Where have all the Brits gone?

I make no bones about my Anglophilia. Like most Indians of my vintage – caught between old rotary dial phones and the first tentative mobile phones – I grew up on Wodehouse & James Herriot, walked among old Gothic structures in areas called Fort, Churchgate, and Marine Drive, and wondered what fish and chips tasted like. I was (am actually, of course) the scion of a father who had not only studied Law in one of those Gothic Structures, but was adept at solving crossword puzzles of The Times, wrote “Esq.” after his name and frowned upon meaningless abbreviations. And was able to tie a Windsor knot effortlessly.

My friends in college were of similar persuasion and many a pleasant hour was spent on the cricket field boundary wall facing our college discussing Wodehouse and the doings of Wooster. In fact, if I removed my spectacles and gazed at the cricket field, I could be forgiven for thinking I was watching a match in rural Shropshire.

I visited London for the first time in 1992. My emotions on first arriving in The City (via Paris but that’s another blog) were understandably incoherent. I was all a-twitter (yes, the word existed even in the 90s and meant a completely different thing) and could barely wait to reach Oxford Street and imbibe…Englande! I tumbled out of the Underground and onto the Street, took a deep breath, and heard a peremptory voice asking for directions to Wembley… in Gujarati! I looked wildly around but all I could see and hear was non non-English folks and tongues (with Indian folks and tongues predominating).

Over the years I came to terms with this divergent binary to all that I held dear about the Dear Country. I put it down to that quaint British habit of taking rather than giving. I met natives (of my country) who were more English than the Archbishop of Canterbury. I met natives who had long strings of alphabets after their names or had a “Lord” prefixed to a decidedly Kathiawari or Gangetic-plain origin name. In all this I was reassured that the things that I held to be Truly British – the Queen, the BBC, the Prime Minister, fish and chips, tea, and cricket – were Truly British. These would never be anything but.

But of late, that reassurance has been shaken. Profoundly. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the First Minister of Scotland and the Taoiseach of Ireland are of South Asian origin. The newly appointed Director-General of the BBC was born in a dusty town to the north-east of Mumbai, India. The current and previous two Home Secretaries of the Sceptered Isle trace their origins to the colonies. Chicken Tikka Masala, and not Fish and Chips, is the preferred cholesterol inducer.

Do not get me wrong. All these individuals have succeeded to the highest levels in their chosen profession by dint of hard work and talent. They deserve to be, or not to be, where they are. CTM, though a hideous amalgamation of chicken and cream which should never have been permitted to exist, speaks to the soul of every Ordinary Englishman in his cups.

Still, Where Are The Brits?