Ira Math­ur

One thing In­di­ans don't have is a sense of space. Women will stare right in­to your hand­bag with tun­nel eyes while the cus­toms of­fi­cer ex­am­ines the con­tents. I say women be­cause in all the huge gleam­ing air­ports of Del­hi, Bhopal, Bom­bay and Hy­der­abad, we've had to line up sep­a­rate­ly from the men and been frisked in a closed, cur­tained booth by fierce fe­male army of­fi­cers in army-green saris.Odd­ly, in­stead of cre­at­ing a sense of mod­esty, I sense some per­vert­ed tit­il­la­tion in this.

The ir­ri­ta­tion I felt melt­ed at the sight of the be­nign­ly smil­ing woman and ten of her rel­a­tives look­ing cu­ri­ous­ly at the elec­tron­ic cig­a­rette over which I was be­ing ques­tioned.Be­ing stared at is un­com­fort­able any­where. It's the worst in In­dia be­cause cu­rios­i­ty is naked, noth­ing like the dart­ing looks of the British or the stud­ied in­dif­fer­ence of us Tri­nis. In­di­ans get ex­tra po­lite with peo­ple who they feel don't be­long. They are not them­selves and be­come a cu­ri­ous ver­sion of what they think the West­ern world is–which at best is hi­lar­i­ous.

They of­fer hot dogs for break­fast when you want the South In­di­an dosa. They show you to cafes when you want a prop­er dha­ba. They point you to jeans when you want a sari. In­di­ans have a term for feel­ing at home. It's called "ap­na­pan," lit­er­al­ly mean­ing "among us."

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers