Skip to main content

You can take an Indian out of India..

This one time in 2012, I was in my regular Indian restaurant with a book looking forward to a quiet, contemplative dinner. I had barely placed my order when three old-ish, quite drunk Punjabi Uncles came and sat beside me. They asked me where I am from, "Mumbai" I said, not wanting to get into explanations about where and what my obscure hometown is. "Bombay or Mumbai ?" one of them asked pointedly. I smiled and said "Mumbai."

The next - rather loud - question from him was, "Why are you Maharashtrians so anti national ?"

And it went on from there. Slightly incoherent, very aggressive. "Why do you hate Biharis ?", "Why did you make the RSS ?" one startling question followed another without a pause. I could barely get a word in, let alone attempt to add some nuance to his views on Indian politics.

I gathered they had all three grown up in Germany, pretty much. The other two were trying to get the belligerent uncle to quieten down, to no avail. When he was away relieving himself, one of the more pleasant uncles said "I can't live in India. I barely go there. That fellow" referring to my absent inquisitor "that fellow is obsessed with India. Goes there every year. for months. and comes back bitter and angry."

The blood pounding in my head was just beginning to subside when he was back. "Indians !" he loudly proclaimed "Indians are disgusting people. Dirty. They behave worse than the animals one sees on a safari. Even the Zebras cross the Masai river in orderly queues."

I let it pass. I smiled and said a few sentences to try and get the discussion onto a reasonable plane and managed not to launch a blind, blanket defense of all things Indian. The combative uncle was also somewhat spent and was now looking more glum than anything else. Then the food arrived and I was able to withdraw to my plate and my book and lower my blood pressure somewhat.

I finished my dinner, paid my bill and looked over to the uncles to nod a friendly good night when the obnoxious uncle held my gaze and said - from across the restaurant - still sounding quite drunk,

"All the best beta ! and take care of India."

I groped around for my anger, my indignation, anything to hold on to, but it was gone.

"I will try" I wanted to say "I will try !", but for some reason all I managed was a weak smile as I turned up my jacket collar against the wind and walked into the rainy German night.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Truth and beauty

I had been on that bus for 8 hours already, and a couple of hours after Albuquerque the gentleman sitting beside me asked me where I was from and what brought me to America. Once the conversation continued past the pleasantries, I quickly learnt that he was on his way back home to southern Texas after burying his father who had just died of cancer.  I expressed my condolences.  "Obama killed him you know" he suddenly said. I was genuinely surprised, "What ?" "Obamacare. Death panels of doctors that decide who gets treated and who does not." Bitterness crept into his voice. "They treated him like trash." Obamacare had just been passed, it was the summer of 2010, and most likely, nothing had actually changed in the hospital systems of middle america. Still, I was not going to argue with a man who had just buried his father.  There was silence between us for a while.  "What do you do down in Texas ?" "I teach math at high school....
Post a Comment
Read more

It was a happy afternoon

in the mid 90s in a dusty town on the Deccan plateau. I was five or six or seven (I can't really remember) and playing in the cool shade of my uncle's living room, vaguely aware of the blazing sun and hot earth just outside the large french windows that opened onto a still green lawn. My aunt was drowsy, cup of tea in hand, while my cousin and I ran around with the insufferable, misplaced enthusiasm of boyhood.  While pausing for lemon sherbet, I looked onto the road past the lawn outside those french windows and saw our maid, Kusum bai walking by. I noticed she had her little son with her, three years old perhaps. And on his back, an old schoolbag of mine. The idyllic afternoon seemed to dissolve around me. I felt my mind and chest and limbs fill with rage, with righteous fury at this kid who had been given (I knew he could not have taken )  my  schoolbag ! I rushed outside, eyes misty with anger and fell upon the little boy, wrestling the bag from him. I remember being ...
Post a Comment
Read more