An Englishman’s View of India and Indian Expats

By Gary Busby

When the editor asked me to put down a few words on this dangerous-looking subject, he said I shouldn\\\’t pull any punches. Now, I\\\’m not someone who punches anyone, least of all my many Indian friends, (although some of them are bankers and hence legitimately deserve a punch, I’m sure we all agree) but I will at least tell the truth. So, don\\\’t be offended, try to enjoy not being lied to. We\\\’re going to talk about food (of course!!! It\\\’s dinner time with me right now so I hope you’re hungry); and then the rest of life. In other words, in order of importance.

We\\\’re not going to talk about politics or taxes or social mores as they\\\’re all bottomless pits of disagreement. Anyway, if you insist, we can talk about social amusements another time. But not the other two.

So, get the plates out, the first aspect of India that boggles the English is the food. Loads of them (okay, ‘us’ – but with over half my life outside the UK I often don’t relate to ‘them’) love Indian food. Or at least they think they do. With tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people of Indian lineage cooking food or otherwise involved in the food chain in UK, the average Brit is exposed to something resembling Indian cuisine about five minutes after he’s weaned off his mother’s milk. This, and having a chap called Vijay working with him, and having seen the movie “Ghandi”, makes him think he knows something about India and Indians.

The problem is that the British No.1 national dish may indeed be the accursed chicken tikka masala, but most real stay-home Indian would, rightly, eye it with suspicion and disdain its lack of sophistication. And that Mr.Vijay was born in Surrey and has only been to India three times in his life. Which brings us to a key point – does Mr.Vijay from Surrey count as part of the Indian diaspora, or is he just another member of that mongrel race of Brits, comprising migrants or invaders from half the planet (and a couple of extra planets judging by the curious mix of beings to be found on a London bus any day), accumulated and assimilated over millenia? Surely the real diaspora comprises those who still identify with the motherland, who know how to express 34 different meanings with a variety of head-shakes, who eat daal with a roti, not with a damn spoon!

And Vijay from Surrey also probably has an English low tolerance for chilli. He thinks that Patak’s lime pickle (yes – it’s true by the way – Pataks pickles, made in UK by Brits with Indian names, are the world’s top selling brand of such) is “jolly hot”. A fellow living all his life in Madras would however tell him it’s very mild and bring out something thermo-nucleic that his grandmother makes. I know, I bought a pot of real achar in the market in Hyderabad a while back. I\\\’m surprised they let me on the plane with it. Why were those nice ladies on Indigo check-in so concerned about incendiary Samsung phones when a pot of that achar could so easily blow the wings off a 737?

We, and by \\\’we\\\’ I mean almost any fool not from India itself (itself! aaah, that reminds me… \\\”Indian English\\\”…. another subject for another time) have no real clue as to what constitutes South Indian versus North Indian, nor any other crucial distinction between cuisines to be found between Jammu and Kerala. Here\\\’s a true thing which you are NOT going to believe: I heard an English person actually say, when reading \\\’Goan curry\\\’ on a menu, \\\”goan… is that.. goat?… I\\\’ve never tried goat\\\” Yes really, I am telling the absolute truth. But I digress….

So this is what I, one sort of Englishman, (whose mother’s family trace their roots to Wales and Normandy, and father’s family were Scots…. hmm…so much for the purity of “English”) think of India and the Indian diaspora:- India is a fabulous place filled with sights and sounds and aromas (and bumps and thumps) that is utterly outside the scope of a short article like this to even begin to etch a reaction to. The people are less of a challenge.

The ones I grew up with are like our Mr.Vijay. Their parents or grandparents had to endure a multi-generational slog to make a home and to be accepted by earlier waves of immigrants but, for many of the children who were born there, it\\\’s turned out to be a boggling success. And they\\\’ve managed to turn racism inside out, showing how you stand astride two contrasting cultures and laugh in all directions. Search YouTube for shows like “Goodness Gracious Me” or “The Kumars at No.42” to see what I mean. These ‘Indians’ who’ve grown up in UK are Brits, pure and simple, and that’s all there is to it. Some moronic fascist white nationalists might squeal otherwise, but they’re wrong. Mr.Patel from Surrey is not a foreign object. He’s a bit of turmeric in the English curry that’s been cooking since before the Romans landed (they stayed too, and brought the parmesan with them) and cannot be unstirred from the gravy.

The other Indians whom I know well are the expats like me, the ones who kept the old passport (not necessarily through choice) and soldier on as guest workers or voteless entrepreneurs in a foreign land, sending money home, probably just to keep the family going, maybe to invest if they’ve done more than averagely well in their expat adventure. For most of them it’s just a matter of time before they will up-sticks and return to India, hopefully wealthier, certainly wiser. Of course, here in the Gulf (Arabian, not Mexican) from whence I write this, you can find a fair few nominally Indian boys and girls who were born or grew up here. They, mostly, think the Gulf is a great place, with better cars and a more cosmopolitan lifestyle than their parents had, or their cousins in India still have. But they might be in for a shock. For them the challenge will actually come later when they find they don’t fit in back “home” and, unless they’re very wealthy, the Gulf will eventually declare them surplus to requirements. A friend of mine has a young son; he’s about 8 I think. They went back to India for holiday cum family duty. Four weeks of going from one relative to the next, “catching-up”, giving presents, answering the same questions repeatedly. The boy’s father told me how his son was bewildered by India. Even he didn’t know the language. “Papa” he said, in his standard English, on his first day there “They’re talking Indian at me!”. That’s not comfortable.

Another curious thing is that Indians in the Gulf represent almost the entire spectrum of life from India itself, but with the odd difference that they are more separated here. Where you live and who you mix with in places like Dubai, is less dictated by nationality than it is by the skills for which your Gulf employers brought you. So, an Indian doctor rubs shoulders with medical pros from 20 other countries and sees himself as an expat professional first and Indian second. But the Bihari landscape workers, the Punjabi carpenters, the Rajasthani masons, the plumbers from Hyderabad (did I tell you about the achar I bought in Hyderabad? I did already? okay), identify with their home state and as Indians, not primarily as men of a certain trade. And in Dubai the doctor lives in a part of town reserved for white-collar execs of any nationality, whilst the plumber lives in a camp somewhere in the sticks. They don’t meet in the same shops, and their wives certainly won’t cross paths as the plumber’s wife and family are still in India, awaiting the monthly remittance. I see it, and it pains me.

So, my time’s up today and I didn’t even begin to talk about other things that bemuse the onlooker confronted by India and Indians. We didn’t mention cricket obsessions, or Bollywood, fashions, yogis or Hinglish. Another time maybe.

Gary Busby is a long-term British expat who made the mistake in his youth of qualifying as an accountant rather than an astronaut and has regretted it almost daily ever since. He has visited more than a few parts of India and is amazed how, when he mentions a place to Indian friends, they say they\\\’ve never been there. This might be because it\\\’s a big country. Or some other reason. He presently lives in the UAE with his Egyptian wife who has given him permission to say that.