Jokes and Jail Time

by Laura Messchendorp (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find India

“It’s a sign of how much she trusts me. That I can make these jokes and she lets me. If someone else heard, I would never get a job anymore.” My new friend (engineering student by morning, comedian by sweltering afternoon) is leaning back in his chair, one knee propped up, dirty sandals on his feet. He signals towards our friend’s retreating back, heading away from the cafeteria where the two of them like to smoke and I like to sit. “I could go to jail for this.” // As the plane descended into Mumbai at midnight a few weeks earlier, my last trace of adventurous bravado left me. This was the furthest I’d ever been from home, the biggest city I’d ever been to, and the hottest one by far. And although I like to think I’m capable of critical thought, in the weeks leading up to my departure I'd exchanged common sense for “facts” about life in Mumbai from people I otherwise wouldn’t even take fashion advice from. As a consequence, I’m not only nervous about pickpockets, rapists and kidnappers, but also about panthers, which I’ve been assured (by a friend who’s never set foot on the subcontinent) roam the streets freely here. While I’m already on the lookout for large black cats from the plane window, warm in my sweatshirt and jeans, every other passenger has changed out of their European winter clothes into shorts and T-shirts, having figured out that the on-board air conditioning won’t follow us off the plane. My hand luggage contains a book, mosquito spray and my phone charger… // I’m used to jokes about other people. At home, we make them all the time. People up north are all farmers, the people down south incomprehensible. The people in surrounding countries are dumb, or snobs, or cold, or all three. Jokes and stereotypes, funny or offensive depending on which end you’re on. Now I learn that here, commenting on the supposed inferiority of others, especially the “Other Backward Class” (a name which, somehow, manages to do just that), is illegal. OBC describes those who are classed as “socially and educationally backward classes”, as stated in the Indian constitution. Consisting of 41% of the population at the latest census (admittedly from 2006), that’s quite a number. And that’s what my friend was joking about. About our mutual friend (definitely the smartest out of the three of us, and to this day the most highly educated) and her “social and educational backwardness.” “I could go to jail for this.” Now it makes sense. // From another friend, in the middle of studying for his public sector exams, I learn that 27% of jobs in the public sector and higher education are reserved from people from OBC. “If you’re from the really backward tribes, you just need to be able to put a cross on a piece of paper and you’ll get a government job,” he tells me. “People from my caste, we have to study really hard.” Much more competition, fewer places. No anger from him though, no annoyance, just facts. Maybe that’s just him though. // There’s something about learning directly from people that never gets boring. Like the friend who makes me iced coffee and tells me about classical Indian instruments I’ve never even heard of, and of trips to Europe to visit his sister. He plays Mozart on his piano and I lie on the cool marble floor of his apartment, moaning about the heat. Talking with him about instruments I don’t know makes me feel ill-informed. Talking with him about his travels to countries so near mine, where I’ve never been and don’t know enough about, makes me feel stupid. Then he tells me about building IKEA furniture with his sister, describing the triumph as if they personally constructed the Taj Mahal. They’d always had servants to do it for them. // “I could go to jail for this. That’s how good friends we are.” Luckily for him, our friend gives as good as she gets. Walking down the steps of the cafeteria away from us, she turns back and laughs at him. “Only someone as dumb as an engineer could say that.”