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An Indian Abroad in the UK
There's a Union Jack flying outside my window, juxtaposed against a generally dismal sky, lead gray and swollen with cold rain, just yearning to ruin the aspirations of fresh-faced visitors who would love to picnic in the back garden.
I suppose that's as good a mood as any for writing this post, having spent a week settling in, staring wide-eyed at the way the odd billion or so first-world denizens spend their lives, even in a country that's in genteel decline from its glory days.
Long-time readers here might recall my previous posts from my time in India, as I went from a fresh-faced intern to a cynical, bitter survivor of what passes for medical care there. For those who don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of all moderately-decent posts ever posted on /r/TheMotte, here's a link to my repost on /r/Medicine, since Reddit's abominable search function makes it impossible to dredge up the original, which had one of the few comments Scott makes in these parts on it, still a highlight of my Reddit career:
https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/j30vj2/my_experience_as_a_frontline_doctor_in_a_3rd/
At the time of writing, I was still yearning for escape from India, a squalid, small-minded and parochial place (although, if I had really wanted to, I could have mostly insulated myself from the worst of it, all that takes is tons of money and a willingness to ignore the human shit and suffering in-between expeditions from one enclave to anotjer).
And I'm not entirely home free, so far, I've passed one of the two licensing exams I need to practice in and emigrate to the UK, but pass that one I did, after studying harder than I ever have in my life (because I cared goddamnit, unlike all the times before when I was coasting through simply because it was expected of me), and in an example of positive reinforcement, it paid off, and I'm spending over a month in the UK, prepping for the second, which can only be given in-country because it's OSCE based.
But I've actually left India, and spent enough time here that I can collect some of my thoughts and musings while the awe has yet to wear off.
You know the first thing I noticed after landing here?
How fucking clean London was. No, really, some Indian cities have tried to clean up their act, but the sheer neatness and tidiness of the place was deeply disconcerting to me. I felt as if I was intruding somewhere I wasn't meant to be, a place kept lovingly clean with the devotion given only to private property back home.
The airport experience wasn't particularly different, most countries take pains to set high standards for their international terminals, being the place where many foreigners make their first and only impressions.
But having boarded the tube, still clutching our luggage close, I stared intently at everything around me, how clean and well-maintained it all was, the drastic improvement in the quality and grammar of all the text I could read, the superior typography of all the advertising.
Relatives who had been in the country had also instilled paranoid notions of how run-down and dangerous the neighborhood (full of immigrants) I was going to live in was. Either they were completely ignorant, or simply clinging to an outdated perception of the place, but it was a sleepy, pretty place, only the skin colors of the locals and endless arrays of convenience stores touting their "afro-caribbean" meats and spices that reinforced that. Still plenty of happy families and expensive cars parked outside, so I quickly dismissed their paranoia.
Oh, and closely tied for second place in terms of things that leapt out at me is how utterly multicultural the UK is. I certainly had heard about it, it would be lax of me to plan to move over without doing my research, and I was somewhat concerned about being buttonholed with other South Asians, but the sheer ease and comfort with which people of grossly different ethnicities interact was cool to see!
Third, but certainly not the least, was how streamlined and easy to use the public transport system was. The London tube certainly seemed intimidating with its half a dozen different lines, but once I examined the maps more carefully, I was able to get the hang of it quite quickly.
The buses run on time, with minimal hassle, and just while the prices certainly seemed steep to my Indian sensibilities, they make sense in context. Not seeing people crushing each other or arguing with a conductor about stops was a shock, leaving aside the fact that the buses themselves didn't drive like maniacs haha.
And London is goddamn empty, no seriously, even if I'm staying in a relatively sleepy part of the place, Central London was practically deserted I'm comparison to the metropolitan cities I'm used to. Traffic seemed minimal, and pedestrians were hardly the crushing mass I expected. Perhaps I need to visit New York again in order to dispel my uneasiness..
And people are generally law abiding. My girlfriend and I probably jaywalked and gave some of the local drivers an aneurysm before we realized that people actually cross the streets in an organized manner, whereas zebra crossings are more of a suggestion than a rule back home.
Oh, and nobody let loose on their horn at us, in fact, I hardly hear them at all! This is fucking alien to me, in India, horns are considered to be an extension of the driver, and the first and last resort for self expression.
Driving fast? Toot.
Driving slow? Toot.
Feeling annoyed? TOOT
Just want to express your sheer gratitude for existence and having a motor vehicle? A little toot for the road.
That sheer cacophony is the Cosmic Microwave Background Noise as far as I'm concerned, and its absence is unsettling haha.
On top of that, people seem quite polite and considerate, albeit that's been my experience with people in general. I guess I look too intimidating to fuck around with, but plenty of people offered helpful unsolicited advice when we ran into issues due to our ignorance as tourists, and it was all deeply appreciated.
We did a round of the local supermarkets, and I was absolutely blown away by the sheer variety on offer, like goddamn, you lot have better Indian cuisine than we do! And it's so convenient, everything comes nicely packaged, you can just buy freshly prepared tandoori chicken without needing to mix up half a dozen spices at home. I can empathize with Gorbachev, the West really does things better.
Also, being a couple is absolutely stress free. My girlfriend and I have been extremely risqué even back home, doing absolutely Bollywood-tier stunts like kissing on a moving train while I was on the platform. Thankfully, nobody made a fuss about it then, barring some dirty looks, but the fact of the matter is that nobody cares about us here, I can kiss her and hug her out in the streets or in the bus without a single fuck given (which I can't say about back in our room ;) )
There's hardly any dust to speak of, I could barely open my windows back home without ending up with noticeable coatings, whereas it's been a week and we don't even need to vacuum or dust.
There's also a notable lack of crushing poverty, it's hard to tell at a glance who is working-class, struggling, or quite wealthy. No signs of any homeless, not that the winter would be kind to them.
But you know what I miss the most, something ubiquitous in India?
Bidets.
Toilet paper is absolutely barbaric. Like seriously, what quirk of history made it so that wiping your ass with paper of all things is taken for granted? How does anyone keep their ass remotely clean?? At this point, the modern Western fetish of eating ass is probably the largest health hazard I can think of hahaha. That's the first thing I'm going to get when I find a place of my own, mark my words.
(This paragraph ought to elevate my post to the level of Culture Warring, if nothing else does haha)
But throwing some heavy shade on my happiness is the slow-motion implosion of the NHS, my employer-to-be for the foreseeable future. The situation is getting pretty bad, elective lists for surgery were already backed up for 2 weeks, now there's serious thought being given to simply unloading patients in the parking lot from the ambulance given the lack of room indoors. People spending a dozen hours in the A and E is commonplace, and even a day or more is a distressingly common occurrence. There are plans to strike in Jan, which I'm not able to participate in, but you bet your ass I would if I could. Things are rapidly becoming untenable, with either a massive shakeup (or more likely a collapse of the NHS followed by privatization) being on the cards.
And you know what? If the NHS did fail, it would still be superior to conditions back home. Please, read my previous post if you want to know what healthcare looks like for a billion odd people, with maybe a couple hundred million able to receive care to a standard that wouldn't provoke a lynch mob in the West.
And the UK is far from the richest part of the West. Americans have significantly more wealth, and salaries are pathetic compared to their US counterparts.
So what if it's in (debatable) decline? As painful as it must seem, there's just so much room before you even approach Third World conditions. Like seriously, you guys have no idea how much worse things can get before it gets that bad.
At any rate, I'm just grateful that the end of my time in India is in sight, and I'm studying my ass off for my last exam, motivated by my sheer dissatisfaction at home, and even more by the absolute utopia that the UK is in comparison. (My girlfriend wishes to add that in her absence I'd be eating microwaved meals and hardly studying, so much love to her 😘)
Here's to things not getting as bad as home, and may I not have to refer to India as that any longer!
You can buy a portable bidet if you are staying in temporary accommodation. Turkish life hacks for you
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One of my bird-classes in college was "Sex and Sexuality". The professor was strongly against eating ass. I just can't abide without it myself, but I agree 100% about the lack of bidets being monstrous. My solution has always been to start having sex in the shower prior to tossing salad, I don't think there's a way to responsibly do it otherwise.
Are you particularly tall? Punjabi?
In any case, glad you've (pretty much) made it!
Bengali in fact, but I suppose that there some latent genes for height that were lurking somewhere, probably stunted for many generations by poor diets. Add in the beard, broad shoulders and deep voice, and nobody really messes with me.
And thank you for the well wishes, hopefully with this over it'll be smooth sailing from here on out!
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Welcome to London, and happy to hear that you like it.
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I took it for granted that people were generally aware that PDA was a very bad idea in India, but if that's news to you, I don't mind elaborating:
In general, absolutely! People being outright lynched for it is hardly unheard of, and some kind of violence being inflicted on them is a daily occurrence!
That's just the extrajudicial punishment, there are vague laws against public indecency that are capriciously applied against you if some police officer has an itchy ballsack, or an urge to get a few extra rupees as bribes that day.
You might not be safe from your own family, in some parts, honor killings are rampant in some rural parts of India, and even in more metropolitan regions, you're risking grave disapproval, which can be of serious consequence if you're not already established with a job and independent wealth.
As is the case for pretty much every sweeping statement made of a country of a billion+ people, the severity of the infraction depends on specific circumstances.
Super posh area full of liberal Indians? Think a mall, nightclub or an airport? Nobody gives a shit.
Middle class area where it's not expected? Anything ranging from disapproving looks, tuts, busybodies inquiring "Do your parents lnow?", to insults and being harangued by the kind of middle aged men and women who have nothing better to do.
Relatively poor and backward area, somewhere out in the boonies? The above, plus a very real risk of being beaten up and even killed!
I'm less afraid of it than most, but even I very much acknowledge the danger. We've done it in quasi-acceptable places, but a railway station is absolutely in the second or third group.
If I had to guess why I got away with it, it's because it was a quick kiss or two, and not some long passionate smooch while bending her over, that would have earned jeers at the least, plus I'm a 6 foot tall, bearded and relatively well built guy, if anyone wanted to pick a fight with me, they at least need to think if it's worth it.
But in general, it's a pretty risky game to play. We're just head over heels in love and simply didn't care at the time.
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Blame the Chinese!
On the other hand.
Any thoughts on the really nice Japanese bidets? I miss them after having a taste of absolute asshole luxury.
Can't say I've tried the Japanese style, I kinda like the flexibility of the hand shower style, gets in those hard to reach spots ya know?
But yes, as is tradition since 2020, we must blame the Chinese for what ails our assholes haha
The really fancy ones will massage your anal sphincter with high pressure water while you control it with buttons on the side of the toilet! It can be very accurate.
Also the toilet seat is heated!
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I'll never forget the first time I went to the restroom at the University in Japan. The first stall had the fanciest toilet I'd ever encountered, with a wall of buttons controlling among other things the bidet settings. The second stall was just a trench in the floor.
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This is probably worthy of a Wellness Wednesday thread, but add me to the list of newly-converted bidet fans. I decided to try one out a few months ago, and holy shit (heh), you are right that after experiencing a bidet, toilet paper seems barbaric. I will never live without a bidet again if I can help it.
And you absolutely do not need a plumber to install one. A modestly priced model like you can order online or get at Home Depot just takes literally 10 minutes and a screwdriver to install.
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So what you're saying is that London is clean and polite, except for the assholes.
I don't know if I'm allowed to hand out honorary certificates of Britishness, not being a citizen myself, but I feel like you deserve one for that joke haha
Oh, that's nice. I'll have to throw that in the sock draw next to my British passport.
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What did they ever do to deserve becoming a bong?
Jokes aside yes the lack of bidets is a big problem, every time you go to the toilet you basically have to assault your ass afterwards...
It's not too much of a problem to get installed once you find your own place, but still any public toilets you use like at work or in shopping centres etc. still won't have them.
And yes, people in the west, even at the very bottom of the food chain still have it pretty good in global terms. Merely having nationality of a western country sets a pretty high floor on how shitty your life can get as long as you don't try and actively harm yourself.
I was outright constipated for 2 days because I was dreading having to use it after I flew in :(
Eh, if all else fails, I'll stick my bum out the window and let the British weather do its thing, it never failed me in that regard.
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Well there is a dietary component. If you have enough fiber it's not unusual to have nothing in need of much cleanup.
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Once you acclimate to London, I recommend visiting Vienna. You'd be like: what? why did I ever think London was clean!!
I very much appreciate posts like yours, which give a personal, unusual (to me) in-depth perspective on something that I regard as a given. I was in India some years back for over a month, and I still remember coming out of Los Angeles airport (LAX) and being stunned how clean it is. How clean the air is. And the water--I can drink it straight from the tap! And the LA traffic... so orderly! Cars stay in their lane! Cows are nowhere on the freeway!
Best of luck to you and your girlfriend.
I hope to act on your recommendation! One of the underrated benefits of living in the UK is just being able to hop over to the continent and travel freely in the EU. There's a lot I'd love to see.
And thank you for the kind words, albeit they provoke anxiety that I'll need to find a new schtick on hard-hitting social commentary when my time in India becomes a distant memory haha
(I completely forgot about drinking the tap water, but to be fair, I used to do that in India too, people were probably excessively paranoid about it, though foreign bellies might not appreciate the senriment)
I know perhaps ten Kiwis who came to London on working visas to use it as a base to visit the rest of Europe. It's a popular strategy.
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Wait how are you having your "so this is the first world" moment if you have already been to the US, that too NYC?
Is London just that futuristic or am I missing something?
NYC is disgusting. The subway is dirty, and it smells bad. The sidewalks are dirty with the effluents of the trash bags left right outside, without even putting them in any kind of bins or containers. Americans are, as a general rule, dressed and groomed like slobs by European standards (not to mention high frequency of obesity, which is disgusting in and of itself), but in the busy places of the metros, you additionally have a lot of hobos and crazies, behaving erratically and generally presenting disgusting sight.
New York City is probably one of the worst places to tout as a high example of classy first world. It does have a lot going for this, and, to be fair, is much nicer inside the buildings than at the street level, but clean and nice it ain’t.
If there is one place where this isn't true then that's NYC. People are insanely well dressed and fit. Both the rich and the poor.
Yep
Yep. My first thought when I arrived in NYC was that it feels like home. (my 3rd world city in India)
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It was a long, long time ago.
Hint: The NYC skyline was quite different!
Lets hope you don't bring the same fate to London.
Let's be honest, is anyone really going to miss the Shard? ;)
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No you didn't. Another thing you may come to appreciate about British life: people are free to make their own informed decisions about when it is or isn't safe to cross the road.
Indeed. I learned that from the Beatles.
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Oh, that's a relief, I guess I've been watching too much American media and forgetting things aren't the same across the pond.
Or more likely, it's the fact that pretty much everyone was using designated crossings, and my Indian brain assumed there had to be some kind of penalty for not rushing across the street whenever you feel like it, traffic be damned haha
It's funny you think this is related to your Indian heritage, because I always thought "there must be a law against it if nobody is doing it" was a thoroughly western concept. It's definitely a popular way of thinking with the Danes and Irish I know.
The UK is full of "things that are legal but not done." Sadly, not as much as in the good old days, e.g. British queuing is going Continental.
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It's pretty unusual for anti jaywalking laws to be enforced in America, even if it is technically illegal in some cities. Usually you'd have to be being intentionally disruptive before the cops would give you a hard time. The only city I've seen try to enforce it was DC.
Yeah, my understanding is that it's mainly illegal to simplify situations where someone darts in front of a car and gets hit.
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I only know about the late 90s attempt in NYC from a throwaway futurama joke.
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Good to get some perspective as a pampered American, thanks for sharing. I definitely want to go back to London as an adult and see it for myself. Haven't been impressed with NYC but I've heard London is much better.
I'm curious, why did you choose the UK over the US? Is it just easier to get in from India?
The primary issue is that the USMLE is a much larger pain to get through, as well as the mandatory residency eating up 5 to 7 years of my life, with a shit work-life balance to boot. You would literally make more on minimum wage at McDonald's once you take into account the 80 hour work weeks. And there's 15k international applicants fighting for 4k seats bookmarked for them, so just passing the USMLE is hardly sufficient.
In contrast, once I'm done with the PLAB for the UK, I can practice right away, and pursue specialization at my leisure. The work-life balance is better too, although the pay is significantly worse.
I feel like that's the right trade-off for me, though I must admit I have been eyeing the USMLE of late haha
Hey that makes a ton of sense. As someone who has worked in a high-paying, stressful career for the better part of a decade, I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. I'm actively working to move into a lower paying but less stressful field. Of course, if I had been making peanuts during that time I may feel differently. Who knows.
You can always come visit the US for a bit and have high status as a foreign doctor. Especially if you have a British accent on your English.
I hope your new career works out!
And of course, the pay does get better, after my specialization I'll be making ~120k USD, which is a perfectly respectable salary, even if it's half the median income for a US counterpart. That certainly affords a few weeks spent on a balmy beach in SoCal.
(Albeit I think I already have a great accent, women think it's sexy, and it absolutely doesn't sound Indian. People who only know me via voice chat often thought I was Nordic or American for some reason haha)
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I found the TheMotte comment. This website is good for searching Reddit comments.
Thank you for taking the time to find it! I'll be sure to bookmark both the comment and the site, they'll come in handy.
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I beat you to it, sorry. Should have refreshed before posting!
The website you linked didn't work for me for some reason, so I had to fiddle with the search parameters on Google to find the comment.
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Might this be it? I will admit, it was harder to find than I expected.
Thank you so much for hunting it down! I had spent half an hour dredging through my old comments before I found out Reddit simply doesn't show more than ~1500 in my post history, and my google-fu failed me.
It's nice to read the encouragement from Scott again, he's the one who inspired me to go into psychiatry, and having him respond was a highlight of my Reddit career haha
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As an American who has traveled a fair amount in India and East Asia, I fully agree about bidets, though I prefer the East Asian style over the Indian "shower head" style.
I think the resistance to bidets in the US and UK is connected to a reflexive prudishness about them. When I had bidet toilets installed in my house a few months ago, my wife asked if they were "some kind of sex toy" and my plumber acted like I had asked him to indulge some weird fetish of mine.
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An extremely minor comment, but one of the great things about Finland are these bidet showers in most toilets, next to the seat, public or private. I've used them to clean my butt after taking a crap for over a decade, it's great. I can't fathom why they aren't more popular, even here it's common for people to think they're for cleaning the toilet or something.
Oh that's what we use back in India too, I wasn't thinking of the ones that just spray your ass from under the toilet seat haha
Other than the mild annoyance of swamp ass, which can be mitigated by just sitting still for a bit, they're so far ahead of tp it's farcical.
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There's probably something I'm not understanding about bidets, especially because I've never really looked into them too much, seen one, or used one, and because they have so many people who sing their praises. But they sound so unsanitary! Wouldn't flecks of poop go flying out into the bowl and onto the faucets, wherein particles will then get recycled onto the cavities of the next person who uses the bidet? Also, does spraying water really get you that clean? I'd think that most times, you'd really need to rub in order to get yourself fully clean.
I think a much better solution is to just use wet wipes. They allow you to apply elbow grease, not just lightly shower yourself off. And then you don't have to also worry about getting showered with particles of someone else's waste.
The hand shower bidet has just about a 100% conversion rate. Almost literally everyone who uses one immediately admits defeat at its absolute utility over any other method of cleaning your asshole.
Use one and you too will change your tone. Some hand showers have such high water pressure that you can literally tear into your own asshole if you don't angle the stream slightly off. Because of said pressure the sanity issues you mentioned are usually not of much concern.
What's the conversion rate for people who use wet wipes already? I'm sure bidets have great appeal for people who were raised just to use toilet paper, but that's because just using toilet paper is a horrible practice that will never get you fully clean. But if you already use a mechanism that allows you to achieve improved cleanliness like wet wipes, I think a bidet sounds less like a no brainer.
having used all of these methods, IMO the bidet is the clear winner. it's not even close
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What's the conversion rate for people who use integrated bidets? Seems less messy to have the prepositioned wand spray into a sealed hindquarters + bowl area than manually targetting spay. Most bidets of any design seem to also incorporate antibacterial additives for similar hygiene reasons.
The really off-putting but not necessarily unsanitary (although not great for plumbing when using soap) are hand faucets that feed into the cistern.
Nah, manually targeting is far superior. Its not as if you need to carry out kinematics equations in your head to not spray shit all over your toilet. Its more or less muscle memory for me.
All the disadvantages people are speculating about the hand shower bidets are actually more likely to happen with integrated bidets.
^ All personal opinion obviously.
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A good bidet shower will get you clean reliably. You can of course always use toilet paper to verify, and also to dry your butt a bit.
The unsanitary bit is the air being filled with droplets of shit infused water, floating around the room wherever they please. Keep in mind that I put the toilet seat down before I flush and refuse to keep my toothbrush in a bathroom with a toilet in it for this reason.
I use a hand shower bidet, and flush the toilet with the lid open and keep my toothbrush in that same room. I'm still alive.
Yeah man, coprophiles straight up eat and have sex with shit and live, but that doesn't make me want to try it.
I doubt living after literally eating shit is not the same as living after maybe having a shit molecule enter your body.
You bidet guys think you are being hygienic because you limit the amount of poop on your butt. And that is definitely more hygienic than not limiting the amount of poop on your butt. But what I care about is poop in my mouth. So I do everything I can to limit that. It is no different, except that I think a little extra poop near my butt is better than a little extra poop in my mouth. And like Harold I don't want nappy rash so I use baby wipes, so it probably is only a few extra molecules either way. It is just that my way gets less poop molecules in my mouth.
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Which parts of Poland/the Baltic States? E.g. Warsaw has a lot of opulence, but it's insane to compare all but the poorest UK neighbourhoods to Jar country. For example, I have been in rural villages in the UK that have a wide range of restaurants and many, many shops. I have been to rural villages of equivalent size in Poland that had one shop, and it was only open for a fairly small fraction of the day. And I've been to parts of rural Greece that really were poor in ways that I have never seen in the UK.
I can understand comparing Edinburgh to Warsaw in terms of wealth. I can't imagine being uncertain about Edinburgh vs. Łódź or Kaunas.
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I must protest weakly in favour of Tokyo!
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Thank you for your insight, I was aware that London was the last refuge of Empire, and that the rest of England is often suffocated as all the lubricating blood of commerce flees to the Thames. Still, I didn't expect it to be this picturesque, and I fully intend to accept the significant COL penalty from living here if at all possible. (A junior doctor at my level makes around £35k, with a paltry 2k allowance for London expenses, good thing I don't really need the money)
I'll be passing through more of the country at the end of my stay, and I suppose I'll see if my generally positive impressions hold up.
On the topic of Third World cleanliness, I can assure you that the rest of South Asia fares no better than India.
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal are certainly comparable in terms of dirtiness and squalor, whereas Sri Lanka is only somewhat superior.
That's almost 2 billion people living in similar conditions by my reckoning, and while I'm sure it's better in SEA, and some parts of Africa, I think it's fair to say that most of it counts as shithole haha.
(You people in the UK really need to invest in ceiling fans, I miss them even in Autumn, and they certainly make summers significantly more bearable even without AC)
Can you share any insight why that is so? Do people just not care what kind of squalor they live in?
That is a surprisingly difficult question, but I might have some ideas:
Tragedy of the Commons, in its most naked form.
There's a general lack of civic sense and feeling of stewardship, everyone is just used to public environs being shit, and thus don't feel particularly bad about littering or making a mess. After all, isn't everyone else doing it?
Cultural inertia, there's no real expectation that public spaces should be clean, whereas everyone is scrupulous about tending to their own.
Poverty making it difficult to raise funds to help mitigate the issue, or at least handle the worst offenders.
And all of those points lead into and exacerbate each other too. It is really a lot harder to be clean and tidy when you are poor even if you don't balk at the futility.
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