Mr. Ahmed

I am sorry I couldn’t get back to you guys before. But I was very much tied up with a family-related issue.

A number of questions have been raised about this article. I shall try to answer a couple of them:

Q. Was this a true story?

In essence, yes. The garnishings were made up.

Q. What did I mean by the sentence – “He has no idea what he’s dealing with”.

Precisely that. That if we, with our origins in the Indian subcontinent, could be fooled by Mr. Ahmed’s educated exterior, then the U.S. president might not have a complete understanding about the true nature of many of these people.

However, this was a human reaction on our part, no doubt coloured by similar experiences we had previously.

This does not imply that the efforts at spreading democracy will not succeed. What I tried to say is that it is an impediment the U.S. President might not be aware of.

We hope democracy spreads everywhere.

We hope this “us” and “them” attitude disappears with time.

Here’s hoping that mankind will succeed in realizing the words of the English poet John Donne:

“No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee. ”


Thank you for reading my story and commenting on it.

Re: # 51
Although this is rather late in the day I couldn`t let it pass by. Bhattacharya = bhatta (as in the North Indian/Gujarati Bhatts, the Kashmiri Butts - of course, they`re mainly Muslim now) + acharya. Bhattacharya is a title (not a surname) usually given to a priestly family - not all Bengali Brahmins being professional priests - so that a priest - purohit - is often called Bhattacharya Mahashai, even though his surname may be Mukherjee/Banerjee/Chatterjee/Ganguly/whatever (as long as it is a Brahmin one! Of course, for the sake of convenience I`m using the anglicized versions of the names.) And not all Bhattacharyas come from Bhatpara. Bhatpara is no doubt the place that Bengalis always associate with very conservative Brahmins, but there are plenty of Bandopadhyayas, Mukhopadhyayas, etc., from there. Incidentally, Bhatpara is in West Bengal, but most of the Bhattacharyas I know personally are originally from East Bengal or Assam. Sorry for being so pedantic - I know this is not really relevant to the issue!
Bengali Brahmins don`t often have the same surname as North Indian Brahmins - wonder why? Apart from the above surnames, they can be Sharmas, Mishras, even Pandeys and Shukuls, but never, as far as I know, Trivedi, Dwivedi, Tripathi. etc (except by domicile!).
Although things were very different about a century ago, today the educated Bengali middle-class person is much less caste-conscious than North Indians. Again, I wonder why?
But Dhruva`s story was so real. I`ve met so many people like his Afghan, and not only Muslims.