Russell Peters releases ‘Red, White and Brown’ In US

If Russell Peters isn’t a house hold name then it’s time for you to find a new household.  Peters is a Canadian born comedic superstar known all over the world.  His parents come from Mumbai and Calcutta, but here is a more accurate breakdown of his family. ‘”My family and I are Anglo-Indian,” Russell explains.  ‘Anglo-Indians are a community of Indians from India who mixed with the British when they occupied India.  Both of my parents are Anglo-Indian and their parents were Anglo-Indians and so on,’ says Peters.

Russell Peters is so huge in fact that according to russellpeters.com ‘During a recent tour of Dubai, Russell sold tickets at the rate of one ticket every two seconds crashing all the online sales outlets as soon as the tickets went on-sale.’  In April 2005 Russell Peters broke ground by becoming the first South Asian to headline and sell out at New Yorks Apollo Theatre.  And his accomplishments aren’t only state side.  In June of 2007 Russell Peters became the first comedian to sell out at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre.  At the Centre he performed for over 30,000 fans over the course of two nights.  And if that wasn’t enough for him in February 2008 during his ‘Homecoming’ tour Peters was able to pack Madison Square Garden.

This performance was recorded for the cable channel Showtime and it’s being released on DVD for the first time as ‘Russell Peters: Red, White and Brown.’  This DVD has been released in different parts of the world but it comes out in the US tomorrow. So will the US dig it as much as other fans have? During the DVD you’ll realize that Russell Peters will take a stab at everything with a pulse leaving nothing sacred.  Whether it’s West Indian music and how he feels that it’s too easy to write (and too happy) to the difference between New York Italians and Italians.  ‘Red, White and Brown’ is the follow to his hit DVD ‘Outsourced,’ which was filmed at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco.  Since it was released ‘Outsourced’ went on to go platinum 11 times in Canada, says russellpeters.com.

To justify his comedic success Russell Peters has been nominated for four Gemini Awards over the course of his career.  If ‘Red, White and Brown’ leaves you wanting more than you can catch him during The 20TH Anniversary Tour, which will go across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.  Go to russellpeters.com for tour dates.

Courtsey - http://www.desihits.com/blog/article/russell-peters-releases-red-white-and-brown-20090126

Update on Blog

Hi all,

Thanks for the support. Am temporarily busy with personal obligations, so will not be able to update the blog for the next 4 weeks. I apologize for the same.

See you all again in December. Thanks for the support and please do check back soon.

- Sean Auckland

Vanished Worlds – SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY

The Absolute Anglo-Indian By K.C. Sen, New Millennium, £9.95

This book’s interest lies in the era and society it evokes. K.C. Sen, Bhaiya or Kacy to intimates, was Brahmananda Keshub Chunder Sen’s great grandson on one side and the great-great-grandson of General Sir Edward Barnes, governor of Ceylon and India’s commander-in-chief, on the other. But he is out of joint in concluding that today’s “Absolute Anglo-Indian” will become tomorrow’s “Obsolete Anglo-Indian”. Tomorrow was yesterday, not just for Anglo-Indians but for the fast, fun-loving Anglo-Bengali world of which he writes.

Sen was not Anglo-Indian in the sense of being “of European descent in the male line”, which is the legal definition. As he says, with his extended family spread out in India, Britain, Australia, France, Canada, Myanmar, Switzerland and Pakistan, he could truly have been called a man of the world. But it’s clear that two distinct identities overlapped in his consciousness. His roots were in the archaic Ingabanga society of 19th-century Bengal. Anybody who was anybody in the Calcutta of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties was a relative. Overlaid on that was the Anglo-Indian culture of the Rangers Club, the Grail Club and the club of which he says that “if ever there was a place that separated the men from the boys, and no angels feared to tread, it was the good old Golden Slipper.” Sen managed it for a while, but the links went deeper. Older members of that milieu still remember his unorthodox wedding invitation, “Bridgette and I are going to be married at the Golden Slipper Club.”

His world straddled Calcutta, Darjeeling and London — or rather, small gilded niches in all three, venturing regularly to Colombo and Simla. Rakish Cooch Behar royals, male and female, also descendants of Keshub Sen, loomed large in this fin de siècle society to which World War II and the 300 Club lent zest.

Sen played many parts. He was oarsman, poet, war reporter behind the Burma front, songwriter, composer, guitarist, public relations officer, box-wallah, radio broadcaster and, above all, impressario. His Cavaliers was a popular band. He was frequently MC at the open-air Scherezade nightclub at the Oberoi Grand. It is no surprise that showbiz characters pop in and out of these pages — Duke Ellington, Ross Parker, Alfred Hitchcock and, perhaps in the same genre, Lord Mountbatten. It “was over a cup of tea on the verandah” of his flat that he provided Satyajit Ray with Devika Halder a.k.a. Vicky Redwood for Mahanagar. She was part of Bandwagon, Sen’s group. He says that the voice off-screen in Mahanagar was that of Devika, but the song was a ballad, Time Gave Me No Chance, that he had composed in his rowing days. Major Sharat Kumar Roy of the US army was an unusual wartime buddy and surely the only NRI to be commemorated by a mountain in Greenland: he discovered Mount Sharat.

The book is a treasure trove of such nuggets, though, sadly, many of the illustrations are almost illegible. But though Sen provides enjoyable glimpses, laced with humour, into a vanished world, it would be idle to pretend he does full justice either to his august lineage or to the opportunities that were his. Indeed, one might apply to him Max Beerbohm’s immortal epitaph on George IV’s ill-used and ill-fated queen, “Fate wrote her a most tremendous tragedy, and she played it in tights.”

Paradoxically, Sen is least enjoyable when he pontificates. The constant jumping back and forth from Barnes and Keshub Sen to the contemporary scene is disconcerting. But for all its contrary title, The Absolute Anglo-Indian opens a window of nostalgia into the vanished phenomenon of Anglicized Bengali society.

Anglo-Indians plan gala affair (The Times of India)

KOLKATA: Anglo-Indians in the city are all set to celebrate World Anglo-Indian Day on August 2, with week-long celebrations starting on Sunday.

Way back in 1935, when the Government of India Act – precursor to the Constitution – was enacted, the community was recognised officially. Hence, the day is known as World Anglo-Indian Day.

This year, it promises to be a grand affair as Sunday marks the beginning of the run-up to the platinum jubilee year. The week-long programme will have carnivals, balls, outings and of course, some sumptuous Anglo-Indian cuisine. And all this is bound to whip up memories of the Fifties and Sixties – the glorious days of the community.

The number of Anglo-Indians in the city is believed to be around 3,000 and efforts are on to get them all involved in the celebrations this year.

Members of the community are praying hard that Sunday remains sunny because a day out complete with some yummy khana – as it is popularly called in Anglo-Indian parlance – has been organised at the Maidan tent of Rangers’ Club, an exclusive Anglo-Indian address.

Though organisers of all the four major programmes surrounding the occasion have kept the dress code relaxed, food will be strictly Anglo-Indian. So, right from yellow rice and ball curry to pantras, jhalfrezi, vindaloo, roast meat and plum pudding, it’s going to be authentic stuff all the way.

“Since Anglo-Indians are a typically beef-eating community, we are sticking to it as far as possible. Also, some dishes like vindaloo have dual ownership and though Goans claim that to be their speciality, the Anglo-Indians prefer to keep the title with themselves,” joked Denise O’Brien, wife of the Anglo-Indian representative in the Assembly, Barry O’Brien.

The carnival at St James’ School on August 2 has been organised by the Association of Heads of Anglo-Indian Schools. “Everyone can take part in the festivities, taste the goodies and play games. We have tried to include only the age-old Anglo-Indian favourites like skittle, feeding the clown and killing the rat. Though somewhat forgotten today, these can be so much fun to play,” said TH Ireland, principal of St James’.

The All India Anglo-Indian Association (AIAIA), the only national body of the community since 1876, has organised a special thanksgiving, followed by a sit-down lunch at Frank Anthony Public School on August 3.

“We will ensure that dal-bhaat is served in typical Anglo-Indian style for this lunch. You will be surprised to know that dal-bhaat is Anglo-Indian staple, too!” said Denise, also the secretary of AIAIA.

All eyes, however, would be on the gala Rangers’ Club ball on August 3 when women, in their best of gowns, waltz with their menfolk.

WHEN THE ANGLO-INDIANS SLEEP, THE “LEADERS” (OF THE AI’S) DO WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO ? (courtsey Max Khatchaturian)

When one scans through the history of the Anglo-Indian community, one despairs to read that the community may have a lot to be proud of, but that AI’s cannot be proud of their leaders, (except one). The recent history of the AIs is marked by a leaders that thought of themselves first, and then for the Community. Many AIs still write about the late Frank Anthony, celebrated barrister. An examination of his leadership of the Community, is ridden by complaints of his ego and his dictatorship over the AI community by reason of his close relationship with the Congress party of Nehru and his daughter Mrs. Gandhi. To focus this article on the present state of affairs, I am letting Frank Anthony rest wherever he is. To get an idea of the Church games and how it affects the Community we could turn to the leadership of the President-In-Chief of the All India Anglo-Indian Association, Mr. Neil O’Brien.

A long time ago Herbert Alick Stark (”Call of the Blood”) and Sir Henry Gidney debated the role of the Church in Anglo-Indian affairs, and Sir Gidney, vehemently opposed any interference of the Church, while Stark strongly welcomed it. Gidney warned that the Church was not a friend of the Community. His words have been forgotten and buried with him.  All over India, Anglo-Indian schools and Trusts have been usurped and taken over and promoted now as “Church Schools” in a deliberate program of lies and fabrication by the Church, notably the Anglican Church, now known as the CNI and CSI.

Being a Calcuttawallah myself,  my knowledge is a bit limited to the Calcutta Anglo-Indians so the examples I give, are all from Calcutta.  Neil O’Brien, President-in-Chief of the All India Anglo Indian Association, has been a life long friend of the Protestant Church in Calcutta. When presented with a choice of supporting the Protestant Church or an Anglo-Indian or Anglo-Indian school, O’Brien would rather support the Protestant Church. As “stalwart” and “eminent” leader of the Anglo-Indian community O’Brien has facilitated the CNI Bishop of Calcutta in swindling of the AI school properties.

St. Thomas’ School, Kidderpore, Calcutta is being swindled of millions by the CNI Bishop of Calcutta, with the assistance of AI leaders.

Section 11 of the St. Thomas School Act 1923 is as follows :

“The purpose of St. Thomas School are hereby declared to be as follows and save, as is otherwise herein provided, all property vested in the Governors by or under this act shall be deemed to be held in trust for the said purposes and not otherwise :
(1) the maintenance of an efficient School, and
(2) the provision of a sound education, with religious instruction in accordance with the principles of the Church of England for the children of Europeans and Anglo-Indians..”

On reading this Section 11, certainly and absolutely there should be no doubt that it is an Anglo-Indian School.

The Govt. of  India settled a lease deed with the St. Thomas School Society, leasing out in perpetuity the land at no 4 Diamond Harbour Road, Kidderpore, Calcutta. The original lease deed dated 31st December 1917 made between the Secretary of State for India and the St. Thomas School Society states as follows :

Para 5 :  And also will use and occupy the said premises for the purposes of the said Calcutta Free School only and for no other purpose and whether the same shall be carried on under its present name or any other name

Para 6. : And (the Society or the Governors of STS) will not assign, transfer underlet or part with the with the possession of the said premises or any part thereof without the previous consent in writing of Government.

It is quite clear that the Govt. of India made over the land to be held in Trust for the education of Anglo-Indians and FOR NO OTHER PURPOSE.

Further : Section 3 of the St. Thomas’ School Act 1923 : The Governors of St. Thomas School shall be a body corporate….and shall have power to acquire and hold property….”

Note the exact words. The Government is not a fool and did not give the Governors powers to lease or sell of the property as that power is not contained in the conditions of the lease.

Around 1997-98 plans were hatched by the CNI Bishop P.S.P. Raju to use the school property to set up an “Engineeering College”. Raju set up a Calcutta Diocesan Education Trust(CNI) where he was Chairman and forwarded a proposal to the Governors of St. Thomas’ School (where he was Chairman !!) to join hands with him to set up a College. In his own words he writes “The St. Thomas School allotted an area of 5.276 acres to establish the St. Thomas’ College of Engineering & Technology”. The Governors of St. Thomas’ School (Chairman Raju) very generously gave Rs. 5 million to the College (Chairman : Raju !!) to set it up on the land owned by the School.

While all this illegal transfer of the School property was going on, the Anglo-Indian community was being ably represented on the St. Thomas School Governors by Neil O’Brien and Gillian Hart MLA. Both of these notable Anglo-Indians did nothing to stop the swindle or even protest to the swindler Bishop. Neil O’Brien, stalwart leader of the AIs had been on the Governing board of STS from the early 1980s and should have read the lease deed and the St. Thomas School Act in the 25 years or more he interfered with St. Thomas’ School.

Rather than protest, the AI leaders shake with fear in the presence of the CNI Bishops !!  The Governors of St. Thomas School (under Section 15 of the St. Thomas School Act 1923) have made rules to conduct their own business. Under these rules, made by the Governors, the Bishop of Calcutta is the Chairman of the Governors.

To throw the Bishop and his swindling scheme out the Anglo-Indians on the Governing Body could have proposed that the Rules under section 15 should be amended. The new rules would state that the Chairman of the Anglo-Indian school would hereafter be an Anglo-Indian. This proposal has been put in writing to Neil O’Brien and Gillian Hart. One would imagine as AIs they would jump to this opportunity to throw the Bishop out of the School together with his swindling plans. But it is not to be.

The CNI Bishop has other sweeties to offer the stalwart AI leaders. Neil O’Brien and Gillian Hart were co-opted for many years (by the Bishop) to the Board of La Martiniere’s, Calcutta.  When Gillian fell out with the Bishop Raju over her son’s disastrous marriage to Raju’s daughter, Raju promptly kicked her out form La Marts.

St. Thomas’ School, and the St. Thomas’ Engg. College,  continue to make money for Bishop Raju and his friends thanks to the silence of our AI leaders.

______________________________

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READ THE STORY.. (WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT WHAT HAPPENS…….)

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040923/asp/calcutta/story_3791010.asp

Bishop bail in swindle cry

College complaint puts priest on regular trips to police station

OUR LEGAL REPORTER

Rev. P.S.P. Raju, Bishop of Calcutta Diocese of Church of North India (CNI), moved a prayer for anticipatory bail on Wednesday in connection with a case of misappropriation of funds amounting to Rs 2.4 crore.

A division bench of Justice N.A. Chowdhury and Justice A.K. Bhattacharya adjourned the hearing of the petition till September 29 after the government counsel assured that Rev. Raju, also chairman of the governing committee of the St Thomas School for Boys, Kidderpore, would not be arrested.

The court directed the Bishop to regularly meet investigating officer P.G. Das, an inspector with Shakespeare Sarani police station, till the case comes up for hearing next Wednesday.

“This is, perhaps, the first time in recent memory that the head of a religious body had to seek anticipatory bail. We, as a community, are ashamed of today’s development,” said Rev. Sailesh Mukhopadhyay, secretary, Calcutta Diocese of CNI, and principal of St Thomas College of Engineering and Technology.

A section of members of the 27 CNI-controlled churches has been demanding the Bishop?s removal for alleged financial and administrative irregularities.

On the basis of an order passed by the metropolitan magistrate’s court on August 24, Shakespeare Sarani police station had lodged an FIR on August 26 against the Bishop.

The magistrate’s court had acted on a complaint filed by Goutam Banerjee, registrar of St Thomas College of Engineering, run on the premises of the St Thomas School, Kidderpore, a CNI property.

Banerjee alleged that the Bishop had proposed to set up an engineering and technology institute to function under the Calcutta Diocesan Education Council. The Bishop promised to donate 5.27 acres owned by St Thomas School for the college.

An agreement was signed between the governing body of the school and the council in March 2000, but according to Banerjee, the Bishop, who is also chairman of the council, has yet to register the deed.

“The engineering college was set up by spending Rs 2 crore. An additional Rs 40 lakh was spent for affiliation,” said Banerjee. But now, the Bishop wants the college to vacate the plot and shift. This will jeopardise the academic career of many students.”

When the anticipatory bail petition in this regard came up for hearing, public prosecutor Kazi Safiullah told the court that police would not arrest the Bishop. “But he should be asked to come to Shakespeare Sarani police station to assist the police,” he said.

Please note the views expressed are purely of the author, and in no way represents personal views

Help Needed

Hi,

Of late the number of visits to this blog have increased and I thank all for the support and getting the word around. Also, I would like any help I could get in the form of articles/news reports/personal recollections which I could then post on this blog to reach a wider AI audience. Please feel free to email me at sean.auckland@gmail.com. If you have any articles or wish to write one on famous Anglo Indians, I would be glad to post the same.

Thank you once again and please continue passing the word around.

Regards, Sean Auckland

English medium by Kishore Singh

Anglo-Indians are vanishing as a community. Prakash and Sealy try to rescue them from oblivion with an exhibition and a book.

For two years Dileep Prakash “travelled everywhere except McCluskieGanj” — which as everyone knows is an Anglo-Indian stronghold and railway colony “that has been done to death by others before me” — photo-archiving the members of these “first modern Indians”, according to writer Irwin Allan Sealy.

“It was shocking to me,” says Prakash — whose wife June née Davy is Anglo-Indian — “how fast the Anglo-Indians were assimilating with the other Indian communities. “They had a distinctiveness that is disappearing,” he explains.

What was the more irksome was that the Anglo-Indians had been given an image, courtesy of Bollywood, that bordered on the negative. The vamps were always Mona and Lily, the cretinous villains were Peter and Mogambo, they had permissive lives, smoked and drank.

“What’s worse,” Prakash is clearly hurt to the core, “even their cuisine, which is so exceptional, is rapidly declining,” cribbing that even in the 15 years since their marriage, his wife’s own culinary skills have more often than not made way for a more pan-Indian menu.

The decline of the Anglo-Indians may be difficult to arrest, but Prakash was clear he could at least begin to archive their presence, and so set about a two-year yatra, travelling north to south and east to west, winning over their confidence and getting them to pose for his camera.

Even in this short period, members of the community, many of them old “but still fit, and fond of dressing up”, have since died, lending an urgency to Prakash’s work.

Last evening, some of those pictures of the thousand-odd people he has photographed went up at the Photoink gallery in New Delhi, and simultaneously a book with an essay by Sealy (whose earlier works include The Trotter-Nama, The Everest Hotel and Red) was launched at the event. Sealy writes with sensitivity of their separateness from the very beginning.

“The first births across the land would have been fraught but novel events. As the novelty wore off, practicalities would have arisen: who would pay for the child’s keep? What would he wear? Might the father be persuaded to acknowledge the child? … But very likely the father had disappeared, moved on with his regiment, or his ship, or his convoy, and every so often in the streets of any city there might appear this startling cuckoo, a fair-skinned child in native clothes.”

He imagines a generation passing by, the East India Company taking such interest as it could in their welfare. “They eat with knives and forks, not always a diet the father or the mother would approve; they wear hats. They study and play and quarrel in the foreign tongue.”

This hybrid created a new order, the men working as clerks for the Company, the women finding willing suitors within the ranks of European men forced into uneasy bachelorhood. And so came about a community, “next to but apart from the Europeans” called, in the early years, East Indians.

Later, the East Indians would marry their own kind, creating a new caste that, unlike the rest of their countrymen “do not favour sons or lament daughters or stigmatize widows” and “are largely educated”.

“If in manners and morals the latest Indians modelled themselves scrupulously on the English,” writes Sealy, “it was an imitation not craven or servile but occasioned willy nilly by the vacuum into which a new thing falls.”

And in choosing to ally themselves with Europeans they merely chose what other Indians are happy to repeat today, the more modern cultural overlapping of Europe and Asia.

“So when they spoke of Home they were not being ridiculous; the country they had never seen was the source of all that they valued deeply, while in the only language they spoke, the word India was itself still foreign. Their very persons, their lived experience, domesticated both worlds — and embodied the worlds they stood for. They were foreign and yet native, native and yet foreign, and in that vexed identity lay their double fate.”

This lot then were the Anglo-Indians for which reservations within the colony following 1857 brought them the assurance of middle level jobs in the post and telegraph services, customs and police and on the network of canals, and in a network of “English medium” schools that allowed Indians to learn “Wordsworth under a mofussil sky”, though they have unfortunately remained, almost now to the end “the objects of prejudice” as they once were of protection.

Prakash fears the Anglo-Indian community’s assimilation could be complete by 2020. If indeed if it does happen — then, or anytime soon after — his portraits of the last survivors of a community distinguished more by its dignity than its alienness, would have served their purpose.

Heritage bungalow in tourist hub high & dry

CHANDRAJIT MUKHERJEE

Ranchi, April 9: With the rise in extremism in McCluskiegunj area, Ushanjali — a bungalow — has turned into a deserted place. The once famous guesthouse known for its sprawling rooms, prestigious library and good hospitality lies desolate today. There are two caretakers but they do not get the chance to attend any tourist. Instead they try to keep the guesthouse clean and tidy. Built inside the jungle at McCluskiegunj, which overlooks the main road connecting the hamlet to the highway, the guest house was built by one B.N. Ganguly, a retired government employee now based in Ranchi, in the 90s. The guesthouse has seven fully furnished rooms, including a dormitory. The structure is done up in a typical English cottage style with slanting roofs. A fireplace and large rooms inside the house also hint at the British style of housing. But what sets this guesthouse apart from the rest is the library, which has a good collection of books. Tourists enjoyed being in the midst of nature and at the same time have pure milk products, sweets, cakes and other delicacies as the guesthouse boasted of a dairy and bakery. “Ushanjali had more than half a dozen Australian cows and our bakery was famous at that time,” Ganguly said. The guesthouse is now looked after by Iftkar Hussain, a resident of the area. Hussain said McCluskiegunj was a colony of Anglo-Indians and a lot of people from Britain used to come in those days to this place. Now things have changed as people are afraid of extremist attacks. Hussain also said the guesthouse had 10 dogs of good pedigree once, but with Ganguly losing interest due to low turn out of guests, the bungalow has lost its charm. “We wait here everyday with the hope that some guest would turn up so that we can take care of them and make their stay memorable, but unfortunately we do not get to see any,” he rued. Sandeep Razdaan, a resident of the area, said people do not come here anymore. “The place is very calm, serene and beautiful but outsiders do not come to this place out of fear,” Razdaan said. Hussain said British settlers created McCluskiegunj after purchasing the land from Ratu Maharaja. After 1947, some of the Englishmen left the place while others stayed on and married the residents of the area, forming an Anglo-Indian community in this part of the country. As time passed and with lack of opportunities only a handful of Anglo-Indians stay here now.

Anglo Indians in the UK and India Today – 1999 by Blair Williams

http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/aicomm99.html

Mixed Breed – Sadiqa Peerbhoy

pace attack: Roger Binny ( here, takes a catch) played in the Indian cricket team, is one of Bangalore’s better known Anglo Indians

The sandpaper voiced female on FM who begins each strident lambast with a jarring ‘Hey’ reminds me of all the Anglo Indian teachers who guided my early expeditions into books. There was Miss Gloria who, we were sure, had a thing going with the art teacher. There was Miss Jenkins who once acted as an extra in a film. They were the ‘goris’ who came of a mixed ancestry and made endless plans to go “back home” to England. Some day.

Many entered the corporate world as secretaries with tight skirts. Some became models when no Indian girl was permitted to parade on a ramp, some were singers with husky magic in their throats and some were teachers.

They used to be the fun timers born of an uneasy relationship between rulers and ruled and then left behind in India. Their DNA throbbed with music. They loved their tipple and their parties. Often they produced striking beauties with green eyes, chiselled features and complexions like peaches with a wash of gold.

Bangalore’s story as a cantonment for battle-weary troops to recover from the indomitable Tipu, led to a large number of Anglo Indians being bred here, who gave it the reputation of a very happening city. Long before the techies were downloaded from their mother’s wombs. And the rest of India still thought of it as pensioners’ paradise! They partied, sang, danced and drank into the wee hours of the morning and slept through most days.

My friend Ruth still talks about the wild ‘50s when a certain lady was known for her dance of seven veils that were all discarded one by one. Or the lady who came dressed in a tame cobra and little else.

Perhaps that is why a reprobate uncle, who heard we were moving to Bangalore, called me aside to warn about key parties to avoid. These were supposed to be parties at the end of which the car keys of all guests were put in a bowl and each lady picked a key to go home with whomever it belonged to.

Fortunately we never heard of any such shenanigans in Bangalore, but it made me turn down some friendly invitations.

But times changed . The Anglo Indians started drifting away to lands that did not typecast them as fun timers and little else. They left behind old parents in clusters like Lingarajapuram and KGF, to reminisce over faded photographs of colonial bungalows their British ancestors had bequeathed them.

Now they are few and far between. Like the odd members of a live band trying to exist despite the moral police. A couple of models, a cricketer, a beauty contest winner and a host of them swallowed up by call centres. Almost all have given up their distinctive identity to blend in and that is a shame.

To my mind India was richer in its diversity when all creeds, races existed in their uniqueness within its generous spaces. And there was no one to proclaim Maharashtra for Marathas or Karnataka for Kannadigas. In an aviary there are birds of every shape and hue, not one is forced out because the colour is different. Or it chirps in a different set of notes.