I was taken aback when my father, putting down his glass of Scotch, asked me to prepare a cup of tea for him. When I expressed my astonishment over the whisky-tea mishmash, he angrily warned me never to question a Punjabi’s chaah. “We Punjabis are peculiar; we need chaah in winter, we need it in summer.” I was dealing with one determined to epitomise the tea-drinking typecast.
Punjabis have come a long way from the days of the good old Patiala peg. Stereotypes now revolve around plates of chicken-shicken, daal-shaal, and roti-shoti, though daar-shaaru continues to be a key ingredient of the typical Punjabi household, where elders sporting shawls over their shoulders can be seen asking for yet another round of fried aubergines. We are undeniably on the path of evolution from the days when drunk uncles would feel the urge to try their luck at the Queen’s language, or the glass-on-the-head ballet, where the entire physique with the accompanying glass is balanced precariously on drunken legs, although I’ve read of it more than I’ve actually witnessed the spectacle. No, we have come far from those days. Every second Punjabi youth can be seen talking of the IELTS examination with hopes of migrating to the new addendum to the Motherland, Kanneda. Meanwhile, the bourgeois population would be talking of moral issues like one’s ‘conscious’ when deliberating over significant subjects like one’s ‘carrier.’
Wherever we go, as a Punjabi I am proud to say we are the best when it comes to small talk, most of it hogwash and involves profound discussions on the weather. After spending some years south of the Vindhyas, I was in for a culture shock when I realised the trivialities we can end up discussing. Aunties and uncles take up prime time in discussions. For a third person, nicknames assigned to our relatives would be the zenith of comedy.
The collection of Punjabi stereotypes has evolved over the years and though we still derive pleasure by narrating our misfortunes to others, one can always trust a Punjabi to laugh his heart out. If our folks are notorious for their appetites, they are equally revered for their munificent hospitality. Accuse us of epitomising a stereotype and you are bound to see us embody a couple more, with a radiant smile. We take pride in being the best in the world; we have our stereotypes to prove that.