UNDERTAKINGS ( CHARACTERSTICS ) OF BEING iNDIAN

After a dexterous cross-cultural study based upon  five novels, I propose some measure rules and conventions, peculiarities and traits that a person can be associated and identified with; if he or she claims himself or herself to be an Indian, which give him or her a separate identity even if sharing the common dance floor of “cultural allotropy”. I am deliberately writing these traits in the style of the court’s UNDERTAKINGS:

 That, “Indian prefer to marry only once in a life time.”92

If any Indian like Vasu of THE MAN-EATER OF MALGUDI believes that “only fools marry, and they deserve all the trouble they get,”93 we call them “anglicized Indian” or a “cultural allotrope with scientific outlook”.

 That, “Indians discuss things more than any other people.”94

(In support of the above argument, one should travel through the Malgudi Road and should rest at Natraj’s parlour in THE MAN –EATER OF MALGUDI, which is “a sort of cultural hub, a rendezvous, where people from different schools of thought and professions make gathering, chitchat, having a nice pastime and discuss on various topics viz. Nehru policy or Five plans for long hours of a day.”95)

 That “in India everything end (ed)s seeking money.”96 ( This “bribe-culture” of India has become more prominent after the sensational revelation by one of the most reputed business houses of India Ratan Tata group and the Wiki leaks disclosure of Indian black money with Swiss Banks )

 That, “to move up in India one needed good contacts.”97

 That, “when Indians sleep, they really do sleep… No regular bed – time … don’t stir again till the next day begin.”98

 That, “On a (an Indian) train everyone want(ed)s to know everyone else.”99

 That, “Indian take themselves ‘so seriously’.100

 That, “there are no lovers in Indian gardens. Only little heaps of humanity lay here and there.”101

 That, in India, even ‘scrap is useful’.102 (Indians have got habit of collecting and preserving things regardless of its utility which is much against the West’s ‘Use and Throw’ utilitarian society ).

 That, “in India ‘more people … have to die on the roads, if (the) nation is to develop any road sense at all.”103

 That, in India, people respect for “four-wheeler” community ‘or say’ automobile fraternity.”104

 That, a majority of us misinterpret the meaning of ‘a free country’ and ‘fundamental rights’.105

 That, Indians love the music of West, especially ‘Vivaldi’.106

 That, Indians are ‘emotional’107 and ‘sentimental’108

 That, everyone in India smokes.109 ( A recent WHO Report ,2010 also ditto it and states that India is Rank 1 holder in tobacco consumption )

 That, a ‘Cola-generation’ in India ‘doesn’t oil its hair’110 and likes “T-shirts and Colvin Klein jeans ... fast food joints, … motorcycles …, girlfriends (they) could lay anytime … marijuana, even a little cocaine, the singers who won the Grammy awards, … calling rupees bucks … ambition to go abroad (‘to the US of A’)111” and they like “girls in their arse-hugging jeans and T-Shirts with lewd one –liners.112

 That, Indians prefer not to ‘waste food’.113

 That, in India ‘one always argues with any taxi-scooter – or rickshaw-wala on principle’. Otherwise the journey is not complete.114

 That, in India, people love to be ‘English’ but do not forget to abuse English; sometimes as ‘the language of bloodsucking imperialists, they made our hearts weep ...”115

 That, now in India, the young generation loves to ‘wear a tie, use … credit card, kiss the wives of … colleagues on the cheek and smoke a joint, listen to Scott Joplin and Keith Jarret, and on weekends … see a Horror film, or a Carlos Saura…”116

 That, the crookedness of taxi and auto-rickhaw – drivers of all Indians cities (especially of the north) is ‘matchless, almost mythic.”117

 That, in India, “the men sit apart from the women and children ... may be because no one wants to see a man and a woman enjoying anything together.”118

 That, in India, knowing English language ‘gives one … confidence.”119

 That, India should be taken for granted as ‘a nation of saints’.120

 That, most of the elite and privileged Indians find themselves “so underdeveloped as compared to”121 the westerners.

Also, this research has found that most of the westerners come to India either ‘for a spiritual purpose’122 or ‘in the hope of finding a simpler and more natural way of life’123 but all they “find here is dysentery”.124

After passing through a subjugation of more than a couple of centuries, India today has got a whole lot of hexa-and septegenerians who are transfixed in the twilight zone of new changes. As a result, their condition has almost become that of an ‘allotropic’ (that is full of paradoxes). They ‘eat beef too … corned beef sandwiches and wears dhoti and reads the Upanishads in Sanskrit.”125

As a whole, we can say that “there are many ways of loving India, many things to love her for the scenery, the history, the poetry, the music, and indeed the physical beauty of men and women”126 but owing to cultural differences, the westerners put forth their allegation on us to ‘find out (their) weak spot’ and pressing on it.127 The skepticism of the Westerners would probably never end,

“It is very well to love and admire India – intellectually, aesthetically,… sexually…– but always with virile, measured, European feeling.”128

The above novelists have brought out all the specified cases and patches of cultural allotropy with the assertion that ‘India always changes people’ without ‘exception’.

And with pronouncement that ‘India is working towards a new age’.130 and ‘nowhere else (except India) could languages be mixed and spoken with such ease … American and Urdu…131 Indians are ready to hug anything western, beginning it from the names itself (denying the Shakespearean cry ‘what’s in a name’ and supporting the Oscar Wilde’s bunburryism) that is why, we love to be called “August” in stead of “Agastya’132, ‘Sandy’ for Zahira,133 ‘Sindi’ for Surrender Oberoi,134 and let Chidananda re-christened himself as ‘Chid’.135

To present and paint the prevailing cultural allotropy in such wider canvas, all credit goes to our Indian English writers. Much more research works have to be done in the near further that I shoulder on to the future budding researchers to look into the matter so deeply as it is oceanic to dive into.

I have all confidence that my thesis would help expatriates to understand India as far as their cross cultural training is concerned on their new postings in India. Along with the title of a feature news published in “Hindustan Times’, I would also end up my thesis pleading “Kindly Adjust, this is India”136

References :-

92. The Foreigner, p. 100

93. The Man-Eater of Malgudi, p. 34

94. The Foreigner, p. 115

95. The Man-Eater of Malgudi, pp. 7 – 8

96. The Foreigner, p. 43

97. ibid, p. 42

98. Heat andDust, p. 52

99. English August, p. 207

100. The Foreigner, p. 38

101. ibid, p. 175

102. Heat and Dust, p. 125

103. The man-Eater of Malgudi, p. 33

104. ibid, p. 42

105. ibid, p. 47

106. ‘English August’, p. 72 and ‘The Foreigner’, p. 104

107. The Coffer Dams, p. 70

108. The Man-Eater of Malgudi, p. 134

109. English August, p. 28

110. ibid, p. 110

111. ibid, p. 75

112. ibid, p. 71

113. ibid, p. 52

114. ibid, p. 81

115. ibid, p. 159

116. ibid, p. 153

117. ibid, p. 146

118. ibid, p. 117

119. ibid, pp. 59 – 60

120. The Foreigner, p. 70

121. ibid, p. 80

122. Heat and Dust, p. 22

123. ibid, p. 95

124. ibid, p. 21

125. English August, p. 281

126. Heat and Dust, p. 170

127. ibid, p. 170

128. ibid, p. 171

129. ibid, p. 2

130. The Foreigner, p. 38

131. English August, p. 1

132. The little of the novel itself i.e. English August.

133. Heat and Dust, p. 32

134. The Foreigner, p. 191

135. Heat and Dust, p. 24

136. Snehal Rebello, “Kindly Adjust this is India”, “Hindustan Times”, Monday, April 14, 2008.