We are not racists. No. Never.

This post first appeared on Halabol

I’m glad I landed in Africa. It’s the one place where everybody from every other part of the world gets to be unapologetically racist without having to worry about who’s peeping over the shoulder or who’s going to punch a hole through your face for letting certain words slip out of your tongue. You get to call the blacks black because, well, they are black and they are everywhere. How wrong can you go with it? And there is only that much you can talk about Burberry and De beers and trips to Las Vegas and how many cars you have at your disposal. Once bored, you get to talk freely about the things that have long stopped working in these parts (or never worked in the first place), systems that are defunct, people that are barbaric, practices that are tribal, drains that are clogged, governments that are corrupt, minds that are dull, morals that are missing, words that cannot be trusted, and the world that this world is not.

The whites, too, don’t have it easy. In today’s world, the white-man’s burden is in having to tolerate, besides the newly-found economic sprint in the black feet, the proliferating hordes of Chinese who don’t give a damn to whether or not you’re a white, the cunning Koreans who will invariably invade the golf courses en masse, the abrasive noisy browns only too eager to do the white-thing, the nose-in-the-air Arabs who think money is the answer to everything (it isn’t? you think so?), the - phew, there’re just far too many niggling irritants in this world to keep count of now. But as long as there are browns and yellows and wheats and blacks, the whites will remain whites. So they clink their glasses and do their social-cause thingy at the charity events and complain that the pool water has half a percent more chlorine than their skin can tolerate and balk at a pathetic little piece of dry leaf floating in the overhead tank and they make sure their gated compounds are secured and bolted and fastened and electrified and made impenetrable a hundred times over and they go to bed sighing ah, a white man’s got to do what a white man’s got to do.    

But we’re Indians; and we’re not racists. Never. We are simply more of a lion let loose among a pack of wild boars. Naturally, He, the alpha Indian-in-Africa, is invincible, and is equally a She. Never mind the hours of power cut He faced in his city back home, the dark continent deserves its epithet; never mind the unending shenanigans of the corrupt back home, the term becomes synonymous with the people’s intent here; never mind the constant struggle getting and retaining a domestic help back home these days, She won’t tire of waxing brusque of the help here - the wretched lazy good-for-nothing slobs, all. There is an inexplicable joy in calling a black a black in these parts – it allows for a good laugh and some delicious desi bonding rounds of beer and butter chicken. And should you be heard using the b-word, just switch to the uber-safe kalus the moment the house-maid drops that steel tumbler into the kitchen sink to remind everyone of her black presence.     

If one were to go by the colour of skin, I was born nearly white, turned brown by the time I was in Std III A, turned yellow with jaundice sometime later, and am now black, thanks to my midday swims. My locus standi is, therefore, questionable when I mouth platitudes like, but why can’t we just see them as perfectly normal people who breathe and live and think and feel like people anywhere else in the world? So, I need to qualify further. But I like the people here, I say; the happiest warmest souls on earth despite all rotten odds, and I’m cut short by He saying they’re not-quite-human; look at the way they shoot and loot and riot and kill. Yes, but we do that too, in much the same ways, I say, and She says we’re light-years-ahead; there’s no comparison- they don’t have it in them to rise above themselves. Is it, I ask, but just look at all the wonderful talent they have in their midst, and another He and She butt in saying, Frauds-minds and drugs peddling, that’s the talent; their minds work properly only for things they shouldn’t. Is it, I ask and then point out, just look at the women, the strong-willed the women, and all the He’s and the She’s say, the dark ages is where they still belong; look at them take on wives after wives only to have more sons. Yes, I say, but they don’t kill their daughters or burn their wives and… the hostess announces dinner, and our superiority gets suspended. For the moment.

With my plate in hand, I saunter into the balcony where a part of the gathering has moved. Before I’ve taken my next step to join them, I hear someone say, these kalus really have no brains; all they’re good at is singing and dancing and running and voodoo and drugs. A wiser one makes His valuable contribution to shared delight, junglees, all! And the gurgle of sated chuckles turns into a howlarious laugh.    

We are not racists. No. We are just being ourselves.