WHERE MONEY TALKS
Nearly three weeks into England, I must confess my walking stick is by far my most precious possession. Apart from the utilitarian purpose, it at once elevates me to the ranks of the privileged. And not only in England. The stick is received with respect throughout Europe as I discovered during our travels in Portugal, France, Spain and even Norway. Similarly in Cyprus. The deference faltered only when crossing a few miles of Mediterranean tranquillity, I reached Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile. Egypt treated my walking stick with the supreme disdain to which I have grown accustomed in India. It was another illustration of the difference between East and West, Asia and Europe.
They respond to different triggers. I had an aunt who looked European, being half English, and wore Western slacks at home. But the sari was her chosen attire when travelling abroad, which she did every year. “I get much better service,” she explained. Tshirts, jeans and slacks were for export cargoes of Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi maids; churidars were favoured by planeloads of women from the Doaba region of Punjab joining their husbands toiling in the factories and fields of the English Midlands. Draped in her flowered chiffon, my aunt cut as regal a figure in Dresden as in Dubrovnik. The natives were awed.
Not that the walking stick I have used since an attack of bacterial cellulites in London in 2015 awes anyone. It’s a shabby artefact with a collapsible metal body and an imitation wood handle that began shedding its paint within the first few days. But by arousing concern and compassion, it works wonders wherever it accompanies me. Only yesterday, an elderly (but younger than me) Englishwoman at the bus stand opposite the British Library tried to force me to take the seat she seemed determined to vacate. It has the same effect inside buses and trains. Airports too. I am invited to board planes before the stampede (with my wife naturally accompanying me) even at Heathrow, which is not noted for courtesy or consideration, especially to Afro-Asian visitors. Checking in for flights, I am asked if I would like a wheelchair.
It would be untrue to say I have never experienced similar courtesy in India. But it’s the exception and not the rule. When it does occur, it’s a kindly private — never official — gesture. No airport official beckons me to the head of the queue. No security personnel asks with concern whether I would be able to manage after surrendering my stick to the conveyor belt and X-ray machine. No airline employee ever suggests I sit down instead of standing in line. Yet, if the mythology about India is correct, my grey hairs should command immediate deference even without the evidence of frailty that a stick provides. Perhaps, there are too many of us old and decrepit people around, too much competition for courtesy in a land where almost everyone needs some help or other. Following the inflexible law of demand and supply, India might be running out of courtesy.
The Agewell Foundation found not long ago that 96.4 per cent of the elderly complain of being neglected, abused, exploited or otherwise mistreated, often because of financial reasons. As with every commodity, there’s also the question of fraudulently exaggerated demand, of resourceful people helping themselves to more than their fair share in a catch as catch can society where money and influence are the main drivers. I am thinking of a prominent woman I sometimes encounter on the long flight to London. Seeing her wheeled into the plane and wheeled out of it, I assumed some disability prevented her walking. On one occasion, however, we bumped into her the day after landing at Heathrow. Far from being immobile in a wheelchair, she was trotting nimbly up the steps of a major London supermarket. When I commented on her miraculous recovery, she replied, like my aunt in her sari, “I always use a wheelchair when I’m going abroad!” ****************** Sympathy for the underdog — and what dog could be more under than an old man with a stick? — has always run strong in British life. Many years ago when race relations in London were very fraught, a white woman proudly told a newspaper that she made a point of jabbing Afro-Asians with her handbag so that she could smile sweetly afterwards and apologise. All’s not lost in the world if courtesy is an end in itself. It might even justify a little subterfuge.