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Earlier this week three inebriated Indians were bundled out of a Cathay Pacific aircraft in Hong Kong for making lewd, drunken comments about the air hostesses and generally making a thorough nuisance of themselves. There have been several similar cases of misbehaviour on board flights in the recent past. Clearly air travel is to some Indians what a china shop is to a bull — they will proceed to step high, wide and out of control the moment they are thrown in close proximity with 300-odd other passengers and a few young serving ladies at 35,000 feet up in the air.
But wait, it’s not just an airplane that brings out the Ugly Indian. He, or indeed she, is in merry display pretty much everywhere. You can call them loud, rude and insensitive — but we merely look upon them as interesting sub species of the genus Ugly Indian. A few glorious examples:
The Raging Diner
● You can spot one most often at restaurants in five star hotels. He may be sitting with a gaggle of relatives or a bunch of friends and associates, but he is the one raising hell — about the food, about the wine, perhaps about the napery too if the mood so takes him. He will summon the waiter with a finger in a gesture that looks vaguely obscene and holler that the kebabs are way too tough or that the nehari gosht definitely looks like something else. He will demand to see the general manager, threaten to not pay for this substandard food and maybe throw in some thundering do-you-know-who-I-ams for added effect. “Some diners make a fuss just to show people how important they are,” says the restaurant manager of a gourmet eatery at a five star hotel in Delhi. “Besides, they also know that if they go on complaining, they’ll end up with a sizeable discount on the bill.”
Well, there you are, that’s a nice tip for all you wannabe Ugly Indians!
The Inquisitor
● Amartya Sen wrote a book called The Argumentative Indian. Maybe someone should follow it up with one called ‘The Inquisitive Indian’. For many of us are pathologically curious about the lives of our fellowmen. Try sitting in a doctor’s waiting chamber, for example. If you happen to take a breather from reading the tattered copy of a six-month-old India Today that the good doctor has provided for your entertainment, the person sitting next to you will fix you with a gimlet eye and proceed to grill you about your medical problem. While at it, she will also quiz you about your marital status, where you live, what you do, whether you have children, and if you have good servants. It can beat the fabled Spanish Inquisition hollow and leave you gasping for air.
The Polluter
● It could be a well-directed squirt of betel juice that lands with a thwack on a neighbouring wall. It could be relieving oneself plentifully against the sidewalk. Or throwing litter with gay abandon. Oh yes, and not to forget spitting — a great gobful of frothy spittle gathered up with much harrumphing and then ejected with a flourish. For many Indians these are everyday activities to be indulged in without turning a hair. “Most Indians haven’t developed a notion of civic sense,” says sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan. “Dirt is dirt only in the private space. When it comes to the public space, they feel they are entitled to defile or pollute it.” It’s like — Creating a mess? Arré yaar, but it’s on the road, no?
The Queue Jumper
● The sight of a queue does something to him. Okay, let’s be fair, her too. It awakens some kind of an atavistic instinct to dart in ahead of all those dimwits waiting their turn patiently. Whether it is at an airline check-in counter or a bank or a movie ticket window, the queue jumper will strike with lethal cunning, adroitly cutting in somewhere along the middle of the line. If you protest, he will wax indignant — “But I was here from before only.”
Proud Parents (of kids from hell)
● Sure, kids can get unruly. But their proud poppas and mommas don’t seem to notice it. In fact, they are quite happy to let their turbo-charged little darlings run amok. A kid may be screaming and jumping at a table next to yours in a restaurant. Another may come bounding towards you and make a grab for your plate or let out short, blood-curdling screeches, setting your teeth on edge. At a movie theatre a bored five-year-old may amuse himself by delivering surprisingly strong kicks at the back of your chair. But ask them to rein in their superbrats, and the parents will be highly affronted. It’s all natural, kiddie exuberance, you see — so what if they behave like mini weapons of mass destruction? Incidentally, a fine dining restaurant in Calcutta had taken its courage in both hands and adopted a no-child policy. It soon folded up. Wonder if vengeful parents, denied the right to let their little angels loose on others, had something to do with it!
The Nose Picker
● You’d think Indian nostrils were particularly well endowed with diggable treasures. Why else do so many people dig their noses so unabashedly in public? With eyes half-closed in pleasure, they rotate their forefinger round and round inside their nose until they come up with the precious nuggets. It’s a practice that’s as offensive as the sight of someone scratching himself you know where. But who cares? To quote Vishwanathan once again, “In the public space, a lot of Indians feel they can be slobs — and happy ones at that!”
The Loudspeaker
● We were never exactly soft spoken but the advent of mobile phones seems to have given people the licence to ratchet up the volume even more. For some strange reason they think the poor sod at the other end of the line is hard of hearing, so they speak at the top of their voices — about share prices, about the mother’s indigestion, the nephew’s birthday, the gift someone “got or not”, and so on. For the most part, it’s utterly avoidable conversation conducted utterly unselfconsciously in front of a crowd of strangers. Just in case you’re not researching for a paper on the Mobile Phone Habits of Urban Indians, you may find such loud talkathons a wee bit annoying. Our suggestion: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
