Nurse in a Mental Hospital

Thirty years ago, in August 1987, I began working as a volunteer nurse in a mental hospital in central London.

A couple of years before that, the thought of going abroad, leave alone working in London, would have sounded as fantastic as going to the moon. To my knowledge, nobody in the DNA lineage between Manu (the Indian Adam) and me had ever left Indian soil. My parents’ professions brought in just enough to make ends meet - my father played the sitar, and mother taught Sanskrit. By the time I qualified as a Chartered Accountant, I hated accountancy enough to resolve never to practise it. The CA firm paid me Rs 450 (37 dollars) as a monthly stipend. [It was one of the top firms; the mandatory stipend was only Rs 60 (5 dollars)/month]. My savings over three years had amounted to Rs 2400 (200 dollars), not enough to buy an international air ticket. Like most lower-middle class Indians, my birth-to-pyre journey was supposed to happen exclusively in Indian geography.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, the legendary Russian novelist, was the first to amend my destiny. During my bearded teens, his novels had inspired my study of the Russian language. Dr Nikolay Maevsky, head of the Bombay consulate’s Russian language dept, had recommended my name for a fully paid scholarship for higher studies in Moscow. After Dostoevsky, Dr Maevsky was the second person responsible for my going abroad.

In those days, the Indian passport was handwritten. The opening description page included the colour of your eyes and hair, your height, profession, visible distinguishing marks, and name of father or husband (but never mother or wife). Below that, the name of the person who should be contacted in the event of your death or accident. The passport was valid for all countries except South Africa. It had no expiry date. It was given for five years, and could be extended every five years. I was told one needed a passport and dollars to go abroad. Only fools (or corporate employees) converted rupees at the bank. Black market rates were far more attractive. One of my neighbours was working on a ship. I bought 200 dollars from him at a mutually beneficial rate.

At the airport, for some enigmatic reason, you were required to buy 20 dollars officially, and that entry was made on the passport. On 6 September 1986, visiting an airport for the first time, I proudly held in my hand the free Aeroflot ticket, part of my scholarship package. I carried no credit cards, no travellers’ cheques, no gadgets of any kind – my wristwatch was the only thing with moving mechanical components. My wallet contained 220 dollars in cash that I planned never to spend.

*****

In Moscow, I should have completed my Russian language education, and returned to India on the free ticket. There was no question of ever going to the expensive West.

Seth Godfrey was a close friend at my Moscow Institute. He was an American communist, but with a healthy sense of cynicism about communism. One day, during a walk in the woods next to the institute, he said: “Ravi, now that you are in Moscow, why don’t you travel to Europe? It’s a wonderful opportunity to go to places like France, Germany, England.”

“Seth”, I said, “I need visas to go to all these places. I am unmarried, with no money and no job. Which country will give me a visa?”

“You can go to work there.” Seth said.

I laughed. Americans can be so naive at times. “If tourist visas are so difficult, how will I get work visas?”

“Listen, you can do voluntary work. I am on the board of Volunteers for Peace.”

That was the first time I had heard of voluntary work. Volunteers for Peace (VfP) organised camps around the year. A booklet gave detailed information about each camp. You needed to submit your preferences. For each camp, 15-20 volunteers, up to 27 years of age, were chosen. The organisers made sure the group would be diverse; you usually had more than ten nationalities at a camp. You were expected to land at the camp at your own cost. After arriving, until the end of the camp, you had no expenses. Your accommodation and meals were taken care of in exchange for your labour. Volunteers for Peace sent a confirmation letter for each camp. That letter would serve as the basis for getting visas. I had applied for camps in countries where I had friends. VfP changed only one of my requests. Instead of the Ireland camp I had asked for, I was booked as a volunteer nurse in the St Mary Abbott’s hospital in London. You would work with psychiatric patients, thanks and best wishes, the letter said.

*****

My Indian training on virtue and economy had benefited me. I had saved 400 roubles from my Russian stipend (with the 220 dollars still intact for a black day). That money bought me a railway ticket that would take me to each of my camps. I have previously written stories from my Poland camp where volunteers restored coffins in a beautiful Warsaw cemetery. [E.g. Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust(week 32: 2004) and The Gentleman with a Dog (week 33: 2004)]. From Warsaw, in August 1987, with a train-ferry-train combination, I landed in London. Straightaway, I made my way to Kensington, to reach St Mary Abbot’s hospital.

*****

The hospital was built in ‘Jacobethan style’ whatever that means. It was a four-storey lime-white and brick-brown structure, typically English. On a brochure, it was described as a long stay hospital for chronically sick, geriatric or psychiatric patients. Lush green lawns in the courtyard made the ambiance pleasant. The round-the-year rains make the English green greener, and lift the spirits even at a mental hospital. The top floor of the hospital was spacious, bright and empty. We, the volunteers, were allotted beds there. It was the most comfortable stay among all my camps. Breakfast and lunch provided in the hospital canteen were clean and in plenty. The camp gave each volunteer two and half pounds daily, in lieu of dinner. Alas, the following month showed that such hospitability is not enough to sustain the volunteers. Working with the psychiatric patients is not easy. Volunteers began leaving the camp one after the other (voluntarily), and by the end of the month, I was the only one left attending the famed morning meetings.

*****

Every day started with a formal meeting of the patients. Each group of nearly twenty patients was assigned a doctor (generally male), a nurse (generally female) and a volunteer nurse (such as me). The starting time was 08.00. In a giant room, we all sat in a circle. Each day, a new chairman was appointed. The chairman of the day was chosen from among the patients.

“You select a patient as a chairman. But aren’t they... aren’t they.... mad?” A German volunteer had asked on the first day during our briefing.

“Most of them are classified as psychiatric cases, yes. But the degree varies. Day-patients are here only during office hours. The residential patients, again, can vary widely. Our aim is to improve their condition. It’s important they chair the meetings, and not us.” The English doctor had explained.

Each patient was encouraged to speak. Topics were not prescribed. Everyone was free to talk on subject of his/her choice. Usually, a patient would try to unburden himself by talking about his condition, his fears, his experiences, his dreams (or nightmares). For the patients, this was their community. Some of them looked forward to this meeting, a few dreaded it.

Kevin, a recently retired man, was fairly shy. He was a day-patient. Many times, he turned up at the hospital after the meeting was over. He would apologise for the delay. His doctor then made the meeting mandatory for him. As a volunteer, I got the additional task of getting him to the hospital every morning. He lived within walking distance. I would call on him at 07.30. I had to ring the bell a few times before he opened the door. Kevin was polite and reserved. Yes, yes, I am coming; he would say and disappear inside the house. The following week, he came out with a colourful, big brush in his hand. He was painting the walls.

‘You see, I need to finish painting this wall. Please tell the doctor I can’t attend the meeting today’, he said to me.

‘Kevin, it’s the other way round. You’ve started painting the wall, because you don’t want to attend the meeting.’ I said. One didn’t need an education in psychiatry to see through Kevin’s mind. On my sharing the wall-painting news with the doctor, he smiled. ‘You are absolutely right’, he told me and assigned another man, a strongly built security guard from the hospital to bring Kevin in from the next day.

The morning meeting was scheduled for 90 minutes. The chairman of the day was expected to facilitate the meeting as well as take notes. The doctor and I were not allowed to say a word. It was like a school classroom. Because the twenty odd patients met daily, they knew much about one another. Their stories and experiences were assimilated by the fellow-patients.

People were generally well behaved. But a team of guards always stood outside, ready to be summoned. My most vivid memory is about Thalia, a sweet looking round-faced young girl. When she talked to you, nothing seemed wrong with her. At that hospital, for the first time, I realised that distinguishing between sane and insane people was not an easy task.

Many years later, as a mature student, (I was 41) I studied psychology at the University of Derby. At the beginning of the first lecture on abnormal psychology, the professor took a quick survey. Please, he said, those of you who consider yourself completely normal, raise your hands. I knew I couldn’t fall into that category. I had acquired a CA degree and refused to use it, I had left my career at forty to write books. No way could I be normal. But my classroom was shared by more than one hundred students aged 18-22. Surely, many of them should be normal. Well, not a single student dared to raise his hand.  

Anyway, back to Thalia. This sweet looking girl would suddenly become unrecognisable. Her language and actions became aggressive, with loud banging on tables and throwing of objects. One day she was telling us, in a very nice way, about her friend from school. In the middle of a sentence, she pursed her lips. Her eyes began burning. And then she started shouting, swearing and throwing everything in the room she could lay her hands on. Papers flew, plates broke, tea splashed in the face of another patient. She ran to a cupboard in the corner and knocked it down. It made a terrifying sound as it crashed along with all its contents. Initially, two female guards tried to control her. When they couldn’t, their male counterparts rushed in and took Thalia away. For several minutes, nobody spoke. Even the doctor sat in stunned silence. We wound up the meeting soon. For a week after that, we didn’t see Thalia. When she returned, she looked dull and aged. The spark in her eyes was gone. I guess she was heavily sedated after the incident.

(To be continued)

Ravi

Passport Racism

In the Bulgarian city of Varna, I met three different foreigners on a single day.

The first was an Indian Gujarati couple who owned an Indian grocery store. Familiar smells of Indian spices pulled me into the shop. You see such shops in London, to see one in Bulgaria was a surprise.

“We’re trying to cultivate a taste for Indian food among Bulgarians.” Said Mr Shah, the shop owner. “This country has very few Indians, only some students. Bulgarians have little knowledge about Indian spices or masalas.” Mr Shah was born in Kenya. In the 19^th century, thousands of Indian workers were taken to Africa. They were called “indentured labourers”, a euphemism for slaves. Over the next two centuries, many of their hard working successors prospered, and moved to Europe in search of a better civilisation. Mr Shah has his parents and brothers in the UK.

“We like Bulgaria. We are settled here for the past ten years.” He said. “It was easy for us, with our British passports, to move here once Bulgaria joined the European Union.”

*****

Two hours later, we were inside a bookshop “Shakespeare and friends”. The store stocked books in Bulgarian, Russian, English, and French. Diana, who owns this charming little place, is an elderly and energetic American from Seattle. In the 1990’s, she used to live and work in Moscow, as a journalist for the Moscow Times, Russia’s authentic English language newspaper. We were thrilled to learn she and I were in Moscow at the same time for almost ten years. Diana later moved to London, and ten years ago, decided to move to Bulgaria for good.

“After Moscow,” she said to me, “I didn’t like living in London at all. The West doesn’t have the charm of Eastern Europe. I love Bulgaria - a quiet, nice place. And people here are warm.”

*****

Bulgaria may be Europe’s poorest country. But it is culturally rich. In terms of historical heritage, the three richest countries are Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. The cities of Sofia and Plovdiv are built around well maintained ancient archaeological sites. Each Bulgarian city offers a “free walking tour” led by professional guides, who as a rule are young but experienced history graduates. On one such tour, I met an Italian gentleman, probably in his sixties. We walked together in Varna, and bumped into each other in Sofia.

He explained his tour of Bulgarian cities. “I’m exploring the country because I wish to settle here. I’ve a pension of 2000 Euros in Italy. And a disgusting percentage of that is grabbed by the Italian government as tax. Bulgaria has no tax on pension. I’ll soon move to Varna, probably rent a place in the beginning. Even if I fly to Italy every weekend, I would still save a lot more money than if I were to live in Italy.” he smiled.

*****

 The Gujarati grocer from the UK, the American bookshop owner and the Italian pensioner have made or will make Bulgaria home for their own benefit. Neither Indian spices nor English novels are a burning need in Bulgarian society. On the other hand, Bulgaria faces a huge labour shortage both in agriculture and industry. Bulgarians call themselves lazy, sometimes proudly.

Milena, the Plovdiv shop owner I mentioned in an earlier diary is a non-smoker. She hates employees smoking while attending to customers, or leaving the shop for a smoke-break (which is often). She said she tried for years to recruit non-smoking workers. That proved impossible. She asked the workers not to smoke during working hours. A customer enters the store and finds nobody, because the person supposed to serve him is outside, smoking.

“Finally I resigned.” She said. “If I don’t give up on my principles, I’ll have to shut all my shops.”

A Bulgarian farm owner told me his hectares remain uncultivated because he can’t get people to work on his farms or drive tractors.

*****

Fertile Bulgarian farms are short of workers. In my Indian state of Maharashtra, hundreds of farmers commit suicides every month. Is there any logical solution to these two problems?

The co-existence of unoccupied houses and homeless people, uncultivated lands and unemployed farmers, wasted food and hunger deaths is the tragedy of the world we live in. The chief reason for such contradictions is the restriction on free movement of people.

Philosophically speaking, each human being, each of us, exists on this planet and not in any particular country. An astronaut tried to locate his country from his spaceship. But all he could see was this beautiful mass of earth without boundaries, without countries. Countries and borders are a political fiction created by mankind. 

The European Union defines four fundamental freedoms for the union’s citizens: freedom of movement for capital, goods, services and people. Anyone from the 28 EU countries can travel to, work, reside or settle in any of the remaining 27 countries. That is the reason an Italian pensioner can so easily decide to migrate to Bulgaria.

What has happened inside the EU needs to happen on a worldwide basis. Russia, with 17% land in the world has only 2% of the world’s population. India with 17% of world’s population has only 2% of world’s land. Wouldn’t sending a few million Indian workers to Russia benefit both the countries? If European workers are not interested in working on Bulgarian farms, shouldn’t Bulgaria employ farm workers from Bangladesh or India? I am an advocate of a borderless world, not as an Indian, but as a student of economics. Open market and free competition should match the demand and supply curves; not fences, walls and visas.

The main objections to removing borders are that terrorists, refugees and other unwanted people of all kinds will enter the civilised world and spoil it. A poor man migrating to a rich country is a burden on that society.

Each argument has a flaw. Determined terrorists usually find the means to enter another country if they must. NATO countries indiscriminately bomb countries like Syria, and then complain about Syrian refugees entering them. This is absurd. Stop the wars, and you don’t need to worry about refugees.

An honest immigrant is not a burden if he is contributing to the country. He has a mouth to feed, but also a brain and two hands to work.

The major worry for Europe and America is migrant workers working longer and harder for less pay. In England, shopping hours were heavily regulated in the past. Trading on Sundays was illegal. But South Asian migrants were willing to operate the ‘mom and dad’ shops seven days a week, keeping long hours every day. That pressure ultimately forced the UK parliament to allow Sunday shopping. Over the years, the shop hours have become longer as well. Germany was worse. I remember walking hungrily on the streets of Frankfurt on a Sunday evening, with nothing - not even McDonalds - open. Throughout Europe, immigrant food workers have solved the weekend hunger problem.

Securing borders, building walls were measures to keep wages high, working hours short and protect the local population from competition. Protectionism made rich countries richer and poor countries poorer. The wages in those groups presented such a contrast that manufacturing was finally outsourced. Since you couldn’t get people from Bangladesh to the UK, you sent machinery from UK to Bangladesh to make things. In the 1990s, I could still buy running shoes made in the UK, now they are made exclusively in Bangladesh or Vietnam. This was followed by the internet revolution. Rich countries outsourced their back offices and call centres to poor countries. People who think a borderless world is a fantasy should look at Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg has revolutionised the world. Facebook has no borders.

Though free movement of people is still restricted, free movement of labour (in the form of outsourcing) is the norm of the 21^st century. Anything that can be outsourced from a high wages to a low wages area will be outsourced. Competition increasingly happens on a global, rather than on a national, scale.

*****

My main objection to protectionism is that it is on racial lines. An illiterate, uncultured Romanian can move freely in Western Europe, work anywhere, live anywhere. An educated Indian or African struggles to get a tourist visa which, if given, comes with conditions and a defined short term. All people from a single country are lumped together. I call this passport racism. I will end this week’s rambling with the story of a bizarre job interview I faced in 1995.

*****

At the beginning of 1995, a head hunter called me up out of the blue. I was living in Moscow and employed with BAT, a British multinational company. The expat network in Moscow was strong and active. It’s possible someone had given my name to this head-hunter. An American company was searching for a person to run its office in Russia. The office would be responsible for all former republics of USSR. The jobholder needed to be fluent in Russian, have a good understanding of finance and marketing, previous experience of travelling around Soviet republics for work. The head hunter, after talking to me for an hour, said I fit the bill. Would I mind meeting an American delegation at Hotel Baltschug Kempinski for dinner?

I said I didn’t mind. (A free dinner is always welcome). I met three American men over dinner the following week. They were probing but pleasant. We moved to a conference room after dinner. Our talk must have lasted three hours or so. They talked about the package, which was quite good. (Fortunately, they didn’t ask me what I was getting. British companies offer better perks, American companies give more cash).

“We would like you to attend one final interview in New York.” One of them said. “We will arrange for a business class ticket and a hotel close to our Manhattan office. The earlier date you can give us the better.”

“Thanks.” I said. “I’ll need some time. I don’t know how much time it’ll take for me to get an American visa.”

“Visa? What visa?” One of the gentlemen asked.

“I’m an Indian. I can’t travel to the USA without a visa.”

“Oh, I... we.... thought you were a British citizen. You work for BAT.”

I said that was not the case, sorry.

“All right, we’ll get back to you.” The head of the delegation said. All three cordially shook hands with me. I never heard from them again. My sense of dignity prevented me from contacting them or the head hunter. But I wondered why their faces fell on hearing I was an Indian rather than a British citizen. They seemed willing to employ me, a non-American, along with my skin colour, accent, and manners. But only as long as I had a respectable passport. After that job interview, I had coined the phrase ‘passport racism”.

 Ravi 

Dead among the Living

Most fans of thrillers have read The Day of the Jackal, a novel by Frederick Forsyth, in which a professional assassin nicknamed the “Jackal” is hired to kill the French president Charles de Gaulle. On one hand, the Jackal is making preparations to come close enough to the French president so as to put a hole in his head. In a parallel thread, Claude Lebel, a French detective, having got an inkling of the planned assassination, is using his intelligence and the state machinery at his disposal to stop the Jackal from succeeding. If this information was known in advance, why did Charles de Gaulle still attend the event at the affixed time?

Charles de Gaulle refused to alter his commitment, because 25 April is celebrated as the liberation day (WWII) in France. The French president always appears in public to felicitate the veterans. The itinerary of presidents and kings is usually known in advance – offering ample opportunity for professional assassins.

In 1925, when the military wing of the Bulgarian Communist Party decided to assassinate Boris III, the Bulgarian Tsar, the planners were more ingenious. The communist party, trying to overthrow the Tsar and the government, had resorted to insurgency. A few years earlier, Russia had succeeded in killing its own Tsar and bringing in a Marxist revolution. The Bulgarian communists wished to emulate Russia’s methods and success. The courts had banned the communist party. The party’s military wing had begun working underground. Communist International, founded by Lenin, supported its activities and provided Bulgarian communists with weapons and ammunition.

Since there was no particular event Tsar Boris III was expected to attend, the group of assassins decided to create such an event. The Sveta Nedelya church in central Sofia was already famous. Whenever a high-ranking govt or military officer died, a funeral service would be held here. Such funerals, as a matter of protocol, would be attended by the country’s top officials and the Tsar. The assassins, (in modern parlance the terrorists), decided to first assassinate a high-ranking official to bring about a funeral service in the church. Bombs would be placed in the church ceiling, to bring the roof down, killing the Tsar and other attendees.

A group of six terrorists began working on the plan. In January 1925, they bribed a church clerk and smuggled 25 kg of explosives into the church. The explosives were stored on the top of a column near the Southern entrance. The coffin was traditionally placed at the bottom of this column.  Bottles of sulphuric acid were added to the mix to release poisonous gas along with the explosion. A 15 meter long cord would be used, which by burning slowly would allow the terrorists to escape before the explosion.

Vladimir Nachev, the national director of police, was chosen as the sacrificial lamb to lure the Tsar into the church. However, Nachev enjoyed a high level of security and had to be dropped. They moved to plan B, Konstantin Georgiev.

Georgiev, 51 years old, was a major-general, also a reputed democratic politician. His death would definitely bring the Tsar along with the political and military elite to the church funeral. Konstantin Georgiev proved to be an easy target. On 14 April 1925, during his visit to the church with his granddaughter, a communist terrorist shot him dead. His funeral would be held within 48 hours in the Sveta Nedelya church.

The planning was perfect. It was the Easter week. The funeral would happen on 16 April which was the Holy Thursday. The terrorist group had issued forged invitations to the funeral so as to maximise the toll. Hundreds would turn up for the funeral, making the terrorist attack the biggest in Bulgaria’s history. The church assault would wipe out the Tsar and the cabinet, paving the way for the communists to take over.

The funeral procession would enter the church at 3 pm. The leader of the terrorist group, Nikola Petrov, was waiting in the dome since morning.

The funeral procession entered the church at 3 pm as announced. Peter Zadgorski, another terrorist was standing on the street outside the church. He gave Petrov the pre-agreed signal. Petrov set fire to the cord. In twenty minutes, the fire would reach the explosives. Twenty minutes were enough for both Petrov and Zadgorski to escape.

Crime of the century 

At 3.20 pm a deafening sound brought the roof down. The church’s beautiful dome was demolished. More than 200 people, including 12 generals, 15 colonels, 7 deputy colonels, 3 majors, 9 captains, 3 deputy captains, civilian men, women and children died. More than 500 people were injured; some suffocated by the poisonous gas.

For the terrorists, only two things went wrong.

The forged invitations sent by them had attracted several ordinary citizens to the funeral service. The crowds were unprecedented. In order to accommodate them, the coffin was moved away from the ill-fated column. Along with the coffin all members of parliament including the ministers had moved away. As the elite, they were expected to be next to the coffin. Zadgorski, standing on the road, and Petrov, hiding in the dome had no idea that the coffin was moved. As a result, not a single parliament member was harmed. And the Tsar?

Tsar Boris III was late. So late that his car was still on the road to the church when the explosion occurred. The key targets- the Tsar and the ministers- survived the biggest terrorist attack in Bulgarian history. This story is sometimes offered as justification by non-punctual Bulgarians. If you are not punctual, the delay may save your life.

Saving the Jews

Bulgaria joined hands with Germany in the Second World War. Tsar Boris III had a few meetings with Adolf Hitler. Bulgaria had about 50,000 Jews at that time. Nazis had created special workplaces for Jews. Hitler expected Boris III to send the Bulgarian Jews there. By 1942, the Bulgarian public, the Orthodox Church and the Tsar himself had developed a good understanding of what those special Jew workplaces meant. The Tsar used another Bulgarian characteristic: procrastination. The Bulgarian Jews were deployed for road construction. Whenever Nazis demanded their extradition, the Tsar complained about the shortage of labour. Jew workers were needed to repair and build roads. We will send them as soon as the roads are done.

On 14 August 1943, Boris III had his last meeting with Hitler. Hitler was furious that Bulgaria had refused to join war against USSR, and refused to deport Jews to the camps in Poland and Germany. Boris III once again maintained that the Jews were required for road maintenance in Bulgaria.

Two weeks later, on 28 August, at the age of 49, Tsar Boris III died of a heart attack. He was a healthy man. It is believed that he died of slow poisoning employed by Hitler. True or otherwise, the Tsar had managed to save 50000 Bulgarian Jews from perishing in Nazi camps.

*****

Living with the dead

In Blagoevgrad, our first stop in Bulgaria, I saw a long wall full of A4 sized B/W posters, neatly placed in transparent plastic sleeves, displaying a photo and some text below. Normally, such posters are about “WANTED” or “MISSING” people. That can’t be the case here, I thought. Looking closely, with my limited knowledge of the Bulgarian language, I understood these posters were death notices. Did this town recently have a terrorist attack ?

Two weeks later, I was in the coastal city of Varna, trying to find Galina, a Bulgarian classmate of mine from Moscow’s Pushkin institute. We had been good friends, but had lost contact since 1987. Based on her thirty year-old address, I managed to reach the apartment. To my shock, her front door displayed a death notice. From the name I guessed it was Galina’s father.

After 30 years, I find Galina’s apartment in Bulgaria, and land on the day when the family is in mourning. Galina’s ailing mother opens the door, and explains Galina lives close but not in this flat. I say I am sorry to learn about her father’s death. I am surprised there are no visitors, no relatives.

“Yes.” Says Galina’s mother. “My husband passed away 13 years ago.”

Necrolog

Bulgaria is full of those death notices- called Necrologs.

You post them on street walls, trees, electrical polls, churches, graveyards, on the door of your house, and any place which the dead person used to frequent.

You post them on death, then 40 days, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 18 months after the death and then every anniversary. These are the time slots for the poster. By the time your 3 month poster has become dated, it’s time to replace it with the 6 month poster.

This process of publicly remembering your close ones can go on until you forget about them, or you yourself become a poster. An author of a book published on the subject says she found a notice posted 60 years after the death of one ordinary Bulgarian citizen. She also found a newspaper necrolog for someone who had died 65 years ago.

In Bulgarian traditional culture, our world and the other world are connected. Since souls are immortal; our dead ancestors, relatives, friends are still with us, except in a different form. In other countries, only celebrities achieve some form of immortality. Princess Diana’s photos still appear in media regularly. In Bulgaria, even an ordinary citizen is immortal. If he is remembered 50-60 years after his death, his photos are displayed across the village or town he lived in. It’s as close to immortality as you can get.

The necrolog tradition makes Bulgaria a much bigger country than it is. The faces on the posters are of those living in memory. Their number expands the 7.1 million population figure considerably.

Ravi 

The Bulgarian Untouchables

Mena, my wife, and I were walking on a street of Yambol, a small town in Bulgaria. I noticed two young men nearby. I looked at them, they looked at us and we couldn’t take our eyes off. It was like a Bollywood scene where siblings separated in childhood accidentally bump into one another as adults. Five minutes later, a car passed by. A girl was in its passenger seat. Again the same reaction, we stared at her, she stared at us. Nobody said anything.

That evening, we were accosted by a young bearded guy. Except for us, the street was empty. He began talking to me in a language I didn’t understand. I don’t speak Bulgarian, but I can recognise it. This language was very different. The young man looked disappointed when we couldn’t understand him. For a mile, he silently walked with us, then went ahead.

The following day, on our routine evening stroll, a bubbly, middle-aged man came out of his house and greeted us. He looked like my ground-floor neighbour from Bombay. He wanted to talk to us. Though we had no common language, we recited numbers 1 to 10 in our respective languages and found them to be similar. His extended family and friends gathered. Photos were taken. His daughter posed with my wife. One could be forgiven for thinking both belonged to the same community.

All these people were Bulgarian Gypsies.

Roma, not Gypsies

The word ‘Gypsy’ suggests a group of exotic wanderers and fortune-tellers, playing music and dancing, possessing powers to heal as well as curse, riding in caravans with horses and mules.

Gypsy, as a matter of philological fact, is a mistaken term. When these dark-skinned nomads reached Europe fifteen centuries ago, the Europeans thought they were from Egypt. Gypsy is short for e-gypsy-ans (Egyptians). Columbus erroneously called the American tribes Indian, they were not Indian. On another continent, the nomadic communes arriving in Europe were thought to be Egyptian, but they were actually Indian.  

Linguistics has long established this hypothesis. The Gypsy language ‘Romani’ is based on Sanskrit. Apart from numerals, they share Hindi words like naak (nose), kaan (ear), aankh (eye), baal (hair) and churi (knife). They call themselves ‘Kaale’ (black in Hindi).

They are called ‘Roma’, a word that comes from Doma (house chief) or Domba. [As to how D changes into R, read my open diary week 9:2017]. In Marathi, Domba-ri is a travelling community of street performers.

A 2012 DNA research confirmed the Roma’s ancestry. A Y-chromosome comparison linked European Roma to men from Punjab and Rajasthan. Some 1500 years ago, their families began travelling from North-western India towards Europe in groups. Each group had less than one hundred people, and was headed by a person called the count or duke in Romani. It is speculated these people were the lowest caste, India’s untouchables. They might have left to avoid harassment from upper caste Hindus, or from the Moguls who had begun their attacks on India. If you look at the map, you will find that the distance between Rajasthan (India) and Yambol (Bulgaria) is nearly 6000 km. Interestingly, that entire route is Islamic land; Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. It could have taken them a couple of years to walk/ horse-ride that distance. On the way, most were obliged to accept Islam as their religion to avoid death. By the 13^th century, the Roma had spread across Europe.

Romani people have preserved their language and culture through centuries. They value freedom and independence. Their culture believes in the ‘here and now’ – enjoy this place and this moment without worrying about the future. In Roma culture, a millionaire is a person who has spent a million. He may be bankrupt today, but if he has enjoyed spending a million in the past, he qualifies as a millionaire. (A lesson for modern miser millionaires who will die without enjoying their money).

Every 20^th person in Bulgaria is a Roma. Bulgarian Roma are either Muslims or Orthodox Christians, but they speak Romani, the Sanskrit-based language. You can change your religion in a matter of minutes, but you can’t change your DNA. The Romani people were the first Non-Resident Indians (NRIs).

Legend, or myth?

One legend says a Sassanid Monarch, Baharam Gul, who ruled Persia during the 5^th century felt his subjects were becoming soul-less. He invited 10,000 musicians/entertainers from Hindustan. On their arrival, he gifted to each a bag full of wheat, an ox and some agricultural land. The ox would help them plough the fields; they would grow enough vegetables for themselves, and play music for the citizens in their free time. That was the plan. However, a few months later, the musicians approached the monarch. They had been lazy - not only had they finished eating bread made from the wheat, but also the oxen. Baharam Gul got so angry, he drove the Hindustani musicians out of Persia. Since that time, they have been roaming around the world always looking for a new habitat.

Of course, there is no historical basis for this legend. It sounds outlandish that a group of musicians from a vegetarian land should suddenly become meat-eaters and consume thousands of oxen.

Milena’s perception

Milena, an enterprising 30-year old Bulgarian lady, owns a shop next to where we are now staying in Plovdiv, the second largest Bulgarian city. Her shop selling chocolates, snacks, cigarettes, drinks, ice cream is open till midnight. She sleeps only for four hours a day, and her three year old son sits next to her playing video games in the shop. I managed to have a couple of long chats with her.

“I worry about the future of Bulgaria,” she tells me. “I’m struggling to look after one child. But the Tsigani (Bulgarian word for gypsies) women have 5-6 children. I get 200 lev a month as child allowance from the government, a Tsiganka gets 1200 lev. And everything is free for them. They don’t pay for water, for electricity. They live in large ghettos. The inspector who reads the electric meters is scared to go there. So, nobody pays the bills. We are subsidising the Tsigani population. And we are not a rich country.

“You know, officially, Tsigani are 5%. But lots of them write “Turks” as their nationality during census. So the real figure is much higher. And with tsiganki becoming pregnant all the time, this country will one day become a Roma country. I’m really worried about the future of my son.”

Roma Ghettos

Wherever a majority community complains about the “outsiders”, both sides carry certain perceptions about one another. The truth usually lies somewhere in between.

Milena’s worry is understandable. Stolipinovo, an area of Plovdiv with 50,000 Romani people is the largest Roma ghetto in Europe. The Plovdiv Mayor has called it ‘a Gypsy republic’. It is generally described as filthy and unsafe, with people living on top of garbage, children never going to school.  The non-payment of electricity bills is a genuine problem on which serious books have been written.

As I write this diary, Asenovgrad, another Bulgarian town, is organising protests every weekend. Following an incident in June, a few young Roma boys have been arrested. The protesting Bulgarians are demanding that all newly arrived Roma, more than 5000 of them, should be evicted and sent somewhere else. (Where to send people whom nobody wants?)

The root of many of these problems lies in the history of the Roma.

Discrimination, marginalisation, extermination

Europe has historically hated Romani people. Probably for their alien looks, for their loyalty to their language and nomadic culture.

In the 17^th century, ‘gypsy hunt’ was a form of public entertainment. The Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm, an autocrat, had permitted all adult gypsies to be hanged without trials.

Closer to our times, Hitler targeted Roma along with the Jews for extermination. In the holocaust, half a million Roma were killed, 21,000 gassed in the Auschwitz concentration camp alone.

Between 1970-90, Czechoslovakia forcefully sterilized thousands of Romani women.

A cover of a major magazine in Switzerland said: They come, they steal, they go. In some European countries, the Roma children are sent to special schools for the mentally lagging. In Bulgaria, Romania and some other countries, many Roma were forced to change names and ordered to hide their shacks behind concrete walls.

In France and Italy, Sarkozy and Berlusconi used the Gypsy problem as a tool in every election. They promised forceful eviction of Roma from their countries.  

Many Roma have no papers. They call themselves ‘no people with no nation’. Despite several generations having lived in Europe, they remain stateless. EU’s free movement laws don’t apply to them.

The Romani people are trapped in a vicious cycle. Living in ghettos, born to illiterate parents, speaking in Romani language, the children are deprived of good education. With no papers, the Roma are unable to get proper jobs. Many of them are street sweepers. Those who can’t get even these lowly jobs beg or steal.

The Roma we met in villages were very decent. They were cheerful and educated. They worked on the farms to earn their honest living; had one or two children; appeared to be well assimilated in Bulgarian society. However, the stereotype of Roma is a politically protected, good-for-nothing bunch of people with large families, drinking, stealing and pick-pocketing. A Bulgarian proverb says: One who doesn’t work must not eat. I suspect it is directed at the Roma.

Hitler wished to exterminate Jews, gays, disabled people and Roma as part of his holocaust campaign. Jews, gays and the disabled have since that time been rehabilitated, even gaining respect and dignity in many places. Gays can marry and adopt children in some countries. Developed countries make sure the disabled have access to most facilities denied them in the past. Jews are a strong political and financial force. Roma is the only category that continues to be discriminated against, maligned, persecuted and marginalised.

Worldwide population of Jews and that of Roma is almost the same – about 16 million people each. Europe alone has 11 million Roma. But Roma remain the poorest, most vulnerable Europeans. They face poverty, exclusion and discrimination.

Fifteen centuries ago, when they left India, they belonged to the lowest caste. They were the untouchables.

Tsigani, the Slavic word, comes from the Greek Atsingani, meaning untouchable. Except for the fact that they are in Europe, fifteen centuries later Romani are still untouchables.

Ravi