Twilight Fairy

Bombay apocalypse?

Bombay seems to have been hit really bad due to the rains, fire, landslides and what not. It’s a wonder how the same elements – water, fire, earth – give us life and can engulf us at the same time. Hope the city recovers fast. With no TV/radio access (to Indian news), all I have here, is the internet for updates. There are some heart wrenching tales out there. Frantic people have used rediff’s space for help in getting in touch with their friends/family or pouring out their woes against the city’s infrastructure. With animals dying because they were still tied when their owners fled, to seeing bloated carcasses, Bombay is full of tales of children stuck in their schools, employees stuck in their offices or on the streets and frantic parents/relatives worrying themselves sick. Thankfully my sister was already in Delhi, on an impulse visit from Bombay when all this happened.

My own experience with some torrential rains in Delhi, is a “walk in the park“, compared to what an average bombayite is going through.

I wanted to write since a long time about the TV serial Star Trek, which I associate with fond memories of childhood. Oh! How I admired Captain Kirk :p. He looked like such a dream… My aunt even made a fool out of me by telling me that he came to her office one day and the next day I blabbered it at school (I was in the I or II std) and eventually realised one of my first lessons in life. But this isn’t about childhood innocence. This isn’t even about those childhood memories of TV/sci-fi fascination which have been revived because I watch that same series of Star Trek here in Finland, now. This is about Scotty, the chief engineer aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, who died Wednesday morning at his home in Redmond, Washington, at the age of 85, the cause being pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease. In my mind he’s still the same young Scotty, I saw just a few hours ago on TV, dutifully beaming Capt. Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Chekov and the rest, back to the Enterprise.


With his sad demise, ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ has a new meaning now.

Now it’s confirmed. I just have to step in at the international airport and out of my country, and I cease to look like an Indian anymore. While in India, people get surprised to learn that neither am I a Kashmiri nor am I a sardarni. I am not a mallu either. I get compared with many ‘personalities’ of ranging ethnicities. Many Indian ones of course, but some others include Justin Shapiro, Kate Winslet (Yes I know that person was probably blind) and Benazir Bhutto (that’s still closer home in terms of ethnicity).

One of my friends told me very long back that she met some Spanish female who looked and talked in exactly the same way that I did. In other words she was my lost twin. Anyway, I did not have to wonder for very long how on earth I looked Spanish. When I was in Roppongee (Japan) on one particular new year’s eve, I got accosted by a desi who was keen on wishing me a ‘happy new year’. Only when I spoke Hindi with some other friends of mine, did he realise that I wasn’t Spanish as he had thought but an Indian. And with that his license for trying to be fresh with me got revoked immediately. For some reason the moment an Indian (or is it all) guy happens to spot a non-desi female, he seems to think that he has suddenly procured a license for ogling or rather that the female wouldn’t mind an extra stare. I have seen that transformation in people around me too well to miss it. Not to forget my own experiences. The moment I reached Frankfurt airport this time, I literally got holes drilled in me because of the stares that I was getting from, guess who? Yes, Indian guys. I had left my colleagues somewhere else and probably there was little that could hint to me being an Indian. No salwaar/kameez and no bindis contribute to that I suppose. My guess is that being all by myself misled them more. I wanted to ask them ‘Bhaiyon kabhee koi ladki nahi dekhi ya phir mere sar par seeng hain?’ (Brothers have you never seen a female before or have I sprouted antlers?)

Fast forward to Finland. An Indian female in a grocery store asked me which label (in Finnish) was for which vegetable and I just told her my best guess. She was surprised that I didn’t know Finnish! When I confirmed her exclaimed-in-surprise doubt, she slowly and hesitatingly asked me whether I was from India (Ah! the sun finally shone). I told her that I am and that I thought it would be quite obvious at least to her since she was from the same place. She told me very matter of factly that I looked Russian. Another incident – I was commuting by a tram here in which an African female was creating quite a ruckus with her kids. Suddenly she directly looked at me and said something, which broke my concentration, which was till then on gods gift to these ppl (their hair). What she spoke was obviously gibberish to me as it wasn’t English. But I understood that she wanted me to help her with the pram when she alighted. After I helped her with it, I realised that my indianness was again lacking. Either she thought I was African like her or she thought I was a Finn like the rest of the junta. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Indian. All I have got to say is, shakal jaisi bhee ho phir bhee dil hai hindustani .