I hope that Mohsin Hamid won’t mind me “borrowing” and ruining the title of his best-selling novel ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, but I must confess to being somewhat ‘The ‘Reluctant Indian’. Before you hurl the term ‘coconut’ at my shy, please let me explain.Over the years I have toyed with many terms: born in Kenya to Indian parents who them emigrated to the UK, I have used labels like ‘Kenyan India’, ‘ East African Indian’, ‘British Indian’, ‘British Overseas Indian’, ‘Indo-British’, ‘Asian’, ‘British Asian’, ‘East African Asian’, ‘South Asian’ and more recently evocative terms like NRI (which usually means Non Resident Indian, except in our household where we grew to know it as Not Required Indian), PIO (People of Indian Origin) and my current favourite, TRI (The Reluctant Indian).
I must admit that I prefer the romanticism of India from the relative, orderly comfort of my tourist sofa in London to the REAL THING.
The last time I visited India, over 25 years ago….
- I crashed out for two full days from jet lag
- suggested we go swimming at the filthy Chowpatty beach in Mumbai
- fell horribly ill (Delhi-belly e-coli are still alive and well in my intestinal tract)
- developed a mystery ailment that afflicted all my joints and movement
- couldn’t communicate with my own relatives whose own version of Gujarati was significantly more mellifluous than my own guttural bastardised version
- discovered a rat perched near my shoulder in a fancy restaurant
- ate an excess of sugar until it did actually make me sick
- drank what seemed like paraffin oil (bhang) for medicinal purposes
- saw a ghost and ended up three-in-a-bed in Jaipur
- nearly had a car accident with a lorry at night (despite being warned not to travel at night)
- fell off a horse at Mount Abu and saw the most gloriously unspectacular sunset imaginable.
- was nearly mobbed at the market, so my uncle had to send all his servants as ‘bodyguards’. Never realised we had “tourist” tattooed on our foreheads.
- pretended I was Zeenat Aman in Goa (although the phalanx of cousins who had to act as bodyguards ruined a perfect Baywatch moment by the sea)
- tried to copy my aunt’s hilarious negotiation tactics with tuk-tuk drivers which sounded suspiciously like “I’ll slap you if you charge me that much”
- had to buy extra thick sunglasses to filter out the sight of severely maimed and deformed slum children crowding around our car (I would be told-off if I wanted to stop to throw out some coins)
In short, I felt like a total stranger in what should be my own country.
Gujarati Village Life
My father got his own wish to die and be cremated in his village (some years later, I hasten to add), but all I remember of the village was an eerie emptiness – nearly half the village population had emigrated abroad – leaving desultory rows of dilapidated houses, home to over-sexed monkeys and chameleons and rats. At night, the monkeys would jump on the aluminium roofs creating such a racket that you had to sleep covered up from heat to foot – in more than 30 degrees of airless heat. A tour of the village comprised tobacco fields, the water tank reservoir, the railway station and more poignantly the open-air crematorium (where my father would eventually end up being cremated some years later).
The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum
Our tour of the Northern state of Rajasthan did not improve matters.
I felt sad when I visited the Taj Mahal in Agra – imagine being entombed in the cold, soulless white slabs of marble for all eternity. It may be revered the world over as a symbol of Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan’s love for his Mumtaz, but let’s not forget that it is a mausoleum. Our guide relished his job as he recounted the number of people who had lost their lives in building this great monument and even more so, the number of people who had thrown themselves off the Qutab Minar turrets. Our visit to The Red Fort’ in Delhi was like King’s Cross station in rush hour. Even the sight of a cow walking around the centre of Delhi was sad – they may also be revered and sacred, but they weren’t prevented from eating garbage and plastic bags. Reverence is not the same thing as care.
More Indian in Britain than in India
English-speaking, light-skinned, green-eyed and more comfortable in Western clothing, it was tempting to think we could pass ourselves off as Anglo-Indian….but, sadly we were just plain foreign (ferengi) - unable to blend in with the expats or the natives.
The irony is that in I feel more Indian in Britain than I do in India.
We eat curry (home made versions are usually not called curries) everyday with a range of green vegetables that are hideously expensive to buy in India. We purchase papaya, mangoes and pomegranates by the box - in India, most of the high-quality fruit is reserved for export. I drink about 6 cups of masala chai a day, with that special masala spice lovingly ground from huge cardamoms from Papua New Guinea and the longest sticks of cinnamon, cloves – all the spices keep well in our temperate climate and that are easy to buy in bulk in Wembley. Even the blessed streets are free of tell-tale orange of paan-spit (revolting thought). We can watch Bollywood movies 24/7, speak a mish-mash of GujuEnglish whilst happily swapping between Eastern and Western wardrobe.
As a woman, I can travel alone on the underground or bus with being “eve-teased” (disgusting habit), say what I like without censorship and live my life relatively comfortably between the two cultures without being stifled by the formality of respectfulness, duty, honour and formal tone of language. English is a very liberating language and laid-back London has a lot going for it as far as I am concerned.
Little wonder, then, that I am ‘The Reluctant Indian’
PS. I don’t look very happy having to fetch my own water in the photo above, do I?
