Crocodile Tears

So Shilpa Shetty gets paid an obscene amount of money for appearing in a foreign reality tv show and immediately her stock rises. Suddenly Indians in India and the rest of the world sit up and take notice of someone, who in all fairness hasn’t really been the most successful or commercially viable actress Bollywood has ever had. And what’s the game show all about? Nothing much really… just a bunch of B grade British celebrities that no one has ever heard about, or cared about, living together under one roof. I confess that my interest too was piqued, I wanted to see what all the hype was about, what was it that she was going to do, was she going to be in the game or get voted out, and like millions of my brethren I also said, “Yeah baby! Let’s have you win!”

So every day like a nice, loyal Indian I logged on to youtube to check her status. Fast forward a few episodes, and what do we have? Shilpa sheds a few tears, and the disgusting r word slips out from behind closed doors. “Britain is racist and so are the Brits” we cry foul, and Indians in India and in Britain rise up in arms. There are protest marches, there is campaigning and slogan-eering, the biggest sponsor of the show backs out, the issue is debated in the British Parliament, Shilpa cries some more tears and we scream, screech and protest in anger, indignation, hatred because she has been discriminated against thanks to her color. But coolly she soon drops all charges and there is much fanfare and hugging. Everyone is back to being happy because the show gets the kind of publicity it could have only hoped for.

My reaction to the whole thing was WHOA. We have some audacity to accuse another country and another people of racism when by far, we are the most racist people that the earth has probably ever seen. You know where I have faced the maximum number of racist comments? Not in a foreign country but in India itself. In the various cities where I haven’t really "belonged". I am always the passionate Delhi-ite, and have always been, but how do I discount the number of times it’s been assumed that of course I cannot have a home in Delhi because I am a Bengali. So Calcutta is where I belong, or where I should belong. Does that mean I feel perfectly at home in Calcutta? No, simply because my accent gives away the fact that I haven’t had as much practice with Bangla as maybe I should have had. Or the assumption that I am not going to be able to eat fish with finesse because I am from the north. I am a Delhiite, how would I know which bone to pluck from where? Balls. Or say my initial months in Chandigarh, when understanding Punjabi was still a bit of a problem. Did the head of our department with seventy odd people under her, think that she was being politically incorrect every time she broke into Punjabi, which was often enough? No. Did friends and other colleagues think for an instant before lapsing in to Punjabi with each other as to how would Sayantani understand? No. The assumption was that now that you are here, if you want to survive baby, and be one of us, learn our language. Or go and suck an egg. As are the horror stories I hear from other people…those that have lived in one part of the country all their life and shifted to another, and have suddenly had to reconcile themselves to the fact that they are going to be friendless for a while simply because they do not know the majority’s language. Do we leave our language related prejudices behind when we leave the country and come to foreign shores? You would think!

Why the hell are we bothered about a person who by all standards is completely unaware of what it means to represent your country in a foreign land. First of all, wasn’t she supposed to go with at least some understanding of who she is and where she is from. And not with half baked theories that think that Feng Shui is “a Hindu thing”? Yes, I saw this one episode wherein Shetty asks one of the women to give up her bed so that she can sleep there with her feet facing a particular direction because it’s “a Feng Shui …a Hindu thing”. Does she even know where Feng Shui originated? And that there is really no way that Feng Shui can be “a Hindu thing”?

As if this kind of public display of intelligence was not enough, she needed to go a step further. So there was one episode wherein she sat bleaching her skin ostensibly to become fairer, and when asked what she was doing, she went about telling her housemates that fair skin is considered desirable in India. Yes, so it is. By stupid prejudiced people who assume that color has something to do with your worth as a human being. But you have a choice in this matter, you don’t have to give in to every kind of stupidity just because you are in the public eye. Or even if you have to, maybe you can refrain from it for a few days considering that you are in a “white” house where your attempt to become fair will appear to them “Look, what a wannabe! She is desperate to become White, she wants to be one of us. Why shouldn’t I make fun of someone who is not proud of who she is? And instead wants to become one of us?”

Wouldn’t YOU make fun of someone like that?
I know I would. I would make it a nightmare, a complete living hell.