There was a time when the ability to laugh and be laughed at was a sign that we were secure in our Indian-ness. When did we lose that superpower?
We live in humourless times. A part of me misses that India where friendly ribbing and joshing were signs that somehow, against all odds, we belonged together
One morning, I was lying on a bed at a hospital in Bengaluru, awaiting a routine angiogram required for insurance purposes. Having undergone the procedure before, I knew they’d insert a catheter through a big artery in my groin and thread it up to my heart for various checks.
I sensed a young Kannadiga in hospital regulation shorts and a shirt standing diffidently at the door, a metal pail in one hand and a toolkit in the other. He looked apologetic even before he said his first words, “Sorry, saar.”
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“Yes?”
“Saar, very sorry. We have to do it now, saar. So I have come personally. Very sorry.”
“Do what?” I asked, completely baffled.
“Part preparation, saar,” he said contritely. “Justu it will take five minutes wonly, saar.”
“What is part preparation?” I asked him.
He groveled where he stood, looking wretched.
My introduction to our national peccadilloes with language and culture came when I was eight. My father, a man not easily amused, had returned chortling from Howrah station after triumphantly booking some tickets. The dour Bengali at the counter, after struggling with one of his initials—V—had finally erupted, “Ees eet bhee for Bengal of bhee for bhictory?”
Bengali has no sound for the letter v and makes do with bhee.
The best Bengalis also inexplicably interchange their uh’s with their ah’s, so that heart is only understood when pronounced as hurt—as in I have a pain in my hurt.
Similarly, hurt must be enunciated as heart for the Bong to understand it as anguish—as in I have a heart in my knee.
As TamBram children, we would crack up hearing Gemini Ganesan declare that he was in louw with Savitri, who would later in the movie become his darling oif.
Which of us hasn’t been to a Gujju birthday party where the snakes were being served in the hole and all gifts came nicely raped in party paper?
Or the UP bhaiya who wanted to know what went of my father when I asked him why he was crashing the queue?
In a different epoch, we’d openly snigger that Tamilians might be cleverer but would never get the girl. That Panjus were tall, handsome and fair dreamboats but were destined to be shopkeepers. That some Bengalis hadn’t received the memo about India’s independence and still went to England to die but were peerless when it came to making fish taste magical. And everyone knew at least one tall, dark and handsome Gujju dreamboat who had acquired a faux American accent after just one trip to the international airport.
Our national foibles carried us through youth and did nothing to hamper lifelong friendships between Bongs and UP bhaiyas, Gujjus and Mallus, Panjus and Madrasis. We recognised that we were ingredients in the same messy salad and that it was ok to try to stand out by knocking the others down as long as you helped them back on their feet again. We laughed and were laughed at but it was always mutual and affectionate. We recognised that under it all, we were both perfect and perfectly flawed. If you couldn’t laugh at the complicated mess of being Indian, you couldn’t possibly deal with being Indian.
With our parents eating our heads, as only Indian parents do, we eventually passed out of college, as only Indian students do. We regained consciousness in a world where we had to ‘adjust’ a little, which we were happy to do, and called people Sirji, fully aware that doubling the honorifics didn’t mean twice the respect.
Somewhere along the way, all that changed. We have acquired eugenically-minded rulers who want purity of Indian-ness, preferably Hindu-ness. Jokes about culture and worship are now taken seriously, and it matters if the joker is from a minority or a majority. Speaking freely, being cynical or critical, bringing each other down a peg or two by reminding them of their failings, all these became acts of treason punishable by an income tax raid, Twitter-shaming and at worst, lynching by WhatsApp. Speaking too loudly for someone else’s right to be themselves, as the late Father Stan Swamy did, could land you in prison for life.
We live in humourless times. A part of me misses that India where friendly ribbing and joshing were signs that somehow, against all odds, we belonged together.
Meanwhile back at the hospital, the Part Preparer was still shuffling from foot to foot, waiting to proceed with his official duty. I now know that his sole function was to ensure that any section of any human body awaiting a surgical or other procedure was free of hair, to pre-empt unnecessary tangles and possible infection from strands falling in.
Back then, though, the boy was just an enigma to me.
“So?” I demanded. “What part do you have to prepare?”
He looked utterly miserable.
“Sir, private parts, sir. I have come to prepare your private parts.”
Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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