Indian Writing

What a pathetically snobbish, obnoxious op-ed in the Telegraph today. Sure, some people can behave peculiarly or boorishly while travelling. But the kind of elitist prejudice shown in this article by Sunanda K.Dutta-Ray is far more offensive than the body odour of the so-called hoi polloi. Some extracts:

If colour prejudice forced Indians to exercise restraint, confidence has opened the floodgates of exuberance.
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It used to be an empty plane but for a few well-behaved chokras going to Bangkok with no luggage and returning laden with cheap contraband.
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Such is the level of English of many flyers that I heard a Royal Brunei hostess warn another, “They don’t understand ‘vegetarian’. You must say ‘aloo-gobi!’”
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I have filled in landing cards for countless passengers who produce their passports when asked for name and address, but never for an unlettered qualified surgeon, as Tapan Raychaudhuri, the historian, had to do. Though with a surgery degree from some Uttar Pradesh university, the woman called the entire British Isles — including Dublin where she was joining her doctor husband — “London”.
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Field hands who have acquired an insatiable appetite for whisky and a raucous bonhomie when reborn as factory hands in Britain invite the superciliousness of British Airways crews with little other experience of Indians.

Even as he laughs at a woman for calling all of Britain “London”, he dismisses her degree as being from “some Uttar Pradesh university”. And hello, what does the traveller’s “level of English” have to do with their politeness?

“Mine is, of course, a restricted world at home and even its walls are being breached,” wails the writer. Too bad, sir. Please learn to deal with it.

In Australia, the Ernie Awards for the most sexist statements. Tom Cruise was a winner:

Fresh from being dropped by his studio, Hollywood actor Tom Cruise won the celebrity Ernie, for saying the life of his partner Katie Holmes is now about being a mother. He said he was not giving her the chance to turn into another Nicole.

There were other categories:

The Media Ernie went to a Newcastle Herald journalist for the way he denigrated female space shuttle crewmembers.

Jeff Corbett wrote that, “NASA ensured there was a male engineer on board in case things went wrong.”