By Kartik Krishna
First impressions, they say, count for everything. This may be true in some cases, especially those in which one doesn't have to probe. Fashion shows, circus extravaganzas, any Michael Bay movie…skin deep is about as deep as you need to go. But as a first-timer in China, half-amused, goggle-eyed, I was aware that I had to wait and wait. There were going to be several explanatory notes at the end of every day; even the footnotes here require footnotes. Annotate, and wait.
As a teenager in Bombay, my buddies and I used to gang up on a certain breed of Indian. One of the families that resided in my building was from the northeast of India, Mizoram or Manipur or some such state. They could've been from anywhere in China or Mongolia -- they bore a striking resemblance to Shaolin monks -- and perhaps their ancestors did hail from distant shores, but for us ignorant teens, they were unequivocally from a fictional town called Dragonland. "Dragon" was a slangy pejorative reference to the slight upward tilt of their eyes. Never mind if we ourselves ran the gamut of physical possibilities, occupying every shade and hue and idiosyncrasy of physiognomy, but they were the aliens, and we'd chosen to revile them. So we stood below their windows, enchanted by our own putative superiority, and chanted, "Dragons go back to Dragonland, Dragons go back to Dragonland!" If one of the unfortunate kids from the family (the youngest one was called Michael) happened to be playing somewhere in the vicinity, we would take up positions a few feet from him and croon at him until he would flounce off in tears.
This continued for several months, until I began to notice Michael's sisters noticing me. My friends also noticed what I noticed, and as a result of the march of progress, our proud campaign of persecution was called off abruptly. No more mudslinging and hectoring and bullying. These were noticeably blossoming women, eyes notwithstanding, in the prime of youth and influence. Who were we to object if they cast their dewy gazes in our direction? And so it went. Nothing came out of Operation Romance; the girls teased and taunted and tantalized, twirling our hormones (shaken and stirred) with their little fingers, perhaps all for their baby brother, who gloated from the sidelines.
Twenty years on (as in a Hindi film), I have been served my comeuppance on a silver platter. I've lapped up John Woo and Ang Lee films hungrily, had scores of best friends from Assam and Sikkim and Mizoram, and been dumped by a half-Chinese girl from Kyrgyzstan. Sometime in my late teens, I stopped thinking of them as Dragons, and lent them more benign, human characteristics. If they could see me -- a failed Earthling by several standards -- as even remotely acceptable, what then was my problem?
And now I'm in a country full of "Dragons," stared at unabashedly, incessantly, mocked good-naturedly for my hideous Chinese accent, joshed for being a representative of that fabled otherworldly realm, Bollywood. Divine retribution? Perhaps. When I tell taxi drivers that I'm yinduren (Indian), they develop a glint in the eye, as if they expect me to launch into a gyrating rain dance at the drop of a vowel. My landlady once made me pose for photographs in front of a police station, cradling her baby as if I had just rescued him from kidnappers or terrorists. I did not delude myself that I was being regarded as anything but an idle curiosity, part human part freak-show, to be displayed digitally at family gatherings or any occasion that required a dab of the outré.
I used to think that all Dragons looked the same. But now, in the curves and contours of their faces I see those of my Indian friends, family, ex-bosses, famous Bombay actresses…I stand in front of a mirror and imagine my eyes curving upwards, curling at the edges like the beginning of a smile, not prone to gravity like the rest of me. Hey, I think I actually look cool, for a change. Maybe it's homesickness. Or perhaps Indo-China is conjoined by more than a hyphen, and our twin cultures are just that -- twins.
The writer is an Indian journalist living in Beijing
(Beijing Review September 12, 2007)
