CA

US

BR

ES

CH

FR

GBIE

NL

BE

TR

DE

ITEG

KWSA

QA

RU

JP

HK

TWVN

ID

Singapore

Thailand

China

Bahrain

Australia

Cayman Islands

IndiaOM

ZAAE

MYAR

MX

1

34

2

5

6

7BEST PLACES FOR EXPATS

More than 7,000 expats rank India the 7th most hospitable country to relocate to

Source: HSBC Expat Explorer Survey, 2013

Joeanna Rebello Fernandes | TNN

Inclusive travel is one of those tides that washes into public conscious-ness each time news breaks of a voyager in a wheelchair, only to re-

cede from collective memory when the deed is done. The challenged itinerant is left to deal with problems like fitting through a hotel room door, boarding a plane or finding a toilet. Lately, however, several initiatives have been introduced that could have the disabled out and about in greater numbers.

Varun Jain, a 29-year-old paraplegic from Rishikesh, is an inveterate traveller who launched his inclusive travel company two years ago. Travel My Way aims to reach out to wheelchair-confined travellers. “Hav-ing travelled often I recognized the need for travel companies and travel assistance pro-viders for the differently abled,” says Jain, who set about auditing hospitality and transport providers in the hills, and listing locally available caregivers. He also sensi-tized taxi drivers about how to interact with travellers with special needs. A camp operator near Mussoorie went so far as to make his campsite obstacle-free for the wheelchair-bound. “They may not partake in adventure sports but they should have the opportunity to enjoy the camaraderie at a campsite,” Jain believes.

About a year before Jain floated his pennant, a socially-oriented company called Travel Another India (TAI) and a disability advocacy collective from Lada-kh called PAGIR embarked on a project to make Leh wheelchair-accessible through Himalaya on Wheels. They identified monuments, hotels and lodges, assistive facilities and itineraries that catered to those in wheelchairs. “Hotel owners built larger rooms so people in wheelchairs could navigate more freely. Even the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council promised to act on our recommen-dations for accessible pavements,” says Gouthami, founder of TAI.

Further south, in Bangalore, Vidhya Ramasubban started a taxi service called Kickstart when she realized that the una-vailability of adapted vehicles could curtail the mobility of the disabled (and also the elderly and infirm). Her fleet of modified

cars has front seats that swivel out and ramps. The three-month-old service cur-rently has more pensioners as clients than people with disabilities, but she hopes that will change. “As more of the disabled get jobs in the corporate sector they’ll want to

travel more,” she predicts. However, despite best efforts, such en-

terprises are not making the expected num-bers, even though the estimated number of people in India with disabilities is 21.9 million. Even the ministry of tourism has lately woken up to their potential to con-tribute to domestic tourism and has identi-fied Accessible Tourism as a new vertical to be developed. They’ve started by issuing

guidelines to make tourist facilities, hotels and monuments barrier-free, and insti-tuted an award for the Most Barrier-Free Monument/Tourist Attraction.

The problem is that people with disabil-ities have little or no faith in Indian estab-lishments going beyond the brief. “I know that in India one can’t depend on public transport. Even some hotels that claim to be accessible on sites like TripAdvisor are not really,” says Shivani Gupta, founder of the consultancy AccessAbility. Gupta, a PG in inclusive environments, is often called to weigh in on structural modifications in buildings to render them disability-com-pliant. “While the ministry of tourism has issued star ratings for accessible hotels, and the Archeological Survey of India has committed to making historical sites ac-cessible, much of the change is only on paper. Moreover, a wide range of disabili-ties demands a wide range of adaptive in-terventions, which are not comprehen-sively made,” she points out.

Prof K Raghuraman, who teaches Eng-lish at the Government Arts College in Chennai, suggests braille maps and city

guides to help visually impaired people like himself find their bearings. “Muse-ums should have tactile instructions, navigational cards or audio guides,” he adds. “When I went to a museum in Mys-ore with my parents, they were too ex-hausted to explain all the exhibits to me. What about guides trained in sign lan-guage for the deaf-mute?”

Neenu Kewlani, who has scoliosis and polio, points out that specialised travel is the prerogative of the rich, who can afford to travel by air or in their modified vehi-cles and stay in pricey barrier-free rooms. In 2011, Kewlani and three of her wheel-chair-bound friends, Arvind Prabhoo, Nishant Khade and Sunita Sancheti, set off on a 84-day tour of 28 state capitals. They experienced first-hand the inadequa-cies of the road and pointed these out to state governments and non-profits. “When more disabled people are visible on the streets, it will encourage others to come out too,” says Kewlani, who travelled with a portable shower chair and bedpans as public toilets make no room for wheel-chairs. However, the disabled won’t ven-ture out until provisions are in place to guarantee their safety and comfort away from home — an admittedly daunting task in India where in classic cart-before-horse logic, hotels want to see the numbers be-fore they make structural changes.

Change will be slow in coming but it will arrive, entrepreneurs like Piya Bose are confident. The founder of Girls on The Go, a travel company exclusively for wom-en, is planning to set up a travel vertical for the disabled. She’s beginning with a series of recces to holiday spots, starting with Goa (which entails identifying an accessible beach). “People need to under-stand the business potential of this seg-ment,” she says, “Even countries in East Asia and Africa are ahead of us in this regard.” Bose wants to eventually custom-ize tours for travellers with different kinds of disabilities, no doubt the beginning of a long and promising journey.

Vikram Doctor

When Bapsy Pavry, Marchioness of Win-chester, died in 1995 the obituary writers had fun. The British have a taste for irrev-

erent memorialization especially when the subject is neither important nor has lived to the unwritten codes of British life. And Pavry despite determined, even desperate, efforts was neither the former nor quite managed the latter.

“An enthusiastic self-publicist… prone to circulating documents extolling her own virtues,” wrote the Daily Tele-graph, which even republished the obit-uary in an anthology entitled ‘Rogues’. It gleefully described her greatest mo-ment of mortification when her hus-band, the Marquess of Winchester, left her soon after their marriage in 1952 to live with an ex-girlfriend, who happened to be the mother of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Pavry was nei-ther willing to grant a divorce nor accept the change. She flew to the Bahamas where Mrs Fleming lived and staged a dharna outside her home.

The obituary quoted a neighbour de-scribing her as “an overweight Indian lady clad in a dingy sari, pacing the main road… occasionally pausing to raise and shake her fist towards the main house.” She fought and won a case against Mrs Fleming for ‘enticing’ her husband, but it was reversed on appeal. She never got him back, and returned to Bombay where her father had been a senior Par-si priest and where she still had a home. She lived between London and Bombay and spent her time writing hundreds of letters to celebrities “and usually re-ceived replies from their secretaries.”

The city doesn’t have many memories of her. Sunama House where she lived is still there at Kemps Corner, but most-ly seems to be divided among commer-cial properties. Parsis of a certain age recall her remarkable feat of marrying a Marquess despite having grown up in the racial divides and snobberies of the British Raj. “After she got married all the lords and ladies of England had to bow down before her!” one of them once told me. This probably didn’t actually happen, but it is true that in the peerage of England the Marquess of Winchester

ranks just below the Dukes, and Pavry would have had that status.

Pavry hasn’t been entirely forgotten. Duncan Fallowell, a British writer with a quirky range of subjects, has recently profiled her in his book How to Disap-pear: A Memoir for Misfits. Fallowell writes about people who, one way or the other, didn’t quite fit the worlds they lived in or aspired to and, as a result, have fallen from general memory.

Pavry fits Fallowell’s title to a T, but he is more sympathetic than the obitu-arists, writing that her desire to advance herself was “a high romantic passion capable of crossing into the absurd; on occasions she was importuning, mad-dening, pitiful”. She never stopped her efforts, least of all for self-reflection, and there is something almost heroic in her “breathtaking resilience, her social crudeness, her absolute refusal ever to pick up a dropped hint…”

STEP 1 | WRITE A BOOKThose descriptions could apply to many socialites today, and Fallowell’s profile suggests that Pavry set the prototype for so many people who want to be famous just to be famous. For example, she knew that it was best to have a basic achievement that could then be end-lessly milked. She wrote a book, The Heroines of Ancient Persia, and was for-ever after described as a ‘famous lit-terateur’, even though she never wrote another. The book helped in the letter-writing — she sent copies to celebrities, institutions and universities. “For that singular gift, thank-yous arrive from the Library of Congress, the Royal Geo-graphical Society, Harvard University,” writes Fallowell as he examines her pa-pers — nine big boxes, donated to the city of Winchester, along with one mil-lion pounds, to make sure the city kept them (she also got them to name a hall after her).

Pavry did start with a few benefits. As a well-off young Parsi woman she studied abroad, at Columbia University, and had gone through the ritual of being ‘presented’ at the British court in 1928, to mark her social debut. But from then on she was on her own — though she did have the benefit of having a brother, Jal Pavry. He too wrote one book, on Zoras-trianism, and boasted of being an Ori-ental scholar, though most of his time

seems to have been spent accompanying his sister in social climbing. After his death Pavry would make bequests in his name, of course, writing to everyone to inform them of this.

STEP 2 | WORK FOR CHARITIESFallowell writes of how Pavry worked for charities, another standard socialite tac-tic: “one discovered Bapsy helping out the

British Empire Cancer Campaign at the Dorchester Hotel, or the National Children Adoption Association ‘do’ at the Gros-venor House Hotel”. The powerful society ladies who ran these shows knew they could rely on her to help.

STEP 3 | WRITE COPIOUS CONDOLENCE LETTERSBut she also practiced more questionable tactics: “whenever she read in the paper of anyone important suffering a bereave-ment, she would fire off a letter or con-dolence and thereafter sweep into the memorial service like an old friend of someone who was usually a complete stranger to her”. Today’s social climbers send tweets.

STEP 4 | DRESS DIFFERENTPavry also knew the value of a signature style. Pictures of her show a striking looking woman who knew the best way to stand out was not to dress just like others. She stuck to her embroidered Parsi saris, always worn with the pallu covering her head. Just after she mar-ried the Marquess and it seemed like they might go to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, she had what must have been a deeply satisfying ex-change of letters with the College of Arms, which oversees protocol in the UK, on the correct way to wear a sari on such a formal occasion. She was told that the sari would have to be cream or white and she would have to wear a tiara over the drape on her head.

TOP IT ALL BY MARRYING AN ARISTOCRATYet she never got the chance to do this,

since by the time of the Corona-tion, the Marquess had left

her. Perhaps he only mar-ried her to spite Mrs Flem-

ing, who wasn’t willing to marry him for the practical reason that she would lose her ex-cellent widow’s pen-sion. The Marquess had

no money, which might have been another reason

a rich Parsi woman was ap-pealing. He was also extreme-

ly old — almost 90 when he mar-ried. All he really had to offer was his

title, and for Pavry that was enough.But he had to be around for her to use

it, which explains Pavry’s bitterness once he left. Fallowell describes her des-perate attempts to attend the Corona-tion, all firmly deflected by the Bucking-ham Palace staff. She slowly found her-self shut out of most British society events, though occasionally she was ac-

commodated in an inconspicuous posi-tion, hidden behind a pillar. She may not have minded this, since what mattered was being there. But the rejections must ultimately have hurt even her and she came back to India.

Yet India offered her little. Well before marriage she had made sure her efforts were well chronicled in the Times of India — there are stories of her travels and, of course, of her legal battles. She would also receive invitations to the Viceroy’s events in Delhi, but now in an independent coun-try there was no Viceroy. There is one report of her going to meet Governor-General C Rajagopalachari in 1948, and in deference to the new nationalism she no longer uses her title, but is simply described as “Miss Bapsy Pavry”. But there was little further scope for social climbing in Bombay.

NEVER STOP NETWORKINGAnd so for almost 40 years she wrote her letters to celebrities and world leaders, interspersed with travels during which she tried to meet them, at least long enough to get pictures taken (which were then sent to the newspapers). Fallowell notes how little the letters change over the decades, except that in time she was writing to the children and grandchildren of people she had written, and carefully keeping the replies. “In a world of good manners it is amazing what pushy people can achieve,” he writes.

Fallowell notes how there are no per-sonal letters from friends or family in her papers — her life was focused on associat-ing with celebrities and by extension be-coming one. Only just before she died did a letter appear that graciously fused the two. A letter to the Queen Mother, in 1995, is replied to by Margaret Rhodes, a cous-in of Queen Elizabeth and lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother.

One wonders if it was Pavry that Rhodes was referring to in her own mem-oir, The Final Curtsey (2011) when she wrote that “every letter had to have a response, even if written by some poor person who was mildly deranged”. But one can see the compassion in this, be-cause as Fallowell writes, that slight personal touch would have made some-one like Pavry so happy, “coming as it did…from none other than Elizabeth the Queen-Empress herself, wife of George VI, the last King-Emperor of India”. Eight months later Pavry was dead and the obituary writers were being rude, but perhaps she wouldn’t have cared. In the end, Pavry lived her life on her own terms, deriving the pleasures that come from social climbing and self advance-ment and leaving her legend, such as it is, for all the hordes of climbers who have come up after her.

71%of expats termed India as one of the

friendliest countries, boosting its rank on

the expat experience league table to 7 out of 37

countries. Thailand was the friendliest

PUTTING INDIA ON THE MAP SIGN OF THE TIMES

TURBAN TURNS HEADSGap’s new ad campaigns are eagerly awaited for their pathbreaking themes. They feature celebrities who are known as much for their intellect as their star value. An admirable array of muticultural faces from across age groups have modelled their clothes — from Ken Watanabe and Liev Schreiber to Lucy Liu and Madonna. The latest Gap campaign has again broken new ground — it features a turbanned Sikh, the strikingly handsome New York jeweler, actor and aesthete Waris Singh.

The ad comes at a time when race crimes against Sikhs are being reported not just from small US towns but also big, liberal cities like New York. In recent months, young Sikhs from across

professions and backgrounds have been engaged in creative initiatives to familiarize Americans with their religion and the turban’s place in it.

These include tie-a-turban campaigns as well as online initiatives like the Singh Street Style blog that makes the ‘pag’ a style statement. In April this year, Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring collection featured a stylishly turbanned man. It drew some flak for portraying Sikhs as exotic.

The Gap ad, however, has mostly elicited praise on the official Facebook page. One by Nancy Ewelike read: “I simply love the photo. I love how his culture is being embraced (from head adornment to full beard). Well done, GAP!” The turban as a marker of a peace-loving, stylish people? That message shouldn’t take too long to sink in.

Narrow doorways, cracked pavements, small toilets…all travel is adventure for the disabled. But now some operators are wheeling out hurdle-free holidays

Entrepreneur Piya Bose plans to set up a travel

vertical for the disabled. She’s beginning with a

series of recces to holiday spots, starting

with Goa (which entails identifying an

accessible beach)

Have wheelchair, will travel

Shivani Gupta, founder of AccessAbility, at Pangong Lake

India is the 4th least expensive for expats, after Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan

25%of the expats

were sent to India by their employer(global average of such

lateral mobility was 7%)

73%reported

that

India is improving as a place to live and work

Indian summers got a thumbs-down with 47% saying

it was difficult to adjust

to the weather

39%of expats are

likely to own a home in India as compared

with Canada (46%), USA

(40%) and Australia (39%)

INDIA’S FIRST PAGE 3 PERSONRich, beautiful and ambitious, a Parsi marchioness was the prototype for those who aspire to be famous for being famous

EVERY INCH THE STYLISH SOCIALITEPavry knew the best way to stand out was not to

dress just like others. She stuck to her embroidered Parsi saris, always worn with the pallu covering

her head

Varun Jain’s firm Travel My Way focuses on inclusive travel

NZ

SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, LUCKNOWNOVEMBER 10, 201314 SUNDAY SPECIAL