Last month a close friend, just back from a holiday to the Queen’s land, happened to mention a certain young man. At the time it didn’t seem like much, we laughed about it as she gave me an account of her last evening in London, deftly manoeuvring through the details. Only one sentence stayed with me – even long after the receiver lay rested on the cradle – “I’ve never been with a foreigner before.” I think this wound goes far deeper in the Indian psyche than merely wanting to share intimacy. Call it what you will, a post-colonial hangover, an awe for the White Man, but it’s prevalent even now. And you will notice it in places you wouldn’t expect it too. Like how the guards will not frisk foreigners in the malls; or the wider, creepier smile they fawn over them with.
Even when it comes to pronouncing names and words that our Indian tongues don’t recognise, we make it our life’s duty to ensure we roll them at the right syllable and spring on anyone who says them even a bit wrong. Yet, these are the same people (often even you and I), who will smile when their NRI cousins
mutate – no mutilate – their names at the behest of their habit.
But it doesn’t end there; take for instance, one of the biggest contributors to our GDP, Bollywood. It’s fraught with women who enter the country as tourists and sometimes girlfriends of stars and end up turning into supposed A-listers, without as much as an iota of talent. At best, it is the most misconstrued implementation of ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’. I’d like to see someone pull this off elsewhere on the globe. For instance, remind me again of the Bengali actress that replaced Audrey Tautou in French cinema, or the sultry South Indian who turned into the heartthrob of the Stanislavsky theatre. Exactly. It’s just one of those things we are taught to shrug off saying “it happens only in India.” Like the other day, I was reading a piece in the newspaper of how someone who calls himself the King of Bollywood has decided to launch a certain Brazilian model and has hence assured the media she will first learn Hindi. It’s shameful for a country that happens to be known for its beautiful women, to look beyond its geographical borders to find suitable film poster material. How else do you explain this phenomenon of ‘top actresses’ in a country whose language they can’t speak, if not for our obsession for foreigners.
Then there are certain actresses who insist that they are paired strictly with foreign male models in ad commercials. Speaking of which, I’ve always belched at that short-cut companies and even ad agencies take; nearly a quick-fix formula to make a brand ‘premium’ overnight – simply use foreigners in it. Even cosmetic and denim brands that harp about the real beauty or curviness of Indian women, use female models who have nothing Indian except for their bank accounts. The same people who are no more than routinely attractive, and at times even merely ordinary in their own country, lionized so blatantly in ours.
But please don’t mistake these sentiments for jingoism;
they're just questions a confounded mind seeks answers to.
Help me out here. Who will take a country that lacks self-confidence seriously? Who will look into a mirror for anything unique? And speaking for a nation that moved into the 21st century over a decade ago, it’s high time our collective consciousness did the same.
