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| Lost cause: John Kerry |
Getting a bit Kerry-ed away
I won’t go so far as to say that, other things being equal, most Indians in America would much rather Senator John Kerry lost the presidential election. On second thoughts, though, I will say that. Normally, Indians are more sympathetic towards the Democrats, especially after George Bush’s misguided adventures in Iraq.
Kerry, however, is making himself thoroughly unpopular with Indians by unfairly focussing on outsourcing of jobs to India as one of his main election issues.
Things have come to such a pass that ordinary Indians feel they are being made scapegoats for jobs lost by Americans. A young Indian woman in Washington, who works in IT, voices her fears: “People look at me as though to say, ‘We are losing our jobs because of you.’ ”
Conveniently forgetting that the American economy was built on the principle of free trade, Kerry has compared companies which outsource jobs with Benedict Arnold.
“He was an (18-th century) American traitor,” explains Gautam Patwa, a hot shot financial adviser in New York with one the world’s leading investment institutions.
Kerry, he reckons, is exploiting the loss of 300,000 jobs through outsourcing to India, China and elsewhere for electoral purposes. “Some Indians are worried that if Kerry wins, it will have a negative impact on their friends and relatives in India,” he points out.
Kerry has promised to give tax concessions to companies which do not outsource but to Patwa, this policy represents economic illiteracy.
He argues that if companies become uncompetitive through being actively discouraged from outsourcing, then unemployment, which currently stands at 5.6 per cent, will rise. If what Patwa says is any guide, Indians won’t be heart-broken, surprising though it might seem, if Bush goes to the White House in September.
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| Spice Girls: Bollywood cover story in Time Out in New York |
In common with many other Indians in New York, her parents have already booked to see Bombay Dreams, which opened for previews on March 29. I cannot get a ticket for love or dollars but first reports about the American version of the musical, which has done so well in London, are encouraging.
An Indian friend, who went with his wife on the very night it opened, reports: “It was excellent.” He bought me a copy of Time Out in New York. The cover story in the weekly is Bollywood on Broadway, with a “14-page South Asian New York special”. The cover photograph is of the “Spice Girls” — Ayesha Dharker and the female lead in the show, Anisha Nagarajan. The main feature, Salaam New York!”, develops the following theme: “From Basement Bhangra to Bombay Dreams, the South Asian community is spicing up NYC art and culture like never before.”
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| Indian Shining: Bhavsar with Patwa |
The artist Natvar Bhavsar has been thumbing through a copy of Newsweek, which has got an eight-page spread, American Masala, on the Indian phenomenon: “They have changed the way we eat, work and play. South Asians come here from many places, and they succeed by blending East and West.”
It is a trot through a forest of familiar names, from Bobby Jindal to Anand Jon, Norah Jones, Jhumpa Lahiri, Parminder Nagra and Sabeer Bhatia, plus several new ones, ending with the leads from Bombay Dreams — which is the excuse for doing the piece, anyway.
“According to the Census Bureau,” says the article, which uses the word “South Asian” mainly to mean Indian, “the median income in Indian-American families is more than $60,000, compared with the national average of $38,885, and experts estimate that more than half of the two million South Asians in this country are college graduates.”
Natvar, who will be attending an All India International Art Festival in Bangalore from May 25 to May 30, apparently the first such gathering of Indian artists from the diaspora, tells me of another success story which he considers far more significant.
It is the founding of the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India at Pennsylvania University. It has been set up with a gift of $2 million from two financier brothers, Doctors Sanjiv and Rajiv Sobti, to which the university has added $1 million.
Natvar suggested to one New York journalist, blessed “with a very good brain” but who covers celebrity trivia, that he would be “better off committing suicide”.
He has nothing against Bombay Dreams, which he has booked to see, says Natvar, but the setting up of the chair broke new ground. “This is the first time a chair for the study of contemporary India has been set up,” he enthuses.
Yet it has just carried a leaderpage article on the current India-Pakistan series, Wicket Politics, by Ramchandra Guha.
I applaud his brave attempt at trying to explain cricket to the Americans, which must seem even more baffling than Bollywood.
He ticks off the ruling Hindu-dominated Bharatiya Janata Party in India for trying to exploit the Indian team’s triumph for electioneering purposes. But why pick on just Vajpayee and Advani? Weren’t England’s rugby world cup “heroes” invited to 10, Downing Street, by Tony Blair for a photo op?
As an aside, Steiger confirms: “We are going to publish the Wall Street Journal in India.”
It’s a pity that “Danny”, much loved by relatives, friends and colleagues, won’t be around to file from India. He liked wacky, human interest stories, which aren’t exactly in short supply in India.
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| Grub Club: Foodstore Dean & Delucha |
“We don’t have coriander,” he replied. “But we do have cilantro.” Having pressed the leaves and smelt the familiar aroma, I corrected the man: “This is coriander.”
“It’s cilantro,” he said stubbornly. “Look, I am an Indian, coriander comes from India and this is coriander,” I insisted. Later, I found we were both right but the thought that dhaniya could be anything other than desi is unsettling. It’s like discovering your parents aren’t your parents.
It is not until you come to America that you realise this isn’t a bad place (which is my way of saying that, in very many ways, America is fantastic). It took 90 minutes to clear immigration on arrival. This was simply because 20 flights, including AI 111 from Delhi via Heathrow, had landed at JFK at the same time.
As passengers flooded into the arrivals hall, they were herded into two queues – one for US citizens and the other for visitors. What was remarkable was that the US citizens appeared to me to be as culturally diverse, if not more, than the visitors. And that, I think, says a lot for America.
Sam Bhadha runs a tight ship at the Radisson Lexington, home away from home for Indians visiting New York. How tight I discovered last week. In more hope than expectation, I told the front desk at the hotel that I thought I might have left behind my best pair of black trousers in mid-February.
The man took details – name, room number, exact dates and description of the said garment. I returned to my room in the evening to find a plastic bag on my bed, containing a note and the prodigal trousers.
I was so thrilled I even forgave the Americans for calling my trousers “pants”.
