Going Over to Down Under

It begins on the Quantas flight. The Flight Attendants can barely conceal their impatience with the browns. They attend to calls with a dismissive, ‘Yes? Sir. You make a request and they will purposely delay it while they go about attending to everyone else. If you are on a stop over flight, the ground staff will do a repeat. I have watched the Quantas rep whispering to the Check-in Staff at Bangkok Airport, ‘Check his passport’, an honour again reserved for the brownies. You land in Sydney and they will pick you out from the crowd and guide you to the customs hall and ask you to open your luggage. You stand there hoping you haven’t put anything in by mistake, while the burly Aussies wear gloves to go through your stuff and you hope the lady behind you doesn’t notice him holding up and shaking out your underwear. (I certainly wouldn’t hide illegal stuff in that.) Standard procedure? yes, but again targetted at the browns. Atleast on two occasions I was with a colleague from Singapore and both times he went through.  

I went to Starcity, a well known casino in Sydney with my Indian colleagues and we were in for some lip service there as well. J was standing in line to cash his chips when this Aussie behind told him, ‘Its an honor for you to stand next to me, you brown d***’.  J paid back in kind with something about origins. The next instance came soon after, while we waited for a cab. We saw this group of Aussie youth hail down a cab and then screaming, ‘Why cant you go, you f****** b****?’ We got into the same cab and it was this middle aged Lebanese lady who was shivering and told us that she wanted to go home as it was close to midnight and the boys wanted to go in the opposite direction. They didn’t stop at the yelling, they took another cab, overtook us and stopped at the next signal and shouted obscenities while gesturing with their fingers.  The next was at the Sydney Railway Station while we tried to get out through the turnstile, an Aussie pushed D and went ahead. 

I have always been intimidated while in Australia, there is an uneasiness you feel and you are constantly on guard. However, my Aussie colleagues are great people. They have always been warm, protective and very helpful.   

As for fellow Indian travellers, the less said the better. They are bad visitors, period. They will summon the Flight Attendants for the flimsiest of reasons. I have seen guys asking for drinks well past serving time, they hoard miniature whisky bottles in their pockets. As soon as the ‘Fasten Seat-belt’ sign is off they gather around a particular seat and talk loudly while blocking the passage. Yelling in Hindi across the aisle is common, so is talking loudly while co-passengers try to catch a wink.  Get off the plane and they will push you to get ahead, jump queues, litter the place. And if you see Indians in a shop, flee. They will bargain on stuff that have fixed prices with liberal doses of theatrics thrown in. I have been to shops where they have said they wont sell to me, because ‘Indians only haggle’.

My sympathies go out for the students of racial attacks in Melbourne but I think it is time we had a good look at ourselves. We need cultural sensitization sessions for visitors, be it tourists, students, or professionals. I remember that during the first wave of on-site projects, engineers had to go through a session on sensitization – please use deos, wash the oil off your hair, do not talk with your mouth full, say please and thank you…. 

This is the era of globalisation and the global village, we need each other. Let’s learn to live and let live.