Coming into Larnaca, there is a family of three on the plane, father, mother, daughter, their accents, when their voices float across the aisle, sound South Indian. It’s been a while since I travelled to this part of the world, and I hadn’t expected to see many Indians. The tourist season has barely begun, but at Nicosia, in the markets, near the old city, I see many men in their 20s, some much older, wearing hairstyles and plumage you see only in tourist brochures. The confidence with which they loiter tells me they are not tourists.
I ask the Indian High Commissioner, Ravi Bangar, the Indian question: How many? He says there are about 2,700 Indian students in Cyprus, mostly from Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. I can almost see him making the inverted quotes gesture when he says ‘students’. The Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides is more forthright: “We are prepared to welcome students from India, but true students,” he says.
The marriage mart
We hear the emphasis. And he explains, “They come here to get married to Romanian and Bulgarian girls so that they can get into Europe.” Later, the Interior Minister furnishes the break-up of the 5,413 Indians in Cyprus. Family members of EU nationals: 276; students and teachers: 1,962; family re-unification: 144; family members of Cypriots: 90; employees in foreign companies: 132. And so on. Visitors: 37.
The Indian High Commission is at 3 Intiras Gkanti Street, which is how Indira Gandhi is kind of spelt locally. I ask Bangar: ‘Such a pretty country, do Indians come to shoot films here?’ No, he says, but Hindi film songs hold great sway in these parts. He gets on the Net and shows me a YouTube video of a yearning song called ‘Madhubala’ written and sung by Stelios Kazantzidis, after he saw the actress on screen. By Bangar’s count, about 118 or 119 Hindi film songs were ‘incorporated’—those invisible quotes again—into Greek.
I remember the opposite: R.D. Burman’s ‘Mehbooba’ from Sholay , with Gabbar looking on with undisguised intent at a writhing Helen, a song more or less ‘incorporated’ from Demis Roussos’ insistent ‘Say you love me, love me, love me’ or perhaps from ‘Ta Rialia’ sung by the Cypriot Michalis Violaris. That evening, Bangar drops off a CD with songs in Hindi followed by their Greek version. There’s Mukesh’s ‘Sab kuch seekha hamne’ from Anari ; there’s ‘Ghar aaya mera pardesi’ from Awaara .
The Cypriots seem fond of Shankar Jaikishan. I am more interested to see ‘Yamma Yamma Yamma’ from China Town on the CD, the song where Helen, looking good enough to launch a thousand five hundred and two ships in a dress that could only have been Velcroed on her, sways with a tambourine, and Shammi Kapoor in a fez completely changes the rhythm, pace and intent of the song midway.
We take a mandatory photograph of ourselves next to Gandhi’s bust in Nehru Street, which houses the Cypriot Parliament. We pose next to a couple of tattered Indian flags in the buffer zone where peacekeepers try to prevent, among other things, too much small game hunting. But I cannot bring myself to visit any of the Indian restaurants in Cyprus and sample their fare.
There is at least one in every city. Kalimera India in Limassol; India Gate, India India, in Nicosia; Oriental Fusion, Yummy India in Larnaca, apparently run by an Indian with a Bulgarian wife. Then there is Kohinoor and Poppadums in Paphos. The last, I learn is not, as the name suggests, a South Indian restaurant.
The absinthe drinker
I don’t know if any of the Indians who sought visas for Cyprus have sampled the fare from these restaurants. You may wonder why so many Indian restaurants in Cyprus? The answer perhaps lies elsewhere: in the tourist traffic from the UK, where Balti cuisine is popular, and in the Cypriots who studied there and developed a taste for it.
I spend my time more usefully, developing a taste for ouzo, the local version of absinthe. It is my sad duty to report, though, that I could not find the T-shirt I went looking for with the legend: “I don’t remember the question. But Ouzo is the answer.”
