Sunanda K Datta Ray: A tale of two countries

WHERE MONEY TALKS

The elderly English couple spoke lovingly of their half-Sikh grandson. "Is it an Indian son-in-law or daughter-in-law that you have?"

I asked, and they replied, "Neither." The new twist to an older tale is that their daughter had an ethnic Indian "partner" for some years but the couple had separated.

The existing British problem "" if you call it such, which few do in these modern times "" is birth out of wedlock. The newer dimension is acknowledged extra-marital romance across race lines. No doubt we shall soon also hear of teenage pregnancies among South Asian girls, and of teenage South Asian boys becoming fathers.

The latter may already be happening in Brick Lane, Southall, Leicester and other immigrant areas that naturally follow the natives. But they lie beyond my limited ken.

Certainly, no whisper of such excitement rustles the walnuts as I write this on a terrace overlooking a tangled mass of dense vegetation covering a gorge. The clicking sound is of a golden oriole; a pair of blue tits peck among the parapet stones.

This is the Dordogne department of France rising gently amidst oak and poplar towards the Pyrenees and Spain. My wife apart, the only Indian within sight or sound is a Bengali graphic designer who lived in England for nearly half a century and has retired to an old stone farmhouse that he and his English wife converted into a charming cottage covered with vine and honeysuckle.

But though they harmoniously straddle two cultures, Trilokesh and Margaret are part of the British exodus that has brought life to the serenity of the Dordognes.

"You must be going to British or British Indian friends," France's ambassador in Singapore had said before we came to this cluster of 49 hamlets grouped as a village called Campagnac les Quercy.

A century ago Campagnac had nearly 900 people; now they number less than 300. With manual farming in decline, the area was languishing until this second (the first was in the Middle Ages) English invasion. The Brits bought abandoned farms to settle down in or for holidays in an attractive sylvan setting where everything cost so much less.

Our visitor's calm acceptance of his grandson brought to mind a cartoon in the New Statesman in the middle fifties. It showed a teddy boy and an enormously pregnant teddy girl sitting sulkily, back to back. "I don't care if it's mine," says the boy, "but I ain't marryin' no bird wot ain't a virgin."

Not since the Prince of Wales became engaged to Lady Diana Spencer has that been a factor in matrimony. When a newspaper carried out a survey of virginity among teenagers in a village in the south of England, a 15-year-old boy asked, "What's celibate?"

Today's Oxford undergraduate is unlikely to ask another, as in Stephen Spender's novel, The Temple, "Are you vergers?" Nor will the other boy blush with embarrassment when he realises that verger is slang for virgin. Britain reportedly has Europe's highest rate of teenage pregnancies.

With free sex comes a casual approach to what was once called holy wedlock. It was the talk of Manchester when I was studying there that a couple in the slum where the university had an extension project were waiting for their illegitimate (a taboo word nowadays) daughter to be old enough to be a bridesmaid.

Now, a well-known foreign correspondent tells me he is quite satisfied that his child's birth certificate records him as father. Another British journalist was happy to attend his son's church wedding to the girl with whom he has lived for several years and by whom he has two children.

The church condones such unions. The neutral word 'partner' not only takes the sting out of a previously irregular relationship but guarantees gender equality as well as Gay Pride.

Clearly, Mary Whitehouse, self-appointed guardian of British morals in the eighties, left little impact. Neither will the American group Silver Ring Thing, currently touring Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast to promote chastity before marriage, arguing that abstinence alone can prevent unwanted pregnancies and control 30 sexually transmitted diseases.

The Surrey village where the mission started could not produce a single teenage virgin. Nor did anyone between the ages of 14 and 19 know of a boy or girl who was.

Expectedly, George W. Bush admires the group which was founded in 1995 in Pittsburgh, Ohio, by a man who calls today's teenagers the "cesspool generation."

The Bush administration has given it $1.1 million, and 20,000 American teenagers have bought the $12 silver ring symbolising the vow of chastity before marriage. Silver Ring Thing's roadshow pounds out Christian rap music, including a track called "Oh No, Don't Give It Away."

Such situations may be common in Paris. But the deadly seriousness with which elderly couples danced to accordion music at last night's village fete was a reminder that all those foreigners' jokes notwithstanding, the French, especially in the provinces, are a prosaic lot.

They are far more open than the British and have taken Trilokesh to their heart, but they are also very proper. That may be why "bourgeois" has no exact English equivalent.

Amidst Campagnac's innocent ebullience "" music, a bonfire that in some way commemorated Joan of Arc, white wine and various forms of doughnut "" I suddenly realised that hardly any of the British who have revived the Dordognes was present. Perhaps because of their Hundred Years War with England, the French have learnt to keep a secret.