February 18, 2008
Mixed Breed – Sadiqa Peerbhoy
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| 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.
