What we are

Imagine a tall hairy brawny Sikh, brought up in Scotland, holidaying in India. No, he doesn’t go to Taj Mahal with a video camera strapped around his neck or the Golden Temple in Amritsar to offer prayers. He doesn’t try to catch up with Pinky Aunty whom he knew as a kid or Bunty uncle who taught him how to ride bicycles. He visits cities in India and cooks English cuisine at the most unlikely places. Why English cuisine? Well I couldn’t quite appreciate his reasons, except for a strange belief that to understand a people you need to understand their cuisine. Well, we didn’t understand the English even after 200 years of English rule. Why bother to teach us? I thought they adopted our cuisine and went back. Imagine Karuppusamy’s thatched restaurant in Mahabalipuram in Tamilnadu. Imagine a Sardar with a clipped Brit/Scot accent cooking shepherd’s pie and stovies there to feed the customers. I can imagine the uncomprehending looks on the dark faces of people gathered around him. He must have been the source of amusement for many days. The book is ‘Indian Takeaway’ by Hardeep Singh Kohli, a broadcaster and newspaper columnist. It is a fun read but a bit poorly edited- could have done without the repetitions of phrases at many places. The descriptions of railway journeys and his observations of every day Indian life are truly hilarious.

Often we see ourselves better through the eyes of outsiders. The other book I am reading is ‘Holy Cow- an Indian adventure’ by Sarah Mac Donald. It is written by an Australian woman who courageously lived a life of sin with her fiancée in India and lived to tell the tale(living together outside marriage is not yet considered kosher in polite circles in India…although we get by with worse sins like bride-burning and female infanticide). There are tales of Delhi male bravado, the ogling and pinching of female flesh, the dirty water and polluted air, and the loathsome public habits of men with fingers in nostrils, constantly re-adjusting their crotch. She experiences all this in a secluded and tony neighbourhood in Delhi, reasonably insulated from the dark side of the cruel city. I wonder what would she say if she had to experience the middle class existence of Indian babus in Government Colony Delhi?

Surprisingly I wasn’t offended by the descriptions of unjust Delhi. We are often caught up so much in our daily lives that we fail to see what is apparent. We are a highly hierarchical society and our importance flows from our exclusivity. It stems from how many people do we manage to exclude from our cozy circle. We snap at drivers, we scoff at servants, we heckle clerks, we abuse fellow drivers on roads and we violate the queues at movie theatres. Our membership to exclusive clubs, our family lineage, our position in the bureaucracy, and the garish furniture and drapes in our living rooms, all scream for attention to our exclusivity. We revel in this importance and turn up our noses at all the unwashed people on our streets. I could understand Sarah. She sees us for what we are… a people smug in our exclusivity. And this exclusivity is constantly redefined by excluding more and more people from it. All this while our politicians talk of inclusive development. Might be a good idea to start some inclusiveness from Delhi and from within the government….

I still yearn to go back to the melting pot that is Delhi, despite all that. But I dread going back to work. I have enjoyed much of this past one year, on the couch, reading, browsing, studying a little and day dreaming. The good time is running out and the show is about to begin... I try practicing the evil look of a self important Babu before a mirror every day…
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I am hooked onto the song’ Heads in Georgia’ from the J J Cale & Eric Clapton album called ‘The Road to Escondido’. It has a dreamy, laid back beat to it. Wonderful blues music!!