Dear Harpreet and Clement

Ah, young love! The thrill, the joy, the agony. It was written in the stars, it was sung on the wind, it was meant to be. When romance is in the ascendant, nothing else seems to matter.

Congratulations, youngsters. We can only wish you well. May your love blossom, mature and set an example to the world.

In the meantime, you may want to think about some things.

Harpreet: Pregnant at 18, with no obvious means of financial support? What exactly were you thinking?

Clement: granted, you were pushed into a corner by your prospective father-in-law, an ornery cuss by all accounts. But using the media to ambush him, and then goading him to make a complete fool of himself? What exactly were you thinking?

Contrary to how it may feel sometimes, the world does not spin around the two of you. You will need help in life. You will need to be understood. You will need financial security. You will need parental guidance.

Cheapening your Great Love Affair with comic antics was utterly misguided. You should have sat down to explain, placate, understand and be understood. Failing that, you should have walked away like the adults you are with your heads held high.

You should have kept the moral high ground for yourselves. Unprotected sex and unleashing a media circus betrayed naivety and foolishness.

Passionate love is a fever. It subsides. When that happens, you need a strong, sober bond to see you through the years. You need sense and sensibility. You need to be less impetuous and more thoughtful. Life has consequences.

But for now, we do wish you well. Enjoy your passion, before real life intrudes. And when it does, have the fortitude to deal with it.

Best wishes

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Dear Raju Syan

Commiserations. An unemployed 22-year old announces that he has impregnated your 18-year old daughter? That would send most fathers I know up the wall. I can only imagine the rage and helplessness you felt, coupled with the shame that our reactionary community will undoubtedly heap on you. Pole sana.

But having said that, did you have to have such a mindlessly over-the-top reaction? Allegedly locking your daughter up, threatening a forced abortion? What century do you live in?

And when you showed up at the hospital and found Clement waiting, media circus in tow, did it escape you completely that you were walking into a trap? Attacking all and sundry, losing your turban, shouting obscenities in the most public of places – what was that all about? All you managed to achieve was giving a newspaper the most unseemly of photo spreads.

And the next day, when the same paper calls you up to ask for more, you plunge headlong again. This time calling your daughter (and, apparently, your wife) unprintable names. You seem to be under the impression that this is everyone’s fault but yours.

Did it escape you that your daughter’s antics might actually reflect the relationship you’ve had with her all these years? What is the point of flying into uncontrollable rages when the damage is already done?

Oh, and perhaps you didn’t tune in, but all the FM stations went to town with this. And their callers phoned in to say “Oh, so this is how much these Wahindi hate us Africans.” Thanks a lot for that one.

Pride and prejudice undid you. Still, we commiserate. This was a tough one, and few of us can guarantee a sane response when provoked so severely. But it was a time for love and understanding. I hope you find those in the times to come and can reclaim the regard of your daughter.

Best wishes

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Dear Kenyan Media

Wow, that was a big one, wasn’t it! It had everything: young love, forbidden romance, lust, recriminations, drama, spectacle. More newspapers sold, more listeners phoning in. Advertisers happy, journalists exultant.

But tell me: were you doing the right thing? Agreed, you didn’t create the story: Harpreet and Clement and Raju did that all by themselves. But did you not fan the flames? You lay in wait for a crazed Raju at the hospital, and you goaded him into making an utter spectacle of himself. Then you splashed the ugliest of photo spreads in the paper.

And radio station hosts, did you only see one angle in this story? That of the pure young lovers trying to cross a forbidden racial line? I heard this played out for hours on end on the airwaves. Do you have any sense of responsibility for the wider society around you, when you throw fuel onto the fire like that? And which of you is not a racist and a tribalist, that you wish to point fingers at a more obvious one?

What is the point of highlighting the rage of a father who has clearly lost the plot? Is that news? Why don’t your interview any number of disturbed people out there, if sound-bites are all you’re after?

Most journos these days seem to be too young to have developed mature perspective. But I was surprised that less impetuous figures, perhaps with daughters of their own, did not stop this story from turning into a silly carnival. Is it so hard to put yourself in the shoes of another, and to understand where anguish comes from?

Yes, Harpreet and Clement are adults, but did they demonstrate any emotional or sexual maturity? Issues like this call for reasoned and sensitive handling, not the circus that ensued. The media may not have written the story, but they certainly made it into the shallow and silly news that it became. Only two correspondents that I came across – Clay Muganda and Rasna Warah – added sense and insight to the debate.

We can be better than that. There were big issues at play here, but we missed them all in our rush to produce the sensational.

Best wishes

***************************************

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There it is, tucked away in Nairobi’s Highridge area: the strangest of shopping malls. Like some bizarre human-sized rabbit warren, full of confusing corners, surprising staircases and odd little businesses in basements, on roofs, in the car park. You almost expect Alice to pop up somewhere in this wonderland – expect that Diamond Plaza, or ‘DP’ as we locals call it, is a purely South Asian phenomenon, and Alice would have to be called Alya, and be wearing a little salwar-kameez.

You can buy madafu in the car park at DP. Or watch others do it while sipping a coffee on a rooftop. You can get a quick haircut as the cars pile in, looking for that elusive parking space. You can buy newspapers from Mumbai, toys from Shanghai, bhindi from Limuru. You can have a prayer said for you by a priest in full regalia in a tiny mandir, no bigger than a closet; or pick a choice cut from a butchery not too far away. You can eat anything: biryani and pau bhaji compete with chow mein and burgers for your culinary attention; but Kenya’s own Maru’s bhajia and mayai chapatti take pride of place. Or you could just chew a paan all day long with your fellow idlers, watching the girls come and go.

You can come here to buy rakhis for your brother, barfi for your mother, kurtas for your father. You can buy firecrackers for Diwali, semolina for Idd and tinsel for Christmas. You’ll get the best mangoes in December and a range of affordable umbrellas in April. You can choose from a full range of the world’s tackiest decorative pieces to adorn your living room. Or you could give it all a miss and go somewhere quieter. And cleaner. And more refined.

Nothing really happens at DP at ten in the morning: you can park anywhere you like and watch a couple of sweepers make half-hearted attempts to clear away yesterday’s debris. At ten o’clock at night, however, you’ll circle for ages looking for a parking slot, and may share a table with three other clans. But you can always do that peculiarly Kenyan Asian thing: eat in your car, en famille. Whatever you do decide to eat, you’ll have to contend with swarms of waiters, incentivised to the verge of dementia by tiny commissions on every order taken, waving menus in your face until you finally shout out what you want.

Diamond Plaza showcases the best of us: it has within its walls the quintessential business model. Lots and lots of hard-working, determined and shrewd hucksters who set up their stalls in minuscule cubby-holes, work all hours and turn a neat profit by maintaining a tight focus on what their customers actually need, at a great price. This is the most basic arena of free enterprise: it’s where the little people set up shop and take their economic future into their own hands. Individuals, families, communities and entire nations have lifted themselves out of poverty in this fashion, throughout history. It is chaotic and frenetic, and it works.

DP also encapsulates the worst of us: it is dirty, disorderly and not a little dangerous. There is grime and litter everywhere, and no one appears to care. Most of those bustling eating houses have kitchens that would fail a health and sanitation test in Hades. The walls and floors are often pock-marked with the hideous remains of someone’s paan, ejected casually. You would not want to visit a lavatory in DP.

Naked wires still hang loose from ceilings. Part of the place is always a construction site, with sand and cement piled up right outside shops open for business. What architectural plans are being followed, and what quality of materials is being used, are not questions you should waste any breath asking. You could spend a lifetime looking for a fire exit, and would not want to be around if someone dropped a lighter.

If you’re picky about probity and exacting about ethics, you might find it difficult to shop here. Most of the music and videos on sale are clearly bootlegged, and only the KRA knows whether any duties or taxes are being paid here. But for most DP shoppers those are laughably irrelevant issues, nahin? As one Mr Pattni pointed out to a Judge Bosire recently, we can’t go around checking whether duty was paid on everything we buy – whether we’re procuring billions of shillings of phantom gold or just the latest Bollywood bop track for a most attractive price.

And then there’s the people issue. It’s an open secret that most of the folk in those shops and eateries are ‘rockets’ – illegal immigrants from the sub-continent. Rumours about brothels have always abounded, and many a marriage was rocked during DP’s early days by husbands marinated in cheap whisky cavorting with dancing girls into the wee hours.

And yet, could it have been any other way? Perhaps we needed all those rockets to fly in and light up the place, giving us a live testament to the chaotic continent our forebears left behind aeons ago. Perhaps we needed a little India within the large Africa that is our home. Everyone is of immigrant stock in Kenya, after all: some wandered in from the Congo forest or down the Nile; others came in dhows under imperial order. Today’s pioneers are flying in on coach class on Kenya Airways.

Perhaps these busy little nouveau immigrants are happily doing what we pampered and lazy third- and fourth-generation descendants can’t anymore: they’re working hard; they’re doing whatever work they have to do in order to get by; they’re saving most of what they earn, instead of squandering it on fripperies; and they’re providing service with a smile, rather than the studied scowl that most of their hosts have perfected.

Perhaps, when we open a free-for-all marketplace where all needs are met, we should not be too surprised when drunken debauchery is also traded. It only happens because people want it to. That kind of thing can never be blamed on the suppliers alone: the customers, our kith and kin, create the demand. Supply follows. Free enterprise usually turns out to have its godfathers, and DP is no exception.

And yet DP is evolving. Its worst seems to be past, and a brighter future may be shining through. The dancing girls are gone – or at least are out of plain sight. It’s cleaner and brighter than it used to be. Many of the music shops are offering ‘original’ CDs and DVDs – and are finding a customer base that is willing to pay a little more for quality and legality. A one-way traffic system with new exits is easing the perennial traffic jams. Shops are growing, sometimes buying out their neighbours to create more space and a better shopping ambience. There are more black Kenyan faces around – both in the shops and amongst the shoppers.

It could be so much more, our DP. It is already an example of unprompted, unplanned commerce at its best – perfectly in tune with its market without a planner in sight. It is already a showcase for spontaneous enterprise, a place where the goods of the world arrive to be met by willing wallets. It could also be a place where our wafrika and wazungu brethren come to shop and eat with us, and marvel at the composed chaos we wahindi revel in.

If we had more mutual tolerance, more belief in doing things right, and more acceptance of the laws of the land, Diamond Plaza might be a different place. But then it wouldn’t really be DP, would it? Most of its supporters love the place to death. Do they see the chaos, the disorder, the squalor? Heck, no. They see range, relevance and refreshing informality. DP is us. You want order, hygiene, careful planning, safety? Go to the Village Market. DP is an eruption, and that’s the way we like it. In any case we choose, because it’s a market: we vote with our wallets, or we vote with our feet. So far, the wallets have been winning.

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Mahmood Mamdani always makes sense. He is a rare voice of reason in East Africa, where unadulterated vitriol and uneducated diatribes are often the norm when discussing this thing called ‘The Asian Question’.

When something as shocking as Kampala’s April riots disturbs us, it is soothing to read an insightful reflection by so thoughtful a man. In particular, Professor Mamdani’s ‘long view’ – from colonial times to the present day – provides perspective and context to a younger audience.

The good professor’s robust analysis of the background to the riots did not disappoint. Yet it left me more than a little perturbed. I struggled to understand this disquiet: much of what Prof. Mamdani asserts about the short-sightedness of the ‘Asian Community’ in Uganda is almost identical to what I have written about South Asians in Kenya, right here in the pages of Awaaz:

“If we want to have a meaningful future in the land where our parents and grandparents were born, it is time to face up to some issues very squarely. There are things we have done that are utterly misguided and have caused much of the hatred that comes our way. If we don’t own up to them, we will remain the victims of self-delusion.”

That was in my first contribution to this magazine, early in 2005. I went on to point out the things that we Asians in Africa do that cause so much resentment: living in cultural ‘islands’ behind high walls, excluding all ‘outsiders’; making all transactions with black Africans with our wallets rather than our hearts; remaining a thoughtlessly visible economic target of a resentful majority; observing the horrible headline corruption of the small number of ‘robber barons’ that besmirch our collective reputation – without ever raising a voice of condemnation; indulging in stupidities like importing ‘rockets’ into an already volatile workplace.

So we would appear to be on the same page, the Professor and I. Yet I remain nervous, and it is about this: there have been many pages written by many thoughtful people about the Kampala riots, but almost all have tried to place the event in context in order to explain it. An ugly mob goes on the rampage, supposedly on an environmental issue, and targets Asians in Uganda’s capital city. Terrified shopkeepers are forced to take refuge in police stations; one unfortunate Asian motorcyclist is cornered and savagely stoned and beaten to death. Two ‘protesters’ die at the hands of the police.

I am aware of the bigger issues at play here. How the Ugandan government is colluding with a rapacious Asian investor to hive off vast tracts of an ecologically important forest; how there is a decades-old racial history that lies behind this riot; how opposition politicians fuelled racial hatred with a forest as an excuse.

But in our search for explanations, why are we forgetting to condemn? To pluck out an innocent bystander and kill him simply because of his colour is an act of racism, pure and simple. It doesn’t matter how much context and reasoning we provide: it is unforgivable to run around in hate mobs killing people. Why is no-one saying that very simple thing?

Yes, I can ‘understand’ why it is so easy for Ugandans to hate the South Asians in their midst. Yes, I can ‘understand’ that the ‘brown’ community has made many errors of judgement in its history. But I refuse to understand that that it is somehow OK for us to be seen as vermin that must be eradicated from African societies, by whatever means necessary. I fear we are in danger of appeasing and placating our African brethren to a ridiculous extent.

Here’s some more context. Asians in Africa did not colonise anyone, impose hegemony or grab ancestral lands. Asians in Africa did not install cruel and racist systems of apartheid. Asians in Africa did not invent corruption nor bring it to these shores. Asians in Africa have not denied anyone the opportunity to engage in business. Asians in Africa have not caused all the economic mismanagement, incompetence and plunder that have impoverished the average African. Asians in Africa do not run around in mobs killing people. Asians in Africa are not genetically predisposed to be corrupt and greedy.

So why all the hatred, and why all the self-consciously defensive stances being taken by so many? Why do we feel we have to keep apologising, and struggling hard to understand things like the compulsory expulsions from Uganda in the 1970s, the brutal violence meted out to Kenya’s Asians in the abortive coup of the 1980s, and now the Kampala riot? In every case, we look to forgive and forget, to brush the matter under the carpet, to not cause more ripples.

Enough of all that. Let it not take a distinguished academic like Prof. Mamdani to provide understanding of this issue: let every shopkeeper, industrialist and housewife make an effort to confront the problem of how we live in Africa amongst Africans, head on. Let us all face up to the quite idiotic mistakes we have made as a community in a land that is not ancestrally ours.

But there are some things we have no reason to apologise for. Let’s not apologe for our cultures and our accents. Let’s not apologise for the fact that we are in the main a community of businesspeople who combine dogged hard work with shrewd commercial sense. Let’s not apologise for the fact that we are enterprising and self-sufficient. Let’s not even apologise for having money, when we have made it through our own efforts and initiatives.

Modern societies are made up of a mosaic of communities. They are vibrant because of their diversity; open-minded because of their experiences of different cultures. That we are diverse in East Africa should be a cause for great celebration, not fear and resentment. Brown Africans in these lands have much to be proud of. They also have much to regret. So do Black Africans and White Africans. There is no reason whatsoever for Asians to be picked out and targeted. We have to confront the problems of our nations and our times just like our fellow inhabitants do. We have to engage in the issues of politics and development as Africans, not as immigrants.

We must participate and integrate. We must become part of the fabric of African-ness. But we must never accept the derisory attitudes and latent violence that keeps haunting us. To accept that you deserve casual brutality is to participate in your own extermination.

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There is a fable that is widely heard in Kenya. This fable has two versions, depending on who’s telling it. If it’s a Kenyan South Asian doing the recounting, then it goes like this: Kenya’s Wahindi are born business-people. Excelling at business is in their genes. They can make any venture work, and can wring a profit out of anything. Buying and selling, building conglomerates, pulling off deals? It’s all inborn. ‘These people’ are the engine behind the economy.

If you hear many black Kenyans tell the same tale, it takes a different slant. Kenya’s Wahindi are born business-people. They are ruthless exploiters and mean-spirited employers. They band together to raise capital and run their businesses as community networks, locking out everyone else. They corrupt Africans and divert resources. ‘These people’ are the biggest drain on the economy.

Which version of the fable is the myth, and which the reality? Or is it just a fable all round, a far-fetched legend that bears no resemblance to the truth, whichever version is recounted? It is time we all stopped kidding ourselves (for we all are) and tried to identify the facts about South Asian entrepreneurship in Kenya.

The success of the Muhindi entrepreneur in Kenya is not really in question. South Asians run many things: from small shops to sprawling multinationals. They own workshops and contracting firms. They build roads and control hotels. They sell lots of stuff: from bicycles to broadband; from sukuma to satellite dishes.

The ubiquity of Muhindi business is a matter of casual observation. The extent of its dominance of the economy, on the other hand, is highly exaggerated. A casual look at the ‘owners’ of big business will bear this out, as will an examination of Kenya’s ‘rich lists’. Or we could run through the country’s land ownership rolls, bearing in mind that agriculture is still the largest sector of the economy. It is the elite African families that own vast swathes of the Kenyan economy, and have done so since independence.

The Wahindi, on the other hand, provide a convenient bugbear for all to kick. ‘These people’, with their funny accents and huge families, their penny-pinching ways and their strange gods, are an easy target for everyone, from urbane politicians to calloused rabble rousers. And the more successfully they run their businesses, the more the common mwananchi is roused to complain: these people succeed because they are scrooges; they compete by being corrupt; they excel because they exclude.

Over the years, a siege mentality has taken hold in Kenya’s South Asian communities. ‘We’ feel we are hated because we are successful, so we batten down the hatches to shut out that dangerous noise. We retreat to our bunkers and keep only our kith and kin in key company positions. We are threatened with forced expropriations and expulsions, so it is only sensible to keep a foothold elsewhere.

These are the vicious circles that bedevil the economy, and keep it spinning in one place: a place where a chosen few continue to mint money, while the seething masses go only backwards. We are suspicious, unkind, mistrustful and wary. We are unable to build a nation that can take off and achieve its potential. We achieve neither critical mass nor collective strategic thought. All vision is lost in the clouds of racial, tribal and social misapprehension that we keep generating.

Such misapprehension exists because we refuse to face up to reality, and prefer to deal in legends and fables. The mythologies exist in all tribes and races in the land, and over time, we have all come to accept them as received wisdom. Here’s a quick tour: Asians are hard-working, Africans are lazy. Europeans are disciplined, every one else wallows in chaos. Africans are brave, Indians are cowards. Kikuyus have no understanding of higher education; a Luo can never run a business.

Every single one of us has encountered examples that confirm these stereotypes (that’s why they exist); but every single one of us has also encountered examples of the precise opposite. Do the counter-examples make us question the stereotype? Not a bit of it. We stubbornly stick to the myth: it seems to make life easier to understand. People must stay in their pre-ordained boxes: otherwise we’ll have to deal with Kikuyu scholars, lazy Indians, dissolute Mzungus and business-savvy Luos. Whatever next? Our hard-wired brains would explode.

But some myth-busting is needed, and it behoves South Asians to start with their own favourite myths. Like the one that claims we are the best business brains around, the most astute deal-makers, the shrewdest negotiators. Oh, really? Tell me, honestly, if you have ever encountered the following ‘animals’ in Kenya’s Muhindi business ‘jungle’(I have depicted these particular animals as male – they are almost never female):

1. The Politicians’ Friend: This is the chap whose whole business advantage is built around connections and patronage. He has little by way of schooling, and even less by way of skills. If he were asked to run a legitimate business, it would last a month. But what this man does have is the ability to connect; to schmooze; to wine and dine with the high and the mighty. He acts as the front-man, the broker, the intermediary, the in-between. Or the pimp, if you like your language more direct. His skill is to get powerful people to grant exemptions: from tax and duties, from licensing requirements, from decent business practice. He partners up with the politicians of the day, and drops their names wherever he goes. He is prone to ostentation: he will have the most showy cars, foreign bodyguards, even jets and helicopters at his disposal. He will make a career out of appearing in court, and will support a dozen lawyers and their families. Sprawling business empires have been built up this way. But can this man run a business honestly? No. His competitive advantage is corruption.

2. The One-Track Wonder: This person really cares about his business. Cares so much that he cares not a jot about anything else. Wives and children? Mere appendages, often unnecessary. Social life? Not possible, when you’re doing deals ’24-7′. Sleep? That’s when you think about the next day’s transactions. Higher thought? Now you’re kidding – is there anything higher than bottom line? This man will splash the money around: wifey will have huge shopping allowances at her disposal; kiddies will go to the best schools and will be rolling in pocket money – anything to keep them quiet. And when age catches up, this animal will not know what to do with himself: he will keep turning up at the factory, the shop or the site like a fading ghost, because all his life happens there. So will his death.

3. The Maha Miser: This one was born to save. And gather. And accumulate. And cut corners. And take shortcuts. This is the fellow who ferries all his workers to his factory in a lorry, like goats. This is the one who runs shifts round the clock and locks in the employees at night, otherwise they’d rob him blind. This is the one who employs and re-employs people as ‘casuals’ for decades to prevent them from joining unions and seeking employment benefits. He searches staff when they leave for the day. He does not provide toilet paper, let alone computers. There is no internet connection at work, because staff would undoubtedly abuse it for personal use. All envelopes received are kept and reused for sending out. Expenditure on safety features is a no-no. Waste, whether toxic or merely smelly, is tossed onto roads and into rivers. This person will accumulate a vast fortune before he’s done, but he’ll enjoy none of it by spending it: all the joy is in the gathering.

4. The Business Butterfly: Now this fellow is enterprising. Too enterprising. His brain is always buzzing with new business ideas, new ventures to try out. Each one, when conceived, is The Big One: the one that will make his name and make millions besides. The problem is, none of them ever does. The Butterfly will flit from venture to venture, trying them all out, succeeding at none. None of his wells will be drilled deep enough to actually strike oil. He will lose heart and lose interest well before a proper business is in place. Before he is through, this chap will have run an insurance company, a restaurant, an Internet firm, a video shop and half-a-dozen other things. There is no sign of these companies: they disappear into the ether as quickly as they arrive.

You have met these people, and so have I. For some of us, we are these people. See anything to be particularly proud of in that zoo? So in what sense are we, as a community, the business titans we like to proclaim we are? Some humility, please.

I am, of course, constructing caricatures. These are just good qualities taken to extremes: there’s nothing wrong with ambition, single-mindedness, thrift and the search for new enterprise. These attributes turn bad when the dial is turned too far, taken into the distortion range. That’s when mental balance is lost, and extreme behaviour takes over. It doesn’t happen often, but happen it does.

But here’s the point: there is nothing about crooks, hucksters, exploiters, sad sacks and serial failures that is inherently Muhindi. They exist in every community, every race, every society. They are more noticeably ours in Kenya because we are so widely present in business. But there are Kikuyus who push their workers to the point of abusing their basic human rights; Kambas whose minds can’t entertain a thought outside of business; white Kenyans who have a string of failed ventures behind them; and Kenyans of all shades who make a career of making connections and nothing else. They are part of the universal business menagerie: all types of fur, feathers, whoops and antics are necessary!

Out of all that activity, much of it doomed to failure, comes business success. And because of our fixation with myths and fables and self-aggrandisement, we refuse to address the fundamentals: the precise nature of that success; and the causal factors underlying it. South Asian business in Kenya, when the wheat is separated from the chaff and reality is discerned within the myth, is a success story. We did demonstrate great enterprise as this country opened up to the world. We did start strange ventures in unlikely places. We did take great risks that others were unwilling to; we did work long hours and make sacrifices that others found unacceptable.

And so we have our reward: a collection of businesses big and small, simple and complex, which stands comparison with any in the world. How did we do it, and why us? Now there’s a thesis for an enterprising student to write; a research project for a university department to undertake. All I can do is tell some stories. But within these stories are the kernels of universal truth: and if we want to this success to be built upon, replicated, repeated – we must sift out those little seeds, stack them up, and study them.

There would have to be stories about hard work in our collection: about pre-dawn starts and post-midnight stops; about families working shifts to keep the business going. We would tell the tales of enormous sacrifice: of social lives blighted and personal fulfilment forgone in order to build up the family business. We would chronicle the ambition of youngsters with little education, who used a trifling sum as start-up capital, but turned that capital over at great velocity and with great application until it became a king’s ransom. We would listen in awe to the accounts of enormous risks taken by pioneer entrepreneurs: plunging a lifetime’s savings into foolhardy ventures with no probability of success. We would note the dogged determination with which these ventures, once begun, were pursued: fighting bureaucrats, rivals, politicians and economic upheaval with equal vigour and great heart. And we would discern that family and community networks provided invaluable capital: advice, knowledge, succour, and peer pressure.

Those are the stories we should tell; and, by and large, they are true. They contain all that is good and admirable about the South Asian business record in Kenya. What is actually remarkable goes largely unnoticed: that the true success stories are stories about some rather down-to-earth qualities. Drive, discipline and ambition; not fraud, deceit and manipulation.

So it is with all entrepreneurial communities around the world; so it is with us. It could be the Chinese in Singapore, the Koreans in Los Angeles, the Kikuyu in Nairobi; the Italians in Tuscany. They put in the hours; they build the social capital; they set up odd businesses in odd places; they invest in knowledge; and most importantly, they keep it going. For decades, for generations, for lifetimes.

What is sad about the Kenyan story is that the entrepreneurial drive of the few has not led to the welfare of the many. We have not constructed an economy in which the fruits of enterprise fall far and wide, in which lessons are learned and successes are shared and repeated. We have not learned to respect the diversity we are blessed to have as a nation; nor to understand the great stories of achievement all around us.

Instead, we remain mired in mistrust, spinning myths and legends about all the wrong things. This is what all the businesspeople who washed up from the shores of South Asia all those generations ago should be saying to their fellow Kenyans: we’re not as good as we make out; but we’re better than you think we are. If we learn from that, Kenya will be the winner.

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In which language do you think? When I was ten years old, it became clear to me that I generally think in English. Many years later, the repercussions of this seemingly innocuous discovery became apparent. Since then I have tussled with the idea of ‘my’ language, and its loss.

‘My’ language is Punjabi. But Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and Kiswahili are also mine – I can speak and understand them (in varying degrees). I grew up with them; more importantly, I feel for them. I love their nuance and cadence, their idiom and rhythm.

Sitting above all of them, in terms of usage and general intimacy, is English. It is the language I find myself conversing in and writing in most of the time. I am devoted to it, but it also fills me with unease. Is it ‘mine’? And in giving it the crown, what have I lost?

English is the language of South Asians in Kenya today. It is the language of business, of general expression, of exuberance. Once upon a time, it was the language of external communication: our homes resonated with the sounds of Punjabi and Gujarati, of Cutchi and Hindi. Outside – in schools, shops, public places – we switched to Angrezi. But listen to the generation below thirty today: English is not only spoken in every single situation and every single interaction – it is the only language spoken.

So what? Languages do die out. There are more than six thousand still spoken around the world today, but by the end of this century more than half may have disappeared. Many argue that this is a good thing; that it reflects the end of isolationism and heralds a new integration of the people of the world. In the past, wars, invasions and colonisations often led to the loss of indigenous language. Today it is globalisation that leads the onslaught. English is lingua franca – you either speak it or you stay irrelevant.

So it is with the young wahindi of East Africa. The old folks may still be twanging the old tongues, but we who are modern can only express our freshness in English. All our learning – of medicine, of law, of science, of art – is conducted in English. Our expressions, our elations, even our put-downs – all English. “Take a chill pill, bro”, I hear you tell me. We are part of the South Asian diaspora. We are entrepreneurs and achievers, and we’re on our way to ruling the world. We can only do that in English. So don’t fulminate – reciprocate!

And yet there is another interesting phenomenon at work. We don’t abandon our songs and our movies – they have never been more popular. Bollywood keeps booming; our crooners keep crooning. Because of our films and songs, everyone has some sort of working knowledge of Hindi and Urdu. We can’t really speak the lingo, but we get the drift and don’t lose the plot. Hai na? It helps, of course, that the dialogues of most new movies are increasingly peppered with English (to sell to the diaspora) and have ve-e-e-ry simple plots (to sell to half-wits).

This ‘resurgence’ of the cultural values of home is largely driven by the diaspora dollar. No matter how well the brethren do in far-off lands, after a while of trying to fit in and doing as the Romans do, a lament rises deep in the soul: this isn’t mine! I want my songs, my words, my heritage. Sadly, this is not coupled with a desire to learn or relearn the mother tongue: it only manifests in a need to partake in ‘culture-lite’ – fusion music, movies with international settings, folk songs remixed and redux.

Why am I worried? Because you can only express a culture in its own language. Consider the following lines of poetry.

How will I ever prove to you
my smitten heart’s agony?
The problem is: my face lights up
whenever you are with me.

Cheesy, but not too bad? The poet is struggling to make things rhyme, clearly (‘agony’ with ‘me’; ‘not’ with ‘thought’); but we can make out the glimmer of subtle thought: the lovesick one’s painful yet comic dilemma; the poking of gentle fun at the idea of heaven.

Now, if you understand Urdu, read the original lines:

Un ke dekhay se jo aa-jaati hai munh parr raunaq
Woh samajhtay hain ke beemar ka haal achha hai.

Hamm ko maaloom hai jannat ki haqeeqat, lekin
Dil ke khush rakhnay ko, Ghalib, ye khayaal achha hai.

The original ghazal was penned, of course, by none other than the legendary Mirza Ghalib, one of the finest poets (in any language) to have walked on the face of the earth. The translation is from ‘Ghalib: Cullings from the Divan‘ by T. P. Issar. Mr. Issar has a genuine ‘feel’ for the subtlety and magic of Ghalib’s word-play. Yet not even he could begin to convey the artistry of the original. The fault is not his; when you change the shell, the contents cannot remain unaltered.

We cannot find our way back to the heart of our culture via translation. We will discover only a sad surrogate, a pale proxy of the real thing. Translations are useful in conveying the basics, and in helping multi-lingual people deepen their understanding, using the nuances of both languages; but we will not recapture in English that which was not conceived in English.

Language is a unique repository of knowledge, of culture, of traditions, of histories. It is a treasure trove of human experience. That is what we are going to lose when we finally cannot speak or understand our mother tongues: our knowledge of what we are.

Which raises another point: why is it we don’t speak our own language? What stops us? There are many answers: “No one speaks it anymore.” “It’s what my parents spoke, and I’ve spent years getting away from their outdated ways.” “English is the world’s essential language – it’s what you need to get on professionally and culturally; I just don’t have time to mess around with others.”

Actually, you should never need to find the time to learn your own mother tongue. It is usually learned in the most natural way possible: by speaking it in the home in early childhood. That’s the way our parents learnt it; and that’s the way many of us did – by usage, not by going to special classes or listening to CD-ROMs. Sadly, the natural way is the way we have all tossed out of the window.

Listen out: the language of parents and children today is English. Children are instructed, guided, encouraged and admonished in English. Their learning medium is English; they learn the English alphabet and use English learning materials. English is the only medium they ever encounter. ‘Culture’ they perceive as dimly understood ethnic rituals and songs. The future is clear, and it is in English.

If it was just another language we were assimilating, there would be little to worry about. But exclusive reliance on one language – someone else’s – means that we are also assimilating someone else’s ideas, knowledge, perspectives and view of the world. By making English the sole communication medium of the next generation, we are moving inexorably away from what it means to be us, towards someone else’s idea of reality.

Why would we do that? A clue: I was on a family holiday at the coast recently, and listened to the conversations of the multi-hued families around me. The English families spoke, naturally, in English. The Dutch, Germans and French children all spoke in their natural tongues. The South Asian and African families all spoke in English.

Another clue: if you go down the social ladder and eavesdrop on South Asian (and African) families of a poorer background, you will discover that they are still, even in today’s Anglophone, globalised world, speaking in their mother tongues. As affluence comes, however, the rustic sounds of the old language are dropped for the crisp professional tones of the world language.

I can only explain our wilful abandonment of our identity by thinking of self-hatred. A peculiar self-hatred it is, too. Is it the colonial experience that did it to us, and is that why continental Europeans and the Chinese have no problem retaining (and rejoicing in) their own languages? Why are we so willing to place our languages – and with them our poems and songs – on the rubbish dump of the past? What shame, what inadequacy are we running away from?

And when we want our children to learn a language other than English, we think of French. How unspeakably sad.

All that conditioning in childhood: all those Archie comics; Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books; Disney and Bond movies; Biblical epics; Shakespearean sonnets and Dickensian plots. We swallowed it without question, and it swallowed us in turn. We emerged unaware of Ghalib and Tagore; of raags and taals; of the Vedas and the Upanishads; of three millennia of cultural history.

Perhaps we should not be too harsh about this. Not all the abandonment of given tongues is happening because we’re too blase to care. In some cases, our mixing with the world has led to genuine difficulty. Sometimes, the environment is such that we are genuinely unable to practice and recapture what was once ours.

Yet, by and large, we are running very fast to be something other than we are. We are chasing shadows. Once you have accepted another’s way of looking at things at the expense of your own, you have already assumed inferiority. Your way is better. Mine is something to leave behind. Will unique development models, methodologies and mentalities emerge from this mimicry? No, we will always remain clones and replicas – never quite as good as the original. Can you build anything great when you question your own foundation as a human being?

All of life’s richness is reflected in its diversity. It is our varied experience of peoples, foods, tastes, sounds and attire that makes our lives exotic and interesting. Without diversity we are doomed to experience life as humdrum homogeneity. Language is the first loss; and all that is reflected in that language inevitably follows. It never ceases to shock me that we are going to stand by and let it happen.

Are there signs of a revival? Sanskrit is being learnt afresh in parts of India – and as far afield as Germany and America. The internet is being used as an effective medium by parents in diaspora to recapture Hindi and Urdu. Even right here in Kenya, demand is growing for language classes in temples and social centres. Perhaps the call of identity is stronger than we think. Aage dekho.

Related posts:

1. Loss of language hurts everyone
2. The lost art of speaking plainly
3. How not to choose a leader – by England’s FA

Fusion music has taken over. Whether it’s in Hindi films, the pop charts, or even semi-classical experimental music, it’s only in if it’s of mixed parentage. The most popular filmi tracks of today sound like rock anthems. The sassy, globalised new generation wants music that’s hip and cool, in your face, funky and fitful. And that means rock, rap and hip-hop. Only the accents are Indian now: the words, cantos and rhythms are sourced occidentally.

At a somewhat higher level of exposition, artistes like Prem Joshua, Nitin Sawhney and Karunesh, who use eastern instruments to belt out western riffs and create a vaguely pleasant melange of globalised sound, are all the rage. Even venerable classical masters are not above the fray. The heads of many gharanas are not merely tolerating but actively promoting the forays of their progeny into the fusion arena. Renowned classical vocalist Pandit Ajay Pahonkar, for example, sang the sublime Piya Bawari for his son Abhijit. Abhijit, brought up immersed in the music of two renowned gharanas, mostly plays his music on an electronic keyboard, which simulates the sounds of sitars, tablas, and santoors, and blends them with string and horn sounds from around the globe. Like many fusion songs of its ilk, Piya Bawari was a worldwide hit.

This is merely the opening stanza of an historic renaissance in world music, we are told. Walls are coming down, barriers are being breached. Once-isolated cultures are mingling and catalysing new experimentation and fresh ideas. As the musical traditions of the world are thrown into the global melting pot, a new, better, sound experience will emerge. As this New Age asserts itself, we will be all the richer.

The endeavour is daring, therefore, and noble. This is reflected in the titles given to fusion albums and titles. The songs are “of the earth”; they are “written on the wind”; they capture “native rituals”; they respond to the “calls of the wild”; they echo “ancient legends”. The music may be new, but it represents timeless wisdom and puts us in touch with our essence.

If only most of what is being produced wasn’t such miserable trash.

The new Bollywood songs being belted out for the hip new Indian teens are bad enough, but forgivably so. Songs aimed at the hormonally overwhelmed are not known for their subtlety or depth. They are merely supplanting the usual, time-worn saccharine sounds with the idiotic cadences of American rap. That’s OK: the kids usually outgrow a taste for urgent but musically challenged drivel.

What’s a little more worrying is the cultural pretension of the more subtle fusion movement. It’s a musical sangam, we are told: the epic meeting of grand traditions, kept apart for centuries by distance, ignorance and isolationism. The new fusion is the new music for the new global Indian. That proposition, like the titles of the songs themselves, is so much hot air.

To understand why this might be so, we must look at the origins of our music. The origins of South Asian classical music can be dated back to the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of what became known as Hinduism. The hymns of the Samaveda are thought to be the earliest rendition of man’s yearning to connect with something bigger through sound. The two classical music streams are Hindustani – focused on the northern part of the sub-continent; and Carnatic, from South India.

Both classical schools centre on the raga - the melodic basis of the music of all of South Asia. There are hundreds of such ragas, and each has its own melodic structure and unique form – and indeed its own fascinating history. Yet, within this tightly defined structure, a master musician can generate almost infinite variations through subtle ornamentation. Some ragas can be traced back to medieval and ancient times; others were invented (or perhaps reinvented) just a few decades ago. Most have undergone subtle transformations over the centuries. The oft-labelled king of ragas, raga Darbari, for example, was popularised by Tansen, the great singer-composer in the court of Emperor Akbar, but may actually have originated from Karnata.

Importantly, a raga must evoke a particular emotion or invoke a certain mood. It is meant to move, to delight, to stimulate an emotional reponse. This association with mood, season, even time of day is critical. Raga Darbari is meant to be heard at midnight, raga Ramkali at daybreak, raga Malhar during the onset of the Monsoonal rains. The Guru Granth, the holy book of the Sikhs, is a collection of hymns composed and classified using thirty-one ragas.

If there is anything elemental and essential about the music of South Asia, it can be found in the hundreds of ragas that have connected us with the seasons, the sounds of nature, the movements of the earth, moon and sun for two millennia. It is this unique treasury of sound that we are debasing by accretive adulteration. The word “fusion” refers to a process that produces a single, better entity; otherwise why do it? But the fusing of the musical heritage of South Asia with every sound and instrument from every far-flung corner of the globe is more milavat than milap.

What began as interesting experimentation is turning into wholesale defilement. The late R. D. Burman introduced western-style guitars and rhythms into popular filmi music in the 1970s, but kept the melodic structure of the songs intact. His classic songs of that era have gone down in history, and are much in demand thirty years later. A. R. Rahman went further in the 1990s and brought full-range western instrumentation and acoustics into popular Indian music. I wonder if these two accomplished composers knew what their innovations would portend. Their successors today appear very ready to ditch the entire raga structure in their headlong race to be more trendy, more daring, more insanely experimental than their peers.

I am not writing this from the perspective of an old-fashioned stickler for tradition – though much of the criticism of fusion and its cousins does come from old fogies. I am as thrilled by the moving anthems of U2 as I am by the folk songs of the Punjab. I marvel at the nuances of the voice of Sade as well as of Noorjehan. But I have never understood the desire to mix the two. Milkshakes and lassis are perfectly delectable as separate drinks; does it occur to anyone that mixing them would produce a superior beverage?

It is one thing to sit down with musicians from a different tradition and strum out a few ‘mix-and-match’ routines in the interests of understanding and harmony, as Pandit Ravi Shankar and, more recently, Shujaat Khan have done. It is another to abandon the fundamental precepts of both traditions in the name of a hazy avant-gardism and proclaim that a new music is born.

Pandit Jasraj, the doyen of living Indian classical vocalists, put it well in a recent interview. A man who trained in the classical tradition from the age of six, he cannot understand why we would want to degrade one of the world’s most advanced musical systems. In any case, he advises, meaningful fusion would only occur when one who is a master of both eastern and western traditions attempts it. Not, the implication being, computer-crazed composers with dollar signs flashing in their eyes.

Ivan Hewett, writing in The Musical Times in 2001, went further: “A spectre is haunting music, the spectre of ‘fusion’. It has no body – no melodies, no harmonies, no instrumental colours it can call its own – but its ghostly presence is everywhere, seeping under and over every musical category.” Referring to the “musical, emotional and intellectual vacuity of much fusion music”, he raised the important question: “Surely music is as much to do with the expression of rootedness in a certain place, and the assertion of belonging to a community? The fact that fusion musicians have such an insatiable appetite for music with just those qualities shows that, at some dim level, they’re aware of that uncomfortable truth but their ideology leads them to deny it. What this leads to in practice is a kind of systematic hypocrisy. They make use of the ‘evocative’ qualities of, say, north Indian devotional singing, but strip it of its real meaning by removing the devotional context, and surrounding the chant in a protective barrier of acoustic mist. As for the audience, how many of them will understand the words of the chant, if they can hear them?”

Hewett was at pains to insist that his withering critique was not a plea for some kind of misplaced purity. “All musical cultures are mixed”, he clarified, “and always have been…But there is all the difference in the world between a genuine marriage between different musics – as in the adoption in Renaissance Europe of the Arab lute – and the kind of shot-gun weddings we see nowadays.” He concluded that in today’s fusion music there is “no clash of opposing values, no emotional ambiguity, just a warm bath of evocative flavours.” Modern fusion, “in its refusal of real human attachment, and its restless search for new flavours, it is the perfect expression of consumerism.”

There’s the rub. If fusion was driven by a passionate desire for the betterment of music, it might actually lead to a higher form. This has happened in the past, as Persian and Arabic influences seeped into Indian music from the 11th century onwards. The arrival of the Sufi mystics led to the development of the pulsating qawwali music popularised worldwide by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the close of the 20th century. The courts of Akbar, Jehangir, Shahjahan and Bahadur Shah took musical patronage to new heights, and led to the rapid promulgation of the remarkable ghazal form.

Today’s seepage, however, is aimed at gathering the dollars of the global audience by creating easily accessible, dimly pleasing, vaguely uplifting sounds that are clothed in a faux higher purpose. That’s the seductive undertone: become a New Age connoisseur, no effort required. We South Asians have a unique knack for devaluing our own remarkable cultural strengths and selling our heritage down the river. It is the musical equivalent of forcing your very accomplished mother to renounce her sari and sending her to flip burgers at McDonald’s clad in jeans.

Fusion is spreading only because you want to buy it. Words on the written page cannot stop you. As King Nanyadeva reportedly put it in the 12th century, referring to raga-based music: the sweetness of sugar cannot be separately described; it must be experienced for oneself. Listen to a simple, pure, unembellished rendition of a raga. Any raga, in any form – bhajan, ghazal, thumri, or even a simple raga-based film song. Feel your soul stir, and know that you communing with your own essence.

That uplift cannot come from computer-generated dissonance. The unholy matrimony called modern fusion will not stand the test of time. It will soon be washed away, a forgotten musical aberration that reflected the mores of a shallow and materialist epoch.

No related posts.

Bollywood: the world’s most energetic film industry. Every year, it churns out more than a thousand movies, sells more than 3 billion tickets and generates well over 1 billion dollars in revenue.

Bollywood: home of some of the greatest movies made anywhere in the world. Surendra Kumar, India’s current High Commissioner in Kenya, is a lifelong fan. He’s even written a book about it (Legends of Indian Cinema). Last year, he staged a festival at Nairobi’s Fox Cineplex at the Sarit Centre where the epics were shown: Pakeezah, Mughal-e-Azam, Sholay, Guide, Awaara and a glittering array of others. Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa, a personal favourite from 1955, is about a poet, Vijay, struggling to make any impact on a materialistic world. It contains some delightful lines. For example, when a magazine publisher throws Vijay out of his office:

Publisher: “If you are a poet, then I am a donkey!”

Vijay: “I would have recognised you, even if you hadn’t introduced yourself!”

But Mr. Kumar suffered the same fate as Vijay: he was casting pearls before swine. The festival attracted only a tiny band of loyal aficionados. The general Kenyan public, ignorant of greatness and proud of it, stayed away. The new Kenyan South Asians know what they like: an inauthentic chaat masala of sex, glamour and synthesized music.

Bollywood: producer of the world’s most idiotic story lines, hip-jerking gigolos, tear-jerking situations, and scantily clad damsels maintaining the facade of purity. A 24-hour production line, 99 per cent of whose outputs are garbage. But consumed voraciously all over the world by an adoring public.

This is not an old man’s lament about the passing of a generation, nor a nostalgia trip about the good old days. For one thing, I’m not that old (although watching today’s blockbusters makes me wish I was); for another, I know that much of what comes out of Bollywood has been bad for decades. The rot began when I was a boy in the ‘sensational seventies’ when films began being made especially for the stars of the day (Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, my childhood heroes); and plot, characterisation and nuance went out of the window. I may have adored them as a child, but films like Don, Naseeb and the like are difficult to watch now. The stars began straddling the screen, and directors decided that the mainstream adult audience had the intellectual and emotional development of a small child. Dumbing down began then, and we’re all dumber for it today.

Yet today’s Bollywood is undoubtedly extending the once-narrow boundaries of popular cinema. Mr. Kumar’s festival contained some notable newer films like Zubeida and Lekin. Genuinely innovative movies like Lagaan have taken us all the way to the Oscars. Black, which told the moving story of a deaf-and-blind girl being taught by a man sinking progressively into dementia, took us into uncharted territory. We’ve also had some rip-roaring comedies (Hera Pheri, Munnabhai MBBS) that brought a new freshness to an industry whose idea of humour was previously tied to the very stale facial twists of Johnny Lever and Govinda. And there appears to be a new market for literary adaptations: Devdas, Parineeta and Chokher Bali are all filmi versions of famous Indian novels. The results may be mannered, self-conscious and overdone, but there’s no denying the merit of popularising literature. More recently, movies like Bose: The Forgotten Hero and Mangal Pandey: The Rising are plugging a gap in popular understanding of Indian history.

Older films were technically very poor. The editing is immaculate these days, and the camerawork is world-class. The special effects are as spectacular as in any Hollywood blockbuster. The sets and costumes are lavish. The packaging, in other words, is outstanding. And the product inside, once you peel off the expensive wrapping? Make your way through the various silky layers: you will often find yourself holding a very small pea.

Shah Rukh Khan is the current colossus, the very self-conscious idol of millions. Virtually all the biggest box-office hits of recent years have had him heading the list of stars. But can you tell the roles apart? Is he in fact acting out any part other than that of Shah Rukh Khan in any of his hit movies? He is epitomising the defect that ailed Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan before him: of the star overwhelming the role. His every expression, every mannerism, every delivery is predictable. Can you distinguish SRK’s performances in KKHH, DTPH, K3G or KHNH? (Khan-lovers all know exactly what those abbreviations stand for. If you don’t, consider yourself blessed.) I haven’t seen him stretch a part since Dil Se in 1998. It may be great for the box office and great for his idol status, but it doesn’t extend the art of acting one tiny jot.

These new mega-movies display not the vaguest creativity. They merely tweak the ‘formula’: the family ruled with an iron fist by the famous patriarch (always Amitabh with a silver goatee and jet-black hair); the misunderstanding between father and son (always SRK doing his open-mouthed wounded look); the son’s love affair, thwarted by convention and misguided emotion, with a suitably lissom lass (insert heroine of choice here – Aishwarya, Rani, or Preety); the loving mother caught helplessly between the egos of father and son (always a star of yore – Jaya, Hema or Sharmila); the weepy climax in which Big B realises the error of his ways and embraces and reunites his scattered family.

Along the way, you will be regaled by music produced by one man and his synthesizer; stunning location shots, filmed in Australia, Austria and South Africa, with the silly pretence that we’re still in good old homely Bharat; an inane comedy thread provided by the aforementioned Lever (as a cab-driver or policeman); and literally thousands of extras in shimmering costumes who seem to come out of the woodwork on cue to dance like synchronised termites for the leading couple’s love duets. And of course the real money is in product placements these days, so you’ll get plenty of shots lingering on the stars’ soft-drink brands, their cars, watches, and shampoo brands. Like the colouring in Big B’s hair, the entire movie comes out of a tube.

And we’re plumbing new depths every year. These days, as globalisation opens up the awareness of the Indian public, the thing that sells is sex. And more sex. Seething sexuality is in every song, every picturisation. Actresses are in a race to the bottom to see who can take disrobing to a daring new low. It is as though we went through three millennia of civilisation without being aware of sex; we just can’t get enough of it on screen now. This is not just a men-exploiting-women thing: producers like Pooja Bhatt and actresses like Bipasha Basu are leading the charge to the lowest chakra. When the two combine in a movie (such as Jism), you will need to disinfect yourself when you get home.

But this is turning into an extended film review, which was not my intention. My concern isn’t really with the generally moronic content of popular Bollywood movies: you get what you pay for. I don’t have to watch them, after all, and generally don’t. There is, however, a more serious problem, which is the seeping of the Bollywood ethos into the daily lives of South Asians all over the world. It’s as though real life is now a forgotten memory, and the movie culture is the only real thing holding us all together.

I first became aware of this just before my wedding a few years ago, when all the shopkeepers in Nairobi insisted on trying to sell us bridal outfits identical to those worn by Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. It was apparently what every young female was buying then. Walk around any Indian wedding these days and you will see it: all the young people are adorned in the ‘look’ popularised by Whoever in Whichever. The men pretending to look like Mughal princes in their elaborate ensembles with crinkled silk scarves and matching mojris; the women holding their breath throughout to keep their awkward bulges shoe-horned into a scanty dress designed more for the lithe charms of Miss Rai of Bollywood rather than the more ample footage of Mrs. Patel of Nairobi. All striving so hard to be something they patently are not.

It doesn’t end there. Little children are dressed in the same absurd outfits because of the ‘cute’ factor (“Doesn’t he look just like Salman in Lucky? So sweeeeet!”). Little girls are dressed in tarty bikini blouses and applauded when they swing their hips suggestively just like Madhuri’s courtesan in Devdas. Parents are apparently unable to see the mental damage of instilling flashy materialism, and an emphasis on the body, into their little children.

Bollywoodification is also assaulting our spiritual lives. I had the misfortune to be in a Nairobi mandir recently to witness once-sacred bhajans being sung to funky popular filmi tunes (with much applause from an enthusiastic audience, which was apparently revelling in the belief that it was there to be entertained rather than uplifted). A few days later, I was at a wedding where the traditional prayers were quickly followed up by someone singing saccharine film numbers (apparently to “bless” the couple in some bafflingly cheesy way) – and this, with the apparent approval of the priest, was done while the couple was still on the mandap. It seems people can’t even wait for the traditional drunken reception party in the hotel any more before getting into the real stuff – the hit songs of the day.

Centuries-old Sufi songs – uplifting, soul-stirring renditions of man’s undying love for his creator – are being pinched wholesale and plugged into metallic tunes, themselves lifted shamelessly from western pop numbers. But after their Bollywoodification, these songs are no longer about our search for meaning and eternal life – they could be picturised as some lovestruck teenager’s sexual yearning for the girl next door who exercises in leotards just to arouse him. Ye Gods. How the wisdom of the ages, so carefully crafted into words, has been bastardised into the chant of the love of sense objects. And the fans applaud heartily, thinking they have heard something vaguely more profound than the usual popcorn fare.

Bollywood at its best produces some of the best works of art and entertainment created by mankind. It provides direct or indirect employment to an estimated six million people. There is nothing wrong with movies per se; but there is everything wrong with our values as consumers of film fare. We are demanding the crass focus on crazed material consumption. We are asking that the sex scenes become ever more brazen and ever more explicit. We know these things are vapid and devoid of sense, but we want more. So more we get.

And who is it we are adoring? SRK and Big B probably are more important ‘leaders’, in terms of their effect on ordinary lives, than Manmohan Singh and Abdul Kalam, two very noble fellows actually worthy of emulation. But watch the star duo’s everyday behaviour. Both have lost the capacity to be anything other than their larger-than-life screen personas. Neither is able to stop performing, on screen or off. Both have amassed more fame and fortune than most people who have ever lived, yet you will still see their faces on billboards and magazine adverts, plugging biscuits or shirts or financial products. These are the high priests of Bollywood, our role models and exemplars.

That the civilisation that produced the Bhagavad Gita and the hymns contained in the Guru Granth Sahib is now focused on the wholesale marketing of sensuality is a tragedy I lack the words to record here. We were better than this.

Let’s leave Bollywood now, and go across the oceans to its even more corrupt role model, Hollywood. The Matrix movies are a global phenomenon, having generated US$ 1.6 billion at the box office across the world (which exceeds the annual revenue of the whole of Bollywood). The three movies are packed with the usual inane special effects, childish good-versus-evil battles and, of course, the requisite product placements. But they are different because of their unique plot premise. The central thesis is that all of what we perceive to be our reality – all our sensations, relationships, yearnings, losses – may be just one massive illusion. How? If machines took over the world long ago, and ‘harvested’ human beings by keeping us in special pods and extracting energy from us, how would they keep us quiet? Simply by feeding simulations directly into our brains. So we would experience pleasure, pain, tragedy, growth (all the things that make up ‘real’ lives) as though they were real. Yet it would be just an elaborate simulation created by a malevolent power for its own gain.

Far fetched, yes? Actually, no. The Matrix is one movie Bollywood has no reason to mimic, because Bollywood fans are already living it. All of our joys, rituals, tastes and aversions all come from one place. So does our sense of good and evil. A sophisticated machine is already producing all the make-believe that we take for real and inserting it directly into our daily thoughts and desires. Who needs science fiction? We’re already living deep in the Bollywood Matrix. And one of the revelations in the original Matrix story is that our seeming enslavement is an act of free will – we actually prefer the fake reality constructed by those who exploit us, to the harder task of thinking and acting for ourselves.

Interestingly, the idea of life as an intricate hoax is not new. The Matrix is based on the age-old Hindu idea of maya (illusion), which tells us that everything we construe as real on earth is just a perception, an output created by our brain processes. Our task is to see through the illusion and comprehend the underlying divine reality. Indeed, the final film in the series, Matrix Revolutions, ends with a Sanskrit chant (in the guise of a rock song), taken from the ancient Upanishads:

Asato ma sad gamaya
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
Mrtyor mamrtam gamaya
Om shaanti, shaanti, shaanti

Or, in English:

From delusion lead me to truth
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality
Let peace prevail everywhere

If we could see through the canned and finely processed illusion thrown up by Bollywood, we might stand a chance of achieving a deeper enlightenment. But oh, no time for that – the newest, biggest, bestest blockbuster is in town. Must get tickets…

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1. Gangsters now control the lives of every citizen

It took a long time to build what South Asians have in Kenya today. Dana April Seidelberg called us ‘mercantile adventurers’: for more than 2,000 years we have been arriving on African shores as traders, investors and artisans, part of the age-old Indian Ocean trading triangle with its corners in India, Arabia and East Africa.

It is hard for us to imagine the nerve and tenacity of those who set sail in makeshift vessels across uncharted waters, seeking opportunity in unknown lands. There is little with which to compare in today’s networked globe, where trade is done in delegations and fairs, using catalogues and computers. Undoubtedly, those who arrived with sacks of sugar and cotton and organised trading forays into a hostile interior were of a hardy breed: the type that builds industries, economies and nations. They were our forebears: rugged individuals with commerce on their lips and the whiff of profit in their nostrils.

They built the railway, and then proceeded to put up shops along its length. They made furniture and beat metal. They became salesmen, middlemen and aldermen. They milled flour and sold currency. They made big bets and small ones. They fought oppression in the streets, in the courts and on the editorial pages. They are our legends, our larger-than-life ancestors whose accomplishments loom large in our imaginations.

Our fathers and grandfathers we don’t need to imagine or read about: we saw them in action. We know very well the single-minded dedication with which they built up their businesses and professions. We observed how they went about their days: very early starts, usually with a brief prayer session; long hours spent in dark dukas, cluttered offices or noisy industrial plants; dinner eaten with an extended family of a dozen or more people; and a suitably early bedtime. Repeat.

We watched vast trading empires and professional offices of great renown emerge before our eyes, and we know how it was done. The work ethic, for one thing, was tremendous. They were dedicated to their work, our dadas and dadis: no easy afternoons or cocktails by the pool for them. They had a single focus: to work, to achieve, to build something for their children. They were not great consumers: their lifestyles were simple, their needs basic. A limited wardrobe, a simply furnished home, the same food week in, week out. Their thrift yielded savings, which became the investments on which great businesses were built. That is the essence of the South Asian story in Kenya in the 20th century: discipline, frugality, dedication, spiritual anchoring and an unbending sense of identity.

Somewhere in the 1980s, it all began to change. A new generation was arriving at the wheel, and this one was different. Born into well-established businesses, and knowing there was serious money in the bank, this generation began to play the game a little differently. It was sent to the ‘best’ schools, where the car you arrived in every morning began to count for something. Teenagers began looking for nightlife, and a host of clubs and bars sprang up to absorb their spending power. The emphasis on education by their parents was still very strong, and so these young adults were sent to Oxbridge, the London School of Economics, McGill and Yale, and to the best business schools. A new generation of sophisticated, well-educated debutantes emerged, ready to take the reins. All should have been well.

It isn’t. My generation is a disappointment, and the one after it is worse. Is this perhaps a natural consequence of capitalism? The journey of accumulation is filled with urgent and spirited adventure; but is its destination a place of slothful indulgence and lethargy?

Hard work is alien to us now. We sleep late, rise late, arrive late and leave early. We perfect our putts in the afternoons and rest our butts in the evenings. We delegate, like they taught us to at B-school. We sign the cheques and resign from responsibility.

Thrift? You joke, yes? We are spending machines. Luxury cars are toys that we buy and discard. We pick our way through fine whiskies, sniffing our disdain for lesser brands. Every birthday and every anniversary is an excuse for a lavish bash at a five-star venue, where the food is rich and varied and the music is live and loud. Our weddings are just plain ridiculous. We have dozens of outfits hanging in wardrobes that we will neither wear more than a couple of times nor donate to others. We have it all, and have our eyes on more.

Our forebears struggled with the Queen’s English, and so urged us to learn it well. They encouraged us to speak it at home. If only they’d known. Today our knowledge of our own tongues is minimal: just enough to gather what’s going on in the latest Bollywood blockbuster; no more. Certainly not enough to interpret a folk song, be awed by a couplet in a ghazal, or understand the deeper message of a hymn in a holy book. English is enough. It is the lingua franca, the language of business. It’s all we need. We teach our children nothing else now: just how to say ‘I want more’ in the correct accent.

Our religions we comprehend dimly as a set of outdated rituals imposed on us by our unreasonable and unsophisticated parents. We refuse to prostrate ourselves before books and idols. We’re too clever to accept myths and tall tales about miracles. We’re too busy (see above) to spend time interpreting the symbolism of ancient texts, working out the meaning of allegories, or understanding messages from the mystics about love and compassion. Why bother, when everything you need is on TV? Our lives are soap operas in themselves, so what else would we choose to be entertained by?

The new generations are not wrong in questioning the obsessive and often unhealthy fascination with work shown by their predecessors. They may be right in needing to “get a life”. They can only be correct in diagnosing a need for old-fashioned businesses to modernise and automate. All of that is healthy examination, a much needed dose of new thought and progressive ideas. But what is the result of this examination? What new mantras have emerged in place of Save and Invest, Work and Duty? Wine and Dine, Delegate and Abdicate, Me and Mine?

I am, of course, being sweeping in my judgements. You know that. Not every Kenyan South Asian under forty is a dissolute wastrel. That would be implausible. For one thing, not everyone was born into money. There are many leading simple lives in trying circumstances. But walk around and look around. Peep into parties, wander into wedding halls, perambulate past putting greens. You will see the scale of the problem. The inheritors of the pioneer legacy are not building on it. They are dismantling it, brick by brick, value by value. When you are mesmerised by the trappings of wealth, bereft of roots, language and identity, and flaccid from years of soft living, then there is only one outcome awaiting you.

Here’s the funny thing, though: nothing I’ve written here applies to South Asians alone. The children of the moneyed and landed Wafrica and Wazungu are exactly the same. The new Kenyan Cowboys are doing little more than preparing horses and cars for the next big race; the new African bourgeoisie are immersed in accumulating ‘bling’ and living the party life. This disease jumps across race boundaries.

The work values of all our ancestors may have allowed them to build a country: but their separate cultural values meant that they built a nation of ghettoes. Imbued in colonial apartheid, they were unable to walk over the beacons and shake hands, even after the walls had tumbled down. That failure is the dark side of the legacy.

So here’s the bleak recipe for a new racial integration, then. Yesterday, we were separated by strong cultures and work ethics; tomorrow, we may be united by our lack of distinctive identity and merge in our mediocrity. As we collect baubles together and intoxicate ourselves in unison, there will be nothing to separate us. But who will build for the future?

A new togetherness looms, then, but it is not one that will take us very far. Emerging generations need to pull off a very difficult trick. The first part of the trick is to understand why decent values are necessary for development, why a vision for a better future demands investment, and why a focus on trivial self-gratification is the most base of standards by which to live. The second part concerns integration: appreciating why we can no longer co-exist across walls and barriers, and why we must build a nation as well as a set of communities. And the third part of this balancing act? The enduring need for identity and roots, language and culture. Integration is not a melting away: it is an act of appreciation. It is an embrace, not a copulation. Without a clear sense of identity, we become rootless tumbleweeds, tossed this way and that by marketing gimmickry, unable to discern the real from the unreal. And one of the realities we must keep reminding ourselves of is this: for all the investment and business-building, partying and decadence, this is still one of the world’s poorest countries. Our work is still undone.

We will get there. But only if we keep stopping, briefly and regularly, to reflect on the journeys of our ancestors and the destinations of our children.

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Awaaz has done a great deal to set the record straight about South Asians in Kenya. For too long, we were the ‘in-betweens’, the ‘unmentionables’ who were expected to know their ‘place’ (the duka). Eloquently, methodically, Awaaz has been filling in the missing gaps in Kenya’s modern history. Its achievement cannot be overrated, and it is an honour to be asked to write in its pages.

We, Kenyans of South Asian origin, have a great deal to be proud of. We almost single-handedly built up the commerce of this country, from dusty dukas in desolate places, to huge industries spanning the continent and the world. We played a noble role in the country’s struggle to throw off the yoke of colonialism. Today, we are Kenya damu – an integral part of the nation’s development and evolution.

Wait a minute: what’s wrong with this picture? If we are so unambiguously a force for good in this country, why are we viewed with such suspicion? Why do we have to take it upon ourselves to continually prove our worth to the country? When the rabble-rousers stand up to do their poisonous routines, why is the common Kenyan so ready to believe them? And why, oh why, do sections of the educated elite also believe that Asians need to leave this country?

We could put it all down to racism, and bemoan the fact that the both the wazungu and the wafrica detest us irrationally. That would be the easy answer, and it is the one we have clothed ourselves in for generations: the righteous victims of cruel bigotry, the industrious folks whose true worth the world cannot see. We can keep waving the victim flag if we like, but we’ll be waving it on the plane out of here.

If we want to have a meaningful future in the land where our parents and grandparents were born, it is time to face up to some issues very squarely. There are things we have done that are utterly misguided and have caused much of the hatred that comes our way. If we don’t own up to them, we will remain the victims of self-delusion.

Consider the way we live. Think ‘Parklands-Westlands’, and you have defined the geography of Nairobi’s Asian community. We concentrate ourselves in narrow confines, producing dense patches of Asian-ness on the map. Once upon a time, we were spread from Kibos to Kerugoya, from Nakuru to Namanga. We pioneered the commercial opening up of the country. We were part and parcel of the social fabric of Kenyan communities. As resentment grew and economic opportunities faded, we receded with the tide, ending up in islands of safety and comfort.

This ‘island mentality’ is our greatest mistake. We live amongst ourselves, surround ourselves with things Asian, and follow our own rituals and practices to the exclusion of outsiders. Our contact with the African majority around our ‘island’ is formulaic: they are our customers, employees, and suppliers; they are the politicians we must keep happy to secure our future; they are policemen, bureaucrats and regulators who get in the way of our business and demand bribes; they are the beneficiaries of our occasional largesse; and they are the unfathomable masses surrounding us with their impenetrable stares and the whiff of latent violence.

I exaggerate, do I? Sit down and make a list of the black Africans you would list as your friends: those with whom you have a bond that has nothing to do with economic gain. Short list? I thought so. This, frankly, is no way to live in a country where we came as immigrants and have established economic dominance. It is downright foolhardy. It is a tragedy waiting to happen.

When I was in school in the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed, briefly, that all of this isolationism would die out with my generation. For the first time, Africans and Asians were sitting in the same classrooms and schools and beginning to understand each other at first hand. How long did that last? By the 1990s we had ‘elevated out’ of the public education system, and were busy building academies that were exclusively Asian. How many kids do you know who attend a multiracial, multilingual school? Only the children of the very rich, who populate the classrooms of privilege. Do any of us have our finger on the pulse of the ordinary Kenyan? Hey, our kids don’t even drink in the same bars, let alone do anything of meaning together.

Wait a minute, you say? Why pick on Asians? What about the wazungu who have ensconced themselves in Karen and Laikipia, the oldsters still living out their colonial fantasy lives, their offspring preoccupying themselves with infantile motor rallies and rhino charges? What about the expats who arrive here every year and spend the first few months trying to befriend Africans and worrying about the ethics of having servants, and then retreat deep into Gigiri, surrounded by uniformed cooks, gardeners, askaris and nannies, blissful in expatriate cloud-cuckoo land? What about the Africans themselves, who live in tribal ghettos as a matter of nature?

What about them? They are all building unsustainable lives, castles on sand. A nation must be more than a series of islands. There must be a common core: of values, cultures, and beliefs. It may be a patchwork quilt that we knit: but there must be threadwork binding the whole thing together, and those threads have to consist of something more than just the coarse strings of commerce and personal gain. The challenge of integration applies to all Kenyans, no doubt; but let that not be a reason for inaction on the part of the Asians. Let us, for once, stand up to be counted as a community. We have had our visionary individuals: the Jivanjees, Rattansis, Singhs and Pintos lit up the skies of Kenyan history; but they are gone now, and it is time for the community – every man, woman and child – to feel and act Kenyan.

The danger is, when someone says ‘integrate!’ the community hears ‘inter-marry!’ That is a fallacy, and one that has stood in the way of meaningful amalgamation for decades. Inter-marriage should be a personal matter for individuals; integration is another issue altogether. It is about the heart, not the loins. It involves recognising the common glue that binds us to this soil. It means regarding those with whom we share the soil not only as equals but as friends. It requires that we get involved in partnerships and joint ventures that go beyond patronage and mutual exploitation. It asks that people share their culture and explain its nuances – and take delight in their differences – knowing that underlying the different skins is our common humanity.

It does not require a dilution of anyone’s culture. We are descendants of Asia and are proud of it. We celebrate our songs and languages. We rejoice in our dress and our way of life. But crucially, we should not wish to lock this culture away behind high walls. We should not wish to hide our ways from anyone. We are Kenyan as much as we are Asian. The African sun has baked us for generations. Our attitudes, cuisine and language have blended with those of the people we found here without our even knowing it. We are unique – so flaunt it! But do it with an open heart and with the eyes of tolerance, not of chauvinism.

Forty years after winning self-determination, this country is in great trouble. In reality there is only one island: populated by ‘haves’ of all colours. A fomenting sea of ‘have-nots’ surrounds this island of privilege. We Asians live conspicuously on Have Island, and are perceived (wrongly) to be its most prominent inhabitants. Kenya is one of the most unequal societies in the world, and history tells us repeatedly that severe inequality is not sustainable. If sensible measures are not taken in time to improve access to economic opportunity for more people, the result will be inevitable: bloody revolution. And when that happens, we are the most visible (and most resented) economic targets. If you have any doubts about that, cast your mind back to August 1982, when one day of chaos was enough to give Kenyan Asians a forewarning of what lies in store when trouble really starts.

If you think I’m scare mongering, read World on Fire by Amy Chua, a Harvard professor. It sets out, systematically and chillingly, what happens to ethnic minorities who are economically dominant anywhere in the world. It has happened to the Chinese in Malaysia, the Jews in Germany, the Lebanese in West Africa. It is waiting to happen to the Asians of East Africa. The symptoms are all there: increasing restlessness and violence in society; crime spiralling out of control, the security forces powerless to contain it; the tendency for any small event to turn into a major conflagration in minutes; the growing hostility towards the ‘haves’. The bell has been tolling for a while, but is anyone listening?

It need not end in tears. We need to shed the baggage of the past and embark on a new way of thinking. The Asian community, with its economic power and philanthropic traditions, needs to lead the way. We need to get involved in systematically building the productive capacity of the poor in this country. We need to go far beyond the food handouts at temples and donations at children’s homes made by bored housewives (with cameras flashing, of course). We need to do something sustained and methodical. The Asian Foundation’s setting up of the City Park Hawkers’ Market was a shining example of the type of thing that is needed. But an integrated pattern of initiatives is necessary now, with a common aim: to give the poor people of the country the means to earn an honest living. We have the money and the skills: all we need is the time and the heart to do it.

We also need to avoid the mistakes of the past. What were we doing in the 1990s, when the robber barons were plundering the country at will? At the forefront of this pillaging was a clique of very nasty Kenyan Asians. Did we condemn them? Did we shun them? Hell, we turned them into heroes. We welcomed them to our weddings as guests of honour. We told admiring tales of their net worth. We were fawning in their presence. We are still paying for it today, for these are the recognisable attributes of Brand Kenyan Asian: Goldenberg, Mahindra, London Taxis; scams, scandals, greed and gluttony. It is an image and stereotype that none of us can shake off with ease now. That is precisely the sort of abject idiocy that we must consign to history.

And what of the ‘rocket’ phenomenon? What exactly were we thinking then? We imported thousands of low-skill workers from South Asia to become our clerks, cooks, salesmen and supervisors. What message did we send to the unemployed local masses with that one? For a supposedly very astute fraternity, our folly and lack of foresight can be astounding. We have to live in the reality of our setting. If skills are lacking, we must spend the time and effort needed to develop them locally. That is the only sustainable method. Those who do not believe in the competence and trustworthiness of the local populace need to leave. Let them live in a place where they feel they belong. It’s as simple as that. We can’t foist our prejudices on to the country in the form of ridiculous and ill thought-out schemes.

If we were part of the fabric of this country, we would have been more thoughtful about the famine that afflicted this country last year. We would have looked beyond the camera calls on the lawns of State House where our assorted moneymen presented cheques that amounted to a laughably small proportion of their net worth. We would have organised our own relief efforts and got involved with management on the ground (we’re doing it now for the tsunami relief effort thousands of miles away, which is telling). And our community leaders might have advised us to forgo blowing our millions on our annual firecracker frenzy at Diwali, and instead make a major multi-community donation to the famine effort – in cash, kind, time and skills. But where are those leaders, and who the hell is listening? Nothing should get in the way of a loud and juvenile good time, after all – regardless of the setting in which it’s taking place.

There is a mutually reinforcing mechanism at play here. The more we are resented, the more we isolate ourselves. The more we isolate ourselves, the more we are resented. It does not need a genius to work out that this will end in an explosion. It’s no use saying that it’s a two-way thing, we aren’t solely to blame. We aren’t. But let’s stop being part of the problem, and start leading the way in devising the solution. The era of cushy living without responsibility is over. If we belong here, we have to take responsibility for the state of the country, and do something about it.

Awaaz‘s last issue profiled Sugra Visram, a woman clearly ahead of her time. She became the first South Asian woman MP in East Africa in Uganda in the 1960s. Now eighty years old, she is clearly still an incisive thinker. Her advice to us: to mix socially and economically with all ethnic groups; to give economic opportunities to the young; to support mothers and children; to integrate with the majority; and to be careful not to pass our prejudices on to our children.

Wise words. Pay heed. Some already have been doing this, for generations: they have fused their livelihoods and their hearts with those of the people in whose midst they live. But they are few and far between, a few gems glittering in the veil we have thrown over ourselves. More need to come out. After a century of enriching this country, most of us still cannot speak the national language properly. Most of us have already made arrangements for our children to make their lives elsewhere. That is damning.

Is it already too late? If the next generation is already moving on, will we have a meaningful presence here in years to come? You tell me. But, if we wish to have an ‘Awaaz’ after another century has elapsed, we have to see the writing on the wall. Open-minded seva is part of our heritage and should be part of our very nature. To ignore that is to sign your own post-dated exit voucher.

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