Thankful Britain

A country that always expects expressions of gratitude, even for its past misdeeds 

On a recent visit to London, I noticed a sign near the exit door of the bus I was travelling on: When getting off please say Thank you to the driver. 

An Indian visitor to Britain will notice that the country is full of thanks. You go into a shop to buy something. The shopkeeper hands you your purchase and you say Thank you. You pay for what you bought and the shopkeeper says Thank you. 

A person preceding another through a doorway will hold the door open for the person following, an everyday courtesy – which in India would be as remarkable as the sighting of a UFO – eliciting a Thank you from the one for whom the door has been held open, which might prompt a reciprocal response of Ta, or Cheers, which are Thank yous in other avatars.

However, the most widely circulated oral coin of the realm is the word Sorry. 

The British are a very apologetic lot, forever vocalising regret for some trivial transgression. You stop a passing stranger on the street and ask the way to a particular place. If the person cannot supply the information, admission of this lack of knowledge will be prefaced with a profession of sorrow for inability to be of assistance. 

In a crowded bus or train, if someone inadvertently jostles you, a minor mishap that you barely register, the occurrence will evoke a salvo of Sorries as though you’ve been the recipient of GBH, Grievous Bodily Harm. 

Coming from India, where such transactional tokens of politeness are notable by their absence, the visitor might find the British protestations of gratitude and remorse perplexing in their profusion. 

Such perplexity might be compounded by the contrasting lack of any official token of Britain’s regret for Jallianwala Bagh or the man-made Great Bengal Famine, which claimed an estimated three million lives. 

Perhaps this reticence on Britain’s part might be in reproof of India’s negligence to say Thank you to the driver who took it for a ride on the bus called the British Raj.

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