I know I’m going to despise myself for the following statement, but it’s something I feel strongly about, so here goes.
I envy men.
Yuck! What a horrible thing to say. I feel my Mum should be shoving a Bird’s Eye chilli into my mouth the way she did when she caught any of her children swearing in English or Hindi.
So why does an independent woman, who is convinced that she doesn’t need a man in her life to be able to live, make such a disgustingly unfeminist statement?
There are various reasons — such as mechanics and building contractors never taking advantage of men — the most important of which is men never have to worry about kissing or hugging each other when a firm, friendly handshake will suffice in practically all situations (unless, of course, they’re rappers, in which case it’s a handshake and a half-hug with a hearty smack on the back).
Greeting etiquette feels like unchartered territory for someone such as myself, who is not fond of hugging or kissing people and is generally as graceful as a fish on terra firma.
As a child, it was the usual fare, where strange relatives would pinch your cheeks and force you to kiss them.
As a teenager, it was worse. You’ve got self-esteem and confidence issues, but you have to get over that in order not to offend anyone at family get-togethers.
I remember asking my Mum about who I should and shouldn’t greet at extended family functions. ”You say ‘namaste’ and kiss everyone,” she said threateningly.
”But what if I don’t know them — I can’t kiss complete strangers!”
”They will know you, even if you don’t know them, and you will not be disrespectful,” she said with a note of finality.
At the funeral of a particularly popular relative, my Mum’s distant family emerged. My Mum is a descendant of Sikhs — a mixture of Indian warrior and royal castes — and it shows. Barely anyone in our family is the typical short, skinny Indian that people are used to seeing. We’re tall and, if it wasn’t for our love of good food, we would probably be somewhat athletic.
At this funeral, there was a group of distant relatives who were unusually tall, even by our standards.
An elderly woman recognised my Mum and starting walking towards us. She looked about 7ft, but was probably 6ft3.
She hugged and kissed my Mum and then turned towards me. I was terrified. I mumbled a nervous ”namaste” and she bent down and took my face into her big rough, hands so that I was forced to look at her. As her face neared mine, I spotted a grisly-looking moustache. I knew that if I pulled away, my Mum would kill me right then and there and so at 15, I felt, for the first time, a moustache on my lips.
I’m convinced it was that incident that ruined my kissing karma for the rest of my life. There’s barely a situation when I’m not completely clumsy and awkward about greeting — even close friends and family — as hundreds of paranoid thoughts course through my brain.
When do you just hug someone to say hello? When do you politely peck them on the cheek? And how do you know when one of those prissy girls wants to do an air kiss? And what do you do in that most horrid of situations when a lady who seems to have had a liquid lunch nonchalantly lays a wet, sloppy one on your lips? Of course, if the person greeting you is European, then it looks like a friendly game of kissing ping-pong, where you have to put up with anything from two to four kisses on both cheeks.
And don’t be so naive as to think that hugging is any easier. Sometimes ladies just want to lightly embrace you where you barely feel any real contact with them, and at other times they latch on to you as if you’re a crutch and they’ve just twisted an ankle.
Worst is when you’re a girl with, um, fairly sizeable breasts and you hug a friend who’s equally endowed. Your breasts squash together, you retreat almost immediately because it feels a bit too weird and then you start slowly backing away from each other as you become suspicious of each other’s intentions.
And normally happy occasions such as birthdays are a potential minefield at work. ”Oh, it’s your birthday,” says a colleague as he starts walking towards you. So you stand up thinking that he wants to either kiss or hug you to wish you well and then the twerp walks right past you, probably wondering if he was meant to kiss or hug you.
A friendly handshake and every-thing would have been fine. You wouldn’t feel ridiculous and rejected and he wouldn’t wonder if you were keen on him.
When it comes to greeting, I invariably get the body language of the approaching person all wrong and I end up looking like someone trying to dodge a flying cockroach.
Cross-cultural greetings are just as tricky. I always err on the side of caution when it comes to greeting someone of another race because I’m never really sure whether they are as un-biased and liberal as they make themselves out to be, and I invariably end up thinking, ”maybe they don’t want to be in such close contact with an Indian” and then, because I’m thinking along those lines, my blood starts to boil as I question why I associate with people who might be racist and then I’m completely disarmed when the person in question hugs and kisses me with truly genuine warmth.
So, if you ever bump into me, know that I won’t hold it against you if you greet me with a friendly handshake, and don’t think any less of me if I attempt to do the same. But if we do happen to kiss or hug, then don’t be surprised if I accidentally head-butt you in the process.