Vikrum Sequeira, a desi American who’s spending some time teaching kids from Bombay slums, unpacks the desi head wiggle:
Affirming your Indian identity: … Since I was wearing sunglasses and talking to foreigners, many of the Indians wondered about my identity: was I a foreigner, an NRI, or an Indian? To answer their question, I made eye contact and waggled at them. No further explanation was necessary…Making friends: … When I finally bought a phone card from him (after weeks of reciprocal wiggling), I realized that the weeks of waggling had paid off. Sagar, the phone-wallah, gave me a giant smile and treated me like an old friend…
Disarming people: … Once I was walking in a slum near Colaba and a few men gave me a look signifying, “What are you doing here?” I gave them the wiggle and they smiled and let me pass without a problem.
Here’s another gem: a commenter explains why religious tiles festoon Indian stairwells.
You will find these kind of tiles [stuck] to stairwalls [throughout] the country [in] almost 60-70% of govt. offices, apts, commercial complexes… [Paan] eaters used to spit on the walls instead of dustbins… so you may find red colors on the stairwalls where there are no tiles.
On a more serious note, Sequeira contrasts street crime with riots in Bombay:
In August 2003 in San José, Costa Rica, a seventeen year old was stabbed to death near my apartment because he refused to give his cell phone to the assailants who mugged him… Bombay is not like that… I have seen women casually walking through poor areas adorned with thousands of dollars of jewelry. A woman can walk through Bombay wearing gold earrings and a diamond ring and not be in any danger…… While the Bombay volcano does not spew lava on a regular basis, it is an enormous volcano… What is scary is that many people believe that an eruption is imminent.
Would it be correct to say that the wiggle in North India is up and down while the wiggle in South India is sideways ?
i consider it sort of a sideways ‘8’ motion, like the infinite sign
Yeah, Al, that’s what my dad always says.
I think the Southie wiggle is faster and the Northie wiggle can be of any duration.
To me, the waggle / wiggle is about affirming something with a little humility or embarassment of some sort. Or perhaps even some implied uncertainty. This implied incertainty may come from some religious belief (head waggle “Of course… unless of course God does not intend it”).
Or it could be the humility that is implied in aknowledging a servant with the waggle.
When I watched my American husband say goodbye to our maid, the straight up and down simply didn’t seem to cut it. It was too direct. Even so, his natural tendency was to tilt his head a little, so even if it was up and down, it was a slightly tilted up and down. The pre-cursor to the real waggle. The authoritativeness of the up and down was not called for in interacting with our maid, who was waggling at greater speeds. My husband’s appropriate response should have been to waggle at a slower speed. Both waggles would have the tone of aknowledgement without authority.
At any rate, the waggle is a happy gesture. One cannot waggle when they’re angry or upset or sad.