Colonial musings

My Old English landlady has a mobile phone gifted to her by somebody but does not know how to use it. So I can only call her on a landline although she has a mobile phone. She is pleasantly surprised when she calls me up on my mobile and I say ' Good evening Mrs. King ' even before she utters a word . She does not know about indicator phones yet .

She knows that you can transfer money through the ‘computer’ but cannot figure out how ?
As long as she finds a Credit entry on her passbook on the 15th of the month for my rent for the right amount she is happy .

Before being introduced to the world of direct debit I used to deposit a cheque into her bank account. I once deposited the rent on the 3rd of 4th of the month since I was going to be away on the 15th.

I got a call from her on the 17th asking if I was in some financial crisis and have not managed to deposit the rent. I ensured her that I did deposit the money and it is indeed debited from my account. She was not convinced but promised to check up. I called a little later with my bank statement and said that I can see a debit for the 4th of the month. She realized that she always checked her passbook for a CR entry on the 15th of every month and panicked when she did not see one for this one month . Had she been an Indian I would have given her a mouthful telling her that she was an illiterate, ignorant idiot incapable of logical thinking.

The colonial mindset that has been passed on to me by my grandparents who were in awe of the 'vellakaran' ( loosely translated as the 'white man' for the benefit of non tamil speaking readers ) tells me that since she is a white I must be polite.
They are a breed who are more disciplined, intelligent , well-read and all that which goes with those civilized people who ruled us .
After all they were the ones who introduced among other things English-medium education , Railways ,beaureaucracy and Cricket into India.

My grandfather lived in an agraharam in a small village called mangudi near Thanjavur. He was one of those farmers who took to green revolution passionately in the pre-Nehruvian era and was one of the early ones who experimented growing 'English' vegetables like tomatoes & cauliflower that were introduced by the englishman to the indian soil.

He did some of his schooling and college in Triplicane in chennai and it was then that he played cricket with englishmen in his youth . I think it was the ground opposite to the kannagi statue which no longer exists now. May be it was not there in his days too ...

While he was alive he would fondly narrate his expereinces about his interactions with the englishmen . It was certanly not an equal relationship .
The white and brown discirmination was evident in his narrations.
But he was so much in awe of the white man , that there was only a sense of reverence and looking up to them and not a tinge of 'oh... they were so racist'.

If I had not seen those scenes like the jalian walabagh massacre in movies like Gandhi , or Mohanlal being tortured in kalapani and or for that matter read text book lessons and wrot essays on Shaheed bhagat singh and purely went by my grandfathers first hand narrations there was certainly no reason for me to believe that the british were indeed a bunch of arrogant , rascist colonial rulers who plundered the wealth of india.

According to him if not for the British , India would not have seen so much development.
He would talk about them with great regard and was frustrated till the end with the way today's politicians were ransacking the country.

Coming to think of it jalianwalabagh is'nt as gory an event as the bagalpur blinding incident or the behmai incident ( i am referring to the one in Bandit queen) ain't it ...

Except for Massey Sahib ( starring Raghubir Yadav) no other film that I can remember ever showed the other side of Englishman. May be it was a politically incorrect thing to show to the next generation of Indian audience after all that hype of India's struggle for Independence.

I Wish I gathered more facts about the benevolent colonial rulers from my grandfather before he died. He was such a wealth of information.

When I left india, my old grandmother wished me well and told me that the people here are from a 'very high breed' - whatever that signified and as though she knew them well.

Such is our reverence for the fair skinned.
No wonder fair and lovely sells so well.