Christmas in London, seen with Indian eyes

I was in London for Christmas. The lit-up angel wings hanging over Regent Street, the glorious Christmas market at Covent Garden, and a guy trying to snatch my phone at the Oxford Circus tube station, were all beautiful. The pickpocket reminded me that it's the Commonwealth.

- Abhishek Asthana

It wasn't easy to get there though. My port of entry was London airport, and not Dover Beach in a dinghy; hence, I had to furnish my property papers, six months of bank statements, and my firstborn to get entry. I hope the immigration official had fun parsing the 57 pages of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions.

A sudden development of thick skin is a unique trait of Indians who migrate overseas—or even those applying for a tourist visa. No amount of casual racism, bigotry, rudeness, and requirement of income-tax returns deters them; they just laugh it off. They just comply. The same people who would break your rearview mirror if you dared to overtake them in India would suggest you ignore a racial slur while standing in a ticket queue in Glasgow. Everything is a means to an end. The end is to stay put, till the time your passport changes colour.

Back home, after a few anxious days, the family got their passports back, duly stamped. It suddenly struck me that our kid is just three years old and has done three international trips this year. Whereas I took my first flight at the age of 24 and my mother took hers at the age of 48. Not just that, she boarded the AC coach on a train for the first time around the same age. That's how India is growing. Each generation is doing better than the previous, but it is taking longer to get married and produce kids.