Chez Moi

I have been living outside India for five years now and I haven’t forgotten the advice one of my close friends, who was living in America, gave me. She said ‘the NRIs are the worst kind of hybrid people you can bump into – and bump into them, you will. They have shed all the good qualities of our culture and have grabbed hold of the not so nice ones of the Western culture. The resultant mix isn’t a pretty sight.’

I thought this was just my ole cynical mate being her usual, you know, cynical self. But in these five years, I have come across some people who have really made me think about those comments made by my friend. From what I have seen, these beauties can be slotted into the following categories:

The Queen Bees: these are the women (ladies?) that have been settled in the foreign country for at least a year more than the earliest emigrant. They tend to act quite hoity-toity to the newcomers and have an affected accent. Getting invitations to their parties would be quite hard.

The Gatherers: These are the women who make it a point to make new friends. It is almost like a mission – they’d rather have 1000 entries in their address book under ‘Acquaintance’ than one under ‘Friend’. What’s more, they shed old friends like old clothes – once a new face comes in, old ‘friends’ usually become stale to them.

The Uppity ones: These are the grand-dames. They will never talk to anyone unless they are addressed to first. Even if you literally walk into them on the streets, they will pretend not to have noticed you till the minute you say ‘hello’. Their offspring are usually reputed to emulate Abhimanyu – whatever the apple of your eye has done, theirs has done at least a year before.

The ulta-desis: These are the ekdum desi women. When they go home for the holidays, they preen about in jeans and talk with a false accent about Tesco and Sainsbury’s to the complete awe of the village. But when they land at Heathrow, out come the salwar kameezes and the tika bindis.

Apart from these, there are also the normal, seedha-saadha ones like Yours Truly, who doesn’t fit into any of these and has a grand time observing the antics of the various members of the above mentioned groups. ?

[This is not an attack on anyone out there – just a satirical look at some of the unfortunate beauties I have met so far in my life! Get out your bottle of Humour potion and take a hefty dose of it before you delve into the blog. ]