Post Colonial Etiquette

       I have chosen to write on this subject after witnessing a lot of anguish due to lack of understanding among Sindhis (and in some cases all desis) of the cultural environment after the colonial mishap.

In the olden days when a piece of food used to fall, we would have picked it up, cleaned it and eaten it as instructed by the hadis. After the British colonization this is considered to be uncivilized behavior! We were made fun of this habit during the enslavement by the English so we dare not pick up a piece of un- wrapped food and eat it once it has fallen on the floor. Children are taught that if they have taken a candy out of the wrapper then they must not eat it if it fell, same goes for a biscuit or a piece of cake. Ladies used to wear shiny clothes with dark colors and adorn themselves with heavy jewelry, buildings used to have darker shades. Crime rates were non existent; people didn’t need permission or documentation to move about from one country to another. 

The only education necessary was the Quran and Hadith which is still the most complete education in the universe.

West didn’t have the hegemony on what is right or wrong, what color should be worn and what time it ought to be worn, what is fact and what is myth. Their so called scientific knowledge brought logic into the world. It’s true it did bring them out of the Dark Ages a little bit but for us they still are still far behind. They have learnt form us Muslims and are trying to do away with the passports to travel around Europe in the 21^st century, still one needs to carry an ID, the crime rates are still high despite all the planet’s resources being usurped by the West!

There is a book out that describes how the Indian maharajas and maharanis were made to dress in Western colors, behave with western mannerisms etc during the British occupation of India. For the first time the Hindu princes and princesses were expected to eat meat upon arrival in England because the palace in England made no arrangements to serve them what they could eat i.e. vegetables. Gone were the tolerant days of the Moghul era when care was taken to serve the guests according to their tastes and dietary laws and no one was forced to wear colors worn by the ruling ethnicity.

Today we the ordinary citizens of the subcontinent are expected to behave in the manner that was taught to the elite Indians by the British and if we don’t, our rich and powerful would make fun of us. Here are some of the rules of the new post colonial etiquette:

Eating habits

1) Eating with fork and knife is considered superior; those who cannot are considered ignorant. The hadis actually forbids eating with cutlery, fork didn’t exist 1400 years ago but the Europeans used to eat with spoons and knives even back then.

Having said that today Hindustanis (Muhajirs) of Karachi and Hyderabad have a positive habit, they eat rice with hands at home and small gathering of friends. Sindhis don’t do that, they think they must always eat rice with fork or at least a spoon.

2) Speaking with your mouth full of food is not acceptable.

3) Do not make noise while you eat.

4) Eat in small bites, Westerners think it posh if ladies eat with their little finger up in the air.

5) Take as much food on the plate as much you can eat, do not take a lot and then leave some on the plate. Do not put your elbows on the table or slouch. When finished eating, utensils must be placed in the four o'clock position.

6) Always cut the fruit such as an apple and orange and eat it, must not bite it unless you are sitting in your own home  

7) Do not slurp your tea or sherbet or coke or water. Tea or coffee should never be poured into the saucer to cool but should be sipped from the cup.

8) Use a glass for drinks, even at informal gatherings or even a picnic.

(If you go to a casual café in the US and need to drink juice, if you ask for a glass instead of drinking from a bottle, the white girl at the counter will smile and present you with a disposable glass thinking you are a cultured person).

Drink soup from the side of the spoon; lift the spoon away from yourself while pouring the soup into your bowl

9) Do not smoke while at the dinner table when others are trying to eat or just get up when some family member still hasn’t finished eating. Do not blow your nose at the table.

10) Fish is considered a smelly food item hence do not warm it up in the microwave at your university hostel in England or America or any other European country, same applies for all the other public places.  Fish burgers at Western restaurants contain cod fish laced with mayonnaise and lettuce and tomatoes so it is acceptable.

If you are packing lunch for your children to take to school in a foreign country, make sure you use a butter and bread or jam or something non desi because desi spices will cause people to react negatively.

Do tell your children that the food outside is mostly haram, even some red colored strawberry juices (such as Tropicana strawberry juice) contains process beetle), not to mention the chicken, mutton or lamb in case it’s a cold country such as England. Pork of course is there for all to see in all the meat shops, so make sure your children understand this.

You must not have more than 3 children since there is not enough food to eat for the whole planet, children make you poor! You have to pay for their upbringing and education and then marriage etc.  Our belief that it is God who provides sustenance, food will come to you even if you are living on Mars is not accepted by the whites.

If you live at farm house, your farm animals must not be visible inside your house, you have to have a barn or something for them, however dogs are allowed to come inside the house! Thank God so far only the rich desis have adopted dogs but they do scoff at other domestic animals if they are seen inside a home as is the customs of desi villagers.

Clothing conventions for ladies:

Desi ladies don’t follow the “when in Rome dress as Romans do” out on the streets of Western countries but wear their national clothing such as shalvar kameez, much to the annoyance of the whites.

In winter wear dark colors such as black, dark green, grey, dark blue, navy blue or any other shade of blue. Do not wear orange, yellow shades bought from Pakistan if you happen to visit Western countries! You will stand out and be laughed at in public.

In the summer white ladies wear white and baby pink. Although baby pink does not suit desi ladies, white you can wear.

White is a color that cannot fail in the west so if you buy shalvar kameez for the summer make sure it is white. Blue is the religious color of the Jews and Christians so this color is always acceptable over there as well as anywhere else in the world including the rich of Pakistan. You will notice that blue eyed people are considered more beautiful, blue jeans are like a uniform, internet links are all blue, in gemstones the sapphires sell the most adorning wedding rings or engagement rings.

All the desi ladies have to wear western clothes in Europe and US: a skirt suit or a pants suit with the winter boots or summer sandals if at work or at university. Wearing of colors of white, black, blue and black is ok for ladies in the West. Buy your clothes from the particular Western country that you are going to live in.

Make sure you buy thermal wear underneath the shirt and legs to protect you from the freezing winter weather of the West. Wearing one over coast is not enough; to keep warm you have to wear several layers of clothes before you can go out of the house or university halls of residence. Ladies need to buy several payers of thick nylon full length tights or you will actually get sick.

Buy only black colored winter coats in the UK or khaki colored trench coats.

In the US you can buy different colored winter coats without looking odd.

Gone are days when ladies used to wear shiny or shimmery outfits even at home, now you must wear dull colors like by Europeans. Nothing shiny can be worn unless it’s at an evening party. Upper class ladies do tend to wear certain type of satin or silk during the day time but they know how to carry themselves, it is not advisable unless you are a foreign university graduate in the millionaire category.

In Pakistan due to lack of communication people still tend to wear just cotton while going to meet someone, silk or satin is considered too gaudy, but those ladies who can carry it do so such as Muhtarma Bhutto. Just across in the gulf region if you are dressed in expensive silk and speak English with a perfect accent, Arabs might actually show you respect even if you are a Pakistani or Indian. English people respect you when you are dressed in expensive silky attire rather than dressed down in cotton.

In Pakistan the denizens of Defence and Clifton do not have someone looking down upon them so they can jut wear cotton all the time but when you are abroad, you need to dress up because desis do not have white skin (even if the ladies bleach their faces people can tell from the glow that its bleached), so you need to show your wealth on yourself to get respect. Things have changed but some Pakistanis still think all kinds of shiny clothes are out and only illiterate women wear them.

If you have an interview at a university for admission in England and America, wear a suit, make sure you iron everything properly. It reminds me of a tale an interviewer told me:

A kid came to be interviewed and it was a hot summer month, I told him to take his jacket off, and he kept refusing. When the interview was over I told him to take it off and when he took it off, only the front portion of the shirt had been ironed! He passed the interview because during the interview he had been dressed properly.

There is a dress code for work place, shopping, party wear etc. In the West all these things are taught on TV by example of visuals. What to wear where and what jewelry is acceptable at what place. Our TV channels ought to start guiding the different segments of society who are entering the work force from the villages and small towns to the big cities. 

if you are a Sindhi lady doctor then you must not wear clothes or shalvar kameez with lots of beads which may fall on the operation table, do not wear shiny colors either. Wear simple clothes with pastel colors in the summer and little bit darker shades in the winter. Same goes for all the women professors, teachers etc.

In the olden days it was fashionable for rich ladies to don a lot of gold jewelry even in the house. Now maximum gold jewelry a lady can wear is a gold chain round one’s neck or a thin bracelet or a ring or two. Married Punjabi & Hindustani ladies tend to wear a few gold bangles because in their culture it is considered a sign of marriage.

A sindhi or non Sindhi lady cannot wear a nath or chamba or a baanheen or a tika or duhri at home or when meeting friends or going for a picnic or going out of the country at the airport. Nowadays things have changed drastically. Maximum that can be worn at a close family wedding consists of just a duhri and a baanheen if you are young but if you are the bride or bridegroom’s mother you should dress up in lighter gold jewelry.

Colors acceptable for men

Always make sure you buy clothes that do not crinkle easily. Children’s uniform must be ironed day before school. Men wear western clothes anyway even in Pakistan’s work places but when they wear desi outfits they must be ironed properly.

White, khaki, grey, blue are colors that are considered alright for shirts. Although blue is used more often due to its religious significance for the Europeans. However some young guys do wear pink shirts even though they are made fun of and called names like sissy or worse. Do not dress your little son in shiny colors.

Do not wear the jeans that you bought from Karachi or Islamabad in US or Europe because the stitching is of poor quality! However some people do buy leather jackets from Pakistan due to them being cheaper, but those people are from overseas and can differentiate between the stitching pattern, and buy only those items which would be alright to wear on the streets in Europe and America.

The non Sindhi Pakistanis tend to do their shopping at places that sell ready made clothes that do not crease when you sit. Sindhis on the other hand buy clothes that would crease instantly. So if you are driving along Super highway and you see someone with the creased Shalvar kameez, 9/10 chances are he is a Sindhi! Middle class Karachiites buy clothing from kurta corner and rich ones from Aamir Adnan, or Deepak Perwani. My advice to everyone who is a Sindhi: buy clothing from Karachi even if it’s just a white kurta shalvar made out of muslin cloth but do not walk around with un ironed clothing please!

General  

Do not scratch yourself in public or clean your ears.

Do not talk at an excessively loud volume.

Do not comb your hair in front of others in public, like balcony of your own house; if you are a male do not comb your beard in public such as a office front desk.

Children are taught ‘do not pick your nose in public, say please and thank you if someone holds the door open for them or hands them something.

Do not clean your teeth with a tooth pick in front of guests at the dinner table unless you have covered your mouth.

Eating inside university classrooms in allowed in America so don’t feel shy to take food with you if you are going to have classes all day.

Make sure you have sprayed air freshener in the house before allowing guest especially foreign guests to enter. You can use a spray of air fresheners or keep a bowl of potpourri permanently in the living room. Westerners use scented candles but they are used by the whites so I won’t advise that. I would personally use incense sticks (agar bati) or incense burners. You can buy strawberry flavored or sandalwood agar batis in American supermarkets.

If you are painting your house do not use yellow, pink or orange colors, you must you light colors otherwise known as secondary colors such a light faint blue, cream, white etc. However the architecture of old havelis and palaces of the subcontinent is breathtaking so do not change that but build more buildings like that to show that we too built grand buildings before the Brits go here. The architecture of Faiz Mahal at Khairpur must be copied all over Sindh.

 Do not shut the TV if someone else is watching a program without asking permission or change the channel. All Pakistanis seem to be unaware of this.

 Use of mobile phones in classrooms of university and lectures and talks is not acceptable.

Do not used hair oil and go out in public, always use it the night before, and wash it off before venturing out. It’s ok if your friends see you in Pakistan or your desi friends pay you a visit in US or Europe and see you with the hair mask, but you cannot go work or use a train or bus with it. Ladies do not dye your hair blond; it makes you look obnoxious with your brown skin.

Kids cannot be sent to school with oil in their hair.

Kids must not be shouted at or beaten, if they have done something wrong, they ought to be punished by taking their privileges such as watching TV or meeting friends for a week etc. If you shout at kids, they will become shy and will not be able to stand up to anyone and when they grow up, their rights will be usurped by other nations.

If you have employed a child servant from a village, train him instead of just beating him up because he left your gate open while talking to guests, villagers tend to live in close community environment with virtually no crime rate so they are unaware of dangers of city life.

 (This is a big problem with Sindhi families. Sindhi kids tend to be quiet, so muhajirs assume they will just bully them. Muhajirs teach their girls to have a mouth of “pahari mirchi” and boys to be sharp like a hawk. Girls are more listened to in the muhajir and Punjabi household. Men tend to follow the women and this is considered civilized behavior. A wife doesn’t ask her husband if she can go to her parents’ house or not, or whether she should go shopping or not. It’s the lady of the house who decides who the children will marry etc. her husband simply supports her with money and is there for her if need be, just watch a play on Urdu channels if you wish to know what life is like in a Punjabi or Hindustani (muhajir) household, do not think it is just a funny play where men are being bullied by wives, it is reality, Sindhi channels tend to copy that but in Sindhi homes, it’s the men who decide every single thing and tend to have a temper that makes you wonder…)

If you have done wuzu in a public washroom make sure you have wiped all the water around the sink or you will have to hear some harsh words.

In England do not call someone after 10 pm on the phone (unless it’s a total emergency). In America it is not that big of a deal. Also in England if someone like a friend helps you move to a new place, offer to pay them petrol money, some will accept mostly desis will not but still it’s advisable. In US there is no need to pay anyone, friends often help each other move.

Tip a waiter 2.5% of your restaurant bill in America, hair dressers are also given tips but every city may differ on the percentage, in England no need.

In Pakistan ladies tend to wear large gold sets at birthday parties etc in small towns. Do not wear small sets for birthdays and other people’s weddings, only family; in places such as Karachi, Islamabad and overseas.

When giving a gift to a non Sindhi, do not go for the best because they won’t appreciate it, instead they will laugh and think you are a fool. But Sindhis will appreciate it so deal with them differently. Even in rich neighborhoods of Karachi people don’t give expensive gifts to acquaintances. However in foreign born Pakistanis who have known each other for a long time do bring decent wedding presents for the children of their colleagues weddings. It could be an English dinner set or some crystal piece.

While speaking try to use as many English words as you can, the non Sindhis think you are educated if you speak the language of the goras. People of Karachi and Punjabis think of Urdu as the language of the ignorant or jaahils.

Send your daughters to school; it is not beghairati to send girls to school, Bhutto Saheb sent his beloved daughter alone all the way to America!

If you just send boys, they will come home from university one day and say: “mum I want to marry an educated lady and none in our family is a university graduate so I will marry so and so”. This is good for him but bad for the family in the long run. So far so many waderas have married non Sindhi ladies and left their own cousins, result is that their kids are taught to hate Sindh and Sindhi culture and the non Sindhi lady doesn’t want a Sindhi girl to marry her son. The whole Sindhi society is falling apart because of this stupidity. If all the Sindhi guys marry non Sindhis then where are Sindhi girls going to go?

In the olden days the friends who came to dinner never used to praise your wife’s cooking, today in Karachi its considered rude if you and your friends didn’t appreciate her cooking in public in the party. There was a graduate son of a wadera from Sindh University who fought with his wife because his Urdu speaking friend came to dinner in Karachi where he owns a house and kept talking to his wife and praising her food. He never had seen anything like it and was mad at her instead! In Karachi the culture is not of pardah & from Sindhi point of view it would be considered westernized so a small town person would be uncomfortable.

 She left for her parents’ house protesting that “it is your friend you brought him here and you are mad at me”! Similarly a small town Sindhi guy was about to blow his friend’s head off who dared to utter the words “say thank you to bhabi for cooking wonderful food”. Since it was a small town the lady didn’t sit at the dinner table herself but was in pardah but the husband was nevertheless mad at his friend who was also Sindhi but a bit more refined in mannerisms! 

Non Sindhi Wedding traditions

Ring is given to the bride to be at engagement, no one buys gold sets.

Sets are bought for wedding, and worn at weddings only by the bride or her sister or brother’s wedding

Bangles for brides at least two, since bangles are considered a sign of being married in the Indian community everyone in Karachi buys bangles for the bride and she wears them all the time. You cannot wear other jewelry such as a choker round your neck but bangles are acceptable.

Non Sindhi Karachiites bargain with each other whether to have certain ceremonies such as mendi or not or who will pay for the dinner on valima to save money. They used to have two mendi ceremonies where they would have a friendly song competition, then the wedding day dinner and then the valima dinner was paid by the groom’s side. Nowadays they have one mendi party together jointly paid, bride’s side pays for the wedding dinner and guy’s side for the valima. Some families negotiate to omit the mendi party to save more money also. After the wedding the fourth day, the bride’s side has a dinner for the guy’s family called the chowthi. The bride’s side will invite as many people as they can because they want you to pay through your nose! Make sure you tell them you will allow this many people at the hotel reception. So you have to be ware if you are going to have a inter-racial marriage in Karachi at every step.

Let me describe a real life incident to illustrate a point:

One bridegroom’s parents (migrants from Kaanpur, India) were told by the bride’s father (migrants from Hyderabad Deccan, India) that it is a custom in the bride’s family to pay money as soon as the bridegroom enters the gate of her house. They had already set up so many other similar ‘fake family traditions’ to fleece the guy’s family on the wedding day. Not to be out witted, the bride groom’s brother devised a plan and told his wife to sit in the car that was supposed to carry the bride groom on the day of the occasion, the one with all the decorations on top! So when the girls from the bride’s side came to open the car door expecting to get money, they saw the lady sitting there instead and meanwhile the bride groom slipped into the house in the confusion and saved himself a couple of thousand rupees!

It is a custom in the Karachi’s migrant families that the bride’s side pays for the wedding and the guy’s side pays for the valima dinner party, but one  Defence area bride’s family fleeced a Sindhi family by saying “it is our custom that the bride groom’s side pays for both”! The rich Sindhi family ended up paying for both even though the bride’s side is rich as them. So make sure that you are aware that the people you are dealing with are just after your money just like in white society the bride’s side and the groom’s side negotiates who pays for what. The Karachi migrant families make up stories like this to make you spend and save their own money!

After marriage the wife tends to make her husband move as far away from the in laws as possible, the guy if he is poorer obliges. It’s usually the case to get your girl marry a poor guy so that she rules him. You will see the wife coming in a Mercedes while the guy will go to office in an un air-conditioned Suzuki Mehran. The poor are supposed to obey the rich in big cities of Pakistan and other parts of the world.

Certain Western habits offensive to desis 

Walking in the house with shoes, even sitting on their beds with shoes

A TV anchor may lift her shoe and point it at the camera, it is considered ugly from our point of view

Swearing in public at a drop of a hat done by both men and women

Eating with their left hand like the devil

Once a child is 18 parents cannot tell him what he does, whom he or she marries or what religion he follows.

Apart from this every country is Europe has slightly different traditions e.g. it is illegal in Germany to mow your lawn in the afternoon. In France it is unadvisable to speak English, you will simply be ignored, taxi drivers will tell you they are going in the opposite direction if you didn’t speak to them in French even broken French will do, it indicates that you are trying at least.

 For a more detailed look at the offending Western habits consult the book by former Jewish lady Margaret Marcus who converted to Islam and chose the name Marium Jamila, the book is appropriately called “Islam and the West”.

April 27, 2008