A Tale of Two NRIs

Farzana,

Although I`m an NRI myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the article and give credit to the opinion you are trying to express. I was pretty shocked to read some of the highly antagonistic comments here, especially #29. That`s just crass and low.. not the sort of opinion you ought to take seriously. I`d like to make a few points though:

1. On my own trips back home to India, I have encountered several NRIs who behave in the manner you have described and I understand how despicable their behaviour can sometimes be. Some of them develop some sort of superiority complex as soon as they land on home soil and have a burning need to show off their newfound wealth to their fellow citizens who haven`t had such good fortune. However, please let me stress in the strongest words possible, that MOST NRIs aren`t like that at all. In my own experience, having mingled with NRIs in the Middle East, the UK and the US, most of us wear our Indian badges proudly and haven`t been so seduced by the comforts foreign currency can bring to forget our homeland. Some of us are more Indian than the Indians living in India and our children are often brought up with more Indian values inculcated in them than children in India because there`s a fear among their parents that the traditions and culture that is so undeniably their legacy, may fizz out. I`m not saying we`re ``Super Brahmins`` but instead that some of us are unfairly criticised. As for the much maligned term ``NRI,`` don`t forget that for some of us it stands for ``Never Relinquished India``

2. Concerning the profiles of Sabeer Bhatia & Vijay Mallya, I don`t understand why readers get so riled up when confronted with people who haven`t done anything for their country at all while lining their pockets with money. You`re right Farzana, and I agree with you entirely on this one. Their problem is not that they are NRIs, but rather that they are selfish. Whoever it was who commented by saying that, ``Poverty has tormented us enough, now let us be tormented by stories of wealth,`` or words to that effect should go get his mouth washed and his brains checked. My friend, don`t be seduced by the personal success stories of a handful. The truth is that around 50% of our country is still reeling under immense poverty and 70% are still struggling to eke out a living in our villages and whose voices aren`t heard as loudly as ours while we Urbanites are oblivious to all this and revel in our, ``shining metropolises.`` I think Farzana has been very justified in her criticism of these two gentlemen. Their crime isn`t just that of wealth, but rather of talking a lot of nonsense. Mallya is in parliament not because he cares two hoots about Karnataka but rather, for political networking. He probably entertains dreams of Chief Ministership or Prime Ministership as well perhaps. Sabeer Bhatia is basically a playboy. That`s fine, they chose their lives. Why glorify them though? What have they done that`s so great? This isn`t Glorify the common man who goes to hell and back every day. Farzana`s article isn`t a grudge against wealth at all. Far from it. It`s an expose of two people who are deified unnecessarily. India isn`t prosperous cities and an upwardly-mobile middle class, what Gandhi said all those years ago still rings true today: India still lives in its villages.

Ref jang #105

[I`d rather attend a Daler Mehndi concert.]

I understand Daler Mehndi was actually an NRI who, disillusioned with driving cabs in LA, returned to India and made it big. Hopefully, this is one NRI prodigal son who meets with everyone`s approval!

FV

You have it too easy. Take pity on us NRIs, you dont know what we NRIs have to put-up with..our fellow Nuvou-Artist NRIs. I mean you dont have to sit-thru stupid plays staged by NRIS with sappy titles like ``Forzen Lanes`` about their life experiences (how they came to the west and dealt with the new country etc.). These are a bunch of folks who are releasing their creative juices on their unsuspecting neighbors...lord have mercy. The only palatable things in these staging are the Samosas served in intermission..less soggy.

I`d rather attend a Daler Mehndi concert.

Harimou

Why Moorthy is selling bonded labor, here is what real innovative companies are doing..(Huawei is even competing with Cisco). Their is not even ONE company from 11 B $ IT india which sells a globally competitive products yet .. why bother if you can export Raghu and Srini and make $10 per man per hour easy?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=a53pe_sL1vEA&refer=asia

The Shenzhen-based company, which has helped build phone networks in Pakistan, India, Russia and Romania, won a $100 million contract in May to supply handsets to Brazil`s largest mobile service provider. It also won business from Telecom Egypt to provide communications and data services to the country`s code- division-multiple access network.

FV`s losing it...barely made it to 100 posts....on to another paki site to find sympathizers and friends for her....

harimou:

``Y2K work was the equivalent of cleaning up the mess left behind by sloppy users of toilets, except that the smell of bad code is metaphorical (this code stinks!) rather than physically palpable, but nevertheless real.``

Superb!

FV-ji wrote

[His (Sabeer`s) was a triumph of imagination over intelligence. But why is he at such a young age so static, while a Narayan Murthy is still innovating?]

Exactly what is Narayana Murthy`s innovation? He, like 2000 other Indian companies, is selling warm bodies to do a job that the locals just won`t do or won`t do at the current low price dictated by the market.

Some 150 years ago, the same thing was being done: Britain was importing agricultural labor into Fiji, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaya and the Caribbean from India. Even now, Indians voluntarily go to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai, etc., to work as plumbers, construction labor, toilet cleaners, etc. Y2K work was the equivalent of cleaning up the mess left behind by sloppy users of toilets, except that the smell of bad code is metaphorical (this code stinks!) rather than physically palpable, but nevertheless real.

No, Farzana, because he`s only complaining about working class British Punjabis and those 2 particular people. Which in effect, leaves me unscathed...

Farzana,

Yes you are right to ``have a problem`` with these NRIs. After all they are ``feeble knowledged``. Ofcourse that must be true as anyone with half a brain knows that the entirety of scholarships in the developed world are ``Merit`` based. ``Need`` based funding (even merely requesting need or suggesting need) will automatically eliminate their chances of gaining admission as foreign students are required to be able to support themselves. Plus they (NRI students) must be stupid as most academicians must know (as they are smart) that most people who share a room with 15 others in a slum are usually not educated. If they are they will qualify for the merit based scholarships.

Yeah ignore the NRIs who only complain but do little else to help their country and instead point fingers at you.

``A man will always hate another man who tells the same lies he does`` (anonymous) and they usually call each other ``traitors``.

Satire

Hi nb:

Thanks for your first ever cut-paste in my honour! But if you agree with this person, then why have problems with me? Because he lives aadha time London mein??

Anyway, it was an enjoyable read.

ana #97

Thank you for addressing the poem to us hard-working NRIs. No amount of phoney criticism from rich Indians enjoying undeserved sine-cure will get us down.

:) :)

for some very strange reason, this poem by an imperialist, who also had the misfortune of writing ``the white man`s burden`` seems rather apropos here. perhaps some of you can read and either disagree, or think of what is apropos and why:

If

(Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don`t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don`t give way to hating,
And yet don`t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you`ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build `em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ``Hold on!``

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds` worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that`s in it,
And--which is more--you`ll be a Man, my son!

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Farzana,
In your honour, my first-ever cut and paste on chowk, from the Indian Express. I have to agree with the man..


The cartoon landscape of the Non-Resident Indian


There are two types of NRIs: the vulgar and the embarrassing


AMRIT DHILLON


Posted online: Saturday, December 04, 2004 at 0000 hours IST



Working class NRIs from the UK used to be the most embarrassing. With their anoraks, shiny clothes and proletarian English accents overlaid with Phagwara trills, they visit India and moan. They moan about the roads, the cheating, the corruption, and the dirt without the slightest irony or self-awareness. Italian or French expatriates do not go home and launch into diatribes about the awfulness of their home country.

If British Indians do it, it is assert their ‘superiority’ over the poor benighted natives who have no choice but to live here. Having slagged off India, they go back to their poky little semis in Southall or Birmingham where Guru Nanak and Krishna calendars hang on the walls and plastic doilies cover the telly. But two men have made me change my mind about which category of NRI from England is worse.



With the plebs, there is at least an ‘honest’ sort of stupidity about them. It is rich NRIs who are far more embarrassing. Last week, two rich Indians from the UK visited India. The first was Lord Lall, a self-made millionaire who came to launch an excruciating book he has written, Rich Man, Happy Man on how he made his money.

The prose is lyrical and vulgar: lyrical in self-praise and vulgar in the boastful enumeration of material possessions. But people like Lord Lall, let’s be honest, have absolutely no idea how dreadful they appear. He is simply unrefined. There is nothing sneaky or devious going on here - the man just wants to show his fortune off to Indians and is going about it in a crude way.

The most disagreeable species of NRI are people like Raj Loomba from the UK. He came to flaunt his wealth and connections last week. That’s coarse, of course, but manageable; too much refinement all the time can be a bit of bore too. But what is objectionable is Loomba using poor Indian widows for his own self-aggrandisement.

Mr Loomba runs a UK-based charity for poor Indian widows. He raises money to help educate their children. He swaggered around Delhi like a man whose charitable works were the wonder of the world. In fact, his Trust - the Shrimati Pushpawati Loomba Memorial Trust - has educated only 1,100 children over seven years. Before the charity dinner in the capital last Saturday, the Trust had raised between 800-900,000 pounds. It has spent only 300,000 pounds. The rest is in a corpus fund. Look at it any which way, 1,100 children over seven years is a seriously paltry figure.

Loomba has managed to persuade Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to be president of his Trust and Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson to be a patron. Along with around 30 peers, MPs and baronesses - Loomba managed to get Blair and Branson to come to India to promote the Trust in India and raise funds here.

A look at the Trust website is illuminating. On every page, he describes himself as ‘The Great Philanthropist.’ Photographs abound of Loomba and family posing with the great and good in British society. There is not much about widows and their children. It was the same during his visit. The ostensible objects of his noble impulses were invisible during Loomba’s splashy entre into Delhi society.

At a press conference held at FICCI, the object of the exercise was to congratulate Loomba on his compassion. This exercise in self-glorification went on for an hour and half. Why oh why do so many Indians in the UK remain impervious to the best things about the British? The humour? The self-deprecation? The self-mockery?

The press conference ended with no questions allowed. Loomba took his British worthies upstairs for a nice luncheon. Journalists were served lunch separately in a pantry - an act of outrageous segregation that Loomba would never have dared to do in London.

At a photo-opportunity for Blair and Branson at Loomba’s Prithviraj Road apartment, about a dozen widows and their children were bussed in. The group gathered on the balcony. Loomba’s daughter and son squeezed themselves into the frame. Yet another picture with Cherie for the family album.

‘‘Can you get the photographers to take a wide angle picture to get me and my brother in?’’ the daughter asked the Trust PR agent from London who was choreographing the event. She paid no attention to the widows or children. They were props. When the photo-op was over, the widows were ushered out of the flat onto the stairwell.

As the widows waited, Loomba’s English dignitaries began to arrive for lunch with his wife Veena. Five minutes later, the widows left the flat, without being given lunch. It was 1.30 pm. It was their big day out. They were dressed in their best saris and shawls. It was an occasion to be given a treat and be fussed over by The Great Philanthropist. But he had no further use for them now that the photo-op was over.

It would be impudent to impugn his motives or to suggest that the Trust is a vehicle for Loomba’s self-seeking. If we started digging into the motives of every good act, who among us would escape a whipping? As long as people are helped, motives don’t matter. But his lack of personal interest in the widows was striking.

If Loomba had bothered to observe the widows who came to his home, he would have seen a decency and gentleness that is humbling. Wealthy NRIs could learn a thing or two from ordinary Indians if they weren’t so busy preening themselves. Asked why they hadn’t been given lunch, one young widow looked down shyly: ‘‘It doesn’t matter, we had breakfast before coming and we’ll go and have lunch at home’.

Now, that Mr Loomba, is dignity.


The writer is a freelance journalist based in Delhi and London

For non-mumbaiyas (and some others who may be limited in their mindset):

There are certain parts of Juhu that are plush and some others that are not (we do visit those too). And tickets at Prithvi theatre for plays on weekdays cost 50-80 bucks and the platform performances are free (commies can do things standing up, you know).

As for Chhabildas, the plush commies would sit on the floor and watch special screenings of Anand Patwardhan`s films...incidentally when a friend (well-respected, I might add) asked the said Mr. AP to please lend him a copy of one of his films (as it was impossible to find) he was told, ``I am not a video library``. So, there is nothing superior or inferior about Chhabildas or Prithvi types.

And heard about Karnataka Sangh at Matunga? Satyadev Dubey staged most of his Marathi plays there.

But times have changed...most of these people want to reach not just Prithvi but NCPA (tkt prices ranging from Rs. 200-500 minimum).

No one is wearing tinted glasses...we see and accept the change and talk about it. Froma distance it is easy to wallow in skewed nostalgia and misinterpretation.

Ralph, jang. . .

you guys don`t have to convince me about NRI`s not all being right-winger nuts. i am already well-aware of that. and i appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me.

ralph, believing in the power and portent of words as i do, it is still disturbing to me to read something someone would like to see happen that has already happened to millions of people because of the power of a working-class person`s manipulation of history and his people. ``rhetoric notwithstanding.`` this is not to say that you are being manipulative (you, sri, jang), i just wanted to express my concern about the language used and its connotations.

you`re not such tough shells to crack afterall, are you? :)

#91 HP

heh heh.. are you worried about your urologist being sri (he mentioned something about living in SC)?

while i have little sympathy for commies (i have some for some their causes), what i was complimenting was sri`s clever post in which he brought in ``grinding poverty``, luv this type of rhetoric generally used by ..