Between the Saheb and the Indian soul

The issues of belonging and identity shadow most Indians who live abroad, writes Pavan K Varma in Hyde Park Corner.

Many years ago, when I was posted in New York, I was at dinner at the luxurious home of a very successful Indian. He had lived in New York for over 40 years, made a lot of money, and had several cars and homes. For his children and grandchildren the United States was home. After dinner, as we sat on his patio sipping coffee, I spoke admiringly of the success he had made of his life, from the days when he had arrived as a near penniless student to now when he had everything a man could hope for. My host graciously acknowledged the praise, but suddenly turned contemplative. 'I am grateful to God for what he has given me', he said. 'It is beyond my wildest dreams. But, Pavan ji, . When the time comes to die, I want to be in India.'

I was reminded of this when last week I was in Birmingham to participate in an interaction with Susham Bedi, the well known Hindi writer based in New York. One of Susham's short stories' is about a similar theme: a successful Indian, who has lived most of his life in the USA, dies suddenly; his American wife, who knows her husband to be rational and progressive and more American than Indian, decides that his last rites could take place in a simple ceremony in Church; she feels that although her husband was by birth a Hindu, this is how he would have liked it. But as the ceremony proceeds, suddenly a childhood friend of her husband, like him a Hindu and long term resident of America, begins to feel that something is fundamentally wrong. He is convinced that, notwithstanding the long years in America, this is not how his friend would have liked his antim sanskar to be done.

I think the issues of belonging and identity shadow most Indians who live abroad, even those for whom there is really no other home than that of their adopted country. Many of them unconsciously live in a never-ending twilight zone: they cannot fully belong to their adopted country, nor can they go back to their country of origin. First generation settlers cling on tenaciously to the rituals and symbols of the motherland. Sometimes they are caught in a time warp, preserving every detail of the cultural past even when those 'back home' have moved on. With the passing of time, especially with subsequent generations, some of the inherited cultural baggage is jettisoned. But the issue of identity never really goes away: Who am I? Where do I belong? What is really home?

Indians are good at adapting to foreign cultures. A survey in the USA revealed that as an ethnic group Indians pick up an American accent the fastest. But I wonder if we are as good in assimilating with other cultures. Many Indians living abroad become adept in living in two cultural zones: one for the outside world, where the emphasis is on acquiring the 'correct' attributes in terms of dress and language and accent; and an inner world, where the attempt is to keep that outside world at bay. There must be, I sometimes think, a considerable degree of hidden fatigue in this constant attempt both to emulate and to deny.

But the synthesis that takes place when two different cultures meet can sometimes have the most delightful manifestations. After that evening with Susham Bedi in Birmingham, the next day a group of Hindi writers and poets met for a picnic kavi sammelan at Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare's spirit hovered benignly over the poets along the banks of the Avon, who sang and read poetry he could never understand. The weather-the occasional sunshine from an overcast sky-was typically English; the food-puris and subji-was quintessentially Indian. I think everybody had a rather good time.

(A Stephenian, Pavan Kumar Varma is a senior Indian diplomat and presently Minister of Culture and Director of the Nehru Centre in London. Author of several widely acclaimed books likeGhalib: the Man, the Times and the recently released Being Indian, he will be writing the column Hyde Park Corner, exclusively for HindustanTimes.com)