The Firangi Fixation

Yes, it’s out there big and bold and gripping the best of us with its invisible death cold hands....
We are obsessed with the whites of the western world and what they have to offer and there’s no bloody point in denying it....
We just can’t get enough of them...skin, thoughts, lifestyles or whatever....
If we can’t be them... well, we’d rather have them as ours....

This comes close at heels of a full bloodied dear ‘Hindustani’ friend of mine getting married to a pretty young thing, with skin as white as pearls and hair as shimmering and cajoling as a cascade of golden waters. This my dear, is a firangi or a foreigner and she’s head over heels about him and he is well just ‘about’ her...literally that is....!

This, when most of his vocabulary is adorned by ‘sala’ along with a string of local flavour...but he says he is ready to transform it to a stylish ‘bloody’ or using the ‘f’ word as would be suited to the dear lady.
Makes you really believe in the epithet that lovers are blind and love really can’t see...marriages too have become a flaunting business!
For some of us, it’s like the ultimate in conquest. What the freedom fighters did for our country in the early twentieth century we can do so for ourselves in the early twenty first....make the white bow down to our wishes...!

We, as a generation until a while ago, grew up with lolling tongues on Baywatch beauties or with smouldering desire for the hunks of The Bold and the Beautiful (I hope they are still not aired on any of those inane satellite channels). We gorge on McDonald’s burgers, slurp for Kentucky Fried Chicken and gulp down oodles of coke...ya, even diet coke gets counted...
And those who are figure conscious and would like to raise in defiance here, may please by reminded that the Atkins diet that they so live by...was not developed by Rishi Shri Shri Atkins but by his western counterpart, who chose to keep the world rexic and emancipated with his drills.

As if that’s not all, we oh so luuuuuuuuuv Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Gabbana...
The traditional Indian weddings must require the Armani suit with the latest Omega watch and the diamond rock...where else but from Tiffany’s....after generously splashing the Davidoff Cool Water....

Don’t get me wrong here....I am not a self obsessed patriotic moron here, out to change the world...or go on a mission to reform the Page 3 circuit... I just fail to understand why condone something by the soul merit of the fact that it’s American, European or Australian and thereby flawless!

A honeymoon in good old Shimla-Manali is so passé...oh come on...go to New Zealand(...not Singapore and Bangkok...please...these are so bloody LS...low society...) And what a blasphemy! Are you really drinking that Kingfisher beer...? Don’t you have a Heineken at home...aw....!
We love to dine in exotic Sushi or ‘Italian la affair’...because we wish to make a style statement....never mind if we have to gulp the tulsi and ginger tea the next day to control the upheaval in our stomach...
We struggle with a fork and knife on that piece of the pizza, when there’s nothing yummier than using your fingers and licking them in the process of it....
(We are still talking of the cheese on the pizza here...mind it)

But firangi it must be...
I must recall here a brief trip I made to ‘the God’s own country’ Kerela recently, visiting its five major cities...no points for guessing that the favourite haunt of the men in our group was Varkala...definitely because of the virgin beaches there, that were thronged by hundreds of scantily dressed....dressed is not the appropriate term here, but for lack of a better terminology...hundreds of white women barely attired and stretching flat out for that all important tan.

Yaar...bharatiye nari ko bhi dekh lo...look at the good old Indian lass or rather ‘kudi’...she may not be meneka always, but there’s something about her that would provide you the right balance in life....what’s that you ask...?
Well, a brain I say...! But I guess you need to have one to see one!

India it is for me...and Indian I would always remain....no matter if my dear friend goes on an onslaught ever so often against ‘bloody Indians’ who go around performing bizarre acts. I may shake hands with the foreign friend but I would still crave for a good old ‘jhuppi’ in the Indian ish-tyle....I may love to do the ball dance, but I would sooner drop into a bhangra at the slightest motivation. I adore Chinese food...but nothing like the good old biryani with chutney....mmmmmmm....
That’s what roots are for...to keep us grounded, no matter how far our branches may extend or stoop to....!