Indian Low Commission

Yesterday I visited India. Took the tube from Stanmore to Holborn, walked along Kingsway to Aldwych, a few steps down India Place and lo and behold, I was in India. People visiting London often mistake Southall, Wembley, Illford etc. for India. But these places, while they see multitudes of Desis, are still British in many ways. For one people more often than not obey the local rules and two, what we call Desi is a curious mix of people from all parts of the subcontinent, not just India. However my journey yesterday took me to a sarkari office in an Indian metro, any metro, you name it.

That door or rather Portal on India Place not just Teleports you to India, it also works as a Time Machine. Technology so advanced that it takes you to India of the early nineties. A railway platform, a passport office, a land registration office, any and all of these sarkari offices bundled in one. Everything about that place reeked Bharat Sarkar at its best. I am talking about the Indian High Commission in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. And while the High Commission itself was Raj personified with glittering brass and glass and a spanking black Ind 1 Mercedez S Class parked in front defying all no parking rules, what was hidden in its underbelly was the Consular Office dealing with Passports and sundry.

Was I home sick? Not really. Two things, apart from the usual Desh ki mitti, make you home sick. Food and Family. No Indian can complain about food in London, and family, they are all currently west of the Prime Meridian. So no it was not because I was missing India. It was because my passport/s (like every Indian who has travelled a bit I carry a few with pride and feign inconvenience every time asked about it) was missing space for any more border crossing stamps and I needed a new booklet. The last time this had happened was in Bombay(MNS are you reading this, I want to be roughed up, banned etc etc) in 2002 and it took 30 mins to submit the application and I had a new passport the same day. Modernization, technology etc. have swept India since then and I thought being London, the process will be even faster. Was I in for a shock or what? It took me six hours to just submit my application.

The officials of the Indian High Commission are smart. Very Smart Robert. First act of smartness, they do not issue Visas from this location. Hence no Non Indian has any reason to visit this place. Second, the entrance to the consular section is so far removed to one side of the High Commission that to a passerby the long queue of Indians outside a door in India Place might seem like an audition for Gandhi 2 in the adjacent BBC building. Like a true patriot I went and stood in that queue that circled around a statue of Nehru with a sly grin on his face as if the building opposite was called Mountbatten House. After about 30 minutes I reached the counter and got a token number. I am a great fan of Token Numbers. They are a great equalizer. Irrespective of where you come from, once you have a token number, caste, creed, colour, religion all merges into that number. Readers of Ayn Rand including a certain Mr Greenspan might disagree but I for one believe there are places where individuality has to give in to uniformity. Unless as an individual you play golf with the High Commissioner and in that scenario you will have no reason to visit the basements of India Place.

With that token in hand I opened a door and found myself in India of 1995. While the rest of India has progressed, the Indian High Commission in UK is desperately trying to latch on to the last vestiges of the Raj and the red tape that came along with it. The door led me to a hall full of people. They were everywhere, or atleast it seemed that way. There were eight counters and every counter had about 20 people all over the counter window. Plus there were hundreds who were sitting staring at the 3 LCD screens displaying counter numbers and their movements, if any. A little investigation revealed that every counter had two or three persons with tokens next in sequence and the rest were either general hangerons who you find in thousands in any Indian sarkari office or those trying to catch the attention of the lady behind the counter with that half grin, half pleading look to help jump the queue. Aren’t we Indians the master of that look.

I decided to wait for my turn with the token. The movement of numbers on that screen was excruciatingly slow. Infact the lady behind my designated counter was a great fan of Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. For about 10-15 minutes numbers would not change on her counter, and then they would move, two or three in a row. I knew it would be hours before my turn came hence I started observing and analyzing that microcosm of India. Except I had to change seats in between when my neighbor realized that the British have hidden the Kohinoor up his nose and was using all fingers and thumbs at his disposal to reach it.

There were eight counters in total. Out of which two were for Passport services, or in other words catering to Fresh off the Boat, like yours truly. Four were for consular services like PIO, OCI etc, more organized as they were dealing with those shouting in that strange British Indian accent. And the last two were people surrendering their passports, cutting that umbilical cord for good. Can you take a guess which counters were the most unruly? The first two and the last two. The first two is obvious because we are like that only. We can beat up people in the Parliament, this was just a consular office. And the last two because this was their last chance to display their Indianness. Once they left that hall, they were expected to be British, get drunk and beat people at Football Games.

And the staff, courteous, multilingual (with Punjabis they were speaking in Punjabi and with Gujaratis in Gujarati and so on, until I realized it was all English) and always smiling (more at your plight). I can understand they were dealing with a difficult people. But that does not give them a right to be self indulgent, self righteous and condescending. It seemed they had graduated from the Air India school of customer service summa cum laude. They had no clue on what token numbers were running as the screens were facing the crowd, so every now and then they shouted, ‘what number on screen’. They were all specialized in their specific jobs like Passports, OCI etc. I guess the concept of cross skilling will last reach the Indian Government. If all this was not enough, promptly at 1:30 the system went down. As Mr Murphy said, right when it was my turn at the counter. “System went down and will be back up at 2 PM please come back after lunch”.

Do they realize that Systems do not go down even in India. We Indians pride ourselves in keeping the Systems up for the entire world. Its time you read The World is Flat which talks of India of 2002 and learn a thing or two about India’s progress Mr High Commissioner. I can't bring myself to call you Excellency, the experience yesterday was not even mediocre leave aside excellence.

Cheeni Come?

Irrespective of which side of the political spectrum we belong to or more importantly which side of the rational spectrum we belong to we all think a Chinese adventure in India is imminent. And the adventure can range from a harmless “expression of unhappiness” to more than occasional “incursions” to actual annexation of a piece of land. All eyes are on Arunachal and despite posturing by various Netas in charge, I honestly do not think India, or more importantly the Indian leadership has it in them to take a firm stand in case any or all of the above situations present themselves.

I am one of those fortunate Indians who has been to Arunachal. And that too for pilgrimage. Legend or rather mythology has it that Parashuram (of the Sita Swayamvar, Shivji Dhanush fame) washed away his sins on the banks of River Lohit (Brahmaputra). Every year in January thousands of pilgrims from mostly North Eastern India cross the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, by ferry, foot, elephants etc etc to reach this picturesque place and take a dip in the icy cold waters of Lohit. Maybe it is more accessible now because my frame of reference is 1984. But I doubt it, as the place still does not find a mention as a popular pilgrim ‘four day five nights’. In-fact whenever I mention the place, I immediately get the “what on earth was Parashuram doing there”. But then come to think of it, what on earth was any of our Gods and Goddesses doing in any of those unreachable places that dot our pilgrim landscape.

I have a theory, and would like honest opinion. Its these places of worship that help make India. Or at the very least define our boundaries. From Dwarka to Jagannath Puri and from Rameshwaram and Kanyakumari to Haridwar, Amritsar and Vaishno Devi, millions of Indians travel across the great land mass to bow, touch, see and take a dip to be one with the creator. And I think this mass movement of souls not only defines religion, it personifies India. Taking it one step further, I think it helps mark territory. This sea of humanity on foot, trains, buses, is India and this India is as much at home in Haridwar as it is in Tirupati or Rameshwaram or Sabarimala.

Taking the same argument forward, I believe the reason Jammu still feels mainland is it’s the gateway to Vaishno Devi. And in those queues from Katra to the temple, you will find Indians from every state, caste, colour and bank balance. My bad, the one’s with means try and take the chopper and go for VIP darshans (like airport security, the path to Nirvana also has a Fast Track option). But VIPs apart, if Lord Rama had gone north instead of south, Srinagar might have been the setting of Bharat Milap or Sita Haran and not just our religious but our socio-political landscape would have been very different today.

The net state domestic product data released by the National Accounts Division of the CSO recently states that 7 out of 8 North Eastern states in India lag the national average in terms of per capita income. Only Mizoram has incomes above the national average. Moreover except Sikkim, for all the other states the delta between their incomes and the average national income has increased in the last 15 years. This despite the fact that Mandarins in Delhi have spent crores in the name of development. Perfect recipe for disaster. And if this does not precipitate Chinese designs, what will.

The only solution is better amalgamation. And we all know it. We have known it all along. Its one of those obvious truths that stare you at the face and mock you to do something about it. The government has tried its best and having spent 12 years in the Northeast I know a Government solution will never work. The way to amalgamation is Parashuram Kund. Or rather multiple such Kunds. The moment millions of Indians start travelling to all corners of Northeast to kneel, bow, bathe, it will pave a path for the region’s prosperity and integrity. Nothing in India sells better than religion and I for one believe a polluted Brahmaputra is worth keeping the country together.

Today mainstream India is indifferent to Northeast. Tomorrow if that same area is home to a few pop Gods and Goddesses (have to be pop like Ganesha or Ma Vaishno or Balaji) we won’t have to worry about Cheeni in our Tea Gardens.