'Veli, veli big dearl'

My conversation with a Thai boatman on bombs. And something more...

‘Hav veli big bomb in India , fliend?’ the boatman on the Cho Phraya that runs through Bangkok asks me. I don’t know what to say, so I say ‘yes’. ‘Many people dead in train, no?’ (he is referring to the serial train blasts in Mumbai or 11/7) the betel-chewing alcohol-dripping boatman asks me again, this time with a graver expression. My fuse blows quietly and I shoot back, with enough pauses between my words to ensure he understands. ‘There is a bomb. Many bombs, actually. Some bigger than the rest. Mallika Sherawat very big bomb. But I am not very familiar with terrorism. You people have bombs in Pat Pong, no? Pretty cheap too.’ I don’t know if he gets my joke, but he says Pat Pong has only legal sex business.
I was on a fast boat. One of those junky looking long things that cuts through the water next only to a Thai police motorboat. I also ensured my beer packs were not idle during the joyride. But I could not help thinking if our face as a ‘terrorist’ nation had penetrated down to the riverbed of Thailand’s economic strata, what were people of more organised nations were thinking – for whom a terrorist simply meant brown skin or a man with a skull cap and a beard. My beard and long hair weren’t helping even in this Asian nation that is charmingly placed between eastern values, western dreams and a Muslim south.
Unfortunately, Thailand has its share of terrorism. The checks at airports are far more intrusive than they used to be, say, five years back. The troubled south has enough Islamists to generate hatred against Muslims in general. However, being a nation that is Buddhist in character, they have tried unique methods to help ultras overcome the violence within them. One that I remember was airdropping thousands of paper doves on the restive zone, but it did not work. It probably only elicited some laughter from the firebrand ambassadors.
Hong Kong is more paranoid now. I remember them celebrating ten years as a special administrative region of China by lighting up its skyline with fireworks. Since the place is riddled with skyscrapers, some housing very important corporations that Osama may eye, they are constantly on guard.
I hiked Lamma Island, a stray piece of land on the South China Sea administrated by Hong Kong. It is a pretty little place for a trek of the urban variety because the administration just cannot leave anything untouched. They have little concrete pathways, garbage bins, which is admirable, and signs so that you won’t get lost. And the walk ends on the beach. Since it was a long hike, steep at certain turns, I ended it with a swim in the sea. But that’s another story.
When I got back from Lamma and hit the shore at Harbour City of ‘mainland’ Hong Kong and saw this skyscraper which looked like a spacecraft in the cloudy sky, I could not help but take some pictures. Just when I was done, a policeman and a policewoman stopped me and asked me for identification. With them there was a plainclothes cop who looked like a tourist with his sling bag and awestruck expression. They check everything that I was carrying, including the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my bag. They wanted to know how long I would be staying, to which I said "not very long now". They jotted down my passport number. They were also polite because they didn’t find any attack maps, letters from Osama and liquid explosives in aerosol cans. I wanted to tell them that the bottle of Jack Daniel’s was pretty explosive.
After the frisking, as I walked towards the car park I wondered why, out of all the people on the promenade, I was singled out. Was it the beard, the hair and the brown skin? I’ll never know, but I understood how easy it was to become a victim of perception. Probably, it was just a random check – but when it happens to you, you wonder what set off the cops’ suspicion.
With the boys from Bangalore giving a suave Indian face to terrorism, perception will surely play a greater role in who gets frisked. And I have to consider silly questions like should I shave before going abroad.
Coincidentally, I read a bit of Amartya Sen’s book Identity and Violence and saw our circumstance a little more clearly. The ‘solitarist’ approach to identity contributes to violence. As he writes, ‘…a major source of potential conflict in the contemporary world is the presumption that people can be uniquely categorised based on religion or culture’.
The world is not that way anymore. I am not just a Hindu. I am also a journalist, a fan of Steely Dan and Miles Davis’ music, an English-speaking Indian, a lover of Pune’s hills and so on. I would hate it if a saffron group tried to tell me I was just a Hindu. I hate pigeonholes.
Finally, all you hardcore clerics and the like, please stop giving us real, usual people a bad name. We love our ice-cream and want to stay that way.