‘An individual-to-individual callousness … is still so strong in the country that it is the greatest danger for a foreigner living in India, for it is a frighteningly easy thing to find it creeping into ones soul.’
A. M. Rosenthal, The Future in Retrospective
I clutched close a bottle of Kingfisher and attempted to step out of Hotel Samrat, to stand and smoke. The security guard, a young, wide smiling Sikh, opened the door; Toadman, the receptionist, stopped me. ‘It is illegal to drink publicly in India sir,’ he croaked, and waved a chubby finger.
Neither Claire, who had christened Toadman, nor I, learnt his real name. He had drooping jowls and a just-discernable chin. He sat marathons behind his desk, on a stool, completely hunched – and rested his arms, at the elbow, on trousered thighs. To compensate for his bent back, when eye contact with a standing customer was required, Toadman would lift his head, stretch his neck and raise his bulging eyes – then talk through flapping jowls.
I accepted Toadman’s superior knowledge and positioned myself instead behind the only table in reception. The Times of India – on the table, in sections – had two women, photographed separately, in headscarves and lycra cat suits, on its front. Out of focus, behind the obviously Muslim athletes, were other women, also athletes, in ski-pants and crop-tops. The pun-heavy caption, ‘The Gulf between Hot Couture and Cool Couture,’ led my eyes down further, to an article of obvious lament: India’s female to male ratio had declined. India now has 927 women for every thousand men. The imbalance is no longer a product of rural ignorance: the disparity is greatest in urban areas, where access to prenatal technology is easier. Only China is more awkwardly male: there are 832 women for every thousand men. China and India: one third of the world’s population; it meant more than 500 million men might never find brides.
The Times of India is sold in stupendous bulk: more than two and a half million copies are distributed daily. It the world’s most circulated English language broadsheet, and its editor has, because he believes its use inflates egos, abandoned the capital “˜I’.
Further into the paper, amongst the business pages, was ‘Biz Next: Talk soft, laugh light, dress right.’ Etiquette institutes had begun to appear in Mumbai, said the article, because ‘if a senior manager gingerly balances a pea on a knife and tries to push it down his throat, he clearly needs a crash course in etiquette.’ A 43-year-old top executive was recently seen doing precisely that (A tip: he could have done his country proud by elegantly eating straight out of his hands).
India’s development, its unfamiliar strength, meant sending uninitiated executives to do business in the west. ‘The Indian executive increasingly travels on business, does stints abroad and entertains foreign clients at home. Now, if only he spoke a little softly, laughed a little less loudly and asked fellow diners if he could smoke before lighting up, the executive would have that personal edge too.’
It reminded me of an advert we’d seen pasted to a crumbling wall. Dr Rajesh D. Bhujle, ‘a miracle, the ninth wonder in English,’ could, the advert suggested, teach us to ‘speak English like James Bond (007) “¦ According to him [Dr Bhujle] there are two class (sic), first and no class. We have to develop the first.’
The Times article, and the etiquette institutes, suggested that ‘the big Indian failing “¦ is absence of regard for others. The way executives behave in the boardroom, at airports or with clients is an offshoot of this callous attitude.’ And many Indians, I had quickly discovered, are callous – particularly the professional elite, the ‘first’ class.
Earlier that week, Claire and I had found a Domino’s selling pizzas for 500 rupees – meals in Mumbai could be had for as little as ten rupees, perhaps 15 – past a line of homeless, fly plagued people, and a child defecating in the street. The boards outside announced Domino’s delivery service, named the ‘Hunger Helpline.’
Claire had boarded the ladies only carriage of a metropolitan train, there was a woman lying, seemingly asleep, on the carriage floor. ‘The woman,’ Claire said, ‘was old, tiny: a bundle of rags.’ A guard appeared. He poked the woman with his lathi, a heavy, medium length stick. She didn’t stir. The guard felt her pulse, then her side. He called another man. The men picked the woman up and deposited her on the dirty platform. Still, she didn’t stir. Claire heard two passengers conversing. One, just boarding, asked another about the commotion. ‘Oh, there was a lady, she was sleeping here,’ replied the other, then kicked the woman’s sandals and water bottle off the train.
Even so, I felt sympathy for the uninitiated executives. Protocol required a professional face in a world as – and perhaps more – uncomfortable and unfamiliar as the one in which I found myself now.
My drink was by now finished. Toadman – mouth pursed, eyes bulging – looked as if he had captured a large fly. I approached his desk to ask if there were any cinemas nearby. Mumbai is Bollywood’s home – the “˜Bo’ came from Bombay – and it seemed important that we watch a local film.
Toadman, head waggling (an affirmative side-to-side), said ‘You’ll need to take an auto-rickshaw sir. Tell them you want to go to the Gaity-Glaxy.’
‘The Gaity-Glaxy,’ I repeated, ‘How much should it cost?’
‘The driver will use a meter sir. It is only ten minutes.’
Claire had appeared in reception a few minutes before. I thanked Toadman and we left.
The cinema, a tall, square building, its walls painted cream and peach, had seven screens. The screens – and I now understood Toadman’s ‘Gaity Glaxy’ – had been named: the Grace, the Gemini, the Gossip, the Glamour, the Gem, the Gaiety and the Galaxy. These names were declared across the building’s front, near the appropriate door, in sturdy blue letters. Above the names were posters, advertising the films being screened.
I had bought Mumbai’s Time Out, a franchise of the London based magazine, and read an interview with Baabul’s director. The film, I gathered, was to be taken seriously – so it was Baabul, being screened at the Gaiety, that we decided to see.
Every screen had two ticket windows: one for advance purchases, another for that night. It had taken us a while, confusedly wandering in the direction ticket clerks pointed, to establish this. Another queue had to be joined before entering the cinema. A man just behind us in this queue – neatly dressed, standing beside his equally neat wife – addressed us.
‘Are you able to understand a Hindi film?’ The man’s thin grey hair and neat but informal clothes suggested a pensioner – as did the evening: a Monday night.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Are there no subtitles?’ I had thought there may be, because the cinema screened films in three languages: Hindi, India’s most widely spoken language and the language of government, Marathi, the local language, and English. None of the three, the man explained, had subtitles. I though it appropriate, then, because of Dr Bhujle, the ‘ninth wonder in English,’ that the Hollywood film being advertised was Casino Royale, James Bond’s latest installment.
‘A baabul,’ the man said – he seemed concerned now that we would not understand and appreciate the film – ‘is the father of a married daughter.’
‘Like a father in law?’ I asked, underestimating his English.
‘No. It is a man whose daughter has been married. I do not think there is an English word.’
Inside, a uniformed porter led us to our seats. He was needed; the tickets were printed in Hindi. The theatre was as large as any I’ve been into. Adverts were already playing on the curved screen: a family, out for the day, happily scattered rubbish and spat, then returned, incredulous, to a foul smelling, litter filled home, then a woman, a mother, cried for the camera and asked us to ‘make Mumbai unbreakable,’ because her son had died in the city’s most recent terrorist attack. The national anthem was played, the Indian flag was projected, and people stood.
Baabul began. I had encountered Bollywood at university, where I dabbled in film; I remember long, excruciating dance sequences and little else. Initially, Baabul surprised me. It presented an unrecognisable Mumbai: clean, wealthy, sanitised. A father and son raced through organised streets. The father drove a silver sedan, the son a bright red, just presented sports car. It feigned cool: pale skinned Indians and posturing, bikinied white girls danced to music influenced by rap.
The plot seemed simple: son returns home from studying abroad and is groomed to replace father at father’s successful business; son meets, courts and marries a beautiful, artistic woman; woman goes to live in son’s family home – with son’s parents, the Indian norm – and immediately abandons fashionable western clothes, wearing the sari of a good Indian wife instead; son and wife have child; son assumes greater responsibility at father’s business and travels, for business, to London; , upon his return, son is killed in a road accident; wife mourns, becomes irrational; father travels to London again, and finds wife’s former good male friend, now a pop icon; pop icon returns to India, courts wife, is liked by child; father suggests pop icon marry wife and, controversially, he does.
The film, spread over three hours, was broken by a short intermission. We considered leaving then, because we were only there to experience a Hindi film and an Indian cinema, and we had done that: the audience laughed loudly – informing us of the humour, in Hindi, that we missed – and cheered and clapped. They answered mobile phones, swapped places and ignored the film, to chat. But intermission came immediately after the son was hit, unexpectedly, by a car, and it was not yet clear if he had lived.
Afterwards, outside the cinema, the neatly dressed pensioner found us. ‘Did you enjoy the movie?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Claire. ‘More than we expected to.’
‘It’s very controversial in India you know,’ he said, and told us that the lives of orthodox Hindu widows, are, even today, considered over. The unfortunate women keep short hair and wear only white (and I now understood the film’s inexplicably solemn figure, a beautiful woman dressed in white). Neither able to remarry or work, the women live silent lives, anticipating nothing but death.
The pensioner, his wife still elegant and silent beside him, became excited. ‘The father is a brave man, a reformer!’ The father, I realised, was the film’s baabul – and the term was heavy with patriarchal respect – because he had arranged the marriage of his son’s widow: he had treated his daughter-in-law like his own daughter. ‘He is quite right!’ said the pensioner. ‘She has to have her own life, you know. And she must be happy and have lots of joy!’
Continue reading Bombay bitter sweet at OldWorldWandering.com, overland travel stories written by a South African couple’s making their way from Shanghai to Cape Town.
