Being British in India......

Stiff upper lipped, insular, cynical, strictly law abiding but rather eccentric - all terms that one usually associates with the Brits. However, to be very fair to my British friends, they are not alone in this!! I don't know about the rest of the world, but the people from the place where I live in currently, certainly show all the above characteristics in equal measure!

Let me start with narrating something I had just read a couple of days back in the parking lot of a building: "If you don't want to be insulted, park your vehicles properly" or words to that effect, albeit in Marathi (the local language here). Now why would you want to warn a potential offender that he would be insulted if he did X is beyond me - I mean most "normal" people would not be offenders anyway and most offenders would be too thick skinned to pay heed to the insults!

It gets even more interesting - this happened to my friend so apologies to him for pinching his story. The story goes thus: there is a very interesting and famous sweet meat shop here where people queue up outside the shop since 7AM in the morning (Needless to say, the shop opens at 8.30)!! Now on one such morning, my friend had to go through the horror of waiting in the queue at 7AM, thanks to orders from SHQ (Supreme Head Quarters, aka wife). He was the third or fourth in the queue and he couldn't but help notice that the first guy, an oldish man in his 60s getting extremely impatient; he kept looking at his watch all the time. This went on all the while from 7.30 AM until 8 AM when suddenly, the impatient bloke took a key out of his pocket and opened the doors of the sweet shop!!! Needless to say, he went straight to the till, welcoming his customers with dire warnings to not touch any of the sweets, lest they be considered sold!!!! He was, after all, the owner of the shop and considered it his divine duty that his customer be serviced only at the designated hours , not a minute early, nor a minute late, never mind even if things are ready well in time and the entire staff is ready to serve ... it was, after all, not a matter of making money, it was a matter of principles.....

My third story is a little poignant but never the less quite shocking - I was doing some sort of community work which involved going to peoples' places and doing some paper work for them. We would choose an area within the city, go to each apartment/house and do the paperwork. In one of the apartment, we were welcomed by a middle aged lady who opened the door a few microns to take a paper from us and promptly slammed it on us .... only to reopen again (a little more than a few microns this time - ostensibly to let some antharx or similar viruses on us...) to give us back the filled paper - and firm instructions to bugger off, lest her dogs decide to start taking interest in our meat....

Now this is nothing new - ask any salesman who has to solicit his products and the amount of abuse that he has to go through and he would call this a walk in the park... so we proceeded to the next apartment where we were welcomed by a serious looking bloke in his 60s. I explained to him the purpose of my visit and told him that he would have to fill in forms for each adult living in that house. The gent told me he need two forms for now, but had I come last week, he would have asked for three but for the fact that his wife passed away over the weekend.......

My final story relates to kindness/human compassion - there was a tragedy in my place as somebody passed away and I needed to buy flowers/wreath to lay on the body of the deceased soul. I went to a flower vendor, an old and cheerful lady. I asked her for some flowers, a mala etc - which she said would cost me Rs 50. While I was talking my wallet out, the lady asked me the reason for buying flowers (I certainly don't look the religious types!!) - and on knowing the real reason, she refused to take the Rs 50 and took only Rs 10.. and this was a women who would probably have to go to bed on an empty stomach if she made Rs 20 less then her daily earnings.........

It is not mere coincidence that the place I am talking about and London share the same STD code: 020....