MY brother and his wife used the New Year to go away on holiday, as they often do through the course of the year – which means not together, that’s for the hoi polloi, but going their separate ways, he to Ladakh where it’s minus twenty-three degrees, she to Dubai where the ambient temperature in malls is maintained at seventeen degrees. We, my wife and I, fall in the guilt generation where holidays are still meant to be spent together (probably arguing, but that’s because we have nothing else in common), at least one of which includes a visit back home (with our children who, being part of a more peripatetic generation, rail against the imposition), and then cobble together any weekends we can manage to dash off to some breakfast-in-bed getaway (effectively eliminating the Neemrana hotels that don’t like to do room service).

This might have been the pattern for our holidays for the rest of our lives but for the native cunning the clan began to resort to, substituting ‘family’ as a balm where ‘travel’ might appear an indulgence. So, we no longer take off for a wicked fortnight to escape to Shillong; instead, we take two weeks to be with our extended family there in a show of solidarity with the country’s nether regions and our distant cousins. (As for all those twice- and thrice-removed clan-wallahs who spend their lives picking leaves at various surrealistically beautiful tea estates, or patrolling borders requiring travel permits, we’re on our way, hon!)

But since that implies being civil to some loathsome, snot-nosed kid you thumped over the head a couple of decades back and must now pay obeisance to for bed-and-board, the crafty family has taken a leaf out of my kid brother’s book. So, last year, my wife decided to do the US on her own in the guise of visiting her brothers (she made sure to leave me behind), and my daughter connived to use a university scholarship and ‘to be with my first cousin there’ to hire herself an apartment in London for a couple of months (she met her cousin on her arrival at the airport, and not even once later), leaving my son and I stranded in India. I took him off for a weekend to a resort in the Himalayas that nowhere approximated his mother’s and sister’s excesses. So using his birthday as an excuse, he gifted himself a trip (at my expense and carrying my credit cards) across Southeast Asia. I – under protest, but diligently nevertheless – simply went to work.

 

All of this would hardly invite comment but for the fact that what many of us consider the privileges of class have been dumped into the dustbins of recent social and economic churning. Travel – and holidays – are no longer the pick of the privileged. Now, Uncleji from across the landing gives you tips on keeping out of trouble in Nigeria, and while you’re still watching the Mayan civilization on Discovery Channel, Behenji from two floors up has been to Brazil, spent a week in Mexico, complained about the shopping in Myanmar (where her husband wanted to see some temples – ‘all in ruins, but just like in India, what’s the point I asked him’), and is cribbing because the children want to go off on yet another cruise (‘every year one cruise, to the Far East, to Scandinavia, to the Atlantic, so boring na?)

 

Indians we know (and many we don’t know) now travel to Dubai and Bangkok for shopping the way you or I might venture to Old Delhi for a meal at Karim’s, or to Bandra for stocking up on leather chappals. When I first travelled to Bangkok thirty years ago, it was as if Indians carried the offensive odour of poverty about them, for shopkeepers would refuse to show you merchandise – those Sony two-in-ones that were all the rage – unless you could assure them you were ‘serious about buying, not looking’, something you had to explain time and again. Those were penurious times when foreign exchange, or its lack, meant everyone smuggled out bootlegged dollars, hidden behind the foil in cigarette boxes to avoid detection by Customs (this was a tip from my boss, which resulted in my becoming an airport smoker for some years).

Taxi drivers in Singapore would sneer about the assumed poverty back home in India (they would be right about that even today, but now all they talk, instead, is about the country’s economic development). We saved money on taxis and ate at McDonald’s to hoard our precious hard currency for the occasional indulgence at Harrods, or to go on a spree in the toys section at Galleries Lafayette, or – and this was truly the stuff of extravagance – afford a ticket on the TGV. Now, pounds and dollars and euros and wons are like loose change in everyone’s wallets, and credit cards that can be topped up like mobile phone cards, are all the vogue for their convenience.

Ten million Indians burst out of Bhatinda and Bareilly, Baroda and Bikaner every year, a number that could double by the middle of this decade – which is why every country worth its publicity budget is opening offices in downtown Dilli, and airlines we hadn’t even heard of are offering bargain fares and services to South Africa or Korea. More people go to New Zealand than can probably spell it on their disembarkation forms, and the ugly behaviour of the Indian traveller is everywhere in evidence – children unloosened in the aisles of your Virgin flight, throwing a tantrum at having to queue for the use of the toilet in Athens, unpacking parathas and achar to picnic at Hyde Park, balking at the going rate for gondolas in Venice when shikaras in Srinagar are so much cheaper…

 

Remember the times when you actually glammed up for flying, descending at your destination with dehydrated skin but crumple-free sarees and suits, tired eyes hidden behind go-go glasses? Today, an aircraft is simply a substitute for the Rajdhani, everyone is clad in track suits (or their equivalent), the toilets smell like something awful, besides they have beds in biz class and first which you can only afford on a corporate account or black money.

Which is why while you’re cramped into economy, the swivel bed is occupied by the owner of the kirana store down from your house, who’s made his fortune in hard cash taking orders for your bread-and-eggs and dals on the phone. And everyone from the bijli ki dukaan-wallah to the dhobi’s kids are headed for Genting in Malaysia or Macau in Hong Kong, where they’ll convert those limp currency notes with which you’ve been paying them into chips at the casino, while you do the wimpish thing they call sightseeing with a genteel zealousness that’s, well, laughable. Getting himself photographed beside Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s plastic likeness at Madame Tussaud’s is Sardar Longowal who gruffly manages your neighbourhood taxi stand, while the Udipi restaurateur can’t understand why fellow-Indians are grumbling about the high ticket price for the London Eye – he’ll make it up with an extra run of dosas at the next kitty party that requires his griddle and cooks.

 

Not that the hoi polloi have the run of the world – not yet, anyway. Atlantic City in Jumeirah, Dubai, is as posh and loud as they can make ’em, and then some. It’s where our entrepreneurial biz types, those who manage the export market from China and Thailand, or commodities from around the world, go for a week of chillax (and so their wives can get decorating tips for their farmhouses). All that good life, it gets a little wearying after some time, there’s only so many oysters you can shuck, or laps you can swim, or dice you can throw, or foreigners in bikinis you can ogle, which is when you head to the city and its malls – these days always on discount, and with Zara so much nicer than back home. Or the spas, where it’s still old money that speaks (and creaks, according to some, having gone arthritic carrying all that moolah around), since a massage that isn’t of the Bangkok variety (nudge-nudge, wink) is just something messy, exfoliated or otherwise, that most others would rather avoid.

It’s called a social revolution, which is why your blouse-wallah’s daughters who crammed for their GMATs are studying on a scholarship in the US while your bachcha-log are struggling to get into a course, any course, at DU. It’s why the Gujarati group that’s doing Europe can afford to carry its own maharaj along, to cook in their unclean kitchens, but at least you’ll get your saatvik meals, with or without onions. And if you lose your plastic mug, someone will be sure to have packed two so your ablutions won’t be affected for a surfeit of toilet paper but an absence of cleansing water.

 

It’s no better back home, where the day tourist is ruining your run in Goa – all those day-trippers in their chaddis at Calangute who gawk at the white flesh, take surreptitious pictures when the missus is looking away, then pack up and go to the next beach, vada-pav in hand. (They spend nothing on the local economy, which could be one reason the local citizenry can’t stand the daily bus tourist.) But they might be better than the loud denizens who descend on the ‘resort’ just above your serene cottage overlooking the Himalayas, and then proceed to hoot it up over Munni’s badnaami and Sheila’s jawani at top volume in the middle of the night, all the while throwing chicken bones into your garden. Hooligans? No, darling, just some testerone-loaded kids having their fun, you can’t grudge them that. Besides, you’ve never once visited the premises of said hostelry to check out their tandoori while they’ve paid in advance for their rooms. So the management is unlikely to be sympathetic to your need for some peace and quiet – what are you, some rishi type or what?

If the brash pack is everywhere, the Brad-pack, stilettoed and Louis-Vuittoned, inhabits the luxe five-stars, weekending at the Westins with their bronzed hair, ayahs ensuring the baba-log get their pony rides, but a few sundowners later it’s difficult to tell one apart from the other, as they crack bawdy jokes, order room service soda to go with their duty-free Black Label, and form a circle of ‘Flash’ players whether it’s Diwali or not. Throw in a Munni and you’d be hard put to tell the difference between the sixteen-year-old and sixty-year-old.

 

Neither cares for their surroundings, they drive up in music-pumped SUVs, their Chanel-shaded eyes don’t care to see the hills, or beaches, or countryside they’re desecrating with their Evian bottles and Lay’s pouches, as they dump their waste in a trail that would have done Hansel and Gretel proud. They scratch on the painted walls of palaces and forts that offer them heritage accommodation and screech when they spot a tiger in a sanctuary, sanctity about environment be dammed. They throw biscuit wraps in the lakes, refuse in the rivers, soil the seas, these tourists from hell, while all they want is the comfort, and food, from home. Hopefully, one day, they’ll decide to stay at home as well.

Till then, your escape from the ravaging Indian traveller is somewhat restricted. The no-frills getaway wins hands-down, whatever its level of luxe, since no yatri wants to fend for his food (which is why you might want to consider the pricey Aman resorts, or a couple of very selective places such as Tiklibottom, for your retreat), or you might enjoy the Neemrana (and its very few clones) for their lack of room service, while at the top of the heap, opulent but discreet, there are always the Oberoi Vilas properties where, for your rupees, you can still get the most stylish holiday money can afford. The snobbery alone is guaranteed to keep the yuppies out – for now.