IFS Brats' hostel: A junior United Nations Assembly

In that long ago era before social media and the worldwide web, the means to make and maintain new connections were limited to the physical plane. Like many other children of Indian diplomats of yore, one such space was the External Affairs Hostel in New Delhi. As lascivious as the name may sound, it was actually a convivial Habib Rehman-designed enclave comprising three buildings and a vast lawn, where incoming and outgoing Foreign Service families lodged.

Now being redeveloped into a gigantic modern high-rise for today's IFS families, I hope it retains the old one's function as a place where members of a very peripatetic profession make precious connections that prevail even when duty takes them to far-flung destinations. My youth was benchmarked by stints in 'The Hostel' and the friends I made during each stay, like chapters of a book. There was an ineffable feeling of loss when the old buildings were ground to dust.

But then again, the lives of IFS families have changed from my time. Back then, each posting abroad was a truly immersive experience as meagre Indian salaries ensured that officers and families had to make do with whatever was available locally, from education and leisure to food and clothing. No international schools or brands were affordable; learning local languages were necessary for shopping, studies and entertainment. And we all made local, non-diplobrat friends.


Hence most kids of my generation also spoke foreign languages fluently. Not just French, Spanish or Italian but Korean, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish.... Being posted in the Anglosphere in North America, Asia and Africa helped, of course, as English would then suffice, but the accents were distinctly different. And all of this added a glorious variety to the evening congregation of IFS children on the expansive lawns of The Hostel, for games and gossip before dinner time.

It was almost a United Nations General Assembly. We all were conversant (quite literally) with the histories and cultures of the countries we had just come back from and therefore could provide pointers to the places some of us were headed to; in hindsight, the children's perspectives were pretty unique. We were actually cosmopolitan oddities in the socialist India of that time, as most people were still cut off from the wider world. That fostered an extraordinary camaraderie.

Today, thanks to the internet and the expansion of cultures beyond geographical borders, there is homogeneity. Nothing is mysterious, unfamiliar or unknown anymore. Lakhs of Indians are travelling, living abroad. Indian diplobrats are no longer unique. Moreover, the Indian government now generously picks up the tab for children's education in every foreign capital's American School and salaries are generous enough for Indian diplo-fams to stick to international brands.

So, while some still learn a smattering of local languages and even interact with ordinary people of the countries they are posted in, it is no longer necessary; and local schools are not a consideration. Though diplomatic life and international schools do entail interacting with different nationalities, they are essentially part of the same small elite world. Unless diplomat families make an effort to reach out and soak in local customs, they can remain in a cocoon wherever they are.

I often wonder whether conversations among IFS children still sound like a junior and more engaging version of the UNGA wherever they meet. Are they still repositories of the varied cultures they come into contact with due to their parents' professions? The camaraderie of earlier generations has been rekindled, though, on an appropriately different plane now: a worldwide WhatsApp group playfully named the IFS Brats Society. It's as if The Hostel has been resurrected!