Notes from Washington D.C.

Bethesda is a leafy suburb nibbling into Washington D.C.. A porous boundary separates the two. Many of the capital’s power brokers and big-ticket journalists live here. It has for years been an annual pilgrimage: our daughter and her family live here. For me, these sojourns are also a return to the past — a double-decker kind of encounter. I spent a decade of my growing up years in the U.S., most of it in the nation’s capital.

It’s a changed landscape today, a world away from when I was studying in D.C.; it was one of the most boring places on earth then, culturally dead. Today, the Trump saga stays titillating, more so than the most outlandish political soap operas, whether House of Cards or Veep . Never has the cliché “Truth is stranger than fiction” rung so true. Political satirists might as well put away their pens for a bit: nothing they dream up can match what is unfolding on the small screen.

Robin Wright, the actress who plays Claire Underwood, the scheming and ambitious wife of the president, and occasional director of the Netflix series

House of Cards , complained in an interview with

Variety this summer that “Trump has stolen all of our ideas for Season 6.” Earlier, several episodes were Russia-related, with a political leader who might be a nod to Vladimir Putin. Even before the Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met the Russians — or was reported as having met them to find ways of pulling the carpet out from under Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Personal lives

My Washington was bereft of these scandals. Perhaps because they did not filter out from various inner circles. For us, Camelot was a sobriquet for John F. Kennedy’s administration, and the President a knight in shining armour. His straying — near and far afield — was kept under wraps. The Indian High Commissioner at the time, the late B.K. Nehru who was also a friend of the Kennedys, told me some years later that they all knew about his affairs and the Hollywood connection. But: “everybody kept the secrets”. Personal lives were, well, personal.

As for Indian compatriots (diplomats and a bit beyond), most were as dull as weak tea. Conversations seldom went beyond best bargains for washing machines and televisions: this was the time when even the word consumerism had not entered the Indian vocabulary. Indians visiting D.C. blatantly asked for discounts given to diplomats. I know because I was also a diplomat brat and my sister had to drive them to wherever the prices were right.

Social gatherings (Indians-only, usually) took place unfailingly, over chola, dahi bhalla, paneer and chicken curry — laid out in Tupperware containers. Homeland was transplanted — lock, stock, barrel and banter. It was the same smorgasbord, no matter whose home it was. The South Indians served sambar, vadas, green beans with coconut and curd rice. Cultural evenings were dominated by bad Bharatanatyam and blaring Hindi film music.

From a Kubla Khan fantasy

A decade or so before the last century rolled round, some kind of fairy must have waved her magic wand over the pockets of Little India: diplomats, students, academics and the odd budding entrepreneurs. From bargain-hunters and penny pinchers, the rapidly expanding Indian population metamorphosed into billionaires or near-billionaires and began to occupy the upper echelons of public life. The latest additions to this burgeoning tribe include Raj Shah, principal deputy press secretary to President Trump, and Manisha Singh, a lawyer likely to become the assistant secretary of state for economic policy. Former U.S. President Barack Obama had already inducted many Indian-Americans into public life. Young Indian-Americans can be found at many levels of Washington’s bureaucracy.

The real influx of desis to the Washington area, which includes neighbouring bits of Virginia and Maryland, really began after 9/11, when Homeland Security started giving out contracts. Young Indian IT experts and software specialists flocked to the region, especially Fairfax County. Earlier, federal bureaucracy had started farming out contracts, and desis were also given defence contracts.

A big cluster of billionaires and aspiring billionaires live in Potomac, a wealthy and sprawling suburb of D.C. in Maryland, fittingly called Potomacabad by those on the other side of the railway track because of the number of Indians who inhabit faux chateaux that could have popped out of a Kubla Khan fantasy, and obscenely huge mansions with towers and turrets and moats, the kind one sees in Disneyland.

Jay Gatsby comes to mind. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel was a cautionary tale about the American Dream. A growing tribe of desis in the D.C. area are now living this dream with second homes in Florida and private planes to take them there.

I almost miss the chola and paneer days.

The author has a lust for life, loves totting up experiences and writing about them, sometimes. She is also Editor of The Indian Quarterly .