Anglo Indian DialogueBy Syed Mujtoba Ali, (translated by Asrar Chowdhury)
Daily Star, Literature PageSaturday 9 Dec 2006 URL: http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/12/09/d612092101115.htm

At home and abroad I've noticed time and time again that when it comes to questions by the English and French, Indians can't muster an honest reply. The chief reasons behind this are that (1) Indians aren't quite familiar with their own heritage and culture--our education system is mainly responsible for this; (2) ignorance about foreign customs--if they had that knowledge then they could have merely pointed their fingers back at the foreigners and shown them that whatever he was doing they were also did the same, albeit in a different way, or had done so some time in the past. The following dialogue will help establish this argument, and I also hope that it will benefit some Indians.Foreigner: I invited you at the Firpo that day. You ran off under many pretexts. I heard that you went to the Amjadia Hotel to have your meal. The world famous French chef de cuisine cooks the food at the Firpo. Whose 'jungle-like' cooking did you go to eat neglecting that chef?Indian: Before judging other specialities of your cooking, I'm drawing your attention to a very simple matter. I don't know whether you've noticed, but in your cooking three flavours are absent--the bitter, sour and the spicy. In other words, out of six flavours half is absent. You do add a little bit of spice, but you confine it in a bottle and keep it on your table because your fear and suspicion towards this flavour hasn't totally evaporated. Therefore, even though one may not have tasted your food, one can easily say that whatever other qualities your cooking may possess, there won't be any variety. Just salt and sweet, exactly what music do you think you'd be able to fry from only the two notes of 'Do' and 'Re'? Do you think you can put up a two-string dotara against a veena? This is why even Amjadia's jungle-stuff can easily lay low your chef. Secondly, there's no difference between your dining table and kitchen. On the table you keep a basket, a bottle made of broken glass you call a cruet. At an extreme, if somebody fails to swallow something dry, boiled or fire-burned, then that person has to pretend to be an expert chef at the table. To add fat you pour olive oil, to make things strong a layer of mustard, and to make things sharp you sprinkle pepper--again, since the mouth of the bottle is sealed, therefore it's inevitable that there will be such a fuss that it will result in simultaneous loss of your bones and patience--at the same time the cook living in fear of his sahib has applied very little salt--have you noticed that eighty percent of the people sprinkle salt before tasting their soup? Therefore apply salt. In spite of all this, when you have noticed that your meal is still tasteless then you sprinkle a weird liquid called sauce. If you do have the blood of a chef in your body, you may be able to sprinkle layers of doses of medicine according to the doctor's prescription, but I, my friend, am the son of a gentleman, and in our house my mother and aunts finish all this in the kitchen while they're cooking. Shouldn't there be a difference between the dining room and the kitchen?Englishman: There's so much capriciousness because there's difference in taste.Indian: Don't make those elder brother arguments with me. If that is so, then why don't you boil meat lighting a fire in the dining room? Why don't you roast kebabs on a grill? Some like it half done, others like it well done. There's difference in taste even there; in that case why don't you let the cook do that job? The bottom-line argument is that there is this difference in taste; admitting this, the chef seeks an intermediate solution that's acceptable to many and the righteous admits it only to travel to a land of ambrosia. In spite of differences in taste, the virtuous like both Shakespeare and Kalidas. A poet never puts a separate table of contents, separate narrations, metaphors, alliteration, and similes in different books and then says according to your tastes and the doctor's prescription be thrilled in the creation of literature.Englishman: Let's forget all this. However, you ate the food at the Amjadia with your hands; there's no arrangement of knives and forks there.Indian: No, there is such an arrangement. In your company, the Indian sub-continent is becoming so barbaric day by day that Indians are also trying to use knives and forks. I can't fathom the need for such filthiness.Englishman: Filthiness, good heavens?Indian: Obviously. There's your knife, fork and spoon; and there's the napkin. You rub it and see how much filth comes out. And whatever won't come out will enter your stomach without your notice. And now, let me rub my finger; see how much filth comes out. And if my fingers do become dirty, then I'll go to the restroom and make my fingers crystal clean. If you chase me with your knife and fork, then the manager will call the police thinking that you've just received an apprenticeship in the art of theft. And listen to this final issue; I'm putting my own finger in my own mouth; whereas, the fork and spoon that you're putting in your very own mouth, heaven knows how many hundreds and thousands of lips and stomachs of pyorrhoea-laden patients it has travelled. Do you keep any track of this? The Chinese are cleaner compared to you folks. They enter a hotel carrying their own chopsticks.Englishman: All right. Let's forget all this (smoke).Indian: Yes, the whole discussion is heartbreaking for me as well. A Bengali Christian friend of mine once ate a Hilsa with a knife and fork--a pucca sahib he was--such that he swallowed the bones of the Hilsa so awkwardly and improperly that all the bones of his body have now made a permanent settlement in the graveyard (in tears).Englishman: Aha! In that case, better not to eat Hilsa.Indian: Then as an Englishman, better not to eat bacon and eggs; as a Frenchman, better not to drink champagne; as a German, better not to eat sausages; as a Bengali, better not to eat Hilsa; better to die from starvation; better to commit suicide. Don't you feel ashamed to say all this? You want to set up a committee called "British Tradition in Danger" if you fail to get your tinned bacon from back home while living on the soil of Bengal, and why should I not eat the Hilsa of the Ganges sitting on the banks of the Ganges? Astonishing talk!Englishman: Let's forget all this (smoke). But you just mentioned that your womenfolk cook; do they only cook? Why do they follow this brutal ritual of the purdah?Indian: That's what they do follow; when you meet them, you can ask them yourself.Englishman: There's no way of meeting them at all.Indian: That is our extreme good fortune.Englishman: (in deep thought). Don't you think what you just said is a bit too harsh? Are we that bad?Indian: Sahib, I'm not judging what's good or bad. However, In 1757 when we entered into wedlock with you, it's not that all of our poison was adulterated, but that having lost the gamcha of self-rule, and as a result having been submerged for two hundred wintry years in indescribable poverty, there's no way we can crawl back on to land. Since the men are in such a state, it's no wonder the women in the andarmahal have quit you.Englishman: These are all exterior matters; your heritage, culture--Indian: That discussion is for another day. I now have to go to the streets to sing Quit India right now.Syed Mujtoba Ali (1904-74) is regarded as one of the finest humorists of Bangla literature.

The above article was written in December 1945.
Asrar Chowdhury teaches Economics at Jahangirnagar University