When You're Indian, Push Always Comes to Shove

This afternoon, my mother had asked me what I would do if the world were truly to end in 2012. Soul-searching is her thing, and an apocalypse is the ideal time to find your soul, before it gets swallowed up in a hopeless abyss. I told her I would want to go to Morocco and Algeria and not look for a job and get a tattoo. She told me she would want to pinch cute babies without worrying about what their mothers would say. Then we chuckled and discussed the fickle weather, the multiple earthquakes, the recent volcanic eruption, and indeed projected the end to come in 2012.

Little did I know, the end was to come today. Every brown person [every person with direct or distant ties to the Indian subcontinent] travelled to New Brunswick to watch Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan in concert. As per usual, as soon we all approached the establishment, our 24th chromosome pair, which is unique to Indians and characterizes a constant, irrational fear of being left behind, began to act up. With a collective sense of fatalism, people pushed, shoved, yelled, and took all efforts to bypass social conduct in order to get into the theater first.

The man regulating the lines was a white man who plucked his eyebrows, with a high-pitched voice and a thick waist. The woman next to him had frazzled hair, frazzled eyes, and small hands. Most Indians had bought their tickets online, and held a ticket confirmation. There was one line for people to pick up their tickets, and one line for people who already had the physical tickets in their hands. It was a simple layout. Two lines. Two doorways. Two line controllers.

But there was one problem. Indians don't do lines. Indians don't do doorways. And Indians definitely don't do people who control the line. They would shout, and we would shout louder. Sometimes, I was sure I heard people just yell out indiscriminate noises just to contribute to the chaos. But, mostly, people were simply indignant about the injustice--"I bought my ticket on the Internet; why must I wait in this long line?!" It was obviously a racist scheme, a post-colonial attempt at keeping the Indians inferior. No. We couldn't stand for this. We needed to band together (except if that didn't work, then as long as the person in question could get in, that was enough) to combat this culturally imperialistic notion of the line.

Following the footsteps of our Great Father, we conducted a Satyagraha, resisting the power of the establishment. Our various efforts simply delayed the entire process, and the show even started one hour late. Some people just kept repeating the same question to the frustrated man with great eyebrows. Every ten minutes, as if inspired by a novel idea, the same group of people would ask him, "but I have my ticket confirmation, can I just go in?" or "It is so cold outside, can't I just wait in here?" Some people would try to bypass the man and wave to no one in particular, in the hopes that someone random would wave back; usually, an arbitrary brown person already past the gate would wave back, and the guest could step inside pretending to know him. Some people even tried to use their children. One lady walked up to the woman with the frazzled everything and explained that she had a baby, a stroller, and that it was cold and the line was long. Her baby cried on cue.

On April 14, 1912, when the Titanic was sinking, women and children were to be saved first, and thus took priority on the lifeboats. Unfortunately, our modern conception of a life-threatening emergency does not entail Indian classical music concerts in New Jersey. So, the baby in the stroller had to wait on line.


Once everyone was finally seated in the theater, and justice was served and Indians were liberated and racism was defeated, (and stereotypes of Indians becoming disoriented and foaming at the mouth when in large crowds were reinforced), the collective resistance against white domination and waiting in line ceded to the excitement about the concert. The announcer declared that this man had gained "international popularity" three times in a row, before she mentioned any of his other feats or musical talents. When he finally performed, we temporarily forgot our fears of being left behind and allowed his enchanting voice to take us away, far from our dusty seats, and to the myths of our own hearts.

The seductive trance was soon dispelled when the fight against social etiquette began to resurface. People began standing, walking, and talking about the singer's father, Bollywood, and Cricket. The lady immediately behind us complained about the loud music, and was offering everyone Kleenex to stuff in their ears. The same people who paid to attend the concert, and who, more importantly, fought tooth and nail to preserve their dignity and not wait on lines, were now trying to partially block out the music.

It was beautiful. Though we are sparsely located, lonely, and perpetually afraid, we were brought together by this one man's voice, the cry of the harmonium, the resonance of the tabla, and the call of the sax. Indians of the tri-state area came together to form a crowd, to displace lines, to frustrate the Establishment, and they came together to rejoice and to agonize, to celebrate and to grieve. And as I looked around me, above me, below me, and certainly to my parents and sister on either side of me, I saw nothing but a sea of short brown heads, all swaying in the same direction, with bits of Kleenex sticking out of everyone's ears. Brava.