Spreading the idea of India, its culture

In the course of my career I have had occasion to visit many countries. In several cases it was just an airport to airport to hotel to the meeting place, back to the hotel and again airport to airport and back home.

It all began in mid-1970s when I and a Doctor was sent by the Ministry of Health, government of India, for a 10 week course in hospital administration in London. We were not exactly told the purpose, but the rumour was that on return we would assume charge as superintendents of two very reputed hospitals in Delhi. But it didn’t happen that way because by the time we returned after completing the course with a certificate in our hand, the government had changed and the idea was dropped.

Several years later I went to England again on a fellowship to a college in Oxford and spent nine months there, in the course of which we had some interesting experiences. One day my wife and I were sitting on a bench in the library of the college. After some time a gentleman came and sat next to us. After listening to our conversation he started mumbling something. We didn’t pay much attention to him but soon we realised that we could understand some of the words he was speaking. He appeared to be reciting a garbled version of Hanuman Chalisa. When we confronted him, he said that he was a Fijian Indian and wanted to find out whether we came from India. We then asked him to proceed with the recitation and very soon doubled up with some of the lines and expressions he used. He told us that that was the version of Hanuman Chalisa that had been passed down in their community from one generation to another. Over the years it had been somewhat distorted, but it didn’t matter.

As I changed my job several times I went to different countries relating to my assignment. One of the jobs took me to Australia, NewZealand and Fiji Islands during the months of May and June. It was very cold and the chill factor in Christchurch of New Zealand was killing. The purpose of the visit was to popularise and market handloom goods of India in that part of the world. However wherever we went, as was to be expected, the Chinese had been there before us and offered similar products at a cheaper rate. It was difficult for us to convince the local buyers that what the Chinese were marketing was not really handlooms but goods made on powerlooms. The socio-economic importance of handlooms was lost on them.

Much disappointed we took the long haul back to India. On the return journey we lost time and there was also a change of flight. I had already been served breakfast in the first plane. After the change in flight I was dozing off when suddenly an air hostess appeared from nowhere and pulled down the table from the back of the seat in front of me and while slapping the breakfast tray on it hissed “eat”. This experience was quite in contrast with the one I had much later when on returning from Japan bya Japanese airline I sneezed rather loudly. There was commotion behind me and on looking back I found that a petite Japanese air hostess coming from the behind had almost collapsed.

There were several visits to the USA and Europe for meetings and negotiations. A visit to South America took me to Panama, Guyana, where we met the Prime Minister ofIndian origin and saw a huge cricket stadium. In Venezuela the petrol was so cheap that even the poor maintained rickety cars with several parts missing and perhaps enjoyed the rides. In Chile we saw of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi placed on a street square.

Then there was a trip to the erstwhile USSR for organising the Festival of India there. As soon as we came out of the airport we saw a lot of commotion. Upon enquiry we were told that some antisocial elements were trading roubles for dollars, offering four roubles for a dollar whereas official rate for a dollar was much less than a rouble. During our stay there we were provided the services of an interpreter, a professor from a University. He used to join us every day when we were about to finish our breakfast in the area earmarked for us and pick up some leftover items such as boiled eggs. One day he put a piece of salami in the pocket of his synthetic fibre pants and due to the heat it left an oil trail there on. He continued to wear that pant for the rest of our stay there. Both these episodes spoke a lot about the deteriorating economic condition of the country. Much later I realised that during that trip I had visited not one but three countries because of the breakup of the USSR later. There were several trips to various countries of Africa. The most interesting of course was a visit to an offshore island in Tanzania, where the pilot refused to carry passengers as per the capacity of the plane because he said: he was “not counting heads but bottoms”.

Buying pearls in China and gold in Dubai during stopovers. Some unpalatable food in a formal dinner in South Korea. More homely ambience in Thailand with cycle rickshaws and a shopping complex similar to New Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar market at night.

One realisation that these excursions brought home to me was that promoting excellence provides you an opportunity to travel abroad. I got an opportunity to go to South Africa, Canada and Australia. In Australia this time after checking into the hotel I walked across to a departmental store to buy some items of daily need. An amiable storekeeper welcomed me and asked: “Have you come here today?” His “today” however sounded like “to die”.

(Writer is Former Secretary-General, Rajya Sabha)