Who is more manipulative

" I am just going to leave the room and not bother about the consequences". My sister was referring to her 18 month old twins. They have just gotten into the intricacies of sibling rivalry and learning everything from attention seeking to physical violence.

What I observed is the gender variant manipulative scheme they seemed to use. From my observations, I conclude - The female of the species wins. I will allow you guys to make your own impressions given two situations.

1. Adhav

Technique used - Straight forward manipulation

Maya finds an interesting object at her reach, which has kept her occupied for more than ten minutes. A miniature Bailey's bottle that has not been uncapped. No harm object. Running in her mind now - Damn. This is even worse than one of those child protective locks.

Adhav wants to have that, so picks up the closest, quickest interestig object, a keychain, runs to his "chichi" and points to Maya. Lure her with this and get me that bottle. Good technique, but very straight forward.

2. Maya

technique used- Emotional manipulation

Maya desperately wants a small silver lamp that is on the kitchen counter, totally unreachable to her height and was refused to her by more than three people. After a while, the quietly playing Maya smiles at her Chichi in the kitchen. She then runs to the kitchen, and smiles her best, making her eyes shine and says 'Chichi...' in a recognizing and affectionate tone. I fall for the bait, pick her up and kiss her, still smiling she reaches for the lamp which is now in her access and now is not looking at me anymore!

Who is more manipulative?

Racism as I see it...

When I first read the Joel Stein article the only thing that came to my mind was "funny". Nothing more or less and then when I slowly saw how the rest of my friends were reacting through social networking sites, my opinion formed. Why did everyoe get so hurt when Stein called our Gods multilimbed or our food spicy??

I think all of us have a little bit of racist streak in us. The tamilians dont like to be called telugu, the North Indians have their own opinion on the south Indians and the mallu & Singh jokes are never ending. There used to be a friend in grad school calling me chicken-worshipper.(Muruga swamy) And we dont stop there, the china-china's accent and food jokes, the jewish - well lets not even go there. Neverending. Its Ok to make small non viscous jokes. Its OK for someone ELSE to make fun of us. The indians here boast about their kids doing well in math and sci, being attached to their family and culture. Its OK if someone jokes about something like this. The whole point is, we are different. We cannot force Americans to acept and like our culture all the time. We dont either, thats why we have innumerable Patel Brothers, Hindu temples and Movie theatres. I am not asking everyone to shut up when a racist group attacks us, but just take a small joke.

The article was more on the lines of how a certain Deepa or Madhu would feel if T.Nagar is infested with... well even just plain vada naatu makkal (we dont even have to imagine outside India). Racist jokes will be all over the place!