It just occurred to me that earlier this year, I completed 25 years of living outside of India, eight or so in the Middle East and seventeen in Canada. Almost every year I have gone back to India, sometimes to spend a few days, and, sometimes a few weeks. The experience has always left me wanting to go back again, wanting more, almost, like meeting a woman one is in love with…’age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’ are the words that come to mind…
It is an exercise in simplicity to say that India has changed. Of course, everything sounds more costly than it was in the days I lived there. I still remember eating a Masala Dosa for thirty seven paise at Rama Nayak’s at Kings Circle. (That should give the reader an idea of how old I am) Today, the same masala dosa perhaps costs twenty rupees. However, that is inflation and I am sure Torontonians can talk of similar things. What occurs to me is that the way of life I grew up in the ‘60s is changing…and, more often than not, I am not missing it…what I am just trying to say is that a more fundamental, deeper change is occuring than what is happenning to the price of masala dosa...and yet some things will perhaps never change…
Having said this, I must make one caveat…I know of only the urban centres today…the heart and the bulk of India is in its middle towns and villages…and my current lack of immunity to e-coli and other bacteria that come as dressing on food in those places has not permitted me to explore much in rural and small town India.
If I were to go back in my mind’s eye and think of the first real change that I noticed after leaving India in 1984, it was the emergence of the little PCOs (Public Call Offices) in the ‘80s. One of the challenges I faced for a major part of my working life in India was to get a residential phone connection. I was the Personnel Manager of a large Indian corporation, and, the company was willing to do anything to get me a residential phone connection…but, no luck. Starting from the ‘80s I began to realize how easy (relatively) it was becoming to connect to the outside world. I remember the days when I would want to connect back to HO, from say Gauhati (now Guwahati) and the operator would put through a ‘demand call’ through the exchange at nine times the regular rate. The arrival of the PCOs in the ‘eighties, as I look back, was the first sign that the way of life I had grown up with, was changing…almost like what Thomas Friedman says the fax machine did to life in Eastern Europe…
The PCO network has grown and stabilized itself over the years in India, and, today everyone has a cell phone. Drivers have cell phones with only incoming calls allowed so that their ‘masters’ can call them to the front of the five star hotel where they (the masters) have been partying. And yes, everyone talks of how boys and girls are SMS-ing coochie coo messages, and, what is happening to Indian moral values…. However, as we will see with all the social revolution that the cell phone is ushering in, somethings never change...
One of the social evils in India (and in several other societies) has been the abuse of women by their husbands demanding money for liquor…on a recent visit to India, I found that the house help woman did not have her cell phone…when we inquired she sheepishly confessed that her man had made a noise demanding money for liquor and since she had no money she had pawned her cell phone to ward off the beast…somethings never change, eh ? In stories written during Prohibition days, it was the woman’s jewellery that she pawned to pay her husband’s liquor bills, now cell phones…
But that was an aside…a serious one, nevertheless, a reminder to my friends who say that with the arrival of Kit Kat things in India have changed…PS pls check with the servant woman referenced above before making that statement…
Which brought to my mind, yesterday’s news item about the death of Gangubai Hangal. Gangubai was one of the foremost Hindustani music singers. It is not about the quality of her music that I would like to comment. It is about the system she was born into and grew up in…the system of patronage (known in some instances as the Devadassi system) under which some of the best known female artists of the Carnatic and Hindustani music scene grew up and ‘flourished’ (is flourished the correct word ?)
Art and artists have always needed a patron…and patrons demand a price for their support, and, that was the origin of the system…some of the stories that Gangubai has talked of portray the twilight zone that this operates in…and the clutches of the strict caste hierarchy..
Her ‘father’ was a Brahmin, though he and her mother never married…as a child she would go stealing mangoes in the Brahmin areas of the city…the inhabitants were not so much concerned with the mangoes being stolen as their being stolen by a girl whose Brahmin paternity had not been sanctified through marriage…
Another very touching reflection that Gangubai talks of…brings tears to my eyes as I write this…she was called to sing at a session of the Congress Party which Gandhi was attending…after singing, her biggest worry was that indeterminate paternity and subsequent caste affiliation might decree that she could not eat with the others…luckily she says that was not the case…and she wept when she was asked to sit and eat along with everyone else…
There is a very curious dichotomy to all this…some of the best music and dance grew under this system…the association with the Devadassi system made it impossible for girls to study Bharata Natyam till Rukmini Devi, a Brahmin woman who married an Englishman, brought it out of the twilight zone…interestingly, to make it ‘safe’ Rukmini Devi downplayed the ‘sringara’ (erotic) element of Bharata Natyam…Balasaraswathi, a renowned dancer, and, herself a product of the Devadassi system is quoted by TJS George as saying, “let this Brahmin women do what she is good at, and, leave dancing and sringara to us who are good at it…”
As a system of sexual and economic exploitation there is no justification for the Devadassi system, notwithstanding the fact that some relationships, like that of Gangubai and Gururaj Kaulgi grew to be based on mutual respect, and, that at one time Gangubai was his ‘patron’ and not the other way around…
The question I am raising is: We can think of several such exploitative situations all over the world…is anything changing in terms of human relationships ? Or, is the exploitation of the Devadassi just being replaced by that of the starlet by the producer ?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Masala Dosa, a State of Mind
Surfing through the web yesterday I came across a photo essay on Falafels, the way they are made and eaten in different parts of the world…which then lead my mind to wonder as to what would qualify for India’s national dish ? Of course, while one lives in India, that is Bharat, every region or street will lay claim to a special dish…thus, for the Bengali, Macher Jhol (fish curry would be a plebeian, non-Bengali way of describing Macher jhol); for the Gujerati, Undhia (cooked vegetables would be again a plebeian, non-Gujerati description); for the Keralite, Avial (vegetables cooked in a coconut gravy to the non-Keralite, God’s Nectar to the Keralite) and so on…
However, as we all know once we have crossed Kala Pani (Indian expression for crossing the oceans), for the outside world everyone is Indian, or, ‘Hindi’ as they call you, somewhat derisively in the Middle East. (I had a Tamilian friend who, like all proud Tamilians of the ‘60s, did not speak a work of Hindi, till, a taxi driver in Bahrain asked him, “kaisa Hindi hai tum ? Hindi nahin bolta hai…’ What sort of a ‘Hindi’ –Indian- are you that you do not speak Hindi…?) And so, for the outside world, which makes no distinction between Hindis and Pakis, what would emerge as the national or food of the subcontinent ?
Given current trends in the UK where, for two and hundred and fifty years of the Raj, Indians (and Bangladeshis, in the main) have now replaced roast beef and yorkshire pudding with chicken tikka as the national dish of Old Blightey, one would think that chicken tikka and/or chicken tandoori would be top of the list. Be that as it may, as we all know, apna Bharat mahan hai (India is great) and diverse. One significant element of this diversity is that there is a significant number of people from among the one billion plus subcontinenters who will not eat anything that walks…in fact, in the old Madras state (now Tamil Nadu) hotels for the vegetarians would be denoted as Civil Hotels, as opposed to the Military Hotels for the carnivores…the principle being that meat was served in the Army, hence Military Hotels as opposed to Civil, or vegetarian hotels…there used to be a further subdivision of Brahmin hotels among the Civil hotels...which I shall not go into for now...
And, if one were to take a look at what the Civil Hotels have to offer, the Dosa makes the top of the list…particularly when we look at Civil Hotels outside of India…
I have seen the dosa variously described by Civil Hotels outside of India trying to market their wares to the western clientele. The most common description is that of ‘crepe made of rice and lentils.’ More important than the dosa itself are its accompaniments, the coconut chutney, the sambar (a lentil based gravy), and, of course, the crowning glory, the milagai podi. Travelling in HongKong, I once saw milagai podi described as ‘chilli powder mixed with spices and garnished with oil…’ A much easier and more understandable way of describing milagai podi is simply, “Gunpowder” It takes some courage and fortitude for the average westerner not brought up on a wholesome diet of green and red chillies to make oral contact with “Gunpowder.”
There is a school of thought among some women who have moved to western climes from India that they will never eat Indian food outside of their homes, as they fancy themselves the best Indian chefs and that no one can make Indian food better. I shall not comment on that school of thought. What is more important is that on Saturday or Sunday morning when Indian Udipi style restaurants open their doors in Mississauga, Ontario or Sunnyvale, California, there is generally a line up of ex Besant Nagar, Ballygunge, Karol Bagh, Matunga (all Indian suburbs with predominantly South Indian populations) residents waiting outside to get a whiff of their favourite food.
Subcontinenters living outside of the subcontinent reconnect to their roots in different ways. For some it is the music they grew up on, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh et al…For some it is the religion they grew up with…Living overseas I have always been impressed with the number of tam-brahm houses that arrange for the chanting of the Vishnu Sahasranama (an ancient chant giving the thousand names of Vishnu) outside of India…For those like me with less artistic or spiritual leanings, it is the food…
Walk into any Indian restaurant and you can see the regulars…for them, the food is their raison d’etre, the reason for being…I have seen some of them go away on business trips, only to be separated from their favourite food, be it chicken tikka masala or masala dosa, and, stumble into their favourite food haunt a few weeks later with a zombie like look on their face…once the body has received the nourishment it was deprived of while living off bagels and salads, and, the masalas start doing their trick once again, the person can start talking rocket science once again…
My son spent last year in France, studying at a global business school…when he was coming home after six months in France we asked him what he wanted, expecting him to ask for some exotic French cuisine to be served with red wine…Dosa with sambar was the instant chat line reply…and boy, for the next six weeks he lived off dosas…
Which then, makes me wonder is the Masala Dosa (or chicken tikka) a food, or, a state of mind ?
However, as we all know once we have crossed Kala Pani (Indian expression for crossing the oceans), for the outside world everyone is Indian, or, ‘Hindi’ as they call you, somewhat derisively in the Middle East. (I had a Tamilian friend who, like all proud Tamilians of the ‘60s, did not speak a work of Hindi, till, a taxi driver in Bahrain asked him, “kaisa Hindi hai tum ? Hindi nahin bolta hai…’ What sort of a ‘Hindi’ –Indian- are you that you do not speak Hindi…?) And so, for the outside world, which makes no distinction between Hindis and Pakis, what would emerge as the national or food of the subcontinent ?
Given current trends in the UK where, for two and hundred and fifty years of the Raj, Indians (and Bangladeshis, in the main) have now replaced roast beef and yorkshire pudding with chicken tikka as the national dish of Old Blightey, one would think that chicken tikka and/or chicken tandoori would be top of the list. Be that as it may, as we all know, apna Bharat mahan hai (India is great) and diverse. One significant element of this diversity is that there is a significant number of people from among the one billion plus subcontinenters who will not eat anything that walks…in fact, in the old Madras state (now Tamil Nadu) hotels for the vegetarians would be denoted as Civil Hotels, as opposed to the Military Hotels for the carnivores…the principle being that meat was served in the Army, hence Military Hotels as opposed to Civil, or vegetarian hotels…there used to be a further subdivision of Brahmin hotels among the Civil hotels...which I shall not go into for now...
And, if one were to take a look at what the Civil Hotels have to offer, the Dosa makes the top of the list…particularly when we look at Civil Hotels outside of India…
I have seen the dosa variously described by Civil Hotels outside of India trying to market their wares to the western clientele. The most common description is that of ‘crepe made of rice and lentils.’ More important than the dosa itself are its accompaniments, the coconut chutney, the sambar (a lentil based gravy), and, of course, the crowning glory, the milagai podi. Travelling in HongKong, I once saw milagai podi described as ‘chilli powder mixed with spices and garnished with oil…’ A much easier and more understandable way of describing milagai podi is simply, “Gunpowder” It takes some courage and fortitude for the average westerner not brought up on a wholesome diet of green and red chillies to make oral contact with “Gunpowder.”
There is a school of thought among some women who have moved to western climes from India that they will never eat Indian food outside of their homes, as they fancy themselves the best Indian chefs and that no one can make Indian food better. I shall not comment on that school of thought. What is more important is that on Saturday or Sunday morning when Indian Udipi style restaurants open their doors in Mississauga, Ontario or Sunnyvale, California, there is generally a line up of ex Besant Nagar, Ballygunge, Karol Bagh, Matunga (all Indian suburbs with predominantly South Indian populations) residents waiting outside to get a whiff of their favourite food.
Subcontinenters living outside of the subcontinent reconnect to their roots in different ways. For some it is the music they grew up on, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh et al…For some it is the religion they grew up with…Living overseas I have always been impressed with the number of tam-brahm houses that arrange for the chanting of the Vishnu Sahasranama (an ancient chant giving the thousand names of Vishnu) outside of India…For those like me with less artistic or spiritual leanings, it is the food…
Walk into any Indian restaurant and you can see the regulars…for them, the food is their raison d’etre, the reason for being…I have seen some of them go away on business trips, only to be separated from their favourite food, be it chicken tikka masala or masala dosa, and, stumble into their favourite food haunt a few weeks later with a zombie like look on their face…once the body has received the nourishment it was deprived of while living off bagels and salads, and, the masalas start doing their trick once again, the person can start talking rocket science once again…
My son spent last year in France, studying at a global business school…when he was coming home after six months in France we asked him what he wanted, expecting him to ask for some exotic French cuisine to be served with red wine…Dosa with sambar was the instant chat line reply…and boy, for the next six weeks he lived off dosas…
Which then, makes me wonder is the Masala Dosa (or chicken tikka) a food, or, a state of mind ?
Dear Shashi (written a few months ago)
Background note to readers:
The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, the former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, is in some hot water, first, for having stayed at Delhi’s plush Taj Mahal hotel (admittedly at his own expense since there is no gym at the Kerala Bhavan where he should have stayed, eating avial and kalan) while waiting for his official residence to be vacated by the previous resident. Also, in response to a diktat that all ministers travel economy class, he is supposed to have used, in a tweet, the expressions cattle class and holy cows…the people of India, I am told, are not pleased and the General Secretary of the ruling Congress Party, in addition to others, has apologized to them…
This is a friendly letter written to The Hon Mr Shashi Tharoor, former Manhattan resident and current Indian Minister of State for External Affairs…sharing some thoughts from a current Toronto resident…
Dear Shashi,
While I am not one of the 169,096 people who is following you on Twitter, I have been following the story about your tweets and thought I could share some thoughts with you.
In the first place I don’t think it is appropriate for the Honourable Minister of State for External Affairs of Bharat that is India, to go around tweeting. It is going to give the world the impression that in India we have become so westernized that Ministers, even if they are Ministers of State, do not have important matters to attend to and have all the time in the world to tweet around. It is all fine and dandy for President Obama to carry his own Blackberry and reply to the select group of people who have his email address, not a minister of the Bharat Sarkar. Indian ministers have weightier things to do than tweet away to 169,096 people.
The correct procedure in these matters as your staff may have already advised you is to entrust your Blackberry to your third assistant Principal Secretary. At periodic intervals the third assistant Principal Secretary will ask the fourth assistant Principal Secretary to print out all emails received in your name, review them, and, forward them up the chain of Secretaries, Assistant, Deputy, Principal and Chief to be left in your in tray.
At each stage of the process the appropriate Secretary will add their remarks. You will then peruse the aforesaid document and add your own thoughts, which will work its way down the hierarchy. Should any of the Secretaries require a translation of the comments since you may not be familiar with the national language, Hindi, in view of your having lived out of the country for so long, it will be sent to the Translations Directorate.
Finally, in the fullness of time, the document will reach the fourth assistant Principal Secretary who will call the Principal Stenographer (provided he or she is not on Casual, Sick or other leave) and dictate the reply. The Principal Stenographer will type out the reply and give it to the Information Technology department who will send the message out.
Now, having lived in the infamous West for so long you maybe tempted to say “Why do I need a Blackberry for doing this ?” Dear Shashi, that is because like all those who have lived in the West for so long you have no understanding of time…you think if something is not done on time, there is no point in doing it…let me try and explain this to you from the Indian perspective…
Years ago, much before computers took over the Indian Railways and you could check ‘online’ where every train is at a given moment, every station had a printed timetable which gave the arrival and departure timings of the trains. Needless to add the actual time when the trains came and left had little bearing on the timetable displayed.
An irate passenger once marched up to the Station Master and said, “What is the use of this timetable ? The trains are always late…why do you display it all ?”
The Station Master who had been schooled in the timeless philosophies of the Vedas and the Upanishads looked at the customer and said, “Agreed the trains are late. However, if there was no timetable how would you know that the train was late ?”
Moral of the story, Shashi: Timetables and schedules are there only to tell you how late you are…throw that Blackberry away and stop tweeting…you will, if not anything else, give your staff some peace…whatever has to happen will happen whenever it has to happen as the Lord Krishna has said somewhere in some holy text…
Then, Shashi, I saw this picture of you sitting in the Economy class cabin of a domestic flight. While you appeared to be meditating, honestly, the look on your face reminded me of a child who had been forcibly made to swallow a large dollop of castor oil…I am not being critical…I know how bad travelling by Economy class is, having travelled Economy all my life…
Looking at that look on your face I realized how near I was to similar disaster when on one of my trips to India I was offered a job to head the HR department of a big Indian company, and, I very nearly accepted…and the story of your tweeting around only confirmed how some guardian angel sitting on my shoulder saved me from disaster…
Let me tell what may have happened had I accepted that job.
My first job, soon after I graduated was with a large Engineering Company in the Bombay region. Every year, the Management and Union would celebrate Satyanarayana Pooja where all those who had got married in the last twelve months would sit for the said pooja along with their spouse.
As you perhaps know by now, having lived in India for a few months, Satyanarayana Pooja is performed by newly weds to ensure that the God Satyanarayan bestows on the couple a male child…In the year I got married, my wife and I sat the Pooja and enjoyed the meal thereafter…all was well…we had a good time, and, six years later my daughter arrived…notwithstanding the fact that the God Satyanarayan had got the timing and gender of the product requisition all mixed up we had no complaints…this was what happened before I left India a quarter of a century ago…
Just imagine, the Canada returned HR Director dealing with the Satyanarayan Pooja request, had I accepted the job.
Union representative Blackberrys me: “We need to conduct Satyanarayana Pooja and provide a meal to all employees…”
Canada returned HR Director Blackberries back: “What is Satyanarayan Pooja ?”
Union representative: “Satyanarayan Pooja is prayer for newly married couples to be blessed with male child…”
Canada returned HR Director Blackberries back: “What does this Satyanarayan chap have to do with producing a child for our employees ? There are different and more pleasurable ways to producing a child…stop wasting time…get on with your work…”
The rest I leave to your imagination. A holy cow has been assaulted, if not killed…workers walk out, rioting, police come and all that which you maybe slowly getting to know…
Needless to add, the HR Director would have been on his way back to Canada, coach class, to collect his unemployment benefits. (btw, ‘coach class’, try and use that word next time. Having always travelled premium first in your days as Under Secretary General of the UN, you may not have heard of it. It is the same travel class as the prohibited c word that you used, and, is located at the back of the aircraft where you can get the wafting smell of the loos.)
Moral of the story, Shashi: In India things work differently from Manhattan or Toronto.
Now, very recently the lady at Pizza Hut seems to have decided that all of you must go coach class I am not questioning her wisdom, she knows all…However, hearing about this decision and that of the boy wonder travelling by the Shatabdi Express reminds me of an exchange involving the Father of the Nation who used to travel Third Class rail…
I am not sure if it was Lord Wavell or Lord Mountbatten (having written all those books you will know the story and should be able to correct me if I tell it wrong), but, one of them remarked to the Father of the Nation that it was so wonderful to see that in spite of the power he wielded he lived in such poverty. Sarojini Naidu, a woman not known to hide the truth, who was standing nearby, quipped, “It takes an awful lot of money to keep this old man,(referring to the Father of the Nation) in poverty…”
Moral of the story, Shashi: To be a successful Indian politician you don’t have to be poor, you just need to appear to be poor.
Thank you for all that you are doing. Come winter, when I shall be shovelling snow off my driveway, and, the thought comes up in mind, “I wish I had accepted that job in India…” I shall administer myself a strong, hardy slap on my cheek and perish that thought…
With much affection,
PS- I do apologize for having taken the liberty of addressing you by your first name…I should have said, “Dear and Respected Mantri-ji”…again a bloody Western habit, like women wearing jeans and going to pubs…I hope you are not calling your boss by his first name… “Manmohan, old boy” may get you into trouble again, just like that tweet did...
The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, the former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, is in some hot water, first, for having stayed at Delhi’s plush Taj Mahal hotel (admittedly at his own expense since there is no gym at the Kerala Bhavan where he should have stayed, eating avial and kalan) while waiting for his official residence to be vacated by the previous resident. Also, in response to a diktat that all ministers travel economy class, he is supposed to have used, in a tweet, the expressions cattle class and holy cows…the people of India, I am told, are not pleased and the General Secretary of the ruling Congress Party, in addition to others, has apologized to them…
This is a friendly letter written to The Hon Mr Shashi Tharoor, former Manhattan resident and current Indian Minister of State for External Affairs…sharing some thoughts from a current Toronto resident…
Dear Shashi,
While I am not one of the 169,096 people who is following you on Twitter, I have been following the story about your tweets and thought I could share some thoughts with you.
In the first place I don’t think it is appropriate for the Honourable Minister of State for External Affairs of Bharat that is India, to go around tweeting. It is going to give the world the impression that in India we have become so westernized that Ministers, even if they are Ministers of State, do not have important matters to attend to and have all the time in the world to tweet around. It is all fine and dandy for President Obama to carry his own Blackberry and reply to the select group of people who have his email address, not a minister of the Bharat Sarkar. Indian ministers have weightier things to do than tweet away to 169,096 people.
The correct procedure in these matters as your staff may have already advised you is to entrust your Blackberry to your third assistant Principal Secretary. At periodic intervals the third assistant Principal Secretary will ask the fourth assistant Principal Secretary to print out all emails received in your name, review them, and, forward them up the chain of Secretaries, Assistant, Deputy, Principal and Chief to be left in your in tray.
At each stage of the process the appropriate Secretary will add their remarks. You will then peruse the aforesaid document and add your own thoughts, which will work its way down the hierarchy. Should any of the Secretaries require a translation of the comments since you may not be familiar with the national language, Hindi, in view of your having lived out of the country for so long, it will be sent to the Translations Directorate.
Finally, in the fullness of time, the document will reach the fourth assistant Principal Secretary who will call the Principal Stenographer (provided he or she is not on Casual, Sick or other leave) and dictate the reply. The Principal Stenographer will type out the reply and give it to the Information Technology department who will send the message out.
Now, having lived in the infamous West for so long you maybe tempted to say “Why do I need a Blackberry for doing this ?” Dear Shashi, that is because like all those who have lived in the West for so long you have no understanding of time…you think if something is not done on time, there is no point in doing it…let me try and explain this to you from the Indian perspective…
Years ago, much before computers took over the Indian Railways and you could check ‘online’ where every train is at a given moment, every station had a printed timetable which gave the arrival and departure timings of the trains. Needless to add the actual time when the trains came and left had little bearing on the timetable displayed.
An irate passenger once marched up to the Station Master and said, “What is the use of this timetable ? The trains are always late…why do you display it all ?”
The Station Master who had been schooled in the timeless philosophies of the Vedas and the Upanishads looked at the customer and said, “Agreed the trains are late. However, if there was no timetable how would you know that the train was late ?”
Moral of the story, Shashi: Timetables and schedules are there only to tell you how late you are…throw that Blackberry away and stop tweeting…you will, if not anything else, give your staff some peace…whatever has to happen will happen whenever it has to happen as the Lord Krishna has said somewhere in some holy text…
Then, Shashi, I saw this picture of you sitting in the Economy class cabin of a domestic flight. While you appeared to be meditating, honestly, the look on your face reminded me of a child who had been forcibly made to swallow a large dollop of castor oil…I am not being critical…I know how bad travelling by Economy class is, having travelled Economy all my life…
Looking at that look on your face I realized how near I was to similar disaster when on one of my trips to India I was offered a job to head the HR department of a big Indian company, and, I very nearly accepted…and the story of your tweeting around only confirmed how some guardian angel sitting on my shoulder saved me from disaster…
Let me tell what may have happened had I accepted that job.
My first job, soon after I graduated was with a large Engineering Company in the Bombay region. Every year, the Management and Union would celebrate Satyanarayana Pooja where all those who had got married in the last twelve months would sit for the said pooja along with their spouse.
As you perhaps know by now, having lived in India for a few months, Satyanarayana Pooja is performed by newly weds to ensure that the God Satyanarayan bestows on the couple a male child…In the year I got married, my wife and I sat the Pooja and enjoyed the meal thereafter…all was well…we had a good time, and, six years later my daughter arrived…notwithstanding the fact that the God Satyanarayan had got the timing and gender of the product requisition all mixed up we had no complaints…this was what happened before I left India a quarter of a century ago…
Just imagine, the Canada returned HR Director dealing with the Satyanarayan Pooja request, had I accepted the job.
Union representative Blackberrys me: “We need to conduct Satyanarayana Pooja and provide a meal to all employees…”
Canada returned HR Director Blackberries back: “What is Satyanarayan Pooja ?”
Union representative: “Satyanarayan Pooja is prayer for newly married couples to be blessed with male child…”
Canada returned HR Director Blackberries back: “What does this Satyanarayan chap have to do with producing a child for our employees ? There are different and more pleasurable ways to producing a child…stop wasting time…get on with your work…”
The rest I leave to your imagination. A holy cow has been assaulted, if not killed…workers walk out, rioting, police come and all that which you maybe slowly getting to know…
Needless to add, the HR Director would have been on his way back to Canada, coach class, to collect his unemployment benefits. (btw, ‘coach class’, try and use that word next time. Having always travelled premium first in your days as Under Secretary General of the UN, you may not have heard of it. It is the same travel class as the prohibited c word that you used, and, is located at the back of the aircraft where you can get the wafting smell of the loos.)
Moral of the story, Shashi: In India things work differently from Manhattan or Toronto.
Now, very recently the lady at Pizza Hut seems to have decided that all of you must go coach class I am not questioning her wisdom, she knows all…However, hearing about this decision and that of the boy wonder travelling by the Shatabdi Express reminds me of an exchange involving the Father of the Nation who used to travel Third Class rail…
I am not sure if it was Lord Wavell or Lord Mountbatten (having written all those books you will know the story and should be able to correct me if I tell it wrong), but, one of them remarked to the Father of the Nation that it was so wonderful to see that in spite of the power he wielded he lived in such poverty. Sarojini Naidu, a woman not known to hide the truth, who was standing nearby, quipped, “It takes an awful lot of money to keep this old man,(referring to the Father of the Nation) in poverty…”
Moral of the story, Shashi: To be a successful Indian politician you don’t have to be poor, you just need to appear to be poor.
Thank you for all that you are doing. Come winter, when I shall be shovelling snow off my driveway, and, the thought comes up in mind, “I wish I had accepted that job in India…” I shall administer myself a strong, hardy slap on my cheek and perish that thought…
With much affection,
PS- I do apologize for having taken the liberty of addressing you by your first name…I should have said, “Dear and Respected Mantri-ji”…again a bloody Western habit, like women wearing jeans and going to pubs…I hope you are not calling your boss by his first name… “Manmohan, old boy” may get you into trouble again, just like that tweet did...
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