England Diary Part 3: London Tube Trails

After landing in London, my employers provided me with an ‘Oyster card’, a blue ATM card-type object that can be used to criss-cross London. All you need is to swipe to gain entry into the tube and buses. 

The nearest station to my lodgings was Wembley North. And on the first day, I got into the station by scanning the card and was guided by my colleague to the relevant platform. 

Wembley North is an ancient-looking two-platform station, and the premises could easily be mistaken for a Matunga or Tambaram or any other Indian suburban station - minus the plastic bag and cigarette packet litter, unauthorised flex and paper billboards, no handbills of piles and fistula clinics strewn around, no paan stains, and finally no stench of urine. Even the tracks looked free from any litter.

Conversely, this is how most stations in India would have looked if people had shown better civic sense and the authorities were more service-minded.

The station had a smallish entrance with two swipe card entry gates and the stairs to its two platforms. 

Wembley North was the overground outpost of the Bakerloo line, which goes underground after Queen’s Park towards Elephant and Castle in Central London.

It was around 7 am and sparsely crowded. But as I gazed at the passengers on the platforms, I could sense the multi-cultural Britain with many South Asian and African faces.  

After a short wait, a tube train ambled into the platform, making loud clanking noises.

The train’s footboard was nearly a foot below the platform! 

All through my stay in London, the most common in-train announcement used to be ‘please mind the gap while deboarding’. 

The train was a rickety old one, and to me it came as a big let-down. I was expecting them to be on par or even swankier than Bengaluru’s Namma Metro.

I later read that the Bakerloo line is one of the oldest among London's tube rail system, and the rakes that run on this line are the oldest ones, with some of them of 1972 vintage. 

The doors of these trains appear to be very reluctant to close, and at some stations they do so after many back-and-forth groaning, like children being dragged to get an injection.

And unless all the doors close, the trains don’t leave the platform.

The seats are fabric-upholstered ones and placed with a mix of along the side and across formations.

Once the train entered the underground section mobile network became patchy, and the clanging noise grew louder, often drowning out the in-train announcements. 

Other than ‘mind the gap’, the other recurring announcement was advising passengers not to touch any strange-looking objects and dial a particular number if anything unattended is found.

Some of the stations on the Bakerloo line have been immortalised by authors and figure in some well-known English novels. 

Thus, on the first day, my heart leapt in excitement when I came across stations like Baker Street and Charing Cross, as it reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. 

Some other names, like Paddington and Piccadilly, brought back memories of reading Agatha Christie and P G Wodehouse, respectively.

We got off at the last station, Elephant and Castle, and my colleague guided me to the office, a five-minute walk from the station.

Baker Street

Although Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character, the Baker Street station’s walls are adorned with memorabilia of the famous detective, who gave many edgy moments for generations of readers.

During my later explorations of this station, I came across a Sherlock Holmes statue outside, and I was told there was a museum nearby.

I also realised that Baker Street station may look ordinary and nondescript while passing in a train, but it was a civil engineering marvel with a complex web of platforms and escalators catering to different lines. 

And mind you, this multi-tiered tube station was built sometime in the late 1800s. 

I had a similar shock when I once got off the Paddington station to meet a friend. 

It too had a maze of different platforms for different lines of the tube station, and it also had overground platforms catering to outstation trains bound for Wales and other destinations. 

When I reached the outstation train platform, a train was getting ready to leave for Swansea.

I had trouble getting used to the escalator etiquette. Those not in a hurry should stand on the right side, and those in a rush can climb up the stairs on the left. 

It came as a bit of a surprise, as the UK follows a left-hand side traffic rule, and I carelessly landed up on the left side a couple of times. 

I was politely told by those in a rush to make way for them and stay on the right.  

Though the Bakerloo line remained the mainstay of my office commute, I used to explore some of the other lines during my weekend sightseeing trips.

The rakes in some of these lines were much swankier and lived up to the expectations we normally have of a first-world country like Britain.

Moreover, the footboards were at platform levels, and there was no need to ‘mind the gap’.

Familiar faces

Though the co-passengers' faces keep changing during the morning tube rides, some appear to be constant and acquire an air of familiarity. 

One of them is a middle-aged black guy with long beaded hair like those Caribbean pop singers, and a neatly trimmed beard.

Whenever I take the last compartment of the 7.15 am train, he will be seated on the last seat.

He used to keep his eyes transfixed on his mobile phone screen, probably watching some downloaded stuff, as once the train goes underground, the internet connectivity gets patchy. 

He used to get out at Warwick Avenue station. His trademark beads were something that caught my attention when I first saw him.

Another is a white, portly man with a beard. He is also in his 40s or even early 50s.

He often wears a shirt with flowery patterns that men would like to wear in beaches, longish shorts, and sports shoes. 

He often carries a suit cover bag. Probably carries the suit he wears at the office. 

His colourful dressing was something that drew my attention on the first day.

Though the October nip was growing stronger by the day, there was no let-up in his Hawaiian sangfroid dressing.

‘Crowded’ Tubes

One day, it was getting late to leave the office, and a colleague told me to hurry up, as trains could get crowded. 

I rushed through my remaining work and reached the Elephant and Castle station. 

Having come from India, where boarding a train at Churchgate and CST in Mumbai is nothing short of a blood sport, I psyched myself up for an impending struggle.

As I entered the Elephant and Castle’s Bakerloo line platform, I began wondering where the crowds were! 

Ok, the number of commuters on that platform was a tad higher than usual, but it in no way appeared intimidating. 

As the train entered the platform, I wondered, “Why is no one lunging into the moving rake to get the favourite window seat”, or “why are the waiting passengers not girding up to gate-crash into the train the moment it came to a halt?”

They patiently waited for the incoming passengers to alight before getting in. 

The seats got filled, and a few were left comfortably standing. 

The doors soon closed, and the train got going. No broken spectacles, no loosened shirt buttons, no ‘ooh-aah’ over fresh aches on shins acquired while boarding the train. 

Maybe things might get tough on the way. 

There were some additions at the subsequent stations like Waterloo and Paddington, but they were no match to Dadar, which can populate a train to bursting-at-the-seams level even at midnight.

All through the journey, the crowds never looked even marginally threatening or suffocating, like say while travelling from Churchgate to Virar at 6.00 pm.

Doom scrolling

With smartphone doomscrolling becoming a worldwide affliction, London Tube commuters, too, were not immune to it. 

A major chunk of passengers could be seen glued to their phones with ear pods snugly affixed inside their earlobes. Thankfully, no playing of videos without headphones.

However, I still find a tiny minority reading physical newspapers and paperbacks. 

Most newspapers were those picked up from free newspapers like Metro or The Standard stacked up at station entrances. After the commute, they often get discarded on the train. 

Some rare serious readers may carry the bulky print edition of The Guardian or The Times. Once, I was surprised and impressed to see a man reading The Economist.

Newspapers in Britain are unwieldy, running into 50 plus pages, and on Sundays most of them run to over 100 pages!

Those who read paperbacks are more diligent types, and many of them are women. It could range from the current bestsellers to classics, and they read them with much more commitment, unmindful of the surroundings or the train’s clanging and grating noises.

Disruption

During my tube journeys, I often used to come across announcements of services on certain lines getting closed for maintenance works or other reasons, or facing delays. 

I used to pay them the same amount of attention we generally do for safety instructions air hostesses make before take-off. 

But one day, I got caught up in one such disruption, and this happened when I was returning from Oxford University.

I got off the Oxford Tube bus at Hillingdon and took a train to Baker’s Street. 

From there, I got on the usual Bakerloo line for Wembley North. A little later, I heard the announcement that the service will terminate at Queen’s Park. 

When the tube reached Queen’s Park, it was around 9 pm and drizzling. The temperature on my phone was showing 6 degrees Celsius. 

I got off the train and began wondering ‘what next?’ Will I have to walk all the way to the next station in this inclement weather?

I have done that in Mumbai a couple of times during such disruptions.

Or board a bus with little idea of the routes it will take. 

I came across a white lady in a railway uniform and told her my predicament. 

She told me the trains have stopped services, but directed me to a group of railways unform clad guys at the exit. 

They appeared to be South Asians, and they directed me to a nearby bus depot, where a bus with a ‘Rail Replacement Service’ board was waiting. 

I told them about my destination, and they replied that the bus would take me to the nearest station, Harlesdon, from where I could continue my train journey. 

They didn’t charge any money, and the bus took me through various deserted streets and dropped me near Harlesden station. 

At Harlesden, there were a couple of volunteers, this time of African origin, who directed me to the right platform to board the train for Wembley North. 

This hardly even seemed like a disruption, and many of my initial fears were quite unfounded.

England Diary Part 2: Tryst with Big Ben and the Mahatma

As I was climbing the stairs out of the Westminster tube station, I could see the cheerful and touristy hustle outside.

It was a week after I had landed in London, and I was getting used to the intricacies of various routes that the suburban trains or ‘tubes’ had on offer. 

Once I came out, I saw the iconic Big Ben – one of the most photographed structures. It figures prominently on the social media accounts of people who land in London.

It was a Sunday afternoon and the October sun brought no relief from chilly winds.

People were clicking endless photos and selfies and I overheard one young woman grumble, “Damn my phone has run out of storage space.”

Luckily, I arrived a few seconds before 4 o'clock. Though the crowd was waiting in anticipation for the Big Ben chime, I was blissfully unaware of it.

Hence, when it let out its melody, it came as an unexpected surprise.

Barring the vehicles on the road, the whole place got into a suspended animation with all eyes on the landmark clock. Once the chiming ended, the footpaths came back to life.

With the British Parliament and Westminster Abbey in close proximity, the whole area has an upmarket heritage look and has been vigorously marketed for tourists with open-top double-decker buses and guides chaperoning the tourists.

A lot of the tourists happened to be of South Asian descent (read loud-mouthed uncles and aunties, and their equally noisy extended families), with a smattering of Southeast Asians and others thrown in.

I decided to explore around on my own and came across a wooded place where there were many statues.

They were the statues of all the worthies who had made a mark in Britain’s political history.

The first one I came across was Winston Churchill, and to me he looked quite out of sorts without his top hat and cigar. Then I came across other greats like Lloyd George and Robert Peel.

What I next saw was something I was not prepared for. It was a famous face we Indians can never miss. It was the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. 

It came as a very pleasant surprise and made me wonder how the statue of a man who was responsible for the downfall of the British empire find a place right next to the British Parliament! 

Truly, it shows the maturity of the British politicians and the people. Though Gandhi was responsible for ending their empire, they now appreciate his greatness as a person.

To satisfy my curiosity, I later did a Google search and found that it was erected fairly recently in 2015 during the time of David Cameron. 

This is something a person like Churchill, who had called Gandhi a ‘naked fakir’, would not have appreciated, to put it very politely. 

Gandhi stands in good company here - his neighbours are Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom shared his egalitarian views and made it a mission to fight inequalities.

I tried to visit Westminster Abbey nearby, but was told that tourists are not allowed on Sundays, as it is reserved for prayers.

As I was ambling along, wondering ‘what next’, I saw a road sign near a junction, ‘Trafalgar Square’. I decided to walk in that direction. 

I came across a memorial called ‘Women of World War II’ to honour their contributions during the world war. It was in the middle of the road and I could see lots of flower laid near the memorial. 

As I was passing by, I saw on the other side of the road a fit-looking soldier’s statue. 

It made me stop by and wonder, “Is this him?” 

The face looked somewhat similar to the black and white photos I had seen in books and documentaries on the Second World War. 

My hunch grew stronger as the man in the statue was sporting a beret, which used to be his trademark. 

I decided to cross the road to verify. Once I reached, I realized, “Yes, it is him” – Field Marshal Montgomery, who led the British Army during the famous battle of El Alamein in the present-day Egypt.  

He was famously known as Monty, which was prominently written at the bottom of the statue. 

He was standing there unsung. No flowers, and I was the lone visitor at that time. 

Probably it was one of those odd, low-turnout days, or the guides think people may not be interested.

The defence ministry office was located right behind the statue.

After that, I walked down to the street to Trafalgar Square. 

The road was strewn with various government buildings, all easily 400-500 years old. 

At Trafalgar Square, the famous Lord Nelson statue was placed on a very high column, and it was barely visible from the ground. 

I had to move away to the adjacent street to capture it on my phone.

I wish I could see the battle of Trafalgar hero - the original one-eyed Jack, who stopped Napoleon from invading Britain, from closer quarters.  

By now, the dusk was falling, and the nip in the air was getting stronger. 

I decided to call it a day and moved to the nearby Charing Cross station to go back to my lodgings.

England Diary Part 1: The Ubiquitous Letter Boxes

 

During my recent visit to the UK, what struck me on the very first day was the presence of letter boxes on street corners. 

I stood by to take a closer look at one of them near my lodgings and realised that it was a functioning one with a neat coat of paint and clearance timings distinctly written on it.

It had a regal appearance with an ornate top when compared with our bowler hat top letter boxes.

Before the advent of internet, they were the foot soldiers who kept the wheels of communication, both official and personal, running. 

They were the broadbands of that era.  From the central business districts of metro cities to the far-flung hinterlands, they stood steadfastly braving harsh summers and winters.

Royal Mail has a 500-year-old history dating back to King Henry VIII, and in India it is a legacy of the British Raj, established in 1854.

The coming of internet and mobile phones pushed them to the margins and in India these letter boxes soon started gathering rust and disappeared unceremoniously.

Hence, it was quite a surprise, tinged with amusement, for me to see a functioning letter box in the UK.

During my subsequent days of stay in the UK, I came across the presence of gleaming red 'Royal Mail' vans, many of them electric, at various parts of London and other towns I visited.

All this gave me the impression that the despite the internet and mobile phone, the good old 'snail mail' was still not a 'has been' in the UK, and it whetted my curiosity.

Later on, during my visits to some households, I noticed that all houses invariably had a letter box plate on the front door to receive letters. 

I also saw a pile of letters lying on tables near the house entrances. 

I noticed they were mainly official communications, mainly from the NHS and power supply companies.

During my conversations with my hosts, I got to know that many of the official correspondence continue to happen through letters.

So, I surmised that it is the official correspondence that was keeping the Royal Mail afloat. 

But I was in for a surprise while at a Tesco outlet near my lodging. 

There was a section for greeting cards, which almost reminded me of the 1980s and 90s India, when such a display of greeting cards was the norm at all book shops and fancy stores.

The cards ranged from festival greetings for Christmas and Easter to personal ones like birthday, wedding or even a job promotion.

Though the sale of cards may not be anywhere close to the pre-Internet, mobile phone days, it was encouraging to know that there still exists a market for such cards, and people value sending and receiving cards with handwritten messages scrawled in them, and no mindless forwarding of WhatsApp greetings received from friends circles to relatives and vice versa.

Something totally forgotten in India.

Brain rot: A malady of our times

Oxford University Press (OUP), the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has named brain rot as the word of the year. 

It is defined as deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, mainly as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging.

Though the term brain rot is nearly 170 years old, it is now being used to describe mindless consumption of low-quality, low-value content found on social media.

Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl said that brain rot in its modern sense, "speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time."

With social media having acquired a vice-like grip over our lives, we end up consuming excessive amounts of such low-quality online content. A major part of our day is spent scrolling Instagram, X, Facebook and other social media feeds.

Smartphones have proved to be a force multiplier in providing access to social media anytime and almost anywhere. These devices have become so deeply entwined with lives that it is the first thing we look at after waking up and the last thing we check before crashing at night.

TS Eliot’s Prufrock had claimed “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”. Had Eliot been alive today, he might have substituted Instagram reels and ‘likes’ for coffee spoons.

OUP claims that though the first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854, where he attacks people for not making enough mental and intellectual efforts while interpreting complex ideas.

However, the coinage later fell into obscurity. After languishing in the wilderness of dictionaries and thesaurus for over a century, the term has now suddenly gained traction in the digital era.

It has now caught the fancy of Gen Z and Alpha generations, who grew up amid the social media. OUP claims the usage of this term increased 230 per cent in its frequency from 2023 to 2024.

Brain rot beat five other phrases or words on the dictionary publisher's shortlist, namely demure, lore, slop, romantasy and dynamic pricing. More than 37,000 people voted to help choose the winner.

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

My Experiment With Snail Mail

I recently wrote a letter in the good old manner – using pen and paper and dropped it in a post office letter box. It was like taking a horse-coach for travel, in this era of high-speed trains and flights. The experience was a bit surreal. 

Since I had to write to a friend who is based abroad, I went to the post office and asked whether they still sold aerogrammes.

My tone was cautiously apologetic as I was expecting some in-your-face smirks and sarcastic responses. But the clerk was kind enough to tell me with a straight face that they no longer sold aerogrammes. He suggested that I can send my letter using a normal envelope. 

Then he asked the country where I intend to send and after a few taps on his computer told me the postal charges. 

I came home and did a search for A4 sheets and thankfully some blank pages, the leftovers after my daughter finished college, were available. 

The idea of writing a letter came as a whim. I had forwarded to my friend a newspaper story of a guy who still used post cards to send messages. 

Soon the conversation veered around the letters we used to exchange nearly two decades ago when emails were unheard of. We both lamented that we had lost those letters while shifting houses and moving cities. 

I then told my friend that I wish to restart writing letters. It hardly got registered in her mind. I then had to reiterate my intent and told her to share her postal address.

She obliged out of politeness, but with little expectation. This topic never figured in our later WhatsApp exchanges. 

So here I was, plonked on a chair with a blank sheet of A4 sized paper placed on my folded laptop. I decided to begin the letter by narrating about my enquiries about aerogrammes. 

But writing was a tough act. During my revision, I realized that even for commonplace words I was missing out certain letters. The absence of a spell-checker was sorely felt. 

The hand-mind coordination was patchy with the pen going astray. Every second sentence I had an inverted V symbol to accommodate the missed-out articles and prepositions. 

However, on the plus side there were no distractions. I could focus well while writing. There were no push notifications from YouTube or Facebook, or the 5-10 tabs open on the laptop browser to distract me.

Then I went to the post office and approached the same clerk who directed me to another person selling stamps. 

During the pre-email days, they were the busiest people, selling stamps, envelope, inland letters and other stationeries, and they had to handle the long queues. Quite often heated arguments used to break out over loose change.

Now there was no one. She gave me the stamps and after affixing them I went about looking for the letter box.

These cylindrical metallic structures with a military hard hat top were once ubiquitous at every street corner. They were the ‘broadbands’ of the pre-internet era. From the central business districts of metro cities to the far-flung hinterlands, they stood steadfastly braving harsh summers and winters.

Once the internet and mobile phones became well entrenched, they discreetly retreated from our street corners with no one realizing it. 

At the post office, I found a small wall-mounted version of the letter box near the entrance. It was placed so inconspicuously that anyone would have missed it. 

I then inserted my envelope into the box and it became apparent that it was empty. I could hear the thud when the envelope hit the bottom. 

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

Heatwave!! Ha Ha Ha

British newspapers recently came up with a warning of an impending heat wave all over UK by the end of June. “Cities that will be the hottest include Birmingham, Cardiff, London, Manchester, and Newcastle. This warm spell is anticipated to sweep across Britain from June 26 to 28,” Daily Mirror reported.

The met official warned that on some days the temperature will ‘peak’ around 26 degrees Celsius in certain intervals. 

This made the Indian social media users crack up. In a country where the maximum temperature is at a kissing distance of 50 degrees Celsius in many towns and nearly 150 have died of heat strokes so far, 26 degrees looked aspirational. Because it is nearly 10 degrees less than the minimum temperatures of these towns. 

Most Indians, especially those residing in the northern Gangetic plain are no strangers to mercury soaring above 45 degrees Celsius during the day. But what has caught them unawares this time is that the nights bring no relief. A 40-degree Celsius at 10 pm has become the new normal in many of these towns. 

Amid all these miseries, the Daily Mirror’s social media post on an impending ‘heat wave’ evoked widespread hilarity among Indian netizens. 

The banter can be broadly classified into two categories: 

The first is 26 degrees Celsius just two degrees above the temperature set in most air-coditioners humming round-the-clock in Indian households. Some even said they needed blankets for such temperatures.

The second one takes a more historical view and tries to vent their angst about being a British colony – How did the Brits rule India for 200 years if they can’t even withstand 26 degrees?

Names like Frederic Tudor began to surface. Tudor was an American merchant from Boston, who made a fortune by shipping ice to India. And cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai had ice houses to store them.

This sniping on UK ‘heatwave’ was not confined to Indian users. Cross-border colonial cousins Pakistan too joined in. So did the Floridians across the Atlantic. 

Certain aggrieved Brits tried to explain that it is spring in the UK and temperatures are expected to be cool. Hence a 'spike' of 26 degrees Celsius is indeed a heatwave. Morever, most houses don’t have airconditioners or even ceiling fans. But they were few and far between and got drowned amid the widespread English roast. 

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

Two Indias

During its periodic listing of the world’s billionaires, Bloomberg recently came up with an interesting analysis of wealthy Indian families and their rich heirs. Some of the names were well known like Adanis and Ambanis, and some were low profile types like supermarket chain DMart promoter Radhakishan Damani.

The young sons and daughters of top 10 industrialists are collectively worth $382 billion (₹3.18 trillion or lakh crore), according to the analysis. This is three times more than what the equivalent Chinese heirs can expect to inherit.

The analysis also points out that in many Indian companies, it is common for founders to hold 50 per cent stake or more in their operations, hence appointing children to public boards tends to be seen as a natural progression. In other markets, this would be seen as a breach of corporate governance.

They belong to the top one per cent who own 40.1 per cent of the country's wealth, the highest since 1961, and their share of total income was 22.6 per cent, the most since 1922, according to Paris-based World Inequality Lab. It claims India has entered the 'Billionaire Raj' and the inequality today is greater than the British Raj days.

Now cut to the rest of the young men and women of the rest of India. The country is often described as a youthful nation with the median age being 28 years, which means that nearly half the population is below that age. It is 37 in China and the United States, 45 in Western Europe, and 49 in Japan.

Around a decade ago, many used to gush about the demographic dividend India could reap as China and many other countries had done in the past. But to attain that the younger population must have access to quality education, adequate nutrition and health. 

It goes without saying we never got anywhere close to fulfilling those parameters. In fact, we now have nearly 80 crore people or 60 per cent of the population relying on government rations.

A recent report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) paints a dismal picture on the employment front. It points out that the youth form over 80 per cent of India's unemployed population.

What is even more disturbing is that those with higher educational qualifications are the worst hit. The ILO report says the proportion of young individuals with secondary education or higher among the total unemployed youth rose from 35.2 per cent in 2000 to 65.7 per cent in 2022.

The report highlighted that the highest youth unemployment rates were observed among those with graduate degrees, a trend particularly impacting women.

Even elite institutions such as IITs and IIMs that are generally immune to unemployment statistics are now facing the heat. 

To a middle-class household, a son or daughter making it to these institutions is seen as a high road to professional nirvana. The presence of many Indian-origin CEOs in top US technology firms like Google, Microsoft, and IBM has only reinforced this belief.

However, many of these institutions are now finding it difficult to provide placements to their students and are reaching out to their old students to help them out.

Even for those who got placements, the salary package offered is much more modest, and students with lackluster scores are settling for jobs with less than Rs 10 lakh per annum package. 

Software firms which used to take a lion’s share of fresh graduates from engineering colleges and business schools have tightened their belts. This year their intake was lowest in 20 years. Biggies like Infosys and TCS have put hiring on hold for many quarters as they claim they have a significant number of freshers on the bench and are working on better employee utilisation.

This is the condition of upper-class white-collar job seekers. Now as we move down the pecking order the scenario only becomes bleaker. 

One of the most visible tell-tale sign of this distress is the substantial rise in the number of farm workers. The agriculture sector has now added around 60 million in the past four years. This only reflects the lack of opportunities in other sectors. Youth are taking up agriculture for want of any suitable job opportunity. 

Recruitment exams for government jobs attract candidates that are exponentially higher than the vacant posts. Uttar Pradesh conducted recruitment tests in February for over 60,000 police constables, and over 48 lakh turned up to write the exam in 2,400 centres. Many of them were overqualified and from other states.

Another sign of desperation is jobless Indian youth queuing up to work in conflict zones like Israel. They are paying hefty sums to agents to get these jobs. Many told journalists it is better to die in Israel and die of starvation in India. 

Many are trying to smuggle themselves into the West. Indians are currently the third-largest group of undocumented immigrants in the US, their numbers having surged faster than those from any other country.

In the UK, Indians rarely used to figure among the undocumented ‘boat people’ who take the risky voyage from Calais in France to Dover in England in small boats. A good number of them come from countries like Afghanistan to escape state persecution. But now there is a steady rise in the number of Indians taking this route, baffling the British authorities as India is considered a ‘safe’ country, unlike say Afghanistan or Syria.

The situation in many households is dire. A recent Reserve Bank of India report says India's net household savings are at a 47-year-old low. Household net savings are the total money and investments families have, like deposits, stocks, and bonuses, minus any money they owe, like loans and debt.

On the other hand, there has been a sharp jump in household debt in the same period. 

While some dub it as a sign of rising consumerism and the confidence among the people that their income will rise enough to pay off the debts, others see it as an alarming situation.  They point out that in a country with low per-capita income, people increasingly relying on debt is a worrying sign. 

Thus while the top one per cent has heirs born with silver spoons that have diamond-studded handles, for the rest it is a struggle to stay afloat amid shrinking opportunities and a dwindling number of stable jobs.

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes