Comment

If you want to hear the heartbeat that television skipped, tune into FM Radio. More bindaas, off-the-cuff and free-floating, it sometimes tosses out perceptive observations and truths that sociologists would envy. Usually inadvertently, often in the mindless chitter-chatter of anchors, and in the delightful Hinglish advertisements.

Take the ad for a fizzy drink now synonymous with Thanda. Two young women-one Indian, the other European-walk into a restaurant and ask for a menu. The waiter rattles off the items in Hindi, prefacing each with ‘Thanda’. Furious, the desi lady orders the waiter to call the manager, in the bored and borrowed twang of the newly-modern, and tells her friend that everything is “so slow…that is what is wrong with this country”.

The waiter switches from the vernacular to perfect English, and informs her that he is indeed the manager-and boss. And then comes up with a deadly putdown: he tells her that she is “Jullander walking, London talking”, adding, "So slow…that's what is wrong with the country”.

It doesn't end here. In a delicious twist to the tale, the desi storms out and the foreigner stays back, says Namaste, and in a French-accented Hindi asks for a “saaamossa” and tan-da. The waiter-owner is amused about the ‘chori’ going and the “gori” staying.

The ‘gori’ is perfectly happy with the India that is (at least for the duration of her stay here). She is trying to adapt-in other words do as Indians do in India. Her friend on the other hand is trying so hard to do as goras do in goraland, while still on desi soil. I found the ad interesting because it shed some light on the rapidly multiplying tribe of people who fall between two cultures— “the Jullander walking, London talking” who are neither-here-nor-there.

Many of these young men and women populate jockey land: the DJs, VJs and RJs are seldom more than mimic people. From their accents you would think that they had stepped out of Brooklyn or Brixton. From their attire they seem to have walked off an American Idol or MTV set. From their look they appear to have been squeezed out of some global assembly line of the Beautiful People-standard size and shape.

Yet, it doesn't take long for the accents to slip. As the minis inch upwards the knees soon begin to look a bit wobbly, ill at ease. The feet don't know where to point. The gestures become caricatures; the arms swing as if they are rocking a baby sideways. It’s not enough to look the part, you have to feel it, become it.

Double lives, call it a schizophrenic state-of-being, are even more poignantly in evidence in call centres, and to a lesser extent in the chrome-and-glass corporate offices mushrooming in and nibbling into rural hinterlands, where the split is more than accent deep. The distance between office and home can't be measured in miles but in cultural terms. Turbulence lies just beneath, the result of so-called modernity running up against tradition and convention. I suppose it must be tiring to forever be switching from one identity to the other.

Then there are those who don't bother to switch-who have almost exorcised their Jullanders, or what have you. The burgeoning tribe of blondezillas (bottle blondes with brown faces of both sexes) deny their desi side-proud not to speak any local lingua but fluent in the language of Hollywoodspeak and international brands. It takes a little longer for their accents and attitudes to slip, but slip they do.

This lot have now adopted the European custom of air kissing, and are almost getting adept at it. But occasionally they don't know whether to go for the left or right cheek first, and end up, smack, embarrassingly, in the middle. There is a method to this ritual: not only is it left and then right, but back left again for the special cheeks. The kisses are supposed to be literally planted in the air, but in India they usually end up slobbering and wet and noisily on the cheeks.

So while ever newer batches have graduated to air kissing, the ones who got there before are in retreat. A much-travelled snob told me the other day: “It’s too hot to kiss the cheeks of strangers. Now even the Karol Bagh types are doing it, it's time to stop.” She has a point, and I'm not referring to Karol Bagh, but to our climate. Our ancestors had it right: nothing like our namastes and salaams. And if that is Jullander, so be it.
Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com