Jokes Apart | Things people do in Indian small towns: And why big city folks are no better

We have various identities: Nation, state, region, religion, caste. There is also another, more local identity, perhaps the one that matters to us most: the city or town we live in. In many ways, the other identities are abstract and remote. The streets and neighbourhoods we grow up and work in, the market places we frequent, the local landmarks, these are the places where we carry out the actual business of living.

Over the years, I’ve discovered this curious facet to my personality. I’ve come to realise that I am a city patriot first and foremost. If anyone says something flippant and judgemental about where I live, steamy vapours start coming out from my ears, and, sometimes, even the nose. Writers choose their landscapes and people; they feel a kinship and empathy with them. At times, it happens in reverse, and at times circumstances make you live where you are, or it might be entirely accidental where you turn up and decide to call home. This applies to everyone, not just writers.

The British band Pulp had a No 1 hit called ‘Common People’, which featured the line, “Everybody hates a tourist/ Especially one who thinks it’s all such a laugh,/ And the chip stains and the grease will come out in the bath.” It’s about tourists coming to England, “going native” eating fish and chips, and poking fun at the lives of the working class. To some extent one understands this phenomenon: Those visiting a foreign country for the first time have a habit of succumbing to cliché and stereotype; so much for travel expanding our horizons.

But what about the person who comes from Delhi to Dehradun? I was sitting with one such specimen in a Dehradun bar and the waiter took some time getting him his second beer, which he instantly attributed to small-town tortoise slowness. I’ve been to bars in Delhi where the service is even slower. Another friend went to a Thai restaurant here and complained that the food was awful. “What else do you expect from small-towns?” Any restaurant anywhere can serve food that you do not like. A third city Indian came into town, and, on the way to the hotel, saw a man sitting on a string cot staring into space. This was also turned into a romantic picture of the small-town. Fact is that there are men sitting on string cots in the bylanes of cyber city Gurgaon and New Delhi, even as I write this.

I have lived in three cities/ towns, them being Allahabad, Delhi and, presently, Dehradun. In the mid-1990s, when I first came to Delhi University to do my BA, one senior in college would often catch me and persist with the same question: But what on earth did you do in Allahabad? I’d reply, “Read books, listened to music, went to the movies, had crushes on girls, drank Lehar Pepsi, played cricket, watched Star Trek on Doordarshan, and one Buster Keaton film at the university film club.” This wasn’t the answer he was looking for. Finally, one day, I told him we used to go skinny dipping in the Ganges, and go looking for snake-skin on the sandbanks, an absolute lie. He was satisfied. He’d found the exotic Oriental truth he was looking for.

Delhi folks suffer from the illusion of the Ideal Indian Small Town. For them it’s a prototype, one where there is no difference between Katihar, Allahabad, Shillong, Coimbatore, Itarsi, Ranchi, Jabalpur and Kottayam. At the same time, they are confused in their expectation of what a small-town should be like. The picture they have in their heads is that it is a sleepy, leafy place with rolling hills, like a village in Arunachal Pradesh. That is not the reality of bustling small-town India.

One Delhi person was disappointed at the number of big brand outlets in Dehradun: Hamleys, Dunkin Donuts, H&M, Apple, Crocs... Omigod it’s becoming like Delhi. Pub chains like Turquoise Cottage and Social have already opened shop or are on the verge of it, as are international coffee chains like Starbucks. In the Delhi person’s eyes, we have to maintain a pastoral existence so that he can come here and unwind, then complain about the lack of nightlife. It’s a strange paradox to inhabit.

Another curious aspect of Delhi folks is that they are perennially trying to “get away” from Delhi. When it comes to the fight-or-flight mode, Delhiites are firmly in the latter. Which makes it all the more curious as to why they can’t get a handle on the smaller places they visit. What’s even more ironic is that in the eyes of that other spurious entity, the West, all of India is one giant blob: a hot land with no snow and lots of elephants.

I’ve known Delhiites who have moved to one-horse towns in America, and feel superior coming back to India, only because in the eyes of their neighbours, they have “moved up in life” just by moving to the back of beyond in the United States. This Delhi person, who used to make fun of small-towns, now lives in the smallest of towns in the whole wide world. In this version of Americana, the Hindu Right supporter, who’s moved to small-town America from Delhi, now faces hostility from his new neighbours — Trump-supporting White supremacists. Life has a nice way of levelling things out.

Fact is that in India, the lines between small-towns and cities are fuzzy and blurred. There is a small-town (or many) in every city and a city in every small-town. The scriptwriter who lives in Versova, Mumbai, will never make it to Colaba in her lifetime. Versova is the small-town she inhabits. Every small-town will have someone who will open a trendy watering hole or a boutique cafe.

Yet, this is not to deny the differences. As someone who has spent two-thirds of his life in the small-town and one-third in the city, I think I know a thing or two about quintessential small-town characteristics.

Small-town folks are obsessed with opening shops, usually kirana stores. Eating joints are called Lip ‘n’ Sip, while shops selling readymade clothes are called Dezign Studio. The moral high ground taken here is: Why should I work for anyone? The truth is that there is a genuine lack of opportunity. Those who don’t have the capital to open a shop have a standard answer to save face; when asked what they do, they will say ‘property’ or ‘construction’.

In small-towns, the thing to do first thing in the morning is to turn up at the local bank. Everyone, from twenty-somethings to retired folk, makes their way to the bank after the mandatory gym class or morning walk.

“I have an early morning tomorrow.”

“What are you doing?”

“I have to go to the bank.”

Small-town peeps are also fond of telling you where you or your parents were spotted the previous day.

“I saw your parents buying fruit in Survey Chowk.”

“Arre, yesterday I saw you at the Behl chowk traffic light. My bike was right behind your car.”

In Dehradun, there is an underclass of unemployed middle-aged men who live with their mothers. These are teetotalling males with no bad habits, except candy. In the evenings, they put on a clean shirt, comb their hair and turn up at the local grocer’s, sticking their hands into the various toffee jars on counter. So sweet.

Small-town tipplers are used to drinking only super-strong lager, since the liquor mafia has decided that only five big cities in the country are deserving of regular-strength beer. You won’t get Kingfisher Premium, only Kingfisher Strong.

When it comes to relationships, small-town people have a tendency to get genuinely confused by phrases like “She broke up with me” or “My friends are going through a divorce.”

Small-town people are also great sulkers. They tend to be touchy about the smallest of things and won’t talk to each other for months on end, before eventually reconciling. By this stage no one remembers who got upset about what.

Finally, there is little road rage in smaller places. People smile and get on with it, even if a car has scraped another car. No one carries crow bars under their seat like in Delhi.

Many songs have been written about small towns, perhaps one of the most famous being John Mellencamp’s ‘Small Town’:

“All my friends are so small town,
My parents live in the same small town,
My job is so small town,
Provides little opportunity, hey.

But I've seen it all in a small town,
Had myself a ball in a small town,
Married an L.A. Doll and brought her to this small town,
Now she's small town just like me.

Got nothing against a big town,
Still hayseed enough to say
“Look who's in the big town”;
But my bed is in a small town,
Oh, and that's good enough for me.”

The writer is the author of ‘The Butterfly Generation’ and the editor of ‘House Spirit: Drinking in India’. Views expressed are personal.

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