India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation by Oliver Balch Read Free Book Online Page A

They remain the exception, though, not the rule. Not all Indians can be, or even want to be, the next Captain Gopi or Naveen Tewari.
    Industriousness, in contrast, is more generous in its bounty. It welcomes all bar the idle. Few in India can afford to sit on their hands. They have mouths to feed and bills to pay. And, now, at long last, they have money to make too.

Bad Status, Actually
     
    [industriousness]
     
     
    ‘Their money is big in America. But in India, people want to get money. They eat, do shit, and then get up and work again. They don’t think why.’
Mohammed ‘Babu’ Sheikh, Mumbai driver
     

Mumbai
     
    Babu parks his boss’s white Maruti Swift on a kerb of loose gravel. With considerable effort, he begins manoeuvring his long legs from the pedals to the pavement. His knees bang against the steering wheel as he twists and turns. Once his feet touch the sun-sizzled tarmac, he makes much of stretching his back and exercising his neck muscles.
    ‘This is not a flashy car,’ he says as he bleeps the electronic lock. ‘In fact, it has bad status actually.’
    The practicality of the two-door hatchback – a small car in a traffic-choked mega-city – is of little consequence to the lanky product of a Mumbai slum. Babu doesn’t care that it parks easily or squeezes between lanes. A Toyota Innova. That’s what his boss should buy. Seven-seater, SLX. That is the ‘best good status car’ in his opinion.
    As a retained chauffeur, Babu’s professional standing is directly linked to his employer’s choice of vehicle. As he sees it, the Swift is doing his image no favours. Babu feels that depreciation keenly.
    A Muslim (his formal name is Mohammed) in a Hindu-dominated city, the gangly driver already senses himself on the defensive. His niece, for example, who keeps the faith and wears a burkha, recently lost her job as a teacher in the slum. ‘After seven yearsthere, they required her to change her religion.’ She chose to resign instead.
    ‘In Maharashtra, the party says only Marathi people should work,’ Babu remarks, his shoulders hunching in resignation. ‘Every government office wants to employ their own man.’
    By the ‘party’, I presume he means Maharashtra Navanirman Sena, a radicalised offshoot of the already ultra-right Hindutva group Shiv Sena. The Mumbai-based party (which enjoys a somewhat turbulent alliance with the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party) is hell-bent on closing the city’s doors to outsiders. The list of unwanted includes Muslims, whether Maharashtra-born or not. If he could, Raj Thackeray, the nephew of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, would oblige all Mumbai’s taxi drivers to speak fluent Marathi. The sectarian proposal preoccupies the Hindi-speaking chauffeur.
    Babu’s sensitivity about his status has a more personal edge too. By Indian standards, he is extremely tall – six foot two inches, ‘without shoes’. Everything about him, from his nose to his toes, looks one size too big. It’s as though his mother had anticipated him shrinking in the wash. He never did. What he is most conscious about is his receding hairline. A protractor-shaped patch of naked skin runs from his forehead to his crown. A bald pate is the source of great anxiety for Indian men. A fulsome crop of hair symbolises virility and general manliness. And not just on the head. There are coffee-table books dedicated solely to the wonder that is the Indian moustache. Babu keeps his hair close-cropped, brushing it forward for an extra few millimetres of coverage. Regardless of his efforts, the taunts of children still hound him through the slum’s congested alleyways. ‘Ganjaa, Ganjaa,’ they shout. ‘Baldy, Baldy.’ Their parents chide him too. This time for his bike, a rusty Yamaha RX 100. Babu tells them to go to hell, but the jokes bite. He admits that his two-wheeler is old (‘1987 model’) and rusty and so small that he has to crouch over the handlebars like an overgrown child on a