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Argumentative, boorish, cribbing desis... New Essay
7th Nov 1999 Man From Matunga @manfrommatunga.com
ABCD - Argumentative Boorish Cribbing Desis (or.......Strawberries are Big even in India) Warning: Indians living abroad might find this article offensive. Please do not read ahead if you think you might get easily offended with certain characterizations that obviously do not apply to everyone. I was on a flight to Ahmedabad this morning. I had just arranged myself in my aisle seat, in the middle of the craft, when a commotion started next to me. The aircraft personnel had allowed simultaneous entry from the front and rear of the aircraft, and unfortunately some front seat passengers entered from the rear and a few back seat passengers entered from the front. In the middle of the craft, where I was, two sets of people travelling in opposite directions with quite a bit of hand luggage, found themselves facing each other, needing to pass each other. "Why ca.....a..nt the plai....ine people be more systematic?" a shrill female voice jerked me from the pages of the magazine that I was reading. I looked up to see a lady wearing a T-shirt, pants and a mangalsutra with "Indian" earrings and bangles. This combination is seen only in Indians abroad - American Indians, Gulf Indians and rarely British Indians. The Jackson-Heights/Devon Street accent of course, was also a dead give-away. With a sinking heart, I realized that until she had her way, the ear-assaulting voice was not going to stop. Which is what happened anyway. The steward asked her very nicely if she would get into the seat adjacent to where she was standing, just for a minute, to allow the oncoming passengers to go past. "How caa.....aan I do that? There is no plai..yce. I ha....ve so much lugga....ge" and then she continued "khasa loko che, haji sudhariya nathi" (great people they are, they still haven't changed). Her loud harangue, continued until she reached her seat, when thankfully, she finally shut up. If she had co-operated, the problem would have been settled much faster. Another time, another place. We are on our way to Paris, and the flight is delayed by three hours. There is a long queue outside the security lounge with a chaotic situation at the head of the queue, since some angry Parisians (the flight was Air France) are mobbing an airline official. A confused, elderly, middle-class Indian couple, the husband dressed in his best suit for travel and the wife in a "going-out" sari, walk a little ahead of the "official" queue and land up in front of another lady who has been standing in the queue longer. She starts off. "You Indians give all of us such a bad time. All the time jumping lines. No discipline." "We are sorry." "No, you are not sorry. All the time, you break queues. Even now, in today's world, you have not learnt anything, you'll are so pathetic." "There is no need to be rude, we are sorry." "Sorry, sorry, sorry....its so easy. You are responsible for the poor image we have in the rest of the world. Can't you'll improve? That is why nothing good ever happens in India". This lady happens to be an Indian living in Britain who is now going back home after her Indian holiday. Most of the Frenchmen eventually jump the queue after this episode, taking advantage of the "gheraoing" of the Air-France official by their colleagues, thus becoming the first lot to get through to the security lounge. Our British Indian lady doesn't bother to shout at them. The Frenchmen I guess, are allowed to jump queues, but the confused, apologetic Indian couple has committed a heinous crime. Yet another time, another place. We had stayed for six months in San Diego, some years ago. We became friendly with a middle-aged, suburban couple, who would regularly call us to their house for dinner. All invitations were confirmed twice on the phone and we made sure (as had been impressed upon us by all our friends and relatives), that we were always on time and our schedules properly pre-arranged. After we came back to Mumbai, the husband came for a visit. On a Sunday afternoon, he called us to say that he was in a hotel in Juhu, that he had come two days ago, was leaving that night and wanted to meet us. Though the notice was very short, we asked him whether he wanted to do something specific, or go out for dinner or to a play, but he refused saying he was busy. He just wanted to meet us over tea-coffee in the coffee-shop of the hotel. We landed up on time for our 6.30 meeting, having decided to see a play in Prithvi, which was to start at 8.00PM, having fixed up with some friends for this program. 6.30, 6.45, 7.00, ...finally at 7.15PM, he walked into the coffee shop, though we had promptly informed him of our arrival on the house-phone. We told him that we were running late since we had fixed up for the play, but since we still had half an hour, we ordered coffee, talked and caught up on news. As were about to leave to go for the play, he said he wanted to go see his apartment in Juhu, about a ten minutes drive away, in a direction opposite to that of the theatre. We looked at the watch and though the play was scheduled to start in 15 minutes, we decided to drop him to his apartment. When we got out of the hotel, there was a big traffic jam. We had no choice but to put him in an auto-rickshaw and let him go on his own. We never heard from him again. We heard later from mutual friends that he had gone around telling all our mutual friends in San Diego, how ungrateful and rude we had been, that despite the care he and his wife had taken of us, when it had been our turn to reciprocate, we had treated him like dirt. I keep being told that I should add my thoughts to the narratives, bringing out my emotions and my thought processes. Do I need to really? Aren't these three episodes self-explanatory? Do I really have to stress how irritating it is to listen to cribs and complaints all the time? That I feel like whacking loud-mouthed, ever-complaining women/men, who need but just a little chance to start their shrill-voiced harangue? That, when visiting friends or relatives start talking about the dirt, corruption, etc., I just "fake out", losing interest and patience. That I then land up changing the conversation telling them that we need to talk about other things, considering that we are meeting after so many years. That, maybe they need to offload a little more baggage, before coming to India. That we always have to remind friends and relatives that we too dine on time and that an 8.30PM dinner invitation does not mean 10.30PM. That even in India, outings and evenings are structured and that no one should be taken for granted. That it is much more refreshing to talk to second generation Indians travelling to India than those who have lived in India half their lives before migrating. That in India too, the strawberries are now as big as the ones in California despite the fact that the indigenous smaller ones have always been sweeter.
