We were checking out of a hotel in Singapore last year. Our luggage was down with the concierge, and we were waiting for our airport transfer. Ordinarily, we would have waited in the lobby, but it was full. A group of Indian travellers, just landed from des, had spread themselves across the sofas and were unpacking bags to get at their snacks; some were catching up on shut-eye while their rooms were being readied. Feet up. On the sofas. In the lobby.
Worse, the people one is watching being embarrassing don’t feel embarrassed at all, and we have been assigned the duty of also being embarrassed at their behaviour on their behalf.
A video that has been making social media rounds made me feel the way I’d felt at that lobby in Singapore all over again. A group of Indian adults performing a garba on the tarmac in Vietnam because apparently every available public space is now a stage for Main Character Syndrome: Desi Edition.
This is not a joyous cultural celebration. Stop that nonsensical palaver. We celebrate the garba enough in India. I’ve seen shacks in Baga being taken over by garba. We have no issues with that, even though Baga is not where you expect garba to be thrust at you. The problem is not that Indians dance. The problem is that we seem incapable of recognising the simple fact that all the world is not a stage (whatever Shakespeare might say) for Navratri dandiya nights.
This is not a colonial hangover, sorry. This is basic civic behaviour. The garba is not for the tarmac.
And there are other things. Waiting in a queue. Not screaming across public places to converse with each other. Not turning every public space into your private living room. Littering. Drying undergarments on hotel balconies.
This is cringemax on steroids. The Great Indian Tourist is a species that would impose himself on the world, uncaring about whether the world is amenable to being imposed upon. Indian tourists abroad often behave like people who have never once been told that this is unacceptable behaviour. Because in India, they haven’t.
He (and she) carries this entitlement to behave badly into countries that are polite, respectful and well behaved, and where people actually wait for the lights to change colour before crossing the road.
Thailand has just done away with the 60-day visa-free stay it had offered Indian tourists. There is a stereotype about Indian tourists that is now entrenched. It is not a pretty stereotype.
There’s the buffet-breakfast Indian tourist: sauntering down in their pyjamas and hotel slippers, using their bare hands to pick up food items from the counter rather than using the tongs provided, and being loud and obnoxious with the wait staff. There’s the photo-taking Indian tourist who does not care that pathways are being blocked and heritage structures are being trampled upon. There’s the fruit-and-flower-picking tourist who does not hesitate to climb on anything to reach their fruit or flower, never mind if the path to it happens to be a statue of the Buddha. There is the Indian tourist group on flights.
Sweet God, the flights.
The standing up before the aircraft has even stopped taxiing. The stampede toward overhead bins as if the plane may explode if they do not retrieve their duty-free Toblerone immediately. The loudspeaker-volume conversations. Opening trestle tables in the aisle and playing cards. Watching action films without headphones. The food packets being opened and passed around from front to back with the aromatic force of chemical warfare.
We think of etiquette as elitist and being ‘bindass’ as glorious. Also, let’s blame social media. Every trip is a content fodder opportunity for dancing. Every heritage site is wallpaper for the grand production of Look At Me Abroad.
This is sad. We could be better than this. Many Indians are curious, considerate, socially aware, and gracious travellers. But the loud ones have unfortunately become the global stereotype, and stereotypes can calcify fast.
What can we do, the rest of us who cringe vicariously at these videos the same way one would watch a drunk relative make an ass of himself at a wedding?
A national campaign to educate us on how to behave in public? Call out bad behaviour when we see it happening? Or should we begin with the basics — teach our children to behave in public? Teach them the difference between indoor voices and outdoor voices. Teach them civility, politeness with serving staff, the importance of waiting their turn, of clearing up their trash, of keeping a place clean the way you found it, follow civic rules, everything is not cultural pride, and there is a time and place for everything, including dancing.
And perhaps then we will find ourselves welcome everywhere and not merely tolerated.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.