Mr Obama, sell us something other than weapons and wafers

Dear Prez Obama ji,
So you’re gonna come calling and we in India are damn excited about it. After all every time an American President decides to step on our humble shores, we make a practice of cart-wheeling in glee and going all gungho with our colours-culture-and-curry brand of hospitality.
Of course, we collectively fell in love with your effusive charm two years ago. Today as you battle greater challenges at home, the sentiment is more ‘Oh Baba!’ than ‘Oh Mama!’ But the Taj, our very own ground zero is dressed up fortress-like to welcome you. You will surely do the rounds of our corridors of power, meet the A listers- perhaps a designer village with the resplendent flavours of incredible India and some impromptu dancing for florescent photo-ops.
We are excited that you are coming in your first term itself unlike Bush ji and Clinton ji before you. We’ve heard that you bring the largest ever corporate delegation, representing 250 companies along with you that have GDPs more than those of many countries. Now isn’t that great news?
Okay so here’s the thing. Other than the power of brilliant oratory and your 1000 Watt smile-who is your dentist by the way? Is he an Indian? -- we wonder what kind of carrots you bring along this time? And they’re all good, yeah. Carrots are full of anti oxidants and anti-ageing. Just what we need for some longevity of purpose in great Indo-US relations. Ahem, so do we get the dual technology transfers and support for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council in return for FDIs and the challenge of keeping China in check?
There will be multi-billion dollar defence deals and I am sure India—and taking cue from that, Pakistan—will end up buying many more weapons of mass destruction like two kids trying to outdo each other to appease an indulgent Uncle Sam.
But may I tell you that we don’t need the weapons. A long series of your predecessors have done the same over the years with the sole aim of keeping this region polarised and uneasy, with daggers drawn all the time so that you remain a super power.
Let me remind you that you and your country have influenced popular culture in India across the board. Spurred on by the soft power of all things American, we all began dreaming of going to America to live the American dream. We gave up our lassis for Coke, our samosas for McDonalds, we made Reebok and IBM our very own.
We cherished the ‘Wonder Years’ and wondered why our schools didn’t have less rules, less uniforms and more proms. Seems those hours we spent slogging through boring-looking, sedate classrooms kept us in good stead in the long run. I believe today all Techie companies in US swarm with Indians. A friend who works for Cisco told me on gtalk last evening that their office in California feels more Desi than Dilli ever could!
From Oprah and Elen Degeneres we learnt that those hush hush issues we were always taught to keep quiet about, didn’t always have to be swept under the carpet. We found our voices and the courage to let it all hang out and you’ve got to see our reality shows today to believe how uninhibited and open we have become. Some of our ‘it’ gals can put your Paris Hiltons to shame.
As young Indian women stormed male bastions and put marriage on the back burner, in their newly found independence and insouciance, it was those spunky women in ‘Sex and the City’ and the Ally McBeals who were more our soul allies than the zombies belted out by Ekta Kapoor and Co. If we did even manage to reach the alter, our woes were more in tune with ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’. You know, today we cannot imagine life without our Levis and our Gap T-shirts and our Facebook, Twitter and gmail accounts, our Apples, our iPods and iPads. And thanks to these symbols of American enterprise, we’re all friends out here. Yes, ex- husbands, ex boyfriends, bosses, children, parents, drivers, Indians, Pakistanis-we’re friends like even ‘Friends’ could never be. The lines are blurring. And what we have learnt from this friendship is that people anywhere in the world want just peace, means of livelihood and stability.
We have become so American that we do not even need to go to America to live the American dream. Strangely, believe it or not, from Bhatinda to Bangalore we are living the American dream right here in our own country. In fact, it is time America comes calling to try and figure out how we made 
the American dream our own. Hush Hush, don’t we have an inkling that 
this visit is being seen as a ray of hope more for America Inc than it is for India Inc? A friend just tweeted- “We have 80m wired+40m mob net users using 1m+ sites, IMRB tracks 5k users on 800 sites, call it WHAM. I call it WANK.”
Such is the power of peaceful coexistence and non-aggression today. So stuff happens, right? You had a 9/11 and your predecessor went into a frenzy declaring a war on an indefinite target that has gone on way too long that even you haven’t been able to put an end to. We had a 26/11 but contained ourselves to wait and watch and get on with life, channelising our anger and frustration in constructive activities.
My sincere advice to you? Choose commerce over combat, trade over tirades, and weapons of mass communication over weapons of mass destruction, and you’ll be just fine. We were already sold over to the contagious appeal of your ideas and way of life. Let that appeal abound.
So you could omit offering lollies of ever mounting defence deals to us and more defence aids to Pakistan (wonder how these things go hand in hand?) to further destabilise the region. You could omit the endless wars to smoke out suspected terror threats who are today actually being cloned to make rapturous comedies. Basically, let’s bridge the gap.

Yours truly


Shivani Mohan is an India based writer. She can be reached at smshivanimohan@gmail.com

This article was first published in Khaleej Times on 6th Nov 2010

My Love–Hate Relationship with Pakistan- OPINION Khaleej Times 30 December 2008

My grandparents hailed from Kasur in Pakistan. My grandmother often recollected, with a lot of warmth and fondness, the good old days they had spent in undivided Punjab.

Her childhood friends there, her neighbours and acquaintances were the subject of many an interesting anecdote. She spoke of Kasur being the city of Sufi saint and poet, Bulle Shah, a humanist and philosopher who wrote of harmony and peace.

And her favourite quote in Punjabi roughly meant, “The person who has not seen Lahore, hasn’t seen anything.” All this talk of Pakistan left an indelible mark of mystique and awe on my mind about the land of my forefathers.

I had the usual teenage crushes on Imran Khan and Wasim Akram. During heated India-Pakistan cricket matches, I secretly favoured Pakistan. I devoured PTV serials such as ‘Dhoop Kinare’ and ‘Unkahee’ stationed at various Indian cantonments along the border as an Indian Army officer’s daughter. Now I am an Indian Army officer’s wife. Pakistan has been this invisible enigma in my life by virtue of the profession of the two most important men in my life. Even though no individual from Pakistan has done any harm to me personally, as I grew older, I acquired a reticent stance about all things Pakistani. Over the years I acquired some Pakistani friends on my Facebook and Gmail accounts too but convention demanded that a definite distance was maintained at all times.

Then one sweltering day in September in Dubai I ventured out alone on my own, for a lark. It was my third day in Dubai and I was still getting used to my whereabouts. I took a hotel cab to Karama and sent it off. I was in the mood to walk a bit, do some window-shopping and return as and when I pleased. Before I realised, I had shopped for good four hours.

When I started trying to hail a cab, I was met with complete failure. The cabs would appear smoothly, very promisingly from the corner of an alley and disappear equally fast. The bright sun loomed large on top. A headache had begun to knock on my temples. It was Ramadan, so I hadn’t carried any water along. The parched, arid afternoon hung like an inevitable cloud of migraine over my head.

From the corner of my eye I could feel a pair of eyes watching me. It was a scruffy middle-aged man in a black shirt, thick gold chain around his neck. His eyes had the puffiness that comes with years of heavy drinking. His mouth had the artificial redness of paan stains. He could easily play the goon in a B grade Hindi movie. Yet he stood there nonchalantly taking in my discomfiture with a contrived indifference.

After a while Mr Blackshirt walked up to me. I shifted a few paces. I almost jolted as he said, “Is something the matter? I see you are uncomfortable.”

I said, “No, nothing. Just waiting for the cab. But they are not stopping today.”

“Arre, this is a common problem here. Goron ko dekh ke rokenge na.(They will stop only for the whites).”

To know that he had said in as many words what I had been experiencing for past one hour, had a ring of validation to my ordeal. But I pretended otherwise and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll find my way.”

As I fiddled with my phone thinking of calling the hotel to send a cab, the battery went kaput. I had not charged the cell that day and I realised I did not remember any number. I felt a nervous trickle of sweat dripping down my collar.

Half an hour later Mr Blackshirt was back. This time he was more persistent, “I am telling you, you won’t get a cab. Can I drop you somewhere?”

“You have a car?” I asked dumbly.

“There, that ramshackle blue car you see. That’s mine. I buy old cars and sell them. Do small repairs. Once in a while I drop passengers here and there and they pay me whatever is suitable.”

I still didn’t want to believe him. But a combination of thirst, migraine and panic made me consider the option. I put on my bravest expression and said, “Okay.”

As I was about to open the rear door of his car, Mr Blackshirt said, “Madame if you don’t mind, you have to sit in front. Well, what I do is not legal. It shouldn’t appear as if I am taking a passenger in a car that is not a taxi.”

I almost wanted to run away that moment but then thought it would look rather silly now. Reluctantly I sat in front, next to Mr Blackshirt, in a classic defensive folded-arms pose. I kept my tone firm and no-nonsense while making a mental note of the route he was taking. But Mr Blackshirt was a chatterbox. He proceeded to tell me all the intricacies of the complex nature of his occupation. When he told me he was from Pakistan and that too Lahore, I don’t know why I felt a sense of relief. I immediately blurted out, “Oh! I have come from Amritsar, just a few kilometers away.”

“You look new here”, he said.

“No, no, I have been here many times”, I lied. And then I too spun a yarn about how influential and well known I was in Dubai, just incase he was planning to kidnap me, or something. I had read about the gruesome murder of a South African lady in the papers that morning. When we reached my hotel, I asked him how much I should pay him. He said, “Let it be Madame. We are neighbours literally.” He took the money with a lot of insistence and handed me a visiting card- Kamran Ansari, buyer seller, car-mechanic.

While I thanked him profusely, letting him know that I was actually new to the city, he said most genuinely,
“Inshallah, there shouldn’t be a need. But if you manage to get stranded
 again anywhere in Dubai, just give me a call. I’ll be there.” I stood speechless
 by the kerb with his card in my hand
 as he drove away in the ramshackle 
blue car.

After the recent Mumbai attacks, I was livid like most Indians. In one sweeping motion I wanted to delete all the Pakistani contacts on my friends list. Who needed enemies when you had friends like these? They were telling on TV that the lone captured terrorist, Kasab was from a place near Kasur. That was not the association I had of Kasur. I had known Kasur as the hallowed land of my grandmother’s tales, the city of Sufi saint and poet, Bulle Shah.

Then the condolences poured in. Yes, from my Pakistani friends too. A young bride who hails from Karachi and is now married to an Indian in Chandigarh wrote in, “I do feel insecure; I don’t want people to know that I am from Pakistan. They look at me as if I am also one of the terrorists or as if all Pakistanis should be held responsible for this mayhem. I am not sure if I would be allowed to stay with my loving family here or would I be thrown out of India one day just because a few people bearing Muslim names and a Pakistani tag to their skins had committed an unforgivable crime in India…..”

All these messages in my inbox seemed genuine and heartfelt. Much more believable than the promises made by their leadership. More believable than even the promises made by our leadership.

They provided succour in days of little hope, reminding me of the fact that before my grandparents walked the arduous trek to the Indian side of Punjab sixty years ago, we were one people for centuries.

Last week I sat cleaning my bag and I chanced upon the visiting card of Kamran Ansari, Car-buyer-seller-mechanic. I regarded it for a while before I could throw it into the dustbin. I don’t know when I would be stranded next on a parched afternoon in Dubai. But I found myself flipping the card back into my purse. For now there is some comfort in keeping these few channels open.

Shivani Mohan is an India-based writer. She can be reached at smshivanimohan@gmail.com