London Bridge is falling down, but not the way you might think. London, along with other cities of Britain, is being taken over by Indians and other non-whites, and it is only a matter of time, figuratively speaking, before the Union Jack is hauled down.
This is what British statisticians are saying, though it will be some time before London falls, they say. But quite a few towns have already fallen. Leicester is now 40 per cent non-white, against 30 per cent in 1991. Fully half the non-whites are Indian. By 2020, the whites will be reduced to less than half and the non-whites will rule the roost. London will go the way of Leicester by the middle of the century.
How times change. Immediately after the end of the last war, when some of us landed in London, there was not as Indian to be seen among the ruins. If we saw one, we would cross the road to greet him. He also did the same, so we generally wound up in the middle of the road, chattering away. Sarees were so rare - there were few Indian girls then in London or anywhere else - we used to talk about it for months afterwards, as if we had sighted Taj Mahal in the middle of Piccadilly.
Things began to change a bit after we became free, but not much. There were more Indian officers and clerks in India House, the office of the Indian high commissioner, but it was still staffed mostly by Britishers, many of them retired ICS people. One man had been governor of UP or Bihar, I forget which and was now an adviser to the Commission.
Since the commissioner was Krishna Menon, a prickly Keralite, they did not get on well. Within a year, Menon had packed of all the burra sahibs with their twirling moustaches, and the last British bastion in London had fallen to the natives!
The British were generally a friendly lot, though. When you met them in the street, they treated you kindly and invariably asked if I was from Poona. Why Poona, I wondered, until I was told that most British army officers has served in Poona and knew the place well. Often, it was the only place they new!
There was also an India Club, tucked away among those gloomy buildings near Whitehall, which was a regular haunt of some of these men. I remember going there quite a few times as a guest, when there were more moustaches then lips, and the haw-haw accent was in full spate. There was the usual curry that tasted like nothing on earth - despite 200 years in India, Englishmen could never cook a decent curry- and boiled rice that tasted like quaker oats. English food has always been terrible, but Anglo-Indian or Indo- Anglian food was the pits.
Nostalgia was in full flow. The British may have left India but they had not forgotten it. I used to live in South Kensington, not far from Albert Hall. One morning, I was crossing the street when I saw an old woman waiting at the curb, apparently looking for some one to help her across.
I took her in hand and slowly we crossed the street together.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, in a voice redolent of all those tiger shoots and elephant rides. I shook my head.
“I am your Rani,” she said, “I am Lady Willingdon.”
Her husband Lord Willingdon, I recalled, was Viceroy of India and had once put Gandhi in jail. Would I have helped her across the street had I known who she was? Nice question!
This article was originally published on February 12, 2008.
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