Something about chicken tikka masala…

If you’re calling yourself a desi, then you’re really not Indian or so it seems. In fact, the usage of this term came about when Indians emigrated to British colonies as well as the US, especially around the 60s. Little Indias spawned into big Indias, with corner shops of chicken tikka masala take away to Amitabh Bachchan dvds, all in the name of desi or “South Asian” culture. It catered to a box that you could at last check to mark your identity in foreign lands. So does this fusion identity make it into the NGI box? Well, if we are going to be strict about definitions here, of guarding our new niche, then it fails to gain membership. For starters, our desi here is not really applying for membership in the first place! She does not count herself as Indian. And say, for argument sake, she does want to belong to our newly nurtured acronym, she would probably interpret “global” as being stationed abroad. However, in our little corner, “global” mean movement, movement of self and ideas. And besides, the quintessential desi is about identity pontification, the kind of material that psychologists dream of but the run of the mill Indian wastes little time in self reflection on their “Indianness.” So here you have it, a new boundary for the NGI!

Who is an NRI ? The Coke ad tells all

Remember Aamir Khan's ad for Coke

What’s in a name anyway?

Apparently, there is a need for a new acronym – NGI: the New Global Indian. Perhaps the NRI (Non Resident Indian) label has worn off, after almost two decades of well-advertised clichés of the yuppy Indian coming “home” to show off the latest gadgets and titles, and recently manicured foreign accent. But let me be honest here; our team inherited this title, we did not invent it. In fact, much of this title is perplexing. Is there an “old” global Indian that we can speak of? And when we say “global,” are we talking about people who have an outlook that has been shaped from years of arm-chair reading of international affairs or maybe something as simple as someone who is turned on by sushi as much as idli-dosa? There are of course other less economical and more elite ways of earning this title, having lived in different parts of the world, coming back regularly with their potpourri of anecdotes on British bar talk to the New York subway life. In fact, this title is much like the “expat” title, where although there are several Indians who travel and live abroad, we distinguish the “immigrant” from the “expat” by sheer class and education. So evidently, the New Global Indian is not the Kerala housemaid who has moved to Dubai to support her family but the doctor who has set up his pediatric office in Menlo Park, California, with his kids skyping regularly with their dada and dadi in Gurgaon.

So granted, we’ve talking of a certain class of people and although the liberal guilt should kick in when addressing this niche populace, we should, for all realistic purposes, be accustomed to it. After all, it’s a national hobby to segment ones demographic. There are many ways of slicing the pie, from Khushwant Singh jokes, Bollywood vs Tollywood people, Banglorians vs Mumbaities to the Infosys gang versus the rest of the world. So why not actually have a blog that addresses those Indians who have traveled and/or lived/worked abroad, who continue to be tied to India and, for all purposes, do not qualify to be within the current plethora of clichés. And in this vein, why not leverage on our common cultural capital of what being Indian is supposed to be like and then, through our multiple and often contesting experiences, make you slightly uncomfortable with such notions. This weekly blog hopes to serve this need.