What James Blunt said. That. And a Few Other Things on Orientalism.

The thing about an average Indian is that when we think of Europe the places that come into our mind are England, Germany and Switzerland. We know they are not the only countries in the continent but we tend to remain ignorant about the others. Maybe it has to do with many of us having relatives in the above mentioned countries that we know have a considerable number of Indians living there. My very lovely Czech Republic happens to be one of the countries with hardly any Indians. In fact in a world that Indians are taking over population wise I came across only 3 Indian couples in Prague when I stayed there for a couple of days (all of them were Malayalees :) definitely something to discuss in a future post). It is only understandable that if the capital city has so very few spottable Indians how many will be there in this small town of Pardubice. As a result of this I am what they would call ‘exotic’ here.

At first the whole concept of being exotic was vague to me. This town has a university that has a few students from Africa, America and India. So it is not like people here have not seen those of darker shades. But a trip to a Moravian village (namely Radvanice) over a weekend opened my eyes to what ‘exotic’ actually is.

Here’s something about India. In my country, at least in the last century, people have developed a warped sense of beauty. Fair skin, skinny body and length of hair are some of the top most criterions to be met in order to be seen as beautiful. Having not been blessed by most of these qualities I had never imagined myself to be ‘beautiful’. But having lived in Europe for just two months I have begun to think otherwise. I have had random women come up to me only to touch my hair and say “Your hair, very beautiful.” Oh, and not to mention those who said I had beautiful eyes, skin colour and what not. It felt very good at first till I began to understand what is really happening. When I went to Radvanice I was told that my friend and I were the first Indians to step on the soil there. Many people there had never seen Indians in real before. Personally, the funniest incident was spending time at the local bar towards the end of which 3 elderly men came up and sat right next to me and started touching my hair and saying it’s beautiful. That’s when it struck me. I was reminded of one of those pictures I found floating around on Facebook recently. You can see it below. To these people I am the white child in the picture!

It then brought to mind the many many colonial narratives on the ‘exoticism’ of Indian women I had come across. It was disappointing at first. They did not think that I was beautiful because I was beautiful. For them I was beautiful precisely because I was ‘exotic’. So then I began wondering if I was actually beautiful or not. I realized that the very fact that I was pondering over such a thing was disturbing. I looked in the mirror carefully. I saw two things at once. I saw the average looking Tess in India and I saw the beautiful Tess who had come to live in Europe. And the only thing they had in common was the set of eyes, the small flat nose with a purple nose stud, and the lips. Everything else was what my environment and its people had given me. It just rendered the question “am I beautiful?” futile.

Let us move on to the other interesting things I understood after being in Radvanice. The parents of our host, two of the sweetest people I have come across in this country so far, had so many doubts about India. And very genuinely and apologetically asked us questions like “Is India full of elephants?” and “Do you still travel on the roof of trains?”. And it was not just them. I have come across many people here who are under the impression that India is four hundred years later still the way the early colonialists described it. Did I mention my parlour lady who on learning that I am Indian asked “Why wear you no bindi?" More than anything else these questions amuse me and definitely make good points for discussions in lectures. The problem however remains that the West knows us through what has been written and documented through films on us and you can imagine the kind of images these documentaries produce- sickly looking starving people, battered woman, naked children and yes, as one of the guys at the bar exclaimed “you India- Slumdog Millionaire!” And somehow we are responsible for this too. Pick up any brochure on Indian tourism. You will find on them pictures of elephants, camels, ‘native’ women in colourful attire, etc, etc, only reinforcing the image the West gave us. So maybe we have also unconsciously begun to see India as the land of snakes and elephants? We are selling them our exoticism and they are buying from us the bullshit they gave us in the first place. Technically speaking this is a strange situation but in all honesty it is funny too. So next time when a foreigner asks us “Do you still travel on the roof of trains?” let us answer them the way my friend answered that particular question- “Not just roof, we also horizontally hang by the bottom of the trains.” ;)

P.S.- If your knowledge of English music is even worse than mine (and that’s saying something) then it is for your understanding that James Blunt’s most popular song is titled You’re beautiful. Therefore the significance of the title of this blogpost.