Vikrum Sequeira, a desi American who’s spending some time teaching kids from Bombay slums, unpacks the desi head wiggle:
Affirming your Indian identity: … Since I was wearing sunglasses and talking to foreigners, many of the Indians wondered about my identity: was I a foreigner, an NRI, or an Indian? To answer their question, I made eye contact and waggled at them. No further explanation was necessary…Making friends: … When I finally bought a phone card from him (after weeks of reciprocal wiggling), I realized that the weeks of waggling had paid off. Sagar, the phone-wallah, gave me a giant smile and treated me like an old friend…
Disarming people: … Once I was walking in a slum near Colaba and a few men gave me a look signifying, “What are you doing here?” I gave them the wiggle and they smiled and let me pass without a problem.
Here’s another gem: a commenter explains why religious tiles festoon Indian stairwells.
You will find these kind of tiles [stuck] to stairwalls [throughout] the country [in] almost 60-70% of govt. offices, apts, commercial complexes… [Paan] eaters used to spit on the walls instead of dustbins… so you may find red colors on the stairwalls where there are no tiles.
On a more serious note, Sequeira contrasts street crime with riots in Bombay:
In August 2003 in San José, Costa Rica, a seventeen year old was stabbed to death near my apartment because he refused to give his cell phone to the assailants who mugged him… Bombay is not like that… I have seen women casually walking through poor areas adorned with thousands of dollars of jewelry. A woman can walk through Bombay wearing gold earrings and a diamond ring and not be in any danger…… While the Bombay volcano does not spew lava on a regular basis, it is an enormous volcano… What is scary is that many people believe that an eruption is imminent.
