The slogan caught my eye. “Remember what life was like, in India, before 1991?” boldly printed on an envelope from one of those ubiquitous mutual funds. That’s one thing that wasn’t there, or not so prominently. People put their savings into fixed deposits. The returns were not dazzling but principal was safe. Mostly. I can think of only a few companies — including a tea giant fallen into dishonest hands — that defaulted on deposits.
The world was less glamorous with fewer big scams. Cricket was sport, not speculation. Hinduism was religion, not politics. Recorded telephone operators’ voices didn’t sound as if they belonged to Hindi-speaking young women trying desperately hard to pretend they were Americans trying desperately hard to speak Hindi. Their information was not wildly off the mark. I called the mobile in my pocket from my land line the other day and was told it was engaged. I called the land line number from the mobile and the same affected Hindi-American-Hindi lass sweetly said the number didn’t exist.
People wrote letters instead of tweeting. They chatted with each other, not into machines. Indian women wore saris, not The Red Sari. Actresses hadn’t crossed the gender barrier. Bollywood didn’t pretend to be Hollywood. Bollywood stars didn’t rush to Cannes since there were no awards to collect. There are still no awards but they go to spend all that cash and flaunt their wardrobes. “Topless” wasn’t a fashion option. Newspapers served news.
The writing on the wall demands a wall. Similarly, highway authority officials can’t commit highway robbery unless the Japanese pay for thousands of kilometres of highways. Indian Airlines (IA) was frequently late but served a meal for which passengers paid in the ticket. Private airlines charge as much but for smart-alecky sales staff pushing tasteless sandwiches and doughy pakoras at exorbitant prices. Every so often, IA transforms itself into Air India. How can you trust a carrier that doesn’t know its own name?
We had forgotten Tabasco and were quite content with Capsico. I was reconciled to life without Marmite. Even import substitution couldn’t produce sharksfin. Now, I pick up a familiar packet of biscuits in a supermarket and am startled when the cashier demands four times the usual price. The packet is exactly as it always was but I discover it was packaged in Bangkok. There’s no way of knowing it wasn’t packaged in Bareilly like those India-made cigarettes that claimed Sikkimese provenance to avoid tax.
As I swelter in the car at a jammed intersection, hawkers thrust long streamers of packed masala into my face. The popularity of these packets just shows that aam aadmi and his habits now shape the lives and customs of his betters. That’s true democracy. The punnets of “strobri” also hawked from car to car are more certainly new. Pre-1991, our fruits were mango, orange, guava, papaya, pomelo and lichi. Where are the strawberries from I ask, but sensing I am no buyer, the man whizzes off chanting, “Strobristrobristrobri …”, his punnets stuffed with leaves under the first deceptive layer.
Addicted to fruit in all its manifestations, I bought my wife a present — a juicer for my breakfast — in Singapore last week. Everyone wondered why I also bought sheets of white paper, rolls of string and sticky tape, and spent an hour disguising the juicer box. I have known Customs pounce on a single pin I had forgotten to remove from a folded shirt I had bought in London and exclaim with greedy triumph, “New!” Even my battered electric shaver, bought in Manchester in the fifties when I sold my first newspaper article, was religiously entered in my passport every time I went abroad.
Indian friends assured me the juicer’s price was well below the permitted allowance and that, in any case, all luggage was x-rayed before delivery. But I was not to be dissuaded. I didn’t want it to attract attention. Imagine my chagrin at Chennai airport when passengers strode through the Green Channel, bold as brass, holding aloft like trophies their flat screen TVs or computers in their original boxes.
I wrote in the seventies and eighties that nuclear bombs, missions to the Moon and vehicles in space were for India, not Indians. Now, the expected 8.5 per cent growth is as much for India as for Indians … or for some Indians until Manmohan Singh redeems his promise of a “new deal for rural India” and extends it also to include the neglected urban poor. They, too, have votes.
