Trevor White

Reporting from Bombay, our columnist tries – and then refuses – to define what it means to be Irish today

I bumped into an acquaintance the other night. We hadn’t seen each other for about six months, and meeting like this – at neighbouring tables, in a foreign city – felt like a grand coincidence. Bombay is full of restaurants. It was a shame, we agreed, that we couldn’t spend long together.

Otherwise we’d drink the place dry! It didn’t really matter that neither of us are heavy drinkers or that our laughter sounded forced, unnatural. We weren’t trying to explore the delicate contradictions of the Irish character. It was just one of those remarks that people make in such circumstances. Indeed, what could be more Irish than playing to type abroad?

And do you know, said my acquaintance, where last we met? In Monaghan. We had both been asked to speak at a debate on Irish architecture at the Flat Lake Literary Festival. And for a few minutes we reminisced about two days of rain-sodden argument, music and art in Clones. It was, we agreed, a classic Irish weekend with some right oddballs.

But of course they were. Sure wasn’t the man who put it together none other than Pat McCabe? And then we both laughed louder still, as if recognising the beginning of a well-loved joke. And for a moment it seemed as if we were going to get stuck into a real old-fashioned conversation, with gossip, craic and subtle revelation. The sort of thing we Irish are really quite good at – and which the English, say, seldom provide.

But it went no further. I had an appointment to keep, and there was no way I could get out of it. We agreed to keep in touch in that warm, heartfelt way particular to acquaintances who meet unexpectedly. Again, there was no real insincerity on either part. What could be more harmless than pretending to want to stay in touch with someone whom one only meets in unusual circumstances? Come to think of it: what could be more Irish?

The following morning I reflected on the coincidence of bumping into my acquaintance. Then I remembered that Pat McCabe isn’t the only man behind the Flat Lake Festival. His partner in the project is an Englishman, Kevin Allen. The annual festival is not held in Clones, but outside the town; closer, in fact, to the border with the North.

The venue is Hilton Park, one of the last great Irish country houses, which was built by an English Protestant. And the one point upon which everyone agreed at the debate is that Dublin’s Georgian architecture is worth saving. None of this really matters, of course. I only think to mention it because these reflections are loosely about Irishness, which is typically presented in positive contrast to Englishness. And that is not always fair.

Halt! I do not know what it means to be Irish. All I am suggesting is that it doesn’t always mean staying up late, drinking and talking. But that seems unfair too. All I propose with any conviction is that there is nothing more Irish than reflecting on what it means to be Irish. Yet even that demands qualification. Just as pretending to want to stay in touch is, on reflection, not exclusively Irish – it seems rather English, no? – and playing to type abroad is actually quite common, it now strikes me that navel-gazing is a national sport in many countries. It may, in fact, be a typical feature of the post-Colonial experience.

Here in Bombay the newspapers are full of articles about what it means to be Indian, and they, too, cannot resist a poke at the Brits. Take this spirited example from the Sunday Times of India: “As in England, those whose power is threatened bray at the pace of change. They claim to defend the culture of the nation by preserving it in aspic. But they only claim this because they think they can own it. But nobody can. Not one person. Not a hundred or a hundred million. The culture of a nation is more spirited than the lot of us. The best we can do is observe the beauty of its transformation.”

Yes, I like that. We cannot change culture. “The best we can do is observe the beauty of its transformation.” Quite a sentiment. Not, perhaps, the sort of thing one often reads in the days leading up to our national holiday, high season for earnest polemics. Commentators are normally inclined to draw more forthright conclusions about what it does and does not mean to be Irish. But these are uncertain times. This year, at least, one expects that the tone will be less rambunctious, more equivocal. And that may well be no bad thing.

We are, after all, in a thundering mess.

Comments

[Ohlala]

It's just not the same without ya

[Oonaka]

Having met Trevor quite a while ago and travelled the same route a few years ago. I feel I must give him some essential and befitting advice, the purchase a shoulder of Honey Dew whiskey found in any corner shop. Lessons the chance of any amoebic dysentery risk somehow and makes indian trains feel like the Orient Express. Trust me.