeaker because I’d forgotten to collect a document. Some people around started laughing and my  mom  looked at me with a confused face and asked “Beta, kem hasse che badha (Why is everyone laughing?)” My parents and relatives all studied in Gujarati-medium schools and in the language – as well as in  Hindi  and Marathi – Hardik has a sweet meaning. It means “from the heart”. I won’t go into the specifics, but let’s just say  Gujarati  is a deceptive language. Gota is a deep-fried delicacy and muthiya is a breakfast snack. So while my name had a positive connotation i...