The cartoon landscape of the Non-Resident Indian

With the plebs, there is at least an ‘honest’ sort of stupidity about them. It is rich NRIs who are far more embarrassing. Last week, two rich Indians from the UK visited India. The first was Lord Lall, a self-made millionaire who came to launch an excruciating book he has written, Rich Man, Happy Man on how he made his money.

The prose is lyrical and vulgar: lyrical in self-praise and vulgar in the boastful enumeration of material possessions. But people like Lord Lall, let’s be honest, have absolutely no idea how dreadful they appear. He is simply unrefined. There is nothing sneaky or devious going on here – the man just wants to show his fortune off to Indians and is going about it in a crude way.

The most disagreeable species of NRI are people like Raj Loomba from the UK. He came to flaunt his wealth and connections last week. That’s coarse, of course, but manageable; too much refinement all the time can be a bit of bore too. But what is objectionable is Loomba using poor Indian widows for his own self-aggrandisement.

Mr Loomba runs a UK-based charity for poor Indian widows. He raises money to help educate their children. He swaggered around Delhi like a man whose charitable works were the wonder of the world. In fact, his Trust – the Shrimati Pushpawati Loomba Memorial Trust – has educated only 1,100 children over seven years. Before the charity dinner in the capital last Saturday, the Trust had raised between 800-900,000 pounds. It has spent only 300,000 pounds. The rest is in a corpus fund. Look at it any which way, 1,100 children over seven years is a seriously paltry figure.

Loomba has managed to persuade Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to be president of his Trust and Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson to be a patron. Along with around 30 peers, MPs and baronesses – Loomba managed to get Blair and Branson to come to India to promote the Trust in India and raise funds here.

A look at the Trust website is illuminating. On every page, he describes himself as ‘The Great Philanthropist.’ Photographs abound of Loomba and family posing with the great and good in British society. There is not much about widows and their children. It was the same during his visit. The ostensible objects of his noble impulses were invisible during Loomba’s splashy entre into Delhi society.

At a press conference held at FICCI, the object of the exercise was to congratulate Loomba on his compassion. This exercise in self-glorification went on for an hour and half. Why oh why do so many Indians in the UK remain impervious to the best things about the British? The humour? The self-deprecation? The self-mockery?

The press conference ended with no questions allowed. Loomba took his British worthies upstairs for a nice luncheon. Journalists were served lunch separately in a pantry – an act of outrageous segregation that Loomba would never have dared to do in London.

At a photo-opportunity for Blair and Branson at Loomba’s Prithviraj Road apartment, about a dozen widows and their children were bussed in. The group gathered on the balcony. Loomba’s daughter and son squeezed themselves into the frame. Yet another picture with Cherie for the family album.

‘‘Can you get the photographers to take a wide angle picture to get me and my brother in?’’ the daughter asked the Trust PR agent from London who was choreographing the event. She paid no attention to the widows or children. They were props. When the photo-op was over, the widows were ushered out of the flat onto the stairwell.

As the widows waited, Loomba’s English dignitaries began to arrive for lunch with his wife Veena. Five minutes later, the widows left the flat, without being given lunch. It was 1.30 pm. It was their big day out. They were dressed in their best saris and shawls. It was an occasion to be given a treat and be fussed over by The Great Philanthropist. But he had no further use for them now that the photo-op was over.

It would be impudent to impugn his motives or to suggest that the Trust is a vehicle for Loomba’s self-seeking. If we started digging into the motives of every good act, who among us would escape a whipping? As long as people are helped, motives don’t matter. But his lack of personal interest in the widows was striking.

If Loomba had bothered to observe the widows who came to his home, he would have seen a decency and gentleness that is humbling. Wealthy NRIs could learn a thing or two from ordinary Indians if they weren’t so busy preening themselves. Asked why they hadn’t been given lunch, one young widow looked down shyly: ‘‘It doesn’t matter, we had breakfast before coming and we’ll go and have lunch at home’.

Now, that Mr Loomba, is dignity.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Delhi and London