Many years ago, I went to interview the journalist, Sham Lal, about his friendship with the anthropologist, Verrier Elwin. After he had told me how he first met the Englishman-turned-Indian, and got him to review novels pseudonymously for The Times of India, the conversation turned to the journalist’s early years. He had grown up in Lahore, and studied at the Government College, where he was exactly a year ahead of the novelist, Khushwant Singh. After his degree (which was in English literature), he took a train to Bengal since he wished, as he said, “to go see the poet”. His plan, in fact, was to take a second degree at Santiniketan. Reaching Bolpur late at night, the next morning he set off to find the man he had travelled a thousand miles to meet. A kindly local directed the visiting Punjabi to the cottage where the poet lived. This is how the story continued, recalled from a distance of 15 years in what I hope is a fair approximation of Sham Lal’s own words:

“I walked towards the cottage. The poet was sitting in an easy chair in the verandah. As he saw me coming he put his feet out about six inches [as he spoke Sham Lal mimed the act — so that I could see, as clear as day, the feet of a handsome bearded man emerging from under the silk dhoti out towards the advancing youngster]. I immediately turned around and walked back. I had come to study with the poet; but, before he had even met me or spoken to me, he was expecting me to touch his feet. In Punjab we are more self-respecting. I took the first train home, did an MA at the Government College, and then became a journalist.”

I was reminded of this story when I recently attended a literary function in Bangalore. Here, prizes were being distributed to the winners of a contest restricted to young and mostly unpublished poets who wrote in English. The chief guest was a much respected and widely travelled Indian writer, who had lived in the Middle East and in North America. However, he was, by birth, a Bengali (a fact whose relevance will soon become apparent). The first of the winners went up to receive her prize and shook the chief guest’s hand. The second winner, a young man, chose to touch his feet instead.

The function was being held in what is unarguably the most cosmopolitan of Indian cities, and the young man had written his poems in English. But he was by ethnic origin a Bengali, albeit a Bengali much younger and of far less distinction than the chief guest. Through that act of homage he was expressing his admiration for the senior writer as well as underlining their common cultural heritage.

Was Sham Lal right to have been offended at being expected to touch the poet’s feet on his first (and last) visit to Santiniketan? Was the young poet in Bangalore right in touching the feet of his older (if equally cosmopolitan) colleague? Where, precisely, does respect for seniority and excellence end, and reverence for tradition begin?

Let me deflect these questions by means of another story. I have a close relative (by marriage) who is a Bengali. He once told me about the traditions of the family in which he was raised. His father was one of a hundred and forty-four first cousins (a not uncommon situation in those days, when middle-class families comprised a dozen or more siblings). Only one of these cousins was older than him. On the holiest day in the year (as I recall, Bijaya Dashami), he would rise very early to call on his ‘Dada’ and touch his feet. Then he would return home and await the 142 younger cousins who had perforce to come to him to pay their respects.

Enough Bengali-bashing. For the practice of touching the feet of one’s elders is also a very south Indian custom. Growing up, I was quite accustomed to bowing low whenever an uncle or aunt came into view. The act was not motivated by respect alone. On a lucky day, one got a 10-rupee note as reward. Then again, when my wife and I were first married, we did plenty of forward bends as we visited her relatives, then mine.

This Indian custom is old as well as ubiquitous. And it is not to be scorned or discarded. For the strength and depth of familial ties have kept our society going. However, in the rush to modernize (or, more accurately, Americanize), upper-class, city-dwelling Indians are casting away habits and traditions that served their ancestors well. Could not touching an elder’s feet be counted as one of them? One of the most destructive, indeed self-destructive, aspects of modernity is the altogether excessive worship of the young. Civilizations mature and endure because of the respect for the wisdom and understanding gathered over the years or down the ages.

Apart from older cousins and uncles and aunts, it was also the Indian custom to touch the feet of one’s teachers. Indians who are Hindus also do the same when entering the sanctum sanctorum of a temple. In our eyes, those older than us and those who taught us have an element of the divine. In their hands, as in god’s hands, is the benediction that can be passed on to make us better or more skilful or simply luckier human beings.

One place where this tradition is carried on is in the arena of music. If Rashid Khan, say, is singing, and if Ravi Shankar walks into the auditorium, the younger musician will make sure to lift his palm to his face and bow low as a mark of acknowledging the maestro’s presence. I must have seen this gesture made countless times, yet the ease with which it is done never ceases to impress me. It is as if Indian musicians are always on the look-out for someone more venerable than themselves. If one’s eyes were closed one would not notice the interruption at all. There is not a note lost, not a beat missed; only a hand raised, and a waist bent.

As a regular attendee at musical concerts, I find this custom both impressive and endearing. But somehow, I am not prone to view the practice with the same indulgence when it is transferred to the realms of literature and scholarship. I have seen too many young scholars stifled and diminished by their inability to break out of the bonds of disciplehood. And creative writing is a notoriously individualistic craft. How can one develop one’s own style, find one’s own voice, if one is forever in thrall to some Dada or Didi?

I suppose I can be accused of hypocrisy — of allowing that the practice has its uses in the contexts of family and music, but not with regard to scholarship or literature.

I have long stopped touching anyone’s feet myself. But recently I found myself reverting to the practice, when being introduced to the great hockey player, Balbir Singh, captain of the gold-medal-winning Indian Olympic team of 1956. I had grown up on stories of his genius, told to me by my uncle, who had once played on a side that lost to Balbir’s Olympians by 18 goals to nil. Confronted with the Great Man in the flesh, I paid tribute to him in the manner that comes naturally to (south) Indians. But as I bent low, Balbir pulled away in disgust. He was, you see, a proud Punjabi; and, as a Sikh, even more self-respecting than the Hindu, Sham Lal.

ramguha@vsnl.com