What a fuss-and-pother was made by Nigel Farndale, presumably a Britisher, (in The Telegraph Group, London 2009) in his criticism of Michelle Obama’s so-called faux pas in having hugged the Queen of England (The Island, 12 April 09). Incidentally it is also seen in that picture in The Island, that the Queen too had her arm around Michelle’s waist. It is acceptable that each society has its customs. The Thais do not touch the heads of others, though we would fondly run our fingers through the hair of a kid. There are a few Anglophiles amongst us who scorn the Thais for their perpetual smiles and having lived in Thailand for several months with a simple Thai family, I know how warm their behaviour really is and they should be thankful Thailand was never colonized by the West to have their anachronisms corrupting the essentially simple, lovable, human Thai society. Nor would I pat the Pope or a Mahanayake on his back and say, "Hi bud, hy’a doin?"

But what on the other hand struck me and warmed the auricles of my heart was the simple, spontaneous gesture of affection that Michelle showed by her hug of the sweet old Queen. Farndale had not devoted a single sentence in appreciation of that warm act of Michelle, but chose to take it as an infringement of the cold British don’t-touch-or-hug-me protocol. He tries to legitimise his comments by dropping the pompous, high-falutin words, Evolution and Pilgrim Fathers, in trying to psycho-analyse a simple, warm, lovable human act. I would rather entertain that as an expression of a simple human feeling than all the artifices of an outmoded British society which some of us ape.

If Farndale chose to quibble on Michelle’s spontaneous display of simple affection, let him also remind himself of the sordid colonial history of his English ilk who wallowed in ceremony and in do’s-and-don’ts of English aristocracy, that legitimized such piffle and brow-beat us natives with their vacuous air of superior aloofness. The quintessential Englishman, Lord Chesterfield, in his Letters to his Son, once wrote, that it is necessary for us (Englishmen) to display aloofness, some ceremony to the native hoi polloi to keep them in their lowly place, for as Trevor Fishlock wrote in his book India File, that is how the handful of British was able to wield their ‘power’ on millions of baffled, hypnotized, simple-minded Indians in maintaining their clutches on the Jewel in the Crown (until their great patriots, including Subhas Chandra Bose, my hero, came on the scene to dismantle the British Empire). Some time ago, I read of the Swedes who with their aseptic, non-hugging habits had to be taught how to restore the human touch (literally and metaphorically) by classes, like our yoga classes, teaching them how to touch other Swedish human beings. If Farndale wishes to behave like that and have a meaningless, synthetic frozen smile on his stiff British upper lip, he is free to do so, but let him be advised to allow people who still retain some degree of genuine human simplicity to express themselves according to their uncorrupted ways.

Some sanity was restored by, presumably, another Britisher Patrick Kidd, writing in the Times on Line: "If MCC members, with their bacon-and egg striped blazers, or umpires dressed in white coats like surgeons, or even the modern coloured- pyjama-wearing players, can wear fancy dress, those in the plebs’ (plebians’) seats should be allowed to wear their own bizarre costumes" (Patrick Kidd, The Island, 13 April, 09).

Of course the unrepentant Anglophiles in our soap-bubbly high-society, transparent as it is, would vigorously defend the saw-dust and tinsel of Western trappings they flaunt as indices of civility, with perhaps the British Foreign Minister David Miliband (The Congenital Idiot or is he pretending to be one?, according to SL Gunasekera The Island, 9 April, 09) as their role-model. Incidentally, Farndale has not yet commented on Miliband addressing the Foreign Minister of India as Pranab on his recent tour to India; I am not aware if the Indians quibbled on the faux pas of this patronizing political puppy.

I defend my ground and my plea is that let us devote our energies to discussing more worthwhile things than mere etiquette and table-manners, and bacon-and-egg striped cricketing blazers, to try to make this wretched world a better place to live in with a greater degree of humanity and simple humaneness. I wrote another piece titled, This thing we call ‘breeding’ which I will add as a postscript here, as relevant to my views:

"I was chatting with my academic neighbour, after on one the many student fracas in our ‘universities’. The question came up, ‘these fellows don’t seem to have any breeding’ referring of course to the mythical socializing, civilised demeanour that affluence, and Aubrey Collette’s Anglophilic, Eurocentric C7 culture are claimed to confer on its inhabitants. But then the contradictions were obvious. Look at the so-called ‘upper crust’ of our so-called high society who are supposed to have this nebulous thing called ‘breeding’, pots of money, knowledge of how to use forks and spoons, posh dresses, fast cars and what have you. Refer to our daily press and see the mayhem, the rotting finance companies and credit cards, the stench of corruption, created by these bred’, pedigree-named, high society folk who flaunt the nation’s highest accolades before their wretched names. I have always felt, through repeated personal experience, that the most civilized people we have are the simple, rural villagers who have no upper-crust table manners (they don’t even have forks and spoons to eat with), no flashy dresses, no fast cars, no fraudulent finance companies, no phoney quirks of Anglicised behaviour, but just their simple ways. One swallow does not make a summer but let me recall one swallow who made my day: I was traveling in the 3rd class of the Kandy-Colombo train (I’m not that rich and anyway, I prefer 3rd class, for interesting conversations, to Observation Cars with their high-society) that was crowded. I stood in the corridor and a young man came up to me and had a chat. He was an unemployed rural youth who had come to Colombo to look for a job. At the next station he got down and returned from the platform boutique to the carriage. He had bought two sweets, and he gave me one. Need I say more?"