Ohh! These 'Indians'

When I was making this trip across the two continents I was repeatedly told of the overwhelming number of Indians in the UK. When I got here I can say I was overwhelmed. They are everywhere. I mean in the movies Indians are generally the cleaners at the airport or accented taxi drivers. But no, this was a whole different scenario. First neither are they taxi drivers nor do they have accents. What came to my mind was an old conspiracy theory, one in which the Indian government packs off its people to burrow their way into UK and when the time comes we take control (I can almost hear "Mogambo Khushua"). Very well planned... and I must agree, a marvellous foresight. However I am afraid they might not succeed (not that I really care).

This was a rather disturbing perspective and so I went on a bit of history hunt. If you find time do check "British Asians".It turns out that these Indians I see here today are probably third or fourth generation. In fact they are just namesake Indians, growing up in a British society and most of them going to public schools are probably as British as any Pole or Greek here. They are called cocas (short for coconuts) being brown outside and white inside. Not to blame the schooling system in Britain, I probably cannot accuse anybody of being unindian.

What I am disgusted with is the recognition that is given for their work by the Indians back home. When an 'Indian' kid wins the high school spelling bee competition it makes news in Indian papers. When there are study reports claiming indian kids to be smarter than their classmates it makes news. What we do not realise back home is that these guys are hardly Indian. They are Indian during specific days in the years when they act in the Ramleela at the local community center in english. With dialogs like " Oh Hanuman! Will you bring your monkey friends to help save Seeta? " in a wonderfully perfect english accent, I'd say it would have made the most entertaining show on the westend. At least I was all splits.

My point being if the conspirators (or Mogambo) were to execute their plan they wouldn't really have an army waiting here for them.