Do Indian women have a cat-like grace?

July has been hectic. A visit to the family in Madras and then the descent of the 'Madrasi' parent and the American sibling and family. Four kids in the house instead of two. The guests are all gone now and the house has recovered from the anarchy and my mind from the vertigo induced by living with four active children across three diverse age groups.


To get back my bearings after they left, I slept as much as I could, kept silent for a long periods of time and read a lot. On the lookout for new authors to replace Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and their ilk, I discovered Elizabeth George, P D James and Ruth Rendell. Great authors, no quarrel with that. And as a sign of the times they write in, all three have Asian characters in them. Commendable.

However, read the descriptions below and tell me if something rankles. The first is from Well-schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George:

“They were not greeted by Giles Byrne, however, but rather by a Pakistani woman perhaps thirty years old.... She was obviously not a servant....
The woman stepped back from the door and motioned them to come inside. The gesture drew the sleeve of her caftan away from her smooth dark skin... Her teeth were very small, very white.... She left them, running lightly along the stairs...”

Later in the book:

“'There's no need for you to stay, Rhena. You've a brief to work on for court next week, haven't you?'
“I wish to stay, my dear,' she replied and moved across the room soundlessly to sit on the couch. She slipped off a delicate pair of sandals and drew her legs up beneath her. Four thin gold bracelets slid down her arm. She directed her eyes at Byrne and kept them there.”


Now on to Ruth Rendell's rendering of Malina Patel in A Sleeping Life.

“Beauty had opened the front door to him, beauty in a peacock-green sari with gold ornaments, and on hands of a fineness and delicacy seldom seen in Western women, the width across the broadest part less than three inches, rings of gold and ivory. An exquisite small face, the skin of smoky gold, peeped at him from behind a cloud of silky black hair.”

A little earlier in the book, Rendell writes “He crossed the grass where black children and one white child were playing ball, where two Indian women in saris, their hair in long braids, walked slowly and gracefully as if they carried invisible pots on their heads.”

Compare these with Jules Verne's more openly racist description of Aouda, in Around the World in 80 Days. “The worthy Indian then gave some account of the victim, who, he said, was a celebrated beauty of the Parsee race, and the daughter of a wealthy Bombay merchant. She had received a thoroughly English education in that city, and, from her manners and intelligence, would be thought an European. Her name was Aouda.”

I have no idea if any of the readers find such descriptions of Indian women offensive, but for some reason I do. The whole cat-like grace and tiger-like anger! And God! Teeth! The only other time authors rave about teeth are when they talk about horses! Somehow all the Indian women that Western authors have met have small, even, white teeth. As do Native Americans and blacks. And they all have smooth skin. Nary a pimple! Oh no!

A look at our dental records or our streets will testify that we have all kinds of teeth. Even, odd, big, small, protruding... Oh, and we have cavities too, just like people everywhere else. We probably have the largest population of dentists in the world. And they all make good money out of our bad teeth.

As for George's description of Rhena, the whole thing calls to mind, as perhaps meant to, a wild cat. The eyes fixed on the lover, the soundless movement across the room, the drawing up of the legs on the couch.

The whole cat-like movements of Asian woman is a laugh. Indian women are perhaps the noisiest people I have ever encountered. The decibal levels of a group of aging Indian woman will beat those of a gaggle of Western teenagers hollow! Not all of us are petite and delicate. Some of us are – I hope you're sitting down now – fat. Yes, fat. With cellulite and orange peel skin and all.

Oh yes, we're not all barefoot, either. We actually have a thriving footwear industry here as well. And I should know, I live in the country, see! And the NRIs who are often the richer Indians have access to footwear and use them.

As for the “cloud of silky hair,” it just seems like mixed metaphors to me. To me a cloud of hair would call to mind “fluffy” not silky. But that's probably because English is not my native tongue. Even my accent is not as “prettily correct” as Malina Patel's.

On an another point, I'm not am NRI, so I really cannot comment, but how many young NRI women sit at home in peacock green sarees? NRIs are a strange clan and perhaps they feel compelled to cling to their roots with a saree tied on, but all of my NRI friends live in jeans and dresses. A modern Indian women in a sari is a rare commodity – even in India.

Oh, and did you guys note the “walked slowly and gracefully as if they carried invisible pots on their heads.” I have not encounted any Indian woman who walks slowly and gracefully. Many Indian woman have bad posture. Some of us stoop. We're not all petite and erect with swaying walks. That's only those of us who are on Western television. The rest of us walk like the average woman around the world. No grace, no silence.

Most Indian woman I see are busy people, and they are rushing all the time, unless they are mingling at a party, drink in hand - like any woman anywhere. Apart from that consider the traffic, the catcalls, the unwanted attention on the roads. All the women I know want to be out of public places as soon as possible. Lingering is not encouraged.

I would much rather Western authors ignore the presence of Asians in their midst, rather than endow us time and again with all those stereotyped charecteristics that have been our lot from the age of Jules Verne. What offends me more is that they never describe a Western woman this way. Even the catlike Western women escape without having their teeth examined.

Descriptions such as these don't seem to offend anyone in this politically correct age and pass though the hands of authors, editors, publishers, critics and readers without anyone feeling offended. Except me. And I flinch. Everytime. Do you?