By Nury Vittachi, IANS,
The British royal family has Indian blood, a researcher discovered last week. One of their direct descendants was from Gujarat, a DNA expert at the University of Edinburgh found.
But of course! With their big noses and huge number of family members, it now seems obvious that the British royal family has upper-class Indian blood. How could we have missed the clues?
1) Their weddings are massive and interminable. 2) Curry has been declared the national dish of Britain. 3) Their family life is like a Bollywood soap opera, parties alternating with melodrama. 4) I bet passionate greenie Prince Charles dances around trees when no one is looking. 5) The main family finances come from palatial property holdings.
There’s more. 6) None of them have real jobs. 7) Despite living in the 21st century, they still think that living in a huge house with a massive number of servants is okay. 8) The young ones are terrible at studying, but still get into fancy private schools. 9) The men wear fancier clothes than the women. 10) There are endless disputes over tradition between old and young.
Talking of which, more details are emerging about the court ruling in China that children must visit parents. If your folks are 60 or more, judges think you should visit them every eight weeks.
This is a lot to ask in a country where buying a ticket to ride involves days of queuing, bribery, corruption and possibly a murder or two – and that’s just to get on the school bus every morning. So I was not surprised to read in the newspapers that businesses have sprung up to do the visiting on people’s behalf.
I looked them up. One professional visitor on the Taobao website offered to visit your parents for 100 yuan ($16.50) an hour, plus “you have to tell us topics they like, so we can start a good chat”. I guarantee the number one topic is going to be “what total, evil, useless deadbeats my children are”. You’d have to agree to everything they said, despite the fact that you were being paid by the people they are criticizing. Where on earth would you find someone who would be enough of a slimeball to take such a job? Wait. They’re all over the place.
It would be much better to pay extra and hire someone with drama skills to pretend to BE the actual offspring. Of course, the hired hand would have to think on his or her feet.
Mom: “You look different. Didn’t you used to be a girl?”
Fake son: “Er, yeah, but I felt like a change, you know how it is.”
Mom: “Anyway, I’ll cook your favorite food, farmer pie made with minced cowlips and shredded farmhand underpants.”
Fake son: “Er, yum-yum! Can’t wait.”
(19.07.2013 – Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send ideas and comments via www.mjam.org)