“How dare they?” the woman said to me at a writer’s conference. “How dare they wave a flag of Pakistan in Old Delhi when Pakistan won the cricket match? They can’t insult Indians like that.”
“Who’s this they?”
“Muslims,” she said.
“Muslims living in Old Delhi. They aren’t Indians?”
A shake of the head.
“In Toronto during the World Cup, in every neighbourhood, in every street, people wave flags from every imaginable country. They’re all Canadian.”
A pause. Then, “It’s not the same. That’s Canada. There people can do that. But not in India.”
bits & pieces 