A friend who has enjoyed her NRI status for many years just asked on Facebook : “Why do people who work at the Embassy of India treat Indians like crap?” Quick as always, with my rapier wit at the ready, I responded : “Whether at the Embassy or at LHR, the premise is you are homeward-bound perhaps and this is their helpful way of getting you used to being treated like crap ! Sort of a "breaking in gently" to all you spoilt people who are used to politeness! HAH ! A little rudeness never hurt anybody !!!!!”
The caustic, yet tongue-in-cheek humor of my riposte (or re-post, heh heh heh!) may be lost on those of our fellow-citizens who live on the far side of the pond, since they are simply used to being treated politely all over the place (“May I help you” asked as a gratiuitous question when they step up to a desk that clearly says “information,” for example!). Those on the near side are used to be asked politely, I am told, whether they want ice with their Scotch on the rocks (personal experience on the Scottish border) or if they are being served (check BBC listings for rerun times!)
Every flight alighting in the country restores a few hundred of Mother India’s long-lost children to the maternal bosom every night at several airports all over the country. These lost lambs represent the finest flowering of India that has chosen to excel in all possible fields and then some! That such excellence tends to flourish miles away from the homeland is a sad commentary on the State of the Union (Indian, I mean, of course, but who is this poor blogger to dwell upon such Obamesque themes?) but this “mere trifle” (bagatelle) need not deter us here.
It is a now well-accepted fact that the gratin (top layer) of Indian achievers find their moment (or 15 such moments, if you want to believe everything that Andy Warhol supposedly said!) in the sun under horizons far from our own. Indeed, modern (read 21st century) histories will recount in admirable detail the achievements of Indians in the diaspora (hereinafter referred to as the “d-word”!)1 And so, on all five continents, there are Indians who excel. Let us not labor the point any further!
They blend in seamlessly with the local populations of every ethnic origin, and each continent has their stereotypes which have also found their way into public discourse! Thus, every village in the deepest recesses of Africa has seen a Patel set up shop, prosper beyond reasonable imagination and finally set off for the USA or Canada! Just as the French, those insular snobs of Europe, are getting used to the idea that IT is best left in Indian hands, be it for programming or for hunting down and eliminating the “bougs” in the système!
And yet, those eager hordes of long-lost lambs standing in patient lines at any international airport at ungodly hours of the night will turn into crass, rude, and boorish denizens who seem not to have seen the finer things in life (museums, art galleries) or heard the finer sentences of the English language (refer to paragraph about Scotch on the rocks above)! The will push, jostle, and thus rub shoulders with thebest of the best on suburban trains at rush hour in Mumbai or mob swanky movie screens in multiplexes! The need to be “there first” is visceral, and thus cuts down our national population by a few hundred during every festive season by way of stampedes and the like.
Why do the urbane, sophisticated, savvy NRIs lose their sheen within hours of landing in the country ? Why can they not “show the way” to those less fortunate than themselves by being role models for accepted behavior in civilised societies? Why must they sprawl all over the mattresses laid down for listeners at classical music concerts and then expect not to be pulled up (physically, if it were possible)?
Years ago, an El Al ground hostess asked me why passengers on an Air India 747 departing JFK every night jostled, pushed and pulled like mad to board the aircraft when they each clutched a boarding card and thus had an assured seat on the flight (the overbooked unfortunates were still arguing with unprofessional AI staff back at the check-in counters!). She had witnessed this same scene every night, she said, as she, barely 30 minutes later, helped a 747-full of orderly souls board an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. As a mere Third World student studying in the USA, I hung my head, said nothing, and drew imperceptible designs on the tiled floor of the terminal at JFK!
I did not know then, but I do now! It is all so simple ………… elementary even!
It all began with the “people who work at the Embassy of India” who gave these recent and not-so-recent US passport-holders their visas to go home!
Notes : 1 Not to be confused with the "D company", a corporation that is single-handedly responsible for fighting unemployment, chronic poverty, and fosters sales of illegal arms, currency notes, and passports all over the, well, diaspora!
