My Mother is an Ugly Woman
by Subrato Bagchi
My sense of shame in being an Indian in front of foreigners has somewhat
changed over time.
When I was younger, I used to be very bothered whenever I saw people begging,
pestering a visitor at the traffic intersection and of course, the sight of
people defecating in full public view.
These sights do not put me to shame anymore.
I have come to terms with the underlying causes that make my countrymen beg,
bother foreigners near touristic places or live in squalor next to heritage
sites and five star hotels.
When people do not have a roof above their heads and everyday is a matter of
survival for the majority, what use is my shame?
I am deeply aware that every civilization must progress on its own terms, in
its own time. There are no short cuts to uplifting more than half of a country
with 1.2 billion people into a developed state. I have done my own bit towards
that cause, and I will continue to do what I can, but in my lifetime it is very
unlikely that there will be no beggars on the street, or that people will stop
relieving themselves in public view, or that I will see the vanishing of
squalor that co-exists with the sometimes ugly opulence in our cities. So,
these days, when I am with a visitor from overseas, I am not ashamed any longer
with the sights, smells and sounds of India .
But last week, I held my head in shame–deep shame–and this happened in a small
University town in Germany .
I had been invited there to speak at a student. Along with my wife Susmita, I
had arrived the day before, and we were touched by the affection and
hospitality of the students and the faculty. During the dinner that night, we
had told our student hosts Paul and Leo that if ever they came to India , they
must stay at our home so that we could return some of their hospitality.
Because our two daughters left home a long time back, we live in Bangalore all
by ourselves, and love hosting young people from around the world.
That was the night before.
The next day, when the student event actually began, my talk was preceded by
one from an Indian gentleman based in Germany ; he runs the German operation of
a family-owned Indian conglomerate that is a household name in India . The
gentleman has been in Europe for a long time, and has evidently done well for
himself.
He started his presentation titled “The Indian Mind”. It was a medley of
Internet jokes customized for India , a bunch of PowerPoint slides that
frequently spam all of us depicting the greatness of ancient India , and a
bunch of cartoons that depicted the so-called “the Indian way”. There was also
a short movie that contrasted Germans and Indians based on cultural
generalization. Finally, he delivered his own take on what Indians are
supposedly like.
The presentation opened with the macabre picture of a skull with a dollar sign
stuffed inside it.
The narrative to match this dramatic, if disturbing, image went something like
this:
An Indian went to see a banker in Manhattan . He wanted a $100 loan; he was
willing to pay any amount of interest, and offered his Porsche as collateral.
After taking the loan from the flummoxed banker, he went off to India on a
month long vacation. When he came back, he promptly returned the $100 along
with the interest of $20 and reclaimed his car. When the banker asked him to
explain this puzzling behavior, our man proudly said, “Where else in Manhattan
could I park my car for an entire month for all of $20?”
WOW!
The two hundred or so young German students laughed at the joke.
Then came slide after slide on the glory that once was India : Aryabhatta to
Charaka, he depicted the story of zero to the fact once upon a time, India had
invented chess. He told the audience how we had figured out gravity before
Newton did, and the concept of inter-Galactic travel before anyone else.
The audience sat in awe.
Then he switched over to a film clip that sought to contrast the past with the
present.
His film clip showed Indian legislators break chairs, throw footwear at each
other, and not stopping there, break their microphones to hurl missiles at each
other until blood flowed from the injured, and finally some law makers were
seen taking cover under their tables.
The German students were now bewildered and I started to feel uncomfortable
sitting in their midst. But then I told myself, maybe the truth must be told
and this is important knowledge about India that the 200 future leaders must
know. And why not? As I gulped down my discomfort, more Internet jokes followed.
One was about corruption and inefficiency. .
A man supposedly went to Hell only to find that there were regional options
available down there. There was this American Hell that offered a hundred
lashes. Next to it, he found the German Hell that offered a choice between an
electric chair and fifty lashes. The man moved on to check out the Indian Hell
and finally settled for it. Why?
In the Indian Hell, there were power-cuts so the electric chair did not work
and the person in charge of lashing sinners simply took his salary and never
came to work!
The students laughed some. That was indeed funny!
Then he went on to tell the next Internet joke.
Americans had invited international bids to build a fence around the White
House. An American and a German firm that submitted bids had taken careful
measurements and then they had quoted $700 and $1200 respectively for the work.
Then there was the Indian firm that took no measurements and simply quoted
$2700. The bewildered decision-maker called in the Indian bidder and asked him
to explain. “How can you quote such a high price when you have not even taken
measurements?” , he asked. Our man replied with supreme confidence, “I do not
need to take measurements. I will pay you a thousand and take a thousand and we
will sub-contract the work to the lowest bidder.”
WOW!
Then our presenter showed a short film contrasting how Germans and Indians
thought of the idea of forming a queue - the Germans fell into instant
orderliness and formed a single file but Indians pushed around, and broke the
line as soon as one was formed. Then he showed a German parking a car, and how
an Indian does it, and a few other such things including how Indian bureaucracy
and politics differ from that of the Germans.
Everyone in the audience was getting the message.
At this point, he returned from the movie to slides.
With dramatic flourish, he showed a picture of a bucket full of crabs.
“This picture was taken on an Indian beach while I was with a friend from
Germany . He was curious to know why the crabs were not escaping the bucket. I
said, ‘Let us call the fisherman and ask him’. The fisherman listened to the
question and told us, ‘These are Indian crabs. When one tries to get out, the
others simply pull him down’. ”
Oh well, never mind if you have heard a dozen variations of the same joke.
Now the attention of the students was beginning to wane a little bit. So, he
came to the end of his presentation on India .
He had a slide that said Indians liked to receive (and, thankfully, also give)
presents.
And then he went on to hold aloft his magnum opus, a slide that prophetically
read:
“Indians do not mean what they say
and do not say what they mean”
It required a story to explain.
So, he narrated how a group of Germans were once called home for dinner by an
Indian. The Germans being Germans took the invitation seriously and actually
showed up only to find an unprepared host who opened the door in his pajamas.
The message was clear. Do not take Indians at face value.
My mind turned to the dinnertime conversation the previous night, and I
wondered what Paul and Leo were now thinking about our invitation to come stay
with us when they visited Bangalore !
Finally, the man gloriously wound up, saying that despite all this, India was
one of the fastest growing economies in which if anyone chose to put in his
money, it was bound to fetch a great return.
The audience clapped and then everyone took a fifteen minute break.
¤
I headed to the toilet.
There was a long queue.
Suddenly a young German student in the queue, unaware that I was behind him,
did a mock drill of breaking the line to form what he called an “Indian Queue”.
I was the only Indian there, and I had only my countryman to thank for the
ignominy.
¤
I had to wait until that afternoon for my talk, and when done with that, we
returned to our hotel.
The next day, one of the student organizers came over to drive us to Frankfurt
in a rental car so that we could leave for the US from there.
While driving on the Autobahn, unfortunately, the car drove over some object
and its two left wheels burst. We pulled over, and, after counting our
blessings for what did not happen, called for help. After probably an hour,
another student organizer reached us and we switched over to his car. The first
student had to stay with the damaged car, waiting for a tow-truck to arrive.
Soon we were on our way.
The entire episode had shaken everybody, but thank God, no one was hurt.
Nonetheless, many plans had gone haywire. We were all past our lunch time by
the time the second car had arrived. So when we finally reached our hotel in
Frankfurt , we invited our young friend to join us for lunch since he too had
missed his, and was to now drive all the way back to his University town. When
Susmita asked him to park his car and come into the hotel to have lunch with
us, he responded spontaneously, and without any malice, “The German way or the
Indian?”
We tried to laugh off the repartee, but deep inside I felt hurt where once upon
a time, I used to feel shame.
Poor Susmita started convincing him that we really wanted him to have lunch
before he drove back, and of course, he joined us, but I wonder how on earth we
were to change the newfound knowledge on India that was now deeply imprinted in
199 other young minds because an Indian in a position of authority had so
convincingly delivered the message that we do not mean what we say and don’t
say what we mean.
¤
I can deal with my poor, uneducated, disheveled countrymen back home, begging
at traffic intersections, troubling foreigners, living in squalor and
defecating in public view, and behaving in a thousand other unacceptable ways..
But I have difficulty when the educated, the well-to-do, the ones who have
everything going for them, mentally defecate, trying to impress the world at
the cost of their own country.
After lunch, when the young man was finally on his way and Koblenz was behind
us, I thought of the idea of motherland.
The word “Motherland” evoked the image of my mother.
In that moment I wondered if there is anyone in the whole world who thinks that
his mother is not beautiful.
Worse, is there anyone who actually tells the world that his mother is an ugly
woman?
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