How would you describe ‘vibhuti’ in American?

A few decades ago, the car company Chevrolet attempted to introduce a new small car in the Central American market (primarily Mexico). They called it the Chevy Nova. The name, the marketing mavens felt, hinted at something spectacular in space, stellar and in keeping with the space exploration spirit of those times.

What they did not realise is that Nova meant “No go” in Spanish, a language that, unfortunately for Chevy, their target market spoke with native fluency. This marketing disaster went on to become a case study at several B-schools and even made it to the email-forward ecosystem where it’s been floating around for a while now.

But while we laugh at this sorry tale of predictable American cultural indifference to the rest of the world, I will now tell you another story, one that happened to a friend of a friend and therefore resides in that dimly lit intersection of fact and fiction. Even if it did turn out to be apocryphal, I assure you that it sounds real enough. Good fiction always does, in any case.

The story, as it always is in this column, is set in an airport, one of those most magnificent edifices of concentrated human frustration that are spread around the world much like pustules of chicken pox. This particular airport is located in that scary agglomeration of human beings known as New York and is named after an unfortunate president who thought it was a good idea to travel around in an open-top car in Dallas, Texas.

Our protagonist is the stereotypical South Indian boy going to the “States” to relieve an American IT professional of his job. In possession of an H-1B visa, our man is carrying with him, some 60 kg of contraband. I am, of course referring to mango pickles, sambar powder, appalam (papad), tamarind, and oddly enough, Marie biscuits, which he was surprised to learn, was not available at Wal-Mart. Customs officials at JFK don’t care for the most part.

They just wave you through. But of course, since our man is the protagonist, he must be an exception. He is stopped. The officers wear gloves (just in case the mango pickle is radioactive) and open his bags. Look what we have here, he says with glee, as several hundred rupees worth of prime South Indian kitchen ingredients find their way to the nearest dustbin. Sir, you can’t carry foodstuffs into the United States, our man is advised. Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know, he sheepishly informs them.

That’s when the officer finds a 250 gm packet of what seems to be whitish-grey powder. What’s this, the officer asks? That’s when the cultural chasm between the East and the West opens up like the Grand Canyon. He does not know how to describe “vibhuti”, that ubiquitous ash that Hindu Shaivites smear on their forehead in South India. He tries “Holy powder, religious powder”.

Is it cocaine, the officer asks? Heroin? No, no, our man implores, now shaking in his shoes. The officer murmurs something into his collar mike. A few seconds later, a large German shepherd arrives with another officer and considers our protagonist with the eyes of a predator looking at what could be lunch. The dog doesn’t smell anything funny in a packet of ash.

Our man is released, several hours later, after the “vibhuti” was sent to a lab for testing. He thanks Lord Shiva and asks him for permission to not carry his holy powder the next time around.

Slightly techie, moderately musical, severely blogging, timepassly tweeting.Email: inbox@dnaindia.net