Suman K Sharma
Indra and I were on a walk in a park adjoining the Castle Hill Metro Station when a man in a floppy hat greeted me with a warm smile. Short and stocky, the sharp featured man could have been from anywhere. I responded to him with a ready smile and we shook hands. “No English…Farsi,” said he, his eyes sparkling with friendliness.
“Irani? Are you from Iran?” I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically.
“I am from India, dost,” I went on to introduce myself. Pointing towards Indra, who was watching us from a few feet, I added, “She, my shareek-e-hayaat!” Persian, Arabic or our very own Urdu, these were the words I could muster at the moment.
“Oh, dost! Shareek-e-hayaat!” he repeated after me happily.
He said his name was Hassan. I told him mine. We met Hassan again after a few days during our stroll in the park. This time he carried a small packet of pistachio nuts which he offered me, smiling broadly. I took two nuts out of it, one for myself and another for Indra, in celebration of our friendship.
I can say with certitude that during my stay in Castle Hill I never for once felt like a stranger. It was simple: look at the person you face as you look at yourself in the mirror. The people in Australia anyway are easy folks to connect with.
But what do they think of themselves and the outsiders? The first part of the question is rather difficult to answer. Can anyone else presume to say what I feel about myself? And we are talking of a cosmopolitan society that is much more diverse than ours. There are some pointers nonetheless; the TV mockumentary, ‘Lunatics’, for instance. In a 10-part series, available on Netflix, Actor Chris Lilley performs the roles of as many as six characters. ‘Keith Dick’ is shown making love to a cash register – the machine that we see at the cash counters of the bigger shops and malls. 12-year-old ‘Gavin McGregor’, who would be the lord of a vast English estate, displays all the tantrums of a spoilt British aristocrat. ‘Jana Memhoopen-Jonks’, a middle-aged lesbian, talks to the dogs of celebrities and makes them perform tricks. ‘Quentin Cook’ is a failed real-estate agent who aspires to become a DJ; and so on.
Shakespearean plays have fools and clowns mocking at the follies of the great and the not-so-great to their face. The Australians have mocumentaries to make the world laugh at their proclivities. ‘Lunatics’ makes fun of the post-colonial hangover of the British vis a vis Australia. The colony became a free nation way back on 1 January 1901. But ‘The Australian Day’ is celebrated on 26 January instead, because it was on this day in 1788 that the First Fleet under the command of Arthur Philip landed at Sydney Cove, signalling the British subjugation of this ancient land. The Australian Flag still bears the British Union Jack on its top. The British monarch continues, albeit nominally, to be the Australian Head of the State, since it is s/he who appoints the Governor General on the advice of the Australian Prime Minister. Some nerve! Then there is the Australian fondness for pets. Jana Jonks of ‘Lunatics’ may be a comic exaggeration, but the fact remains that pets are treated with as much adoration in the country as one’s own children. My daughter Pema’s pet Benny carries the family surname. A few months ago, when he was indisposed, Pema and her husband, Vinayak, literally lost their sleep. Benny, like other pets in the country, carries a microchip on his body and is monitored by the state authorities. In fact, it is obligatory for the pet-parents to have the chip implanted in their pets. You won’t find a feral dog or a cat in Castle Hill. Talking of the Australian’s fascination for real estate, it won’t be wide off the mark to say that there are more concerns dealing with real estate in Castle Hill than liquor shops in dear old Jammu. The rents are rising and residents are anxious to acquire one or more properties for residential or renting purposes. And now for Keith Dick’s object-philia. You might find it rather quirky, but Australian are open about their sexual preferences. There is Miriam Margolyes, presenter of another Netflix documentary, ‘Almost Australian’. The grand old dame, all of 78 years, makes no bones about her lesbian character. On the contrary, she keeps reminding the viewers of that aspect of her life throughout the 3-part documentary.
On a serious note, ‘Almost Australian’ renders an honest-to-God depiction of Australians, “with pink glasses off.” Miriam takes us on a 10,000 km drive in her van from Sydney in the south, through Alice Springs in the central Australia, to Darwin, the northern-most tip of the continent. We meet elderly mates who are done with their matehood. And to think that matehood – the macho male chumminess – was once an important attribute of the pioneers going into terra nullius, the daunting ‘no man’s land’ of Australia, which D.H. Lawrence describes as ‘the vast, uninhabited land and by the grey charred bush…so phantom-like, so ghostly, with its tall, pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses….’ Miriam acquaints us with households in the Central Australia, which, because of the drought, find it hard even to maintain the barest needs of sustenance. We also come face to face with a young Afghan who managed somehow to land in this haven of emigrees to secure his future, but is unsure of his standing here.
If Chris Lilley’s people are ‘lunatics’ and Miriam thinks of herself and her compatriots as ‘almost’ Australian, you might ask, then who are the ‘real’ Australians? Let us not go wool gathering about the issue. Suffice it to say that Australians are those who have the citizenship of that country. Of them, first come the Aborigines. They are there but their presence is felt only in acute situations. You know your body has an appendix and a gall bladder too, but unless you are studying for medicine or face a problem with these organs, you don’t really bother about them. In the same manner, the Australian authorities wake up to the presence of the Aboriginal populace only at the time of elections or for the sake of tokenism. Next are the descendants of the British ‘transportees’ (aka ‘convicts’) and settlers who descended on the ‘terra nullius’ during the 18th and 19th centuries. And the rest are all those who came to the country looking for opportunities this resource-rich, expansive land has to offer – Europeans, Americans, Fijians, Koreans, Afghans, Africans, Arabs, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese, and Indians.
The Chinese are seen lording it over here. David Llewellyn-Smith, Chief Strategist at the Macrobusiness (MB) Fund and MB Super calls them Australia’s sugar daddies. Moneybags from China invest heavily in things like real estate and retail businesses, only to impose their own terms on what to sell at what cost and who to employ. Trade between China and Australia is ten times as much as it is between India and Australia.
And us Indians? According to the Department of Home Affairs, Govt of Australia, we “(provide) the most permanent migrants to Australia”. As of June 2021, the Indian expats in the country numbered over 7.1 lakhs. The impression among the locals is that we have flooded the employment market with cheap, low-skilled labour. Prime Minister Modi and his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, may appear very sweet hugging each other for the nth time and signing agreements to facilitate the hopefuls in India to improve their lot in that country. Yet, the ground reality is not as rosy as one would like to imagine. Australian social media is fuming at an agreement which makes it plausible for anyone in India with a diploma or a degree to land a job in Australia. In an online article titled ‘Albos – The Army of Unemployable Indians to Wreck Jobs-market’, Llewellyn Smith denunciates our country for reasons best known to him:
“India is chaos. The poverty is unbelievable. Its people undertake whatever scam is necessary to survive and the Westerners are the numero uno target (understandably so!).”
How I wish some hirsute Haryanvi Jat should have put some sense into the snotty brat!
You must go to Australia, that is, if you have it in you. The country is a nice place to be in, no doubt. The weather is temperate. The land is vast and the skies serene blue. You can wear a shirt the whole week without the top of your collar getting that grimy black layer which puts you off in your home-town after an hour’s use. A gora or gori on a footpath may give you a smile, or say hi, if you come face to face with him/her. A good looking, sports-loving and laid-back people they generally are. Women wear what they like, without having to care about ogles and vigilantes. Theirs is a social environment of amiability and trust. You won’t find any bus conductor in the local buses. It is up to you to swipe the card on boarding the bus and completion of your journey. At certain spots of the pavements, there are glass cases full of books which are almost new. Pick up any of them for a leisurely read at home. For free.
And when you start missing home, you have Little India for you in Parramatta!
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