The Indian expat in Britain

I have been meeting up with various Indian people in the UK since coming back to live in England. By Indian I mean Indian visitor or expat, not British Asian (or British Indian,  as some prefer to be called, referring to British citizens of Indian heritage either born here or who started arriving in the 1950s.) Indeed about 20 years ago most British people’s only exposure to Indians in the UK was  the immigrants who moved here en masse in the 50s, 60s and 70s and their offspring and their offspring’s offspring. Now with the wealth and skills set increasing in India, more Indians are coming to Britain to study Masters and MBAs and many of those are managing to find work and get employed here afterwards. Others are coming directly on highly skilled migrant work visas to work in sectors like IT with companies such as Infosys, Aviva on 2-3 year contracts. Many are already here as doctors and priests. This MBA/IT/highly-skilled set makes up a new genre of Indian you will find in British cities and towns, quite different to their counterpart, the British Asian. It’s funny because, having lived in Mumbai for more than 3 years, I can spot an Indian expat a mile off. They are distinctly quite different, in their accent, dress and behaviour, to a British Asian/Indian. 

Meeting them is interesting for me. I'm curious to see, having been an expat, how well they adapt to the UK, or not; whether they integrate or not and watch the little faux pax or gaffes they unknowingly make that arise from cultural misunderstandings. I know I made many similar gaffes and faux pax in India. I also know, having lived overseas, that it is important to overlook those faux pax as they only arise from being raised in a different culture and society. They are never intentionally offensive. When I was in Mumbai I also made blunders, but, sadly, whereas some people overlooked them, others did not.

In Mumbai, some Indians were welcoming of expats and others were not. I know that some Indians made me feel really different. They did not include me in things, would not confide in me or gossip with me or would say really strange things to me.  As a British woman I also had to fight stereotypes in India. I remember one Indian woman saying to me, “You know how all western women write about sex in their blogs and Indian woman bloggers don’t well..” I was furious. Since when did all western women write about sex in their blogs!! (I know I have touched on relationships, but still…) On another occasion an Indian woman said, “You know how all French people are manic depressives, well it’s because they are spoilt and have not had to endure the hardships Indians have, well….” Such sweeping generalisations spring from ignorance and I generally ignored the remarks. Similarly there was an element of Indians who had a post-colonial hangover. If I dared to criticise India, the response would be “So you want to rule us again?”  Or “Why do you think your culture is superior to ours?” I didn’t. I may have been merely mentioning something or other that could be improved in India (like the fact drivers don’t stop at zebra crossings. They don’t in Rome either and I get equally annoyed there.) I can think of plenty of things that can be improved in England too. I don’t see why I have to continually praise a place. And I don’t. Some of the most interesting discussions with one’s friends can come from debating how to improve or solve social issues. If there were no social issues to solve, what would we discuss? Men and make-up? There was also a resistance among some Indians towards expats getting jobs in Mumbai. If you explained to them that the Indian diaspora was massive and millions of Indians had jobs overseas it made no difference. They were not overseas and didn’t care. Of course outside this stereotyping and prejudice were many very decent, intelligent, bright, spiritual, welcoming Indians who I thoroughly enjoyed meeting.

Expats take to India differently. There are some that ‘go native’ so to speak, refuse to mix with other expats, eat only at street food stalls and so on…There are others who refuse to mix with Indians , slag off India and are only seen at five star hotel brunches. I liked to be somewhere between the two extremes, with half Indian and half expat friends, semi integrated but making the occasional gaffe. One area I did struggle with was using the words, Sir or Madam. This to an English person is completely alien. To my knowledge, the UK, Sir is only used in the British Army and possibly when a commoner meets Royalty. Otherwise it might be used by a waitress in a very posh five star hotel in London to a customer. No one uses this as a form of respect for elders or people more experienced/powerful than you, as they do in India. I also could not bring myself to use the word thrice instead of three times or ride a moped without a helmet. 

But now I am the local in my own country and seeing how the Indian expats get on intrigues me. I was out with an Indian friend the other day at the cinema. After buying the tickets he asked the ticket booth man if he had any change. When the man refused my friend blew his top at him.  I was shocked as it is not acceptable to be that rude to someone selling tickets at a cinema. Then outside a Big Issue seller came to speak to me when I was with my friend and my friend said in a loud voice, “How dare you interrupt our conversation?” I was taken aback as, again, in England we would never speak so rudely to a Big Issue seller either. We know they are homeless and selling the Big Issue to make ends meet. But I guess my Indian friend treated him as though he was a rickshaw driver, day labourer or beggar who had come up and barged into our conversation, something unthinkable in India. They know their place in Indian society and probably would not dare. But England is far more egalitarian. The person selling Big Issue might be homeless today, but yesterday he may have been in a good job. The ticket booth man is probably studying a Masters or working as an actor. In India sadly the treatment of rickshaw drivers, waiters, maids and the like is not always the same as here and sometimes they are treated with immense disrsepect. I didn’t say anything at the time but decided if I met this Indian friend again and got to know him better I would mention it.

Another funny incident happened when I was with an Indian friend going out for a meal and I asked him what cuisine he wanted. “Something spicy” he said. This will pose problems in England where most food is not spicy and we eat a lot of French and Italian cuisine. I explained that left us with Bangladeshi or Mexican cuisine and there wasn’t a Mexican restaurant in the town where we were. He finally caved in and we went to a French restaurant. He was unable to comprehend the French menu. (The menus are always in French in French restaurant in the UK to add to the experience. For Brits they are pretty easy to decipher as we are used to it.) “What is canard?” he asked. “What is poulet?” He asked. Of course he spoke about 7 languages but French was not one of them. For the Brits French is pretty easy. Then the food came and whilst I raved about the food, he seemed unimpressed, probably similar to how I had reacted when an Indian once friend took me to a Rajasthani traditional restaurant in Gujarat where I couldn't get to grips with the unusual food at all. I exclaimed, “Isn’t French food just the best!” tucking into a rare steak with frites. “You know French food is the most gourmet in the world and yet I barely came across a single French restaurant in India,” I remarked. “There is a reason for that,” my Indian friend, who did not eat beef, said dryly.

Meanwhile the British friend I was with kept calling him middle-class. He was saying it to compliment him on how well-brought up and well-spoken he was, but the Indian kept merely smiling; this was the other meaning of the Indian smile and I knew it. I finally explained to my British friend that being called middle class in India isn’t  seen as a great compliment– it’s basically seen there as what we describe as lower class here – you need to say upper middle class to refer to what my friend was trying to communicate…Middle-class in England  conjures up Wimbledon, Henley, private education, four bedroomed-detached house, professional occupation, tennis, rugby, Berkshire etc…But in India it refers  to the  masses, not the upper echelons of  society. It conjures up a very simple home and life in India. So this was another cross-cultural miscommunication, I figured. When I explained it to both of them, the Indian stopped the ear-to-ear grin and his shoulders seemed to relax. He admitted he had been baffled by the constant comment he was middle-class. “I  just could not understand why you kept on telling me I was middle-class,” he said.

As we left the French restaurant we walked past a group of English woman. It was a cold night and they were all, without fail, in mini dresses or mini-skirts, which hung almost below their knicker lines, they had completely bare legs and stilettos. Some had tattoos; others had cigarettes dropping out of their mouths. Most were heavily made up. There were 100s of them all appearing from nowhere, heading for the local dodgy nightclub of the Home Counties town we were in. I was rather embarrassed by this sight and explained to my Indian friend that not all British woman dressed or behaved like this.  I hadn’t seen anything like it myself for years. My female friends and I were more likely to be seen in a country pub in designer jeans and a T shirt than anywhere like this and we never dressed like that in the evenings.  These women all looked like they had one intention in mind, and it is a sentence that is three words long. The Indian friend had no idea that what he had seen and experienced did not represent British women or indeed British society.  If anything, it represented a segment of British society - one that would not be found at Cheltenham Ladies College or in the King’s Road, London or in a British law firm.  “There is a different kind of English woman,” I started to explain as best I could. “Not all British women dress like this.  I am different, for starters,” I said proud of my designer jeans and black top I was in, my stock ‘night out’ outfit, in fact.  “Oh you mean the plain Jane!” he said confidently, in a thick Indian accent. I swallowed my anger, as did the British guy who was with me. I realised the Indian expat had no clue what the connotations of the phrase Plain Jane were.  I have been called many things to date, but not till now, anyway plain. Anyway I forgave him, as you have to, if you want to befriend a foreigner in your homeland. It reminded me of when an Indian in Mumbai had said I looked well fed. I couldn’t have been more offended but he had said it with a big grin as though he was complimenting me and this Indian in England who said I was a plain Jane was also grinning from ear to ear.  I fathomed that expats will make faux pax and social blunders in the mind of the locals, wherever they are, but ignoring them is the best thing to do. Apart from the plain Jane remark, we had had a great evening. The same with the guy I had gone to the cinema with. On both occasions we had discussed politics, culture, and society and exchanged ideas. In fact, the Indian expats had even been so kind as to decipher aspects of Indian society I had not been able to understand. What was the point of holding a social gaffe against them?

I guess what I have learnt from all this is -  you have to be elastic – you have to be able to give and stretch your boundaries of acceptance  and what is normal far more with a foreigners, than with the locals, and don’t expect them to integrate fully (why should they?) but the rewards will be worth it. You will get things from friendships with foreigners you can’t get from friendships with locals, so please be open-minded.

London and Mumbai: overrated, overpriced and dirty...

Everyone at the coach stop was a senior citizen, except me. Most were dressed like hicks. We were all embarking on a massive trip to London. For me it was my first trip to the big smoke, since returning from India. The queue of Somerset locals reminded me of the scene of strugglers queuing up to travel to Mumbai from places like Bihar.
Of course, "I" knew what London was "like", so had spent an entire day emptying my wardrobe looking for smart clothes, in an attempt not to look like a local yokel in the glitzy capital. I had several parties and dinner parties lined up and wanted to look 'the part.' After all, if there was one thing Mumbai had taught me, it was the importance of dressing smartly, dressing to the occasion, and well, in short, looking rich and glamorous. Those are the rules by which the Mumbai social set lives. Disobey them at your peril and expect to  lose your confidence and feel like a wallflower at any social gathering. (I  learnt this the hard way. It took me 2 years to learn that ripped jeans and T shirts do not go down well at page 3 parties in the city that never sleeps, but sequined black dresses and heels do. This is why the latter was my attire at my grand Mumbai leaving party:) I learnt the hard way that it was better not to show up at parties in Mumbai, than dress inappropriately. Of course, I also learnt that some of the most well-dressed people at these affairs, were financially bankrupt, immoral, having illicit affairs, unemployed, boring, rude you name it - but well-dressed they were.)


So, the coach left  and we glided through the rolling hills of Somerset, with fields of sheep on either side.

 I was still in my ''I love England mindset'' and so stared at the scenery and mulled on how happy I was to be in Somerset and how I wasn't missing the noisy honking chaos of Mumbai. The passenger in the seat next to me was rather fat squashing me somewhat. I also began to feel travel sick. Without wishing to offend her, I explained I may move seats as I felt ill, as we seemed to be sat above the wheel. A few minutes later, quite randomly, she asked: "Are you pregnant?" This was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, if ever there was one. "No!"I said. "Oh, I just thought you might be, given you said you felt sick," she said.


I soon moved (or should I say shifted?) to another seat. My sickness wore off and I spent the journey texting those friends, who I would be meeting, after spending such a long time in India.

After some time, the lush green trees suddenly looked dead, the houses were no longer picture postcard aesthetically-pleasing dreamlike cottages, with thatched roofs and fields for gardens, but rather ugly detached "London suburb" homes, with tiny gardens..and ugly cars .Some had no curtains; some had dark drapes across the windows as though disguising drug-growing dens inside; yobs suddenly appeared on the pavements (men with woollen hats stretching down over their foreheads, and in tracksuits, loitering on bikes - a species not found in Somerset); there was litter scattered across the pavement; bins were overflowing; the scene was no grey, rather than green; graffiti scarred the buildings; there was a sense of poverty. It was ugly. The accommodation looked substandard. Council flats appeared. People suddenly looked badly dressed. I looked in horror out of the coach window. Is this the country I had been so proud of in India and constantly compared to Mumbai? Is this the best England can manage to produce with its capital city?  It was nothing like San Francisco.


The coach stopped at the London coach station. I had thought of having lunch there, but soon changed my mind as I went down the stairs into the shopping centre and saw a bunch of waifs and strays roaming around a cheap supermarket. I didn't like the look of the people and decided to head straight to Harrods. But I needed to use the Ladies' toilet. Cost of using the public toilet? 50 pence (Rs35)!! I was shocked. Although overpriced, I figured it would be safe and clean as the undesirables would never spend that much. I was right.


Next I stepped onto the tube. Unimpressive. Litter was scattered on the platform. To a newcomer (like me), the London Underground came across as old-fashioned, like something from the past century, and uncomfortable.  The routes and lines still didn't allow you  to make the journeys you wanted directly, instead forcing you to make changes. You walked so much between tube lines, you might as well have walked the whole distance. The yellow and green lines were still slow and useless. The brown line was still the best. On the tube, I looked around and there was an Asian man in a suit sat down,  a group of Italians talking loudly and what seemed to be a bunch of foreigners everywhere. When foreigners come to England, is this what they see? Do they know there is a whole world of England out there, beyond this, beyond London? Probably not, because you get sucked in.


People sat or stood on the tube in absolute silence. I chuckled at the thought of how noisy the same train would be in Mumbai. In London everyone looked miserable, everyone was ignoring each other, and everyone seemed to hate their lives. No wonder. I got entranced in staring at people, imagining their lives but avoiding eye contact. Everyone was also badly dressed. One man got on, with skinny jeans, trainers, a green urban jacket and ipod earphones in his ears. He had deliberately dressed like a yob, to fit in. No one looked like this in Somerset.


We reached Knightsbrige and I walked straight to Harrods. A doorman said, "Hello, Ma'am," as I walked inside. "This is more like it," I mused. "I feel more at home." I was glad I had dressed to impress. India had taught me the Art of that. I looked ''the part"" and the Harrods staff recognised that. But straight away though I was told to leave my suitcase in Left Luggage at Harrods, and that I could not bring it into the store. The cost? ₤3 (Rs215). I had now  spent ₤3.50 (Rs250) before even doing anything. My plan was to have lunch inside Harrods. After all, you only live once. But a coffee was ₤4 (Rs300) and a panini ₤15 (Rs 1,000). I figured that although I looked the part, I wasn't quite ready to be the part, and slipped outside to have lunch at a nearby trendy sandwich bar. The cappuccinos and sandwiches appeared to be the same prices, as they had been when I left for India. The varieties hadn't changed either. Weird. I sat outside, managing a sandwich, cappuccino and chocolate bar,  for ₤5 (Rs 350) but did not feel comfortable. Immediately two waifs and strays appeared and hovered near a dustbin, opposite my table. I wondered if they were planning on mugging me. I ate my sandwich, clutching my bag between my knees. I never had to do this in Somerset, I thought.


I swiftly returned to Harrods, one of the few places, I felt comfortable in London. The staff were all dressed smartly and looked clean and immaculate, as they do at five stars in Mumbai. They all called me Maám . I felt at home. It was a Mumbai five star experience on offer here in London. I bought something expensive in the cosmetics section. The lady offered me a Harrods loyalty card. Of course, why not? I looked the part. I wandered around the Food Hall for hours, marvelling at what was on display, things I had never seen in India. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I used the luxury toilets, and of course, there were fine perfumes to sample, and a foreign-looking lady inside who washed your hands for you, or got your a paper towel. This was just like the Taj in Colaba! I sprayed Guilty by Gucci on. The five stars in Mumbai had been fabulous and it was great to be able to experience that here, again, I mused. I visited the memorial to Diana and Dodi by the Egyptian escalator. There was a Dubai-esque feel to the place. Grotty London was a world away. In the same way that when in five stars in Mumbai, grotty Mumbai is a world away.


It dawned on me that the two cities had a lot in common: they were both where locals and foreigners flocked to make money, pursue careers or get fame. But neither city was attractive, both were grotty, and neither represented the soul of the country at large. I understood now why some of my Indian friends preferred to live in Chandigarh, Ahmedabad or Pune, rather than Mumbai. And in the same way overpopulation of Mumbai, was ruining it, so is the overpopulation of London ruining it.  In Mumbai there had been open areas of rubbish, where people simply dumped rubbish, which stray animals then fed from. Dustbins barely existed. In London, they did, but litter was strewn across pavements. There were no stray dogs in London, but plenty of stray pigoens picking at litter and feral-looking people. The buildings in the suburbs of Mumbai, such as in Bandra and Andheri, were far from aesthetically-pleasing and often substandard quality inside with monsoon leaks, revolting furniture, no water and peeling paint.
Similarly houses in London were nowhere near the same quality as those new homes you find outside the capital. Yet you pay through the nose to live in both cities.
Of course, south Mumbai has many visual architectural exceptions, as do touristy parts of central London. But the suburbs in both cities visually, at least, leave a lot to be desired. In Mumbai you have unalluring slums. In London you have unattractive council estates. 
Both cities have their selling points - such as nightlife, men, food and culture. That was what I planned to check out in London next. But already I could understand why Londoners raved about Mumbai so much. There wasn't much difference between the two cities, unlike comparing say either to Somerset. Even the laissez-faire attitude, found in Mumbai, was there in London. 
"You write in your blog that London is grotty, and we Londoners will just laugh. We know it's like that and we like it," my London friend said.

Getting ready to leave India

Noone has ever written a book on when to stop being an expat and when to repatriate home. There is nothing documented on it anywhere (apart from one chat forum on one website - more later), but plenty has been written about how to 'become' an expat in the first place and leave the shores of rainy England for some hot aspirational land, such as Spain or Dubai. You can read up on how to pack your stuff, and adapt to a new culture, how to dress conservatively and fit in to your new work place, but nobody tells you when to leave or how to leave.....
So, when the idea entered my head of 'returning' to England after three years working as a journalist at Hindustan Times, I had noone to turn to, noone to discuss it with. I felt very isolated. My Indian friends all sounded horrified at the mere mention I might leave, and my expat friends rebuffed the idea, telling me I was crazy , citing statistics about the recession in the UK, reminding me how much I loved India, pointing out what a fascinating job I had, how many Mumbai friends I had, and so on...and informing me I would never find a job in the UK.But a seed of desire to return to England had been planted in me and it just grew and grew....I couldn't quite explain to anyone why I wanted to go back.
"You are going back to get married?" my Indian colleagues would say. Knowing that that would be a valid reason why they might repatriate home to India, I said "Yes" just to appease them. But it couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, I have ex's I am still very fond of here in Mumbai.
So, I surfed the Net, as I do for every dilemma in my life, in the hope the answeres would be found, but nothing on how and when to return to England came up, apart from one forum on one website, that I stumbled across that was dedicated to expats 'leaving' their respective countries. My eyes scanned it with hunger looking for a clue, any clue as to when is the right time to leave, does one set up a job in England before leaving, how easy is it to find a job from a foreign country in England, do employers like returned expats? How easy will it be to readjust to England now that I speak a semi Indian dialect of English, and street Hindi? The answers were barely there...Most people on this Forum were whinging Brits in Australia, who, it seemed, hated Australia and were fantasising about aspects of English society, of grocery items, or shops, that they missed, but were too scared to return as they had sold homes/emigrated to Oz 15 years ago, and so were using the forum to vent their frustrations and share their dilemmas. I was surprised as I have several friends who have emigrated to Oz from England, who love it...Anyway, the discovery that I wasn't the only expat in the world thinking of going home with no particular reason to, at least made me feel better....I have seen many expats come and go to India...Many leave suddenly, without any leaving party, some fall ill, others have problems in their job...I didn't want to be one of those..I wanted to leave in style. I wasn't sure if I should leave...In fact, everyone was telling me to stay....but destiny had its own plans....