A British friend of mine told me a story the other day wherein his friend called up an expensive restaurant to make a reservation for his anniversary with his wife. Joking around he said, "Do I get a discount because I know the owner?" (He did, actually, know the owner). Fast forward a week and his wife gets a call from a very concerned friend of hers. "I've heard that your husband is having serious financial problems. I just want you to know that I'm here for you if you need me."
Cue laughter.
My friend's take away from this story was that Delhi, at times, can feel like England of yore; there is a small group of wealthy elite who all know each other and keep gossipy close tabs on each other's reputation. The more I've thought about this the more I've realized that yes, Delhi is probably as close to a modern-day equivalent of the world I've only read about in Jane Austen novels as I'll ever get.
For example, I have a very wealthy friend here--a lovely, intelligent, talented woman. The first time I went to her house for a "casual" girl's lunch, she sent one of the family's chauffeurs to pick me up, the butler welcomed me into the house, and were waited on at lunch by two servants. (The lunch, of course, was a multi-course affair cooked by one of the family's chefs and served on silver platters). All in all, I counted about 25 servants in uniform (uniform depending on the servant's position in the house, of course)--including one fellow who was my friend's personal valet, and who waited on us throughout the course of the afternoon.
Doesn't that sound to you all like what life at Pemberley might have been like?
Most of the wives of the wealthy industrialists that I've met here don't work (or have token positions). Many have moved onto their husband's estates where they live in strict hierarchy with their husband's other family members and many seem to entertain themselves through the day by "running the big house" and by making social calls on one another. And almost everyone of some means that I've met here has been educated at least partially in England or the US; a sort of "Grand Tour" rite of passage.
Despite the liberal, western education of the upper classes, there are definite Austen-like social taboos for women, like drinking or smoking, and even though people pretend that it doesn't matter any more, caste (or class, as Jane Austen would call it), still matters quite a lot. One fellow I was at dinner with a while back mentioned offhandedly that one of his maids is not allowed to step foot into the kitchen because she is a Dalit (AKA, an Untouchable) and by tradition, Dalits can't be near food preparation as their mere presence sullies it.
There is of course a huge number of lower caste persons who work and live on the streets. There are both slums-dwellers and pavement-dwellers (who aren't even lucky enough to get a slum shelter). And street children, lots of street children. According to the shelter for street children that I visited last Saturday, frequently gangs of kids band together--led by an unscrupulous adult--and make their living by picking pockets (or sex work, if they're girls). And despite laws against it, child labor in factories is also rampant. The image here is perhaps more Dickensian than Austenian--but you get the point.
Basically India is a severely stratified society: at the top it seems to me there are strict codes of behavior, traditional gender and family roles, and a constant monitoring of reputation; at the bottom there are all the evils of the industrial revolution.
I have to say, it is certainly more relaxing to read an Austen novel than to see her world played out in front of me in living (Indian) color. Ms. Elizabeth Bennett, while I agree it's probably fun to be mistress of Pemberley, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't trade places with you.
Cue laughter.
My friend's take away from this story was that Delhi, at times, can feel like England of yore; there is a small group of wealthy elite who all know each other and keep gossipy close tabs on each other's reputation. The more I've thought about this the more I've realized that yes, Delhi is probably as close to a modern-day equivalent of the world I've only read about in Jane Austen novels as I'll ever get.
For example, I have a very wealthy friend here--a lovely, intelligent, talented woman. The first time I went to her house for a "casual" girl's lunch, she sent one of the family's chauffeurs to pick me up, the butler welcomed me into the house, and were waited on at lunch by two servants. (The lunch, of course, was a multi-course affair cooked by one of the family's chefs and served on silver platters). All in all, I counted about 25 servants in uniform (uniform depending on the servant's position in the house, of course)--including one fellow who was my friend's personal valet, and who waited on us throughout the course of the afternoon.
Doesn't that sound to you all like what life at Pemberley might have been like?
Most of the wives of the wealthy industrialists that I've met here don't work (or have token positions). Many have moved onto their husband's estates where they live in strict hierarchy with their husband's other family members and many seem to entertain themselves through the day by "running the big house" and by making social calls on one another. And almost everyone of some means that I've met here has been educated at least partially in England or the US; a sort of "Grand Tour" rite of passage.
Despite the liberal, western education of the upper classes, there are definite Austen-like social taboos for women, like drinking or smoking, and even though people pretend that it doesn't matter any more, caste (or class, as Jane Austen would call it), still matters quite a lot. One fellow I was at dinner with a while back mentioned offhandedly that one of his maids is not allowed to step foot into the kitchen because she is a Dalit (AKA, an Untouchable) and by tradition, Dalits can't be near food preparation as their mere presence sullies it.
There is of course a huge number of lower caste persons who work and live on the streets. There are both slums-dwellers and pavement-dwellers (who aren't even lucky enough to get a slum shelter). And street children, lots of street children. According to the shelter for street children that I visited last Saturday, frequently gangs of kids band together--led by an unscrupulous adult--and make their living by picking pockets (or sex work, if they're girls). And despite laws against it, child labor in factories is also rampant. The image here is perhaps more Dickensian than Austenian--but you get the point.
Basically India is a severely stratified society: at the top it seems to me there are strict codes of behavior, traditional gender and family roles, and a constant monitoring of reputation; at the bottom there are all the evils of the industrial revolution.
I have to say, it is certainly more relaxing to read an Austen novel than to see her world played out in front of me in living (Indian) color. Ms. Elizabeth Bennett, while I agree it's probably fun to be mistress of Pemberley, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't trade places with you.
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