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8 JANUARY’19-JUNE’19
THE REVIEW
PUNE AGM 2018
professionals in their own right. Were they as good as the person who used to do it before? No! Because I wasn’t as good as I was before; I am better now than I was before. Do you think that both of them can develop? Don’t you think Andy Hoffland and Raisa O’Brien did a pretty good job and they will improve? Give them a hand, in fact.
Don’t be insecure. Too many of our leaders are insecure. I’ve chatted with many of you and I love your style. And they say, ‘Barry, if they don’t like it then they can choose somebody else. Because it’s not a big deal for me.’ And they’re not saying it in a negative sense. That’s the leadership we need today. The Association is really important. But it’s not a life and death situation. It’s not a situation where, if I am not the President-in-Chief then I won’t be an Anglo-Indian or I won’t be a serving member of the community. No! I am not looking over my shoulder. I don’t say, ‘Hey, Oscar, Glen and Mr Rodrigues had a meeting yesterday; what were they discussing?’ and walk past them trying to
to listen to their conversation. No! Those days of leadership are gone. Because you have to be open about it. You have to put no extra value on your chair. You have to put extra value on the post that you hold but not the chair that you sit on—there’s a difference. If you give importance to the chair and you want to stick to it, you’ll be stuck for a long time and people will be asking, ‘When is this fellow giving up?’ So, leadership today is about moving on and not holding on to your chair as if it is your birthright..
New India and the Anglo-Indian
Allow me to criticise about Mr Donald Trump
- he talks negatively about immigration and immigrants. Has he read his history? Who built the United States of America? The people who came from different parts of Europe, India, China, Korea. That’s why America is so strong. Yes, America is a melting pot where you come and you more or less discard or take off your culture coat, and you put your culture into this melting pot called the United States of America. Our country is different. It is not a melting pot. We have different cultures, our traditions are
different, our beliefs are different—I’ll be coming to religion soon—but ours is not a melting pot of cultures. Ours is a beautiful mosaic where every community, big or small, has to sparkle; together, within the mosaic. So, when you see the bhangra happening and the dandiya happening, we will also come in with a bit of a jive. Cultures feed off one another too. Now we don’t see as many dhotis and saris on a normal working day as we used
to. Wherever you look, they’re wearing trousers and dresses. I wish Anglo-Indians could start cutting and tailoring businesses. It’s big time now. Because many people from other communities wear traditional clothes only when they’re in front of their in-laws, and dresses for everything else. So, you’ve got a big business opportunity. Friends, people want to dress like us. People want to be like us. People want to eat like us. Fellows are objecting against beef and asking for a beef steak in the club. I’m not joking, it’s a fact! I know a gentleman from a particular community where the fellow
is not supposed to eat onions. He goes to the New Market, to the meat section. Most people don’t go there because it smells too much. He doesn’t go there because he doesn’t want to be seen. He sends the container through someone, it comes in one way, the beef is put in, and it goes out the other way, where the driver or somebody takes it. I don’t know where he cooks it!
What I am trying to tell you is people are different. They’re not doing it as a favour to you and me—no! But the days of the Anglo-Indian being
a caricature of sorts, the Anglo-Indian being stereotyped, are over. In the ‘70s, every bad guy
in the movies had a big crucifix and his name
was Michael or Peter. Those days of caricature are gone. People send posts and videos on line commenting on how we say things like ‘dis, dem dose’; it’s very good to laugh at and we pass it around but that’s not the reality any longer. I don’t think I’m hearing any ‘dis, dem, dose’ anymore. The caricature is over. The community is being vieweddifferently.ThegreatsingerUshaUthup— who is one of our judges for the ‘Voice of the
Year’ contest—I asked her, ‘Ushadi, should I quote you and say you want to be born an Anglo-Indian in your next life?’ because she said that twenty