Nordic Heritage

     There is a neighborhood park a block away from the hotel we are staying at in Bangalore. In an effort to get more comfortable in my surroundings, I go on walks there daily. It's a large gated garden, with nice plantings and you'd be hard pressed to find trash in the place, which is a rarity in this city. There are about ten rules ascribed to the park, one of which includes, “no playing”, “no walking on the lawn”...Okay, it sounds, harsh, but it's one of the few pristinely beautiful places in the city, so I'll take the rules. You'll find women power walking in white tennis shoes and saris, and older folks sitting on benches chatting it up. The other side of the fence is a cricket field and several matches take place simultaneously, seemingly all day long. It's the kind of place where people are so busy socializing they don't feel the same urge to stare at the foreigner as they usually would.

   One afternoon on my way back from the park I was greeted by a small toddler running in the street. He was not more than an year and a half old, dressed in a little orange torn tee shirt, and blue shorts that were barely covering his plump little body. When I smiled at him, he took off running after me in his bare feet. A man shouts out, “watch out, he's a fast runner” and indeed he was. After a minute of walking, I looked back to find him still running, so I stopped, to direct him back to his guardians. There was an elderly man dressed in a sort of cloth skirt and a middle aged man in western clothes who start walking in my direction to collect the baby. Meanwhile the baby at this point has reached my legs and starts firmly tugging on my pants, almost climbing my limbs to be lifted up. For some reason I didn't think twice about scooping him up...you can't do these kind of things in America, but it India it seems totally acceptable to pick up a random baby who is chasing after you. This really pleased him, and when I spoke to him, he seemed to be utterly transfixed on my face. This was probably the closest he had been to such a pale creature speaking a strange language. He started imitating my words, and wobbling his little head back and forth as he spoke (a very authentic replication of the head wobble I might say too).

    The middle aged man approaches and starts chatting with me, asking me where I'm from, and then tells me he is an ethnologist. He proceeds to give me a very confusing and detailed account of ethnographic “half-castes”. I'm not sure who he his talking about at this point, possibly referring to the baby who has down syndrome and who is from a very poor migrant family from Tamil Nadu. After a few minutes of conversation (and after he has quoted several random historians and made a few nonsensical remarks) I realize he himself has some kind of mental disability and our conversation has no sign of an end. I've grown accustomed to spotting talkers quite quickly from my years at a food coop and after several minutes I try to find the best way to interject that I should be leaving. I go to give the baby back to the elderly man, who appears to be a grandpa of sorts, and the baby refuses to leave, clinging to my shirt and shaking his head defiantly.

    At this point we've drawn a small crowd of a few other curious elderly folks who were quite amused at the sight of a baby attached to a foreigner. They were crowding around, laughing and making comments in Tamil. We manage to pry the little baby's fingers loose from my shirt and the middle aged man remarks to me with a completely serious manner “Oh he does this with everyone... even with me.... oh no, it is not your Nordic heritage nor your electric blue eyes.” He had such a straight face and delivery I couldn't help but laugh. He continued to stand there expressionless, leaving me a bit confused with how to read his remark and then he says quite jovially, “give my love and regards to your husband, and please come and visit if you want I'm at apartment 214”.

A welcoming moment in India....