Jeaunsetalk

REPORT ON PROBABILITY ‘I’

The human memory is a funny thing, well, mine certainly is anyway…… For instance it’s amazing just how quickly my memory of what it’s like actually being in Mumbai fades. I have been away for just eight weeks and yet the culture shock is there upon my return, waiting to greet me at Chaatrapati Shivaji International Airport like some faithful old friend. Of course there are significant components of this culture shock that I am used to, the poverty, the dirt, the squalor, the chaos, the heat, the sheer size and density of the place, the smells, the sounds etc. These are all very familiar to me after years of traveling here and no longer create the ‘OMFG’ effect that they used to, however it is the culture itself that is always the source of renewed wonder and yes, exasperation. Its not until one actually starts to interact with India and Indians that the really profound differences show themselves. Whilst we may all be the same under the skin as individuals, when a group of these individuals get together and decide to become a culture then it seems to me that we can be as different as it is possible to imagine, and, time after time this catches me out. For a start there’s the language: On Saturday evening a bunch of Indian friends invited me to the ‘Golden Swan Country Club’ up in the hills of the Sanjay Ghandi National Park at Yeor for drinks. This place is what would be referred to in ‘Indian English’ as ‘swanky’ that is, it’s a very middle class sort of place where well-off families can go to escape the trials of the city, there’s tennis courts, an impressive one hole golf course, swimming pools, a boating lake, restaurants, bars, all set in beautifully manicured surroundings at half a dozen hundred feet above sea level surrounded by greenery encrusted mountains. We’ll ignore the fact that it’s actually dirty and decrepit with very much below par food (you can get better at virtually any road side stall and at one tenth the price). The first thing that strikes me on my arrival is that the language being spoken, seemingly at every table is English and not ‘Hinglish’ either but the full-on, home counties, received pronunciation, ‘queens’ version. Indeed, close your eyes and you could be in any middle class, middle England establishment back home, perhaps the only difference being the rather superior range of vocabulary utilised by the Indians…..
‘Why’ I asked my friends, ‘does everybody speak English?’ ‘Because English is the aspirational language.’ was the unanimous reply (i.e.: it’s a class thing). Thing is, these people are fiercely nationalistic and in many respects strive to put as much distance between themselves as modern Indians and the English as possible, ridiculing for example the poor Sri Lankans with their red post boxes and English style breakfasts for being unable to break the ties with the erstwhile oppressors! For me of course, being exceptionally lazy when it comes to language skills, its great, or at least it seems so on the surface, however, Indian English, even when the vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation is so flawless, is not the same as the English I speak, there’s something in the semiotics or in the way the brain compiles the higher level language from its neuron firing based machine code that means that real communication between an Indian and an English person is fraught with difficulty that only a certain amount of experience can detect, let alone overcome, and even then not one hundred percent. I see it all the time in business, an English person comes here, meets an Indian and they have a business discussion, it goes well and various decisions are taken, the English person goes home and then both parties are surprised to find that things are not working our quite how they envisaged, it can and has caused significant problems to my knowledge and yet this communication gap is almost never discussed, nor even for the most part recognized! I’m really not sure that this can ever be fully overcome except perhaps by somebody bought up equally in India and in England.
Still, one gets by and learns to be very careful in the interpretation of what people are saying. Clearly this presents few problems when going about the daily administrative routine, if I ask for an apple say, or for a report on X issued last Tuesday then that, for the most part, is exactly what I will get, however, if I ask what a person thinks about an issue or for the rationale behind, say, a particular business strategy then I really have to take care, and when it comes to emotional issues then, well, it may as well be a completely different language. I have been told for example, after a few minutes chat with somebody that I am ( with much smiling and wagging of the head) their ‘very good friend’.
Maybe it’s me but after a lot of consideration I have come to the conclusion that Indians are essentially a pretty insecure lot, maybe it’s because of history or maybe it’s because they are surrounded by reminders of how things could be if they put a foot wrong. This insecurity is quite well disguised however, by a thick insulating layer of behaviors. These can easily be mistaken for hypocrisies, the fake politenesses, the pretend concerns for others or for the sanctity of life for example. Now I am fully aware that this is a condition that afflicts many of us (I know it does me) but here in India I find that it is somehow different both qualitatively and quantitatively from the rest of the world and again it can easily lead to difficulties with deep and or subtle forms of communication, Indians have fake sincerity down to a tee and they don’t just fool foreigners with it, they routinely fool each other! Now I am aware that this sort of diatribe can easily become or be mistaken for ‘Native Bashing’ and that is absolutely not my agenda; firstly its just too easy and secondly I am not asserting the superiority of one way of doing things over another but am simply exploring the roots of certain of the daily frustrations facing an English person living in India.
The above points coalesce nicely around the media: I love reading the newspapers here and yet they raise my metaphorical blood pressure alarmingly! The standard of journalistic integrity (ignoring the obvious oxymoron) is perhaps lower than anywhere else I have ever been, the ill disguised biases, the class/caste issues, the political agendas the poor or non existent research, the credulity stretching sensationalism, the fawning love of celebrity . The point here is that the Indians who read these newspapers are not blind to these things but they simply don’t see them as issues…. So what if the newspaper exaggerates or twists the truth? And yes, I recognize the fact that newspapers all over the world do all of the above but believe me, after reading The Times of India for example, the Daily Sport or that tower of impartiality, the dear old Daily Mail seem like paragons of fine journalism!
And of course, under that thin film of courtesy and mildness there simmers a dark heart of brutality, something else that the traveler is best aware of lest it should catch them unawares.
So that’s got that off my chest, I am now looking at a couple of months of heat and rain, a fantastic time for amphibians and insects and so am looking forwards to getting out into the Jungle as soon as I possibly can, this weekend hopefully……….

More as it happens