The Hindu Business Line : The Indian tourist has `arrived'

IT was an enchanting evening... the large expanse of the serene backwaters was inviting and the hour-long `sunset cruise' offered by the Taj Garden Retreat at Kumarakom in Kerala was temptation enough to set out in a big motorised boat to take a peek at the setting sun. Nestling in a cosy corner of the Vembanad Lake, said to be the second largest freshwater lake in India after Orissa's Chilka lake, the boat was elegantly done up in thatch and bamboo in typical Kerala fashion. It could comfortably seat around 20 people and the one-hour ride on the gurgling waters, surrounded by water hyacinth all around, proved to be a soothing therapy for the body, mind and soul. With South Indian classical music thrown in, what more could one ask for?

But as the setting sun painted a pretty picture, another one emerged too and with all the force of the colours of a rainbow... that of a resurgent India.

Not a single person on the boat was a foreigner... for a change the entire group was Indian. And the kind of expensive video and digital cameras that almost everybody possessed, told its own story... not to mention the glitzy mobile phones, which irritatingly enough shattered the serenity of the ride each time one of them rang.

Anyway, here was a group of people who could casually afford a Taj holiday. Just prior to our departure, another group of domestic tourists from the hotel had set off on a luxurious one-bedroom houseboat, with plush sofas, a swank sit-out on the deck and a bar. It costs a cool Rs 20,000 to hire this luxury boat for a couple of hours!

On our own boat, little kids ran up and down, attempting to capture the rays of the setting sun on their parents' cameras, without their guardians batting an eyelid or showing the kind of anxiety that the earlier generation would have surely displayed while giving a camera to a kid, and that too on a moving boat!

One couldn't help noticing that the watchmen and guards posted on the sprawling property were no longer indifferent to Indian tourists. As you walked around and came across one of them, they greeted you with a cheerful: `How are you, madam? Is your stay comfortable here?'

Even at the Taj Malabar in Kochi, where one had spent the previous two days, it was almost entirely an `India story'. For breakfast, the coffee shop was abuzz with mostly Indians and this gave an indication that the bulk of the hotel's occupants were desi. While one felt happy to notice this, one only hoped that we learn to speak a little softly when in public areas of a hotel, such as a coffee shop or a restaurant. The contrast was too jarring to miss; the goras conversed in soft tones, but our very own Punjabi and Gujarati guests screamed and roared with laughter oblivious of the fact that there were other diners in the room!

Perhaps the only race of people who talk even more loudly than us are the Chinese... the mind went back a couple of years to one's visit to Shanghai, where as a traveller one had found obnoxious the noise levels in restaurants where the patrons were mostly locals. One could not help thinking with a shudder... do the westerners think of Indians too as a noisy people?

Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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