Thankless

In the backdrop of the bomb blasts in London effected by their own nationals, the occassion to relate an incident that happened a few months ago is most appropriate now.

Getting out of the plane on arrival at Caracas and seeing the long serpentine queue at the immigration counter made me all the more tired. Anyway, there is no way I can be excused, so had to stand at the end of the queue carrying my huge baggage. In this unfamiliar place I found a familiar face in the person just in front of me. We just got into a conversation by starting with how horrible the queue to the immigration counter is. The person had a thick British accent, a British national, parents were from Pakistan. He was quite friendly and our conversation spanned from cricket to economic policies of India and Pakistan. He then told me to be careful out in Caracas as the crime rate was high and more so if you were found to be a foreign national. However he said that we can pass off as locals as people from the sub-continent resemble South Americans. He said that the locals have some animosity towards Europeans and Americans. To which I exclaimed with "Oh, is that so?", to which he replied "Koun pasand kartha hain in logon ko" (who after all likes these people) in Hindi/Urdu in an accent that resembled that of Tom Alter who plays the English man's role in most of the Hindi movies;

Now, do not forget the fact that the person whom I mentioned here is a British national, which means that he has access to almost every developed nation in the world with no visa. He has access to the best of the civilized and modern world. Who granted him all these rights even though he was from a country far away and not anyway near prosperity or even civilized society? He or his kind could have been treated as immigrants with no permanent permit to stay (let alone a citizenship) and still they would have hanged on as they can lead a much better life in all aspects as compared to their original homeland. The British would not have realized that they were feeding poisonous unsuspecting snakes in their frontyard. Now the British cannot even weedout these snakes from their yard as they belong to them. You cannot deport them. What do you do with a set of peope owing allegiance to another country and even worse forming a fifth column in a nation which fed you since you were born.

Truly Thankless I felt.