The Story of the Indian Crabs

So there was this shipment of crabs from India to the UK. So tells Kenneth, the host at our guest-house. There a whole shipload of these baskets, uncovered and filled to the brim. The crabs were all alive and accounted for. So this British customs officer comes over and asks the captain of the ship if the covers had been removed. “No sir, no covers,” replies the captain. Well, says the officer, “How is it that all thee crabs are alive and not one was lost at sea?” “Well, sir,” replies the captain, “these here are Indian crabs.”
“Yes, and so,” the officer leans in, not quite understanding the captain’s comment. So the captain explains, “these are Indian crabs, every time one of them claws its way to the top the others grab onto him and drag him back down.”

I tell this story, not because I think it’s particularly funny, or that I believe that the British officer is the real point of irony in the story, but more so to address an issue that has plagued me personally for the last few years. I spent a good part of my life (younger years) thinking everything Indian was lesser in quality than anything American. This is exactly what I was meant to believe- from my teachers, to classmates to just about anyone we came in contact with. But then came the epiphany: If everything Indian was lesser, and I came from Indian parents- I too was lesser in the minds of these people. Well…Bullshit.

Then it hit me while I briefly ran my own South Asian newspaper, that the people in the community were ready to shit on the project, because they themselves believed that the end result would just be mediocre. All the friends and community members who worked on the project believed something totally different; that here, along with some other new projects and organizations that were forming, we had a chance to create foundations for a community with a renewed sense of pride. We were trying to produce something good. No, not just something good but something great.

All our positive thinking vs. the negativity of the older generations in our community. It’s down right depressing really. A bunch of crabs that really dragged the project down- dragged me down.

So is it that the crabs in the story pulled each other back into the baskets because they were Indian? Or because that’s the nature of being a crab. Why is it that the Indian captain is so willing to share his negative insights with a British officer- of all people? How proud that officer must be, to justify his belief that the jewel in the crown was better off under tyranny.

And yet so many of our community go about their days making jokes and snide remarks about other Indians—remarks that they are willing to share with people from other groups before actually dealing with or making things better for those in their own. And for anyone trying to make things better in a way that doesn’t include our new obsession with IT, I find it ironic that we are viewed either as a threat to the status quo or naïve- or both.

Of course if anyone wants to witness the story of another type of Indian crabs, please go to VGP Golden Beach Resort outside of Chennai. There on the beach after winding your way through the amusement park, is a lovely larger than life papier maché umbrella there in the sand. Under which a security officer holds a whistle in his mouth with his left hand, blowing it at relatively constant intervals at anyone he thinks is doing something wrong. The right hand, however, is permanently under his balls scratching himself at a regular pace.