ACCOZZAGLIA

Prepared 2 December 2005 for Prof. Ken Macdonald (DTS201H1F, University of Toronto).

————— —— —————

When moving about Toronto, it is reasonable to grasp why so many people identify it as a “world city”. It is by no means unique in terms of being home to a panoply of cultural, ethnic and religious communities: any amount of time spent in London, San Francisco, Vancouver or New York, for instance, would quickly dispel the notion that Toronto championed this concept. Still, Statistics Canada cited roughly 43% of Toronto’s residents as “visible minorities” in March 2005; that number is expected to reach over 50% by 2012 (Population Projections, 2005, 25, Fig. 11).

Nevertheless, much of Toronto’s relatively short urban history is peppered by stories of people who migrated to Canada out of necessity — displaced and dispersed by the aftermath of civil war (the Balkans and East Africa); the restructuring of nation-states (the Soviet Union and Hong Kong); escape from creedal persecution, punishable by death or torture (Jews and Armenians); and the need for labour (Italy, Ireland and South Asia) — to assemble a new life from the remnants one left behind.

By paying close attention, one can identify telltale signs of a transnational community within a city; if one happens to identify as a member of that community, then these signals can deliver valuable direction on where to go when acclimatizing to new surroundings. And for one who travels around to major global cities with some frequency, a Chinatown district, an orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, or a Little Italy neighbourhood may look remarkably similar to other locales sharing the same district name: markets offering regional produce from “back home” (sometimes labelled and merchandised in a generally agreed mother tongue); social activities (cafés, spiritual houses, community centres and festivals); and schools teaching traditional ideals and values each make up parts of the blueprint for building a sense of home away from “home” — whether that home is geographically, culturally or temporally beyond reach.

Of particular interest for purpose of this essay was the visit to Toronto’s Little India district on Gerrard St. — between Greenwood Ave. and Coxwell Ave — known also as the India Bazaar. Direct observations confirmed the hypothesis that “South Asian” culture — encompassing a remarkably diverse body of experiences and by no means homogenized — is nourished by co-operation and communication with the homeland (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.) and between other nodes of diaspora communities worldwide. It also demonstrates a sense of co-operation between people whose claimed homelands are at stark opposition with one another: Pakistanis and Indians, as well as the Sinhalese and Tamil civil war in Sri Lanka.

On a note of academic disclosure, I cannot speak as a dispersed South Asian, or desi, nor can I assert an inherited birthright over desi culture. My awareness and conduit to this community is predicated by and limited to my experiences stemming from a years-long close friendship with an American-born Gujarati woman whose parents moved to North America just before her birth. Through our intimate association, I have been gifted with an opportunity to observe, learn and experience the social networks encompassing of “pan-Indian” culture — much of it originating outside of India and reshaped by the urban community in which these neighbourhoods are situated.

Upon arriving to Gerrard St., an outdoor sidewalk produce market [Fig. 1, 2] ushered forth an element of familiarity for a community whose regional foods and familiar brands are not always available at major Canadian supermarket chains; in this case, the shop offered a fresh assortment of imported chikoos (sapota), papayas and mangoes. At another market across the street, fresh okra (commonly known in Hindi as bhindi) was labelled for sale as “desi okra” [Fig. 3]. While location of harvest was not explicitly mentioned, the label suggested benefiting both desi shoppers (e.g., the implication that it was not North American-grown okra, but probably Indian-grown or, at the very least, distributed by a desi-owned company) and shoppers from outside the South Asian community who may be more acquainted with bhindi being referred to as okra.

Likewise, an inspection of the shelves found popular brands from India that are available domestically and exported worldwide: Limca citrus soda and Thumbs Up cola; Ashoka MTR (ready-to-eat meal) packages; several varieties of basmati rice from Nepal and India; and Everest masala (spice) package blends. Much of the packaged naan and roti appeared to be delivered from bakeries around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which suggests an established desi economic base in the region. Medicine shelves [Fig. 4] presented an interspersed variety of products from Canada and imported products from throughout South Asia.

Not surprisingly, these are the same products that can be readily procured in South Asian-owned and -operated grocery stores elsewhere: Central Ave. in northeast Minneapolis; Devon Ave. on Chicago’s north side; Bissonnet St. and Bellaire Blvd. in southwest Houston; and in London, as seen in shops nearby Paddington Station.

Gerrard St. is not the only “Little India” around the GTA — Brampton and Mississauga are also home to burgeoning South Asian communities whose growth is driven in part by the information technology (IT) sector. There is, however, direct evidence that the Gerrard area appears to be longer established than its suburban counterparts.

The economic establishment of a new community in an already-developed urban area is pioneered by intrepid entrepreneurs who open small businesses — such as corner convenience stores and small restaurants. The evolution toward restaurant expansion and full-service grocery stores does not occur overnight. Such growth is dependent on capital infusion that comes from a steady influx of people who purchase from and invest into the community. Profit may be generated locally. Pooling resources between “sister” businesses in other major cities may also offer a more diversified capital base upon which to invest and expand business.

For example, Udupi Palace [Fig. 5], located in the middle of Gerrard’s India Bazaar, is today a well-known chain boasting several locations around southern California and Washington D.C.; another chain with the same name also operates in southern California and Seattle/Bellevue, and a third Udupi Palace chain offers locations in both Chicago and suburban Maryland. Both the ambience and menus for each of these locations are remarkably similar: pakora, idli, a staggering selection of dosai and uthappam, pongal avial, kitchedi and kulfi deliver both a consistency and a familiarity for Udupi-regional home cooking.

Far beyond restaurants and shops, the India Bazaar also reveals other anchors of community establishment. The Riverdale Immigrant Women’s Centre (RIWC) [Fig. 6, 7], funded in part by Citizenship and Immigration Canada [Fig. 8], galvanizes a carefully planned partnership between Canada (as host government) and South Asians (as transnational community). The Gerrard/Ashdale branch of the Toronto Public Library shelves South Asian fiction authors [Fig. 9] within general fiction — not in a segregated area of the stacks — while several Gujarati-English and Hindi-English [Fig. 10, 11] dictionaries are readily available for borrowing nearby other Tamil, Urdu and Bengali media. Based on both age and wear of the material, the library appears to have responded to the literary demands of this neighbourhood for quite some time.

Further exploration east of the RIWC yields a couple of upscale department stores, each displaying this season’s latest sari and punjabi fashion trends — many which can seen in the latest Bollywood releases or by reading the latest paper copy of The Times of India, which is printed and distributed worldwide. Incidentally, the headline story on the day this visit was made reported not on politics or business, but on the Bollywood entertainment industry: the legendary actor, Amitabh Bachchan — enduring star of Bollywood, including some of this decade’s biggest films: Aks: The Reflection (2001); Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001); and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) — was scheduled to undergo major, life-threatening gastrointestinal surgery.

Posters for a recent live entertainment event, Dhoom Bollywood, were still posted [Fig. 12] throughout the neighbourhood on construction site façades and shop windows. These posters addressed the desi community.
Bollywood entertainment is produced throughout the world, so it comes as no surprise that Gerrard St. is home to the newly-established United South Asian Film Production agency (USAFP, 2005). Formed in June 2005, it is located in an older building [Fig. 13], but the building’s colours — green, orange and white — clearly represent India’s and Sri Lanka’s national colours.

At the same time, Liberty Paan Corner [Fig. 14] could practically be located anywhere. Because of its name, New York might immediately come to mind, but upon further inspection, this shop could just as likely be located in London, Sydney, or even Chennai. Avtar Brah speaks to this: “Diasporas are . . . potentially the sites of hope and new beginnings . . . [and] are contested cultural and political terrains where individual and collective memories collide, reassemble and reconfigure” (Brah, 1996, 193).

For a recently arrived desi traveller or immigrant to arrive on Gerrard Street for the first time, the ability to buy a wrapper of paan [Fig. 15]; to order idli and salty lassi while sitting with the proprietor to get up to speed on Toronto’s desi community events; and to pick up a phone card [Fig. 16] to phone family in Kolkata (letting them know that all is well) enables a sense of safety and belonging. All of these possess a kind of cultural intelligibility and are readily digestible `to someone who may otherwise feel adrift amidst Canadian culture in general.

But perhaps the most telling sign that the future looks bright for the desi community in Little India is an institution not entirely obvious at first glance. It isn’t the arrival of a new Pakistani fusion bistro called Moguls [Fig. 17], nor is it the presence of Canadian legal services now provided by community members, such as that seen above the bistro. In fact, it takes a few minutes to realize that Canada’s five chartered banks are nowhere to be found on Gerrard St. (there is one RBC branch located on Coxwell, but just south of Little India’s eastern bounds).

There is, however, a powerful financial institution on the block, and its recent arrival demonstrates the investment potential seen for the community. ICICI Bank [Fig. 18] is India’s second-largest bank with branch locations in India, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and now Canada (ICICI Bank Overview, 2005, ¶1). By opening an ICICI Bank branch in a desi community such as Gerrard Street (or Brampton, where another branch is located), it makes the process of wiring money to family in India and Sri Lanka far more efficient than the third-party agents who have traditionally provided this community service. Throughout the block, ICICI Bank’s posters advertise an value-added incentive [Fig. 19] for sending money to India: a $10 long-distance credit for making calls worldwide.

With ICICI Bank’s arrival in a community, the barriers for moving capital to India are lifted, making it more convenient than walking into a TD Canada Trust or CIBC branch and sending a wire. But ICICI Bank’s advantage here is clear: their attention to South Asian clients gives them a huge edge in market whose main competitors are banks based in the host country.

Financial institutions open branches in neighbourhoods when they see potential for development and growth. ICICI Bank’s arrival on Gerrard Street endorses the buying power now levied by the desi community in Little India, and its financial interest in the community is certain to keep Little India’s presence as a South Asian anchor in Toronto for many years to come, especially as more people abroad join extended family already living here (Population Projections, 2005, 24).

When one considers the extent to which South Asians have dispersed globally and how this dispersal spans over several generations, it is interesting to recognize how many of those descendants and emigrants have — by taking advantage of mobile phones, email, instant messaging, and the relative affordability of travel — remained abroad to establish a kind of global, stateless presence: where the idea of “state” or “borders” resembles more an intricately woven neural net than a single geographic territory, and where territories are defined by notions of what is Pakistani, what is Indian, what is Sri Lankan, and what is more inclusively South Asian.

Despite how these communities around the world blur the line of cultural and political regionalism one would expect to see in India or Sri Lanka, by staying close together and building extra-territorial alliances within the dispersed community, the idea of sticking together nevertheless functions to anchor the idea of the familiar, of that which can be related by and to one another. “The way we dress, the music we listen to . . . all provide forms in which we are able to communicate aspects of our lives to others — but not to all others — and to recognise those who share this privileged realm” (Poole, 1999, 14). When a desi girl from rural Michigan is able to relate to the same cultural vocabulary that another girl within walking distance of Manchester, England’s, high street, or a grandmother in Bangalore can, there is no longer a simple process to definitively say where South Asia ends and where the rest of the world begins, nor is there any expressed limitation on who can claim a neighbourhood as an extension of the homeland.

Cited references

Brah, Avtar. (1996). Cartographies of Desire: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge.

ICICI Bank: Overview. (2005). Retrieved November 29, 2005, from http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/aboutus/overview/overview.htm

Poole, Ross. (1999). Nation and Identity. London: Routledge.

Population Projections of Visible Minority Groups, Canada, Provinces and Regions: 2001–2017. (2005). Ottawa: Statistics Canada, Heritage Canada.

United South Asian Film Production: About Us. (2005). Retrieved November 29, 2005, from http://www.unitedsouthasianfilms.com/About_Us.html