Chatting with Bangladeshi boys in Florence's San Lorenzo market brings home to me a vital difference between working-class and white-collar immigrants. There's no pretence about Rahim and Fazlul from Noakhali who sell leather bags. Chubby Mizanur is from Chandpur. "He knows only fishing," they laugh. "That's all he did until he came here! He lived in his boat and caught and sold ilish. What he couldn't sell, he ate." And all the Bangladeshis laugh uproariously.
Middle-class immigrants are seldom as candid, certainly not town-bred Indians. Nirad C Chaudhuri carried posturing to an extreme by vehemently denying being an immigrant, even when living in Oxford on the charity of the British welfare state. He was a guest, he maintained; he had been invited to live in Britain. Who by, readers were never told. The Unknown Indian wasn't alone in pretending. Silicon Valley engineers, New York bankers, Washington think tank pundits, and academicians at British universities spin out unbelievable tales to explain leaving India. Unlike the Bangladeshis in Italy, not one middle-class overseas Indian is honest enough to admit he went abroad for the money.
The young room-service waiter in a hotel in London's Russell Square where I was once put up told me in the early 1990s that his father was in the Indian Civil Service. His family owned a chain of hotels in Delhi and Chandigarh and he had come on a short familiarisation course. Several years later he was still working at the same hotel, older, easier and speaking with a London twang.
Class seems to make a difference. My wife and I were sitting at a cafe in Siena's central square, Il Campo, the other evening when a shabby older man selling some cheap illuminated child's toy approached us. He wanted to talk, not sell. He was a Pakistani from Rawalpindi and had lived in Italy for 19 years. His wife and younger children - the eldest son was with him - were still in Pakistan. He visited them every year. He drove a truck by day and sold toys by night. Could he serve us in any way? I sensed a certain loneliness in the man, a yearning for company he could relate to.
The Bangladeshis were equally hospitable. Rahim pressed a daud - the Bengali Muslim word for invitation - for dinner. Fazlul offered the chanachur they were spooning out of paper packets. They earned little as yet. Their lives were poised on a razor's edge of uncertainty. But they were bursting with hope, courage and ebullience. They had taken huge risks in their determination to make money and help their people back home. "There are more than two lakhs of us in Italy," said a postcard seller outside Vatican City State. "We all help each other!"
And others too. Wherever we were in Italy, we needed only to approach someone who looked Bangladeshi to be overwhelmed with the generosity of which only the poor are capable. A man in Rome flagged down a taxi and negotiated the charge for us. Another advised us in Florence to buy bus tickets at tobacconists' where it cost 70 cents less. A youth behind a counter in San Gimignano taught me how to take photographs with my new smartphone. Many went out of their way to show us the way. They asked penetrating questions about "Kolikata" and regretted so many Hindus had left Bangladesh. "They were afraid," Rahim explained, "but our present government looks after everyone irrespective of religion."
Bangladeshis started coming to Italy in the 1980s and now comprise the largest overseas community outside Britain. Italians are kind. Entry controls are lax. I was told in Venice the police try to avoid illegals. When contact becomes unavoidable, the most the police do is seize their stock in trade - illuminated toys such as the Pakistani sells in Siena - and let the men off with a warning. Periodic mass drives legalise migrants. Over a million have been absorbed under Italy's quota system since 1986. The likes of Rahim, Fazlul and Mizanur sent back nearly a billion dollars to Bangladesh between 2000 and 2010.
Mizanur was only 17 when he arrived. Taking him under the wing of its children's quota, the Italian government sent him to school for two years. He is now on the way to citizenship but remains the cheerful lad from Chandpur. I can't imagine any of these Bangladeshis ever affecting NRI airs, leave alone aspiring to become a Bobby Jindal. That's for middle-class Indians.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
