Hot Cross Buns

I like English and I cannot lie. I am Indian and I cannot lie. In fact, I am writing this at a
kitchen table in London, studying English at a university, wearing a patiala pant with
Dhoom Tana blasting in my ears. I take breaks to watch Yeh Rishtey Hain Pyaar Ke and
that is probably the only part that I may not be proud of all the time. I speak in Telugu with
my parents, in Hindi with my friends and in English every other time. The ironies are never
lost on me. My thoughts come in English as well.

If therapy and countless books have taught me anything, it is that all meaning, all coherence comes from the past. So I guess it is only fair that I look for the solution to my multiple identities and their corresponding ironies in mine. I could never learn hot cross buns. I did not know what a penny was. I was around 2 or 3 so I did not even know what a rupee was but that wasn’t that big of a deal. I could learn the longer version of twinkle twinkle little star, Old McDonald was my brother’s favorite and wee willie winkie and ring-a ringa-roses were childhood plays. I did not know the words properly to the last one either, they were a set of abstract sounds at the end of which we fell.

Cut to 10 years later and I am learning history in an English medium class. For years, our
history textbooks covered in detail India’s freedom struggle. Its colonial history was given
the maximum weightage in all exams so we knew that it was important. I did not even
study about the world wars until a few years ago and recognised, with some shock, the impact they have had on the world. It did not make sense to me initially because they last-
ed (together) for around 10 years, with some 27 years in between, give or take. Colonies have been around for a few centuries.

Even if those numbers did not add up, I thought my personal experience would. India got
independence in 1947, I was reading its history 60 years later, for over a decade. But
colonialism was already etched in my infant memory. And since then my colonial legacy
had new things to teach me apart from innocent nursery rhymes that I could not relate to.
My behaviour was modelled after Enid Blyton even as my grandmother fought to keep
Panchatantra alive through bed time stories. Fair and Lovely was brought in hordes and
used by the entire family because who would give me importance if I was brown? In
school, we wore blazers in scorching heat. Speaking fluently in English had come naturally
to me. In school, you were punished if you spoke in your native language. As long as we
were in the premises we had to speak in English. It is a whole different thing that I was the
only one who took it seriously, even though I was aware that it was an unfair rule.

Examples do not stop there. Time would run out, space would run out but the examples of Indian complicity in propagating white superiority decades after independence would never. But the story is larger than who is responsible for this. The story is bigger than a blame game because contrary to my initial belief, colonialism was never a simple case of bully and victim. This lesson I would only learn in London and who better at teaching me than my old and elusive friends; the hot cross buns.

I walked into a cafe for a mocha and some quiet to read Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable
when I see, for the first time, puffy little round buns with two white lines intersecting each
other sitting innocently atop a creamish white plate and staring at the roof made by an
enormous transparent lid. As I waited for my coffee I thought to myself, “ahhhh now I see.”

I did not just mean the rhyme though. I could see and understand, only in part, why wars
could just sustain themselves for a few years whereas imperialism went on successfully for centuries, across the globe. You see (and I really hope you do), war is a rather acute manifestation of inter-national dissent. Colonialism was the chronic, systematic and methodical suppression of communities through politics, economy and culture. Culture is the key to maintain continued dominance. Cultural dominance, I would go so far as to say (backed by my example of the endurance of hot cross buns in colonial memory), is a necessary, prerequisite condition for imperialism’s success.

People would say that globalisation, which happened a mere 30 years after independence,
would have brought about cultural exchange anyway. But I would urge those people to not only understand the difference between exchange and oppression but also that globalisation is intimately entangled with the imperial empire. Especially the speed with which it happened and the speed with which India took up the challenge to participate in it, is dizzying to say the least. We never even gave ourselves the chance to heal and to understand that while our culture had some problems, we were always capable of changing it for ourselves and for discriminating those aspects which were beautiful, those which were harmless and those which had to go.

Without such an understanding and without confidence in our own heterogeneous identities, any choice we make will be tainted by a colonial legacy which will implicitly propagate a see-saw like opposition in which the system is rigged to keep one side up always. On the other hand, if we do recognize the problem and strive to stop enforcing one culture on another, we will be able to exchange buns for biryanis on equal but different terms.