How to Be a Likeable Bigot: A Handbook for the Savvy Survivor

by Naomi Datta

In this collection of satirical essays in her deft, inimitable style, Naomi Datta tells you how to survive various situations-from how to befriend tiger moms to how not to get a pink slip- simply by being 'ordinary'. This is a book which celebrates conformity and tells you how to be perfectly regular, to blend in and be largely forgettable. It is a fine art-moderation. This book will hold up a mirror to all of us, and we may not like what we see.

Genres: Humor

172 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 13, 2019

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

"One horse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms" - H. L. Mencken

Sometimes in this post-truth universe, the discourse gets so bizarre that ordinary rules of debate make no sense. In such situation, it makes sense to do what Mencken suggested - laugh out in the face of idiocy. In current India, laughter seems to be the only medicine against a society which seems to be going batshit crazy. In this book, Naomi Datta does just that - laugh out. And brilliant writer that she is, she makes sure that her readers laugh along with her.

This book is ostensibly for a "non-achieving fence-sitter" - the kind of person who floats through life doing absolutely nothing worthwhile. In fact, you might call it an operating manual. In the second chapter, Naomi says

The aim of this book is to set you up as a non-achieving, complacent fence-sitter at the very least and a stonewaller at the very best. But I don’t want you to be poor or a failure. I would have written a book on optimizing spiritual health then. You are a mass of inertia, but your career will always be on a steady ascendant. Not a meteoric rise, because as we will say ad nauseam throughout this book, you don’t want to be noticed too much. Your career goal is to be furniture in your workplace. However, you can choose to be the plush couch in the lobby rather than the plastic chair left out in the rain.

The book has fifteen chapters.

1. How to Contribute Nothing to Team Meetings and Not Let Anyone Catch On
2. How to Make Your Résumé Work Harder than You
3. How to Spend All Your Time on Social Media and Yet Give the Illusion of Productivity
4. How to Be a Gainfully Occupied Freeloader
5. How to Be Unfit and Be Morally Superior OR How to Be Fit and Not Invite Resentment
6. Mummy Politics for the Dummy
7. How to Be a Kangaroo Dad (How to Contribute Nothing to Parenting and Yet Be Dad of the Year) 8. How to Be a Likeable Bigot
9. How to Be a Sulking Liberal
10. How to Be a Chronic Feel-gooder
11. How to Be a Journalist and Never Report on Anything
12. How to Crack Woke Jokes
13. How to Be Casually Sexist
14. How to Be a Sports Legend without Ever Getting Injured
15. How to Escape Reality and Live in a Parallel Timeline of Your Own

In these short chapters, she takes apart the corporate world, the arena of social media, and the empty conceits of the Indian middle class. To write a review analysing each would be like deconstructing a joke to see what makes it funny. So instead, I would leave you with some quotes which should whet your appetite to read it for yourself.

Chapter 2

You are the person who throws the rule book at new employees and resists all change by saying that it is against the brand values of the company. ‘This is not who we are,’ you repeat in tones of deep anguish each time something pops up that could topple the apple cart, your apple cart. Apples are odious fruits just by the way they fall unsolicited on people and make them come up with laws of gravity. The interfering busybodies encourage thought and change. You are a fruit for god’s sake. Behave like one. Give me a complacent plum any day.

Chapter 3

‘Interesting’ is a word that doesn’t need you to commit to an ideology or point of view; it doesn’t need you to commit to anything at all. For instance, you could say Jack the Ripper was an interesting guy and it doesn’t make you a murderous sociopath sympathizer.

Chapter 4

A Twitter influencer can be any or all of these: opinionated, well-read, a curator of other opinions, funny, rabid, liberal, right wing, moderate, erudite, ignorant. You need to engage, bait, provoke and inform. All of this for free, nobody pays you. An Instagram influencer just needs to have a good camera phone. You need to post photos—with hashtags. Banality is highly recommended. You can get paid to do this or you can get a host of freebies. It is all par for the course.
***
Stock up on Rumi and Kahlil Gibran. You don’t always have to be penning your own motivational quotes. Luckily for us, Rumi, Gibran and many other great writers, anticipating Instagram, have left us a handy bank of quotes that can be used for anything. Your pet cat, your cup of coffee, the stray pimple on your nose and even your garbage bags with dry and wet separated.

Chapter 6
(On Mummy WhatsApp Groups)

It starts innocuously enough: one morning, you will wake to find that you are now part of a group called *Insert School Name* Mums. It is all quite cheerful in the beginning—just a bunch of regular, pleasant-sounding mums journeying along with you on this life experience called motherhood. That is the brochure. And you know what lies beneath a brochure: the truth. Crack the surface, and it is a minefield of insecurity, hyper-competition, upmanship and fragile self-worth.
***
You must have received this forward (usually on WhatsApp) on how God couldn’t be everywhere, so he created mums. Awww, ya. That cheesy PR spiel of motherhood. I have a slight revision to that for WhatsApp groups. When mums can’t be everywhere, they insert emoticons.

Passive participation is the act of inserting emoticons at regular intervals to suggest involvement and engagement.

I am sure there are many mums out there who use this method to survive!

Now, continuing on the subject of maternity:

Here are a few pointers on how not to be a tiger mum—how to compromise on what the world has made you believe is essential for good mothering. You are not slacking off; you are just keeping sane. You are in the race, but you are running at your own pace. You probably won’t win a medal, but you will reach the finish line and your kids will be more or less fine. They might even be prodigies, and it won’t be because you gave up on everything else besides them. At the very least, they will be average, well-adjusted blobs of generic humanity and not over-entitled, over-indulged misfits. You are doing them a favour—and yourself too. Ease off motherhood.

The most interesting chapters in the book are chapters 8, 9 and 11 - you meet all these characters (the likeable - and the not-so-likeable - bigot, the sulking liberal and the shouting news anchor ) almost on a daily basis in India. In fact, we can't avoid them unless we trek to the Himalayas and decide to spend some time in caves doing meditation.

Chapters 8 and 9 - The bigot and the liberal.

Bigotry only has a branding problem and that is what we need to fix. We need to rebrand bigotry and remove the value judgement from it. We need to pedal a softer version of it. Refer back to the meaning of bigotry; the case we build today is that while the ideas behind it may be strong, they are not unreasonable at all—and therefore attaching likeability to it is a reasonable ask.
***
When someone like you—read someone from your community—commits a crime or misdemeanour, it is clearly an individual aberration. If someone outside your community does the same, he or she indicts the entire race or religion he or she belongs to. Always be equipped with infallible logic like this that can’t be countered... The advantage of having an opinion not based on facts is that it can’t be countered by facts.
***
Bigotry needs a massive rebranding exercise. You need to soft sell it. How do you do this? By giving it softer labels such as ‘controversial’, ‘provocative’, ‘contentious’, ‘fractious’, ‘problematic’, ‘conservative’ or ‘old school’. This relabelling makes it part of the mainstream narrative and socially acceptable. It takes the edge off the issue and puts forward the proposition that a bigot is just another kind of person expressing a different opinion.
***
A bigot and a hard-nosed liberal will have contrasting and divergent views. Focus on the commonality. Both of these views are hardliner views. What you need to do is hone in on the hardliner part: you need to state that you are opposed to extreme opinion and would rather seek the middle ground. The middle ground is a grey area, a moral marshmallow that will be more acceptable to the bigot and untenable to the liberal. You can then make a case for how inflexible the liberal is and is therefore more of the deviant than the bigot. The context for the hardliner views does not matter. The fact that they are often non-negotiable is what you can deflect the attention to.
***
The Indian liberal can be summed up thus, ‘I sulk, therefore, I am’—and that is his or her only plan: petulance. It is pretty comfortable being a liberal: you live in an air-conditioned echo chamber and then Uber it to other echo chambers. You sip tea out of eco-friendly earthen pots with other suitably stirred individuals and lament the end of reason. You shudder and wring your hands in delicate distaste at the ignorant masses and hope the right hashtag will bring back the world order you so desire. You haven’t really defined what that world order is; it is a bit hazy, but you know it is sweet and flaky—a bit like you. It is a charming place where people waft around in wishy-washy congeniality, saying perfectly well-mannered things to each other.
***
Actually, the sulking liberal is even less of a doer than our amiable bigot. The bigot has the force of his convictions. The liberal is mostly confused about what his convictions are—but he knows that whatever they are, they make him morally superior to the rest of humanity. The liberal, then, is clearly not a person of action and is in fact the ideal reader of this book.
***
This is often called the paradox of liberalism or illiberal liberalism, where a liberal shouts down a contrarian view because he or she operates on the assumption that their stance is the only one worth having. Everyone else is a yokel. A truly democratic stance.

I can go on and on. If I do, I will end up quoting the entire book!

Before I stop, I will leave a a few choice bits about the Indian journalist too.

We can now cheerfully proceed with the true objective of journalism, which is to make sure we stay in a bubble of self-involved knowledge. We choose to know only that much that suits us. And that is where later thinkers say Chomsky and Herman might have erred a bit by assuming that the reader/news consumer doesn’t know—it is more likely he or she chooses not to know. We have already established in previous chapters that what we think is truth is often just a validation of our own belief systems. What we seek then is the post truth, which is a bit like the after-party once verified facts have left the party. It is where the real fun begins.
***
As a journalist, it is your business to keep tabs on the popular pulse and make sure the set of facts you have picked are in sync with that. News must give the viewer or the reader an emotional high. News must entertain and engage, and if it manages to inform, then that we must treat as unfortunate collateral damage.
***
Your superpower is anger. You have to figure out a way of staying angry all the time. Give up on yoga, meditation and chanting classes—you don’t need inner peace. The world needs you to stay angry. You also don’t want the world to have peace—you will lose your job. Work yourself up into a vigilante anger, ask furious questions. However, note that your furious questions are never to be directed at figures of authority. Line up some inconsequential spokespeople, throw in a few out-of-work army generals from Pakistan and bellow. Be righteous and emotional in your anger—your prime-time meltdown is cathartic for your viewers. As you verbally pummel your equally angry panellists, the appetite of your audience is whetted for the next season of Big Boss. If on the off chance you do manage to get an interview with a genuinely powerful person, ask them which variety of mango they like to eat. The nation, I assure you, will want to know.
***
Ace this game then—if you can make actual reportage and fact-gathering seem like an anti-national activity, you can continue to loll around in your studio for the rest of your career shouting down divisive forces. The biggest bonus to this is that you will come across as a national hero. Without ever actually doing anything at all.

Read it. As a nation, we Indians tend to think too much about ourselves, and need to be taken down a peg. This is the ideal way to do it. Kudos to the author!

[Selva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought this book primarily coz I follow the author on twitter n find her tweets quite funny.
The book is a collection of 15 satirical essays on a variety of topics from building a resume to being a sports geek. It was a mixed bag: initial 3-4 topics were very funny while the next two: About being an ace mom n the next one titled 'how to be a kangaroo dad' were insufferable, honestly...why I didn't think I could skip that chapter stumps me. I am not a dad, so maybe I couldn't relate to it, I am not so sure. The next 4-5 essays were moderately funny: how to be a likeable bigot/sulky liberal/woke person on social media/chronic feel-gooder. I laughed quite a bit. I couldn't complete 'how to be a sports geek' - too boring. The last one about being a fanboy of web series n superhero movies was super boring too. Writing by which I mean the language was very good.
Rating: 3.5 stars, but rounding it to 4 stars considering the genre of the book. Mentioning coz I have rated some really good works of fiction n some non-fiction at 4 stars.

[Kanika Arora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The famous English Idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, is apt for the book How To Be A Likable Bigot, one look at the cover and no one can guess on the content inside. I am not a fan of the Non-fiction Genre but the book’s title seemed interesting enough to give it a read at least once. As the Blurb rightly mentions, this book is a collection of satirical essays full of witty instances.

As Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change.” In my opinion, this quote holds true to this book by Naomi Datta. Her wisdom distributed among the 15 chapters in the book illustrates that being ordinary while responsive to change as the world around us change is completely normal and should be acceptable by society as well. My personal favourite being the topic where she goes down the memory lane mentioning details of how birthdays of 80s kids were celebrated as compared to the kids nowadays.

I found this book to be a survival kit to be kept handy with every human being who has difficulty understanding the mind-set of the bigots seen in various setups around us. Every chapter in this book has numerous tricks and hacks on how to handle situations in an extremely basic way.
When reading the paperback version, you would require the dictionary handy with you as her vocabulary is very rich and vast that might not be likeable by beginner-level readers. The writing style of the author is very elaborative and drips with sarcasm in every paragraph. In addition, the author is well-read and knowledgeable. However, I feel the factual information provided is too much to fit into one book. It would have been an easy read if she would’ve followed one tangent and elaborated it with instances full of her sarcastic humour.

Although, How To Be A Likable Bigot by Naomi Datta is a book that needs to be read repeatedly with maximum concentration because it is quite possible to have missed out on many useful tricks and hacks in one read.

I would strongly recommend this book to people who are struggling to be the best in their life whether personally or professionally.

[Ishieta Chopra · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you work in the corporate jail - and are looking to unwind & for validation of the ridiculousness of work, war and social media currently - then this is the book for you!

I have not read anything from this author before and I have to say I really enjoyed her satirical writings.
The book is such an antithesis of everything we HAVE to do everyday just to stay in our jobs!
She nails the ‘How to Look Competent’ with the most affable (and hilarious) ideas – and when you take a closer look, you find that you (in some parts) and so many others are behaving like this – both in the offline and the online worlds!
Now the online world – these pieces were so real that you realise that social media is no more than a big song and dance, a-la a Bollywood drama, and we are mesmerised by this world.
She so aptly bring out the futility of the lives we currently lead between the corporate jobs and staying ‘relevant’ and showing off our ‘good’ lives on social media. (PS: All this just leaves me exhausted! – and reading her book validates the futility of the lives we currently lead – it lacks balance and when we look back, apart from a good laugh, will there be anything solid we would have accomplished? (except to earn offcourse, which we have promptly spent anyway!).
I enjoyed her writing – it was insightful and sharp tongued – I enjoy the direct approach with the humorous twist – The author, Naomi Datta has a keen eye for detail and the ability to call it like it is!
She has me thinking that avoiding the spotlight may actually be the best path to surviving with some peace and some moments for the self! Especially, moments such as these where I can just relax and read and laugh at the re-telling of the modern life : )

The Title itself is interesting – it definitely intrigued me and I spent a delightful Sunday reading this book. She spins the word ‘bigot’ on its head and introduced an interesting perspective on the words and what it means.

Read this for a light touch on the pandemic of today’s life – find the validation that we all sail (sink!) in the same boat, and de-stress for a while, while the new work week awaits us!

I definitely recommend this book – especially if you relish a well written book by an Indian author.
Extra Bonus : The sprinkling of comic style images, diagrams if you will – which teach and encapsulate the ‘how to’ perfectly! These too shall bring a smile to your face :)

[Khyati Gautam · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to Be a Likeable Bigot by Naomi Datta has the characteristic tongue in cheek language and oodles of sharp wit sarcasm dripping on each page which would immensely entertain you. I started reading it with zero expectations and I am super pumped up to take over the world after savoring it. The book, a collection of satirical essays, talks primarily about how to remain a bigot who is liked by his fellow beings. The author has presented several tips and tricks (read hacks) to get away with people around you. I was thoroughly surprised to read it as it definitely gave me a different perspective. I don't remember reading a book on a similar premise of being ordinary and acceptable, at the same time.

Divided into 15 chapters, the book is a guide for you to traverse the difficult terrains of living in contemporary society and present you with a mirror to see some things that you might not like to see. I liked how the author quoted examples to substantiate her points. Also, I would commend the eloquence of the author as she goes on to explain things with the correct usage of words. Picking up situations from corporate houses to the WhatsApp groups, the variety of scenes discussed adds to the enriching reading experience of a reader. The amusing writing of the author has a charm that keeps readers giggling, laughing, and sometimes, introspecting. A neat narrative with useful information combined with humorous narration made it a wonderful read for me. Totally recommended.

[Amogh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't read non-fiction that much. However its a small book & when it comes down to Naomi Datta, I'm a fan and there is a bias. I love her tweets and if you do too, you'll love this one.

You'll smile as you'll notice likeable bigots, sulking liberals, kangaroo dads and chronic feel-gooders around you. And at some point, that smile will turn into a sheepish grin when a paragraph will describe you word for word.

After all, we all are savvy survivors! 😅

[Manas Mukul · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to be a Likeable Bigot by Naomi Datta is a counter- intuitive self-help book on the lines of ‘The Subtle art of not giving a f’. Bigot means ‘a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions.’ Now a person who remains intolerant towards others views and never lets the other views to express their stand is mostly an unlikeable person.

What Naomi tries, in her quirky witty satirical way, is for that bigot to become likeable and acceptable by others. She uses this technique to make a person adapt and become comfortable to alien situations and difficult scenarios whether it is about befriending tiger moms or it is about avoid getting pink slips.

Through the book she tells us how to remain under the radar and never come under any spotlight because those are the heads that are chopped off first. To survive is a fine art and she presents various scenarios through this collection of essays how to just manage surviving.

The vocabulary is simple yet smartly used to highlight the paradoxical scenarios. It also helps the book in being a fast read and with under 200 pages you will find yourself finishing it in a couple of sittings. The chapters are not interlinked so even if there is a gap you can always start afresh from any chapter.

The cover page is simplistically done but the usage of font makes it catchy and would surely grab eyeballs at a book stand. The back cover has the blurb with a tag line ‘A fresh and witty take on life today’.

If you are good at sarcasm then you must definitely give this satirical take on life a go, otherwise you might end up missing the hidden message that the book contains and might end up getting more offended than liking and understanding the book. For an average person in life, you might get an impression that the book tries to put you down on more than one occasion and you might go into introspection rather than turning the pages.

[Cheena Chopra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is you, your day-to-day activities at office and your career plan for the next many days. Naomi has done a fabulous job in showing us a true mirror as to what happens at the contemporary offices, what goes in to become a true professional, who appears to be on top of things yet chooses to remain an underdog, and how one should develop the right skills to be become a ‘likeable bigot.’ With a relatable tone and a sassy choice of words, the author is able to connect well with the readers and read their minds. This is a guidebook for anyone who is looking to have their own opinions intact despite the variety of clutters that exists in the world. The author, seeming to have survived and even outlasted various tricky situations in her life, so deftly presents this reference book, which might as well become a life manual to you for the rest of your life and may even pull you through situations which do not demand you to be smart, yet play smartly. This was honestly the first book I seem to have pulled off in one go, for being a short read of just 215 pages, this book will keep you entertained and will make you want to know more. This could be your companion for short travels, quick breaks or even leisure time you choose to keep for yourself. Through the read, you never know you might just get valuable life lessons with occasional laughter and loads of eye-opening nuggets of information. Also, I suggest you hand this book down to whosoever you think might be in need of it, for it is always good to lend a helping hand to someone who might just be needing some ‘democratically correct’ wisdom to merely survive. Overall, this book is an honest and hard-hitting behind-the-scene account for most of our everyday lives.

[Pragnya Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays are examples of excellent commentary. It illuminates the bigots, that we often find in office-office setups, parent-teacher meets or groups, moving to newsroom real and social environment on and offline. In the end, the parallel universe most of us dream of living without any reality.

Datta’s writing is distinctive and deft. She chooses her words quite smartly to bring
out the twinkle in the scenario.

As a reader, you would like the tongue in the cheek moments. Correction, the entire
book is sarcasm dripping. Might mentally try pointing out to people you know
who do behave likewise and end up facing a mirror.

Essays like one on Kangaroo dad might hurt the feelings of many new fathers who do try fit in expectations of the parenting jungle. But again, this is not a self-help book.

The book “How to be a likable bigot” by Naomi Datta is an entertaining one. People who can handle sarcasm would be charmed, others might not be able to appreciate the worth. A notable book of 2019.  

[Tanvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of sarcasm so if you don't appreciate sarcasm, you won't enjoy this super excellent commentary on our times (I love this brand of humour, my other fav book is You Are Not So Smart, which I've been told people don't appreciate being gifted). It starts off filling the Dilbert hole, meanders into parenthood (which i dont fully relate to) and then starting with Likeable Bigot till the essay on Casual Sexism becomes totally irresistible. Every one of those chapters became my favourite. The insights are super sharp and funny as hell. Would highly highly recommend reading and gifting to some of your fav people.
With authors permission, I would love to take a print out of the essay on Casual Sexism and paste it to my desk for quick referencing.

[Gunjan Mittal · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, I had no expectations, as I kept going, I learnt a lot with a smile on my face. The book is a collection of satirical essays which speaks about how to be someone who is liked by all in the corporate world or in fact, I should say in today’s world of social media and technology.

The author has given various tips and tricks to be the most likable person around. She has used various examples which gave a very different perspective. There were a lot of times where I started relating to instances or people at my personal and professional live.

Read the complete review on my blog - http://blushesandsparkle.com/how-to-b...

[Abhay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found it average

Mostly average apart from few high points momentarily. Satire on liberals, social media, office was to the point though :D. Not super engaging.