Well, that was nice!

                Now that I’m back in Blighty and have scoffed a large bacon baguette and a baked Camembert, I’ve been reflecting on the whirlwind that has been the last 6 months. Here are a few closing ruminations before I sign off and try and find some gainful employment:

1.       Every cliché and rumour that you have ever heard about India is true, somewhere – it’s not called the ‘Land of Contradictions’ for nothing. It is gleaming palaces and open sewers, blatant sexuality and strict conservatism, peaceful spirituality and utter chaos. It represents simultaneously millennia of culture and a blossoming, youthful nation with a huge enthusiasm for its future. And all this clashes and harmonises in a fabulous thali that leaves you overwhelmed, exhausted and desperate for more.

2.       However practical and down-to-earth you may be, it is impossible to avoid imbibing the spirituality that filters through every aspect of Indian life. You can’t help but realise that, actually, we really do rely too much on material possessions and it is perfectly feasible to be happy without mountains of plastic and techno gadgets.

3.       On a less profound note, the girls who told me to ‘chub up’ before going out there obviously either didn’t stay out there for long enough to get over the poetically dubbed ‘Delhi belly’ or hadn’t understood properly the rules of the game beloved of women across India which I shall call the ‘carb cramming contest’. Three types in one meal is the average, though four is not unusual. Chuck in half a litre of oil and a few heaped teaspoons of salt and you’re on to a winner. Don’t get me wrong, Indian home cooking just fabulous (which is a big part of the problem), but it does seem that nutritional education is pretty low on the curriculum and I am now struggling to squeeze into my jeans.

4.       How would my dog take to a cow moving into our back garden?

Bungalow Bill

                To be perfectly honest,                 I was a little apprehensive about our stay in the tea plantation manager’s bungalow – playing the Memsahib in an Anglo-Indian Manor house was precisely the antithesis of why I came out to India in the first place. But our foray into the jungles of Assam was intended to give a sneak peek into my grandparents life there, which was certainly not squat loos and eating with one’s hands. But despite my reservations, it was actually rather fab. Eerily quiet, without the howling dogs of Rajasthan and the incessant honking of Delhi, but I can’t deny that it did feel good to see a formally laid table and to sink into a proper bath after five months of washing from a bucket. I do have serious issues with letting people things for me, though – believe it or not I actually am capable of rolling my own suitcase 10 metres down the path. But playing the game means living a part of history which, even though I don’t like it, all helps in the process of understanding.

                We did the requisite stroll round the tea gardens, a slightly surreal, undulating Alice in Wonderland-esque carpet of dense bushes, shrouded in mist punctuated by the hunched figures of the tea pickers (though there’s nothing to pick at this time of year, they were pruning). Now, if I spent my life waist-deep in tea leaves, the last thing I’d want to do is drink the stuff, but these women were quaffing it from tankards an alcoholic German would be proud of. The strange thing was that I could understand them again; it only took minutes after our arrival in Dibrugarh for me to ascertain that my Hindi was going to be fairly useless here, where Assamese is the official language. But the Hindi tea community workers were imported along with the bushes and have remained fairly isolated from the local community. In theory this is a good thing, they have their food and homes provided by the tea estate (and it is a beautiful little community that the inhabitants obviously take great pride in, judging by their flower gardens), but this strikes me as being a fairly deliberate ploy to give them absolutely no reason to stray into the local town.

                After a couple of days around Dibrugarh, we drove up to Digboi, where my grandparents lived in the 1950s and early 60s and where my mother was born. If I’m honest, I’m about as interested in Digboi’s oil industry as I am in growing tea, but nonetheless, it’s been interesting to visit places I’ve only seen in flickering films and grainy photos. We tracked down the remaining bungalows that they have lived in, now inhabited by Indian families in the same industry, and checked out the clubs where they socialised. The art deco Clubhouse can hardly have changed since its foundation in 1927, it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to picture cigar smoke filling the cards room or raucous laughter and the pungent smell of whiskey in the bar. Though I somehow doubt that my 27 year old grandparents would have ever imagined their 23 year old granddaughter propping up the same golf club bar dressed like a Punjabi, debating with a drunken elderly Rajput about the anti-feminist implications of sati. 

Delhi Delights

                Having heard various horror stories about Delhi, including disparaging comments from a few Delhi-ites themselves, I didn’t have high hopes for my short stay in the city. Well, how wrong you can be, travellers of the world! I guess that for a lot of people, Delhi is the first place in India they see and if you’ve never seen that level of intensity of human life before, it could be a little intimidating. And admittedly, the slums are pretty horrific as you pull in on the train, but slums are on the horrific side the world over – they’re not exactly sought-after real estate. But the centre of New Delhi is not dissimilar to the centre of any other capital city, with a lovely shiny new metro system before which I imagine the congestion was fairly horrendous. (It’s also the only place in India where I’ve seen a queue of a standard that would be acceptable at home, at least until the train doors open and everyone surges forward, totally overwhelming the security guard responsible for queue maintenance.)

                I successfully managed to locate my parents (who arrived bearing a large and much appreciated bag of Mini Eggs) and, having swapped stories from the last five months, went off on a tour of the city lead by a couple of students. We scooted around the monuments of the British-built New City and the major temples, where Mum and Dad learned quite quickly that lace-up shoes are not the best footwear for a cultural tour of an India city, and dove (dived? Duv?) into the streets of Old Delhi. Whereas New Delhi is spacious, green and relatively clean (the pride of the British Raj, though they only got sixteen years to enjoy it before the Viceroy’s abode became the President’s), Old Delhi really is a rabbit warren of passageways that seem to get ever-narrower, Willy Wonka style, as they burrow into the heart of the city, but suddenly erupt into peaceful, brightly coloured courtyards of the wealthy merchants. Spices and deep fried foods clash with urine in your nostrils while the shops stock everything from sari-borders to taps. We ambled (or rather, were shunted by cycle rickshaws) along the wedding bazaar which, unsurprisingly, deals primarily in all things matrimonial and then peels off into Parantha Gulli, home of my favourite breakfast item. After a quick sqiuzz around one of the Gurdwaras, where we ‘helped’ by rolling a couple of chapattis in the communal kitchen and Dad sported a rather fetching glitzy bandana, we tucked into lunch at the famous Haldiram’s and headed off to try and find the Tibetan market (we didn’t really find it – I thought we had when we spotted a couple of Buddhist monks, but it turned out they were just making the most of a shoe sale. But then who wouldn’t?)

                During our exploits, I got absolutely no more unwanted male attention than anywhere else in the world (except for a prominent crotch pressed against my backside on the metro, though that could happen anywhere when it’s that crowded), but did get an invitation for dinner from a guy I’d been chatting too on the train, to be redeemed at any time, should I return to Delhi with more spare time on my hands. Mum even managed to get herself an escort across a busy road after having to get herself stranded on the far side, which we’re not sure if it signifies the next step in the evolution of her life or if he fancied taking her out for dinner too.

The Pink City

                Having departed from Udaipur in the pitch black at 6am, I spent seven and a half hours chatting with an elderly French tour group as we trundled on our merry way to Jaipur. I fully intend to never be part of a tour group, French or otherwise; the amount of cluelessness being bandied about was fairly impressive. Anyway, we pulled into Jaipur without any problems, and I resolutely dodged taxi touts as I piled myself into an auto and headed for my guesthouse.

                I’ll be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for Priti’s Kriss Residency, having been posted there after her brother had announced he’d gone on a weekend break to Agra so I couldn’t stay in his as I had originally booked, but she has a beautiful house and an excellent cook. But this isn’t that kind of blog, so I’ll stop there. I did meet some rather interesting travellers there, though, including an ex-US marine turned wedding singer who is now living in Switzerland but only has an 8 month work visa so spends 4 months a year travelling, and an elderly Danish couple who make a point of spending 5 months a year travelling in Asia.

                On my first afternoon, I didn’t fancy anything too strenuous, so I headed for the Albert Hall Central Museum to spend a couple of hours wandering around a collection of dusty oddities, including a model of heads sporting an impressive array of facial hair and some miniature yogis twisting themselves into various uncomfortable positions (except for one who looked as if he was having a day off from being a yogi and was just taking a nap. That’s my kind of yoga.)

                Day 2, the Pink City. I can only imagine that the definition of ‘pink’ has changed somewhat over the last 160 years, as Old Jaipur can only be described as terracotta. At first, I just drove straight through on the bus to get up to the Amber Fort (also a misnomer, as it was distinctly on the lemon side). I’m not so bothered about empty forts, really, crumbling antiquities are more my brother’s arena, I’m far more interested in the people behind them, so I sat and had a chat to one of the sweeping ladies about children and village schools, which was far more interesting and memorable than anything else I had seen there. I also got my first marriage proposal there, from a very nice young man who apparently was so head-over-heels for me that he would ‘follow [me] across the world’ because I looked like a ‘nice Indian girl’. If you want a nice Indian girl, mate, then go and find one. There are plenty out there – I don’t really qualify for ‘Indian’, or for ‘nice’, for that matter.

                In the afternoon, after trekking well out of my way to devour a much-craved pizza, I headed into the Old City itself. I took a stroll around the main bazaars and was surprised to be, once again, the only non-Indian out there. After all, I was following a route recommended by the Lonely Planet, so it must be a good idea. What’s the point being taxied through the streets from monument to monument? The streets are where the real life is – the street chai, the spices (the urine), and besides, in the real streets, there is very little ‘Madame! Madame!’ I do understand why people tend to get annoyed (I’m certainly not immune to it myself), but actually 9 out of 10 people genuinely do want you to see the city view from the Krishna temple; there’s nothing in it for them, they are just honestly trying to be helpful. We get fed so much suspicion and tips about dodging scammers that it does tend to make us somewhat rude and obnoxious. You just have to let go a bit and do some yoga breathing.

                Anyway, I breezed round the Windy Palace (bahaha... I’ve been saving that one up), which offers a lovely view of the city, but otherwise it isn’t so remarkable, then headed to the Janta Mantar Observatory. I’ve been to a fair few old buildings in my time, but I’ve never seen anything like before – a sort of 300 year old amusement park of astronomy, a collection of giant stone and metal instruments designed to measure all sorts of aspects of celestial bodies and events. I tagged on to the end of a couple of tour groups (just one of the many benefits of being multi-lingual), then just had time to dash off to the City Palace before closing time. Although full of the usual banner-wielding Japanese tourist groups, the City Palace has a fair amount to offer, including a rather splendid Assembly hall and an interesting collection of regal outfits. But, as usual, there was very little indication of the existence of women or servants of either gender. But who would possibly want to know anything about them when the Maharajahs were just so damn glorious and had such excellent moustaches?

Learning the Lingo 2.0

I’ve been learning Hindi for about nine months now, and my language skills are long past the embryonic stage, confined to the secure womb of the house, and are definitely ready to be pushed forth into the wider world – just as I’m getting ready to leave. Typical.

It’s been an interesting journey, mostly inside my head (though I have been accompanying the fictional Pratap and his slightly dubious adventures, with titles such as ‘What Pratap did in Nepal’ and ‘Suresh – more than just a friend?’), as it has been the closest I’ve ever been to being conscious of learning my own mother tongue. I’d consider myself to be pretty proficient now, I understand most daily conversations provided that they’re not too mumbled, although I do still speak like a toddler which, linguistically speaking, I suppose is what I am.

Five months ago, when I first came out to the subcontinent, I was more than happy to just point at random objects and say ‘cow’, ‘mountain’, ‘doggy’ and so forth, and stare blankly at anybody who tried to approach me with anything vaguely resembling an adult conversation. An onslaught of Hindi soaps later and I had progressed to understanding something along the lines of ‘She .. blah blah.. to auntie… the milk… hindi-babble… third person future tense verb.’ It is somewhat frustrating that my brain can smugly reveal a grammar construction, but not actually recognise what the word means, though vocabulary acquisition takes time and is all part of the process. But what this total immersion thing does mean is that I can actually follow a conversation at native-speaker speed (though not always village speed which, as well as being somewhat mumbled, comes at machine gun pace). None of this ‘The… cow… is… in… the… field…’ nonsense. (Cows are coming up a lot today, as I’m currently watching a rather aged one plodding up and down the road, wandering what would happen to it if it keeled over and if maybe I could sneak some carpaccio before anybody noticed.)

But I’ll be honest, I’m lazy when it comes to speaking. I often wander into the kitchen to declaim to our cooking lady a sentence that has nothing to do with anything but I’ve spent five minutes working on and am rather proud of, but I haven’t exactly been conversing as much as I perhaps should have been since I’ve been working from home rather than in the villages. It’s just frustrating not being able to put what I’m thinking into words, and besides, I’ve got the additional excuse that there are usually other non-Hindi speakers around. In the streets, particularly in touristy areas, I’ll often launch into a faltering spiel and just get blank stares or a ‘What’s she saying?’ in return. I used to be fairly offended by this, my accent may be rubbish and my grammar is all over the place, but generally I’m 75% there – give me a chance! But then I realised that because it’s so unusual that a white girl has made the effort, it’s totally unexpected and just doesn’t register. The people around that know me (or at least know of me – I have actually been approached by strangers to ask if I’m the girl who speaks Hindi) are much more receptive.

The other problem is what I’m going to term ‘language invaders’. A friend of mine who was studying French and Chinese told me once that her brain has two modes – English and Foreign. I now totally understand what she means. My brain will chuck in morsels of Spanish or German, and even occasionally dredge up some Polish to fill a vocabulary gap. Once I am comfortably in Hinglish mode, getting out of it is nigh on impossible – an Indian guy who had lived extensively in Germany asked me the other day how much German I spoke. I blinked at him for some time then came up with ‘Ich verstehe más als ich kann sagen.’ Come on brain, you can do better than that. My respect for bilingual kids continues to skyrocket.

A Poverty Pickle

I’ve been thinking about this post for a couple of months now and have drafted and scrapped it several times – poverty. It’s such a difficult issue to pin down, let alone work out what my thoughts about it are. What even is poverty? A purely financial take on it doesn’t even scratch the surface, particularly when you think about the role that assets like land and livestock have to play here. It’s not uncommon to see women and men glittering, yet still slumped by the side of the road; someone with little understanding of Indian culture might see this jewelry as a savings fund, but the ever-present pressure of dowry prevents it from being so.

                Can we measure it by facilities, then? Maybe. Access to drinkable water is improving by way of community pumps and taps, meaning less pressure on women to go trekking every day, though it only seems to have freed them enough to swap water pots for enormous bundles of sticks or basket-loads of bricks. There certainly a lot of excellent initiatives to train women in handicrafts and textiles, but I imagine they still don’t have a hope in hell of buying their own products. Nevertheless, the willingness of women (and of their families) to train must be evidence of progress.

                Child labour, on the other, I think we can all agree is a definite poverty marker. The sight of pre-pubescent kids wielding pick axes by the side of the road could never (and should never) cease to be shocking. The all too familiar tug of a grubby little hand on my is sleeve is just heart-breaking, especially knowing that handing over those ten rupees or a packet of biscuits would do more harm than good in the long run – if sending children out begging is effective, then what incentive would desperate parents have to send their kids to school?

                Then there’s the added complication of technology. The status attached to phones and laptops is so powerful that it seems to have overridden the want for the infrastructure that supports it. Politicians are handing out laptops to students who cannot guarantee having the electricity to charge them and to some teenagers I’ve met, school is just one giant electrical socket. I can’t help feeling that pressure from the ‘West’ and a general ‘keeping up with the Jones’ attitude’ is distorting natural evolution, which is never a good thing. Then again, without delving back into the whole Jamie Oliver/ poor people/ TV thing, who am I to begrudge anyone their escapism?

                But the main thing is that there is huge enthusiasm for change. There are organisations doing phenomenal work with massive community support, the caste system is gradually crumbling and the spanner thrown firmly into the proverbial works by the Aam Aadmi Party (The Everyman’s Party/ Mango Man’s Party, depending on your translation) has shaken up a political climate infamous for its corruption. While there’s obviously still a long way to go, the genuine optimism for the future of this country is exhilarating and is one form of nationalism that I could actually get behind. 

The Efficiency Deficiency

                When you move to a developing country, you don’t expect things to run as they would at home. If you’ve done even a scrap of research, you’ll expect the power-cuts (there’s one now), the snail’s pace internet and so on. We at home are in a privileged position that we can turn the hot water tap on in the certainty that a) water will come out and b) it will be above body temperature. (There may be exceptions, such as any postcode with a high student population, but that’s another issue.)

                I’ve said tonnes of times that we ‘Westerners’ aren’t here to impose changes, but I can’t help but wonder that everyone’s life would run a little more smoothly and progress would skyrocket if some simple, minor improvements were made. Take the train reservation system, for one thing. You all know by now that I’m a super fan of a good train, but the process of buying a ticket for one is a nightmare. The simplest way to get hold of one, is to go to a travel agent, pay an extra 100 rupees and have it all fixed for you. ‘Ridiculous!’ I hear you cry, ‘I am an independent traveller, an intelligent human being and an impoverished student. I can do it my own way!’ I’m going to be honest here, you can’t. When you go to the station, you are required to fill in a form with all the information of the train you want to catch. Firstly, the form is kept behind the counter, so there are arms from all directions groping through the hole in the class while some poor soul is trying to make a purchase. Once have the form in your sticky mitt, you have to fill in the details of the train you want to catch, which class, seat numbers and so forth. You cannot get the ticket without this fully completed form, but how do you know which train you want until you try to buy the ticket? Perhaps try the website beforehand– unintelligible. Even if you think you’ve got it all planned, inevitably you leave with something totally different. Or use the computerised system at the station? Step one is to type in the train number, which you don’t have. You have a slight advantage if you can read the Hindi sign, but you still need to know your train’s name and point of origin to identify it. The 2 minutes it takes to book a trip from Cambridge to Leeds online suddenly becomes 20 minutes for no real reason.

                But what I really don’t get is that nobody seems to see this as a problem! I actually tried to move a pile of the infamous forms to the table with pens provided for the purpose of filling it in, and everybody looked at me as if I’d just sprouted three additional noses. I’m trying to make everyone’s lives easier here, people! But I think we find ourselves back at the issue of education – a lack of questioning in school means a lack of questioning in life. Sticking to the status quo is easy, safe and hey, we all get our tickets at the end of the day, so what’s the hurry? 

Baubles in Bikaner

                I admit, there has been radio silence on the blog time – sorry about that, life has got a little bit, well... normal over the last month or so. But pressure is being applied in certain quarters to come up with the goods, so I’m going to break my rule about only posting about what I think rather than what I do and tell you a little bit about somewhat unconventional Christmas.

                As you were all gobbling down your advent choccies and getting flustered over fairy lights, life over here in Udaipur was continuing as usual. The supermarket started selling Father Christmas pencils, but other than that, very little changed. Not surprising, really, as Christians are a pretty small minority. You see, it turns out that Christmas actually is, as they say, all about family. If, like me, you’re not in the slightest bit religious, then what Christmas really is is an amalgamation of bizarre rituals and age-old arguments that nobody outside your own family circle understands. (By the way, I hope the leaves didn’t see the light of day, Christoph.) When you’re away from home, nothing can replace that.

                So, Team and I decided that instead of moping around bemoaning the lack of mulled wine and mince pies, we would go and do something utterly unconventional and spend Christmas in the desert. (Though thinking about the history of Christmas, I guess that’s not altogether unconventional...)

                Our journey to the fort city of Bikaner involved my first overnight bus journey. Now, trains I can get behind. I like trains; you can actually get a decent night’s sleep on a sleeper train. They’re one of the few things that our former colony can perhaps thank us for. The bus, on the other hand, is not my friend. Imagine, if you will, being imprisoned by the Mafia and being put in a still functioning chest freezer, then being driven off to an unknown destination that probably isn’t going to end in tea and cakes. That’s what a single sleeper compartment on an AC bus feels like. Add in to that the fact that we’re driving through the desert, the air so thick with dust and sand that the edge of the road is ‘more like guidelines than actual rules’. And did I mention the horn? Buses have a novelty horn that they’re clearly very proud of and like to make the most of. It’s not exactly conducive to a good night’s rest.

                Bikaner has three main offerings to the curious traveller: a fort, camel safaris and a rat temple. I don’t know about you, but to us, the first port of call was pretty obvious. We stocked up on peanuts, hopped on to a bus and scuttled off to meet some holy rodents. I can’t quite remember their full story, but legend has it that a very important family narked the goddess Durga (not recommended, in case you were considering it), so she made the family switch places with the rats in their palace. So, to this day, they have been provided with food, music and whatever else it is that rats need to make them happy. I had envisaged an Indiana Jones-esque building writhing with furry little bodies, but it actually wasn’t too bad. Definitely an opportunity for a Chicken Run/ Ratatouille combo sequel, though. A handy hint: take a spare pair of socks with you. Like any other temple, you have to take your shoes off. And those ain’t Coco Pops crunching underfoot.

                For Christmas Day, we booked a camel safari out into the wilderness. I’ve never seen a John Wayne film, but I think after three hours astride a camel I was doing a pretty good impression. We had a fab Christmas dinner of vegetable stew, lentils, rice and chapattis all cooked over an open fire by the camel guys while we played about in the sand. It’s amazing the ability sand has to make even fully grown adults regress to toddlerhood, but it’s really nothing compared to the fun you can have with the bleached skeleton of an ex-cow. Beats Lego hands down, any day.

                After a few more hours back in the saddle, we turned up at our camp. Huddling round the fire, watching for shooting stars and having massages (I let the sneaky bum grope go, the camel guy can consider that his tip) is a pretty good way to spend Christmas Eve. I didn’t fancy risking pneumonia/ the wild dogs so I slept in a tent (or at least, under a canvas draped over two poles), but Team decided to brave the great outdoors. I didn’t envy them the ice on their blankets in the morning.

                In the afternoon, we headed up to the fort. It has an impressive display in tribute to the glory of the Maharajas, but no mention of anybody else at all. You’d think a woman or a non-royal would have to set foot in the fort at least once in five hundred years, but apparently not. UNTIL ME, that is. In general, I haven’t been harassed by local people. But when I go to touristy places, that all changes and I seem to become a walking exhibit. It’s infuriating. I sent the fourth guy who asked to take my photo running for the hills; he came up to me with the usual ‘One photo?’ and by that point I was so fed up, I just barked ‘WHY?!?!?!?!?!’ and he turned on his heels and fled, squealing ‘Aaaaah... macho girl!’ Maybe I should get a t-shirt printed, complete with six-pack and biceps.