In Flight, 24th December 2010
Somewhere, 30,000 feet down there, are the dusty plains of Gujarat as we fly south, like swallows (or some other, better chosen, Asian migratory bird whose name escapes us right now) via a stop-over in Mumbai. Hopefully we will be in Cochin tonight after the inevitable hanging around in Indira Gandhi airport this morning for fog-related delay.
Kids are getting to be experienced travellers – unfazed by hopping on and off aeroplanes and generally enjoying the generic charms of modern international airports (security queues, clean toilets, KFC! Pizza Hut! skidding on the shiny marble floors, free internet access). I’m missing the pre-globalised days of rancid terminals with nothing to do and nowhere to sit. L loves flying – “I love all the little things you get” - even in the pared-down world of budget domestic Indian airlines. Spice Jet, so far, beats Ryan Air. W may sleep or may not, no sign of it yet – he’s singing his own version of Bowie’s ‘Starman’ to me as I type. Wolfdad is reading India Today, opting for a photo collage of the last 35 years of Indian history rather than the ins-and-outs of onion prices (food inflation is a big deal here), the WikiLeaks scandal and local crime stories which dominate the daily English Language press here. I’m a nervous flier at the best of times never having been completely convinced by the science of flight or perhaps having inadequate faith in the safety culture of these capitalist boom businesses, and there is no complementary G&T or equivalent anti-anxiolytic to take me mind off the turbulence or bumpy descent. But even I’m prepared to opt for this (and survive the carbon footprint guilt) rather than a 3 day epic family rail adventure – overnighters yes, longer probably not…
Transit seems to be the theme of the last few days – overnight train ride back from Jodphur 2 nights ago, a day spent reorganising our luggage and doing some last minute elving in Delhi and now onwards.
Jodphur had felt (even by North Indian standards) a bit of a filthy, noisy, fly-ridden place – tiny narrow streets where you could reach into the shop fronts from your auto; the old city so tortuous you could only navigate by using the Fort for bearings; open sewers and cows who snack on rubbish. I had to untangle an electrical cable from the tonsils of one bovine. (Another cow aside - L writes appointments in Wolfdad’s diary unbeknown to him. He slipped up and failed to keep his date for dinner with ‘Miss Cow’ on 20th December at 6.45 pm. She was upset, we’d imagine.) We saw the Fort – which was very fine with superb caskets for riding on elephants and palanquins, little hands memorialising the mass sati of a previous generation and a great array of canons (W’s favourite). Wolfdad went to Osian to see a goddess temple that’s a major pilgrimage site of the region (and a lot of other exciting early nagara temples!) whilst the rest of us hunkered down in the haveli guesthouse, the kids rolling around on cushions and talking much too loudly amidst the hushed couple conversations at breakfast-time.
The last day turned out to be the most fun – we went out of town to a big park at Mandor to see cenotaphs of the Rajas of Jodphur, monkey business (the children and I watched a comedy I think, put on largely for our benefit, as the monkeys were driven from the trees by banging of drums, brandishing of big sticks etc, only for the monkeys to return to taunt their adversaries 5 minutes later) and playground encounters. The children were visibly upset by a little girl begging with a babe in arms and snotty toddler at her heels, sobbing ‘no mamma, no papa’ and wanted to give her all their money. L has decided to undertake fundraising activities back in the UK on her behalf. Hard to understand, let alone explain the causes and best solution to such moral dilemmas to my crew. Particularly as we later saw the girl without the younger children and the baby being carried by another woman, possibly its mother… A huge Marwari family were having a big day out, tried to explain their intricated inter-relatedness, wanted to know everything about us, decided M had Angelina Jolie eyes and Bollywood looks (to which M self-deprecates, ‘but I’m only a country girl…’) and wanted us to join in their games.
We caught a local bus back into town, which was fun – a professor of Social Science from elsewhere in India got chatting with Wolfdad and was very jovial, interrogating M about her wish to do archaeology and asking her, ‘What is history?’! M looked a bit nervous…
When we got back to the old bit of town where the haveli was, in the late afternoon, the auto rickshaw drivers at the rank called out, wanting to know how our trip to Mandor had been, an old lady comically counted the kids ‘ek, do, teen!’ (one, Two, THREE) squealing with delight, the tailor on the corner had invisibly mended the rip in my salwar kamise for the princely sum of 10 rupees, we bought bags of beautiful oranges from the fruit stall on the corner, and a little girl invited us all back to her house to meet her granny… so we fell under the spell of the neighbourhood especially as we climbed onto the roof top and watched the sun set over the city (Jodphur is known as the ‘blue city’ as the Brahmin’s colour code spread to the other houses of the old city) with the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, temple sounds and evening activities on other roof tops all around.
W: I want to write my own things! Ohh! Fine!! Fine!!!!!!! I’m too tired to think but I can’t have a snooze! (5 minutes later – he’s out cold. We’ve touched down in Mumbai, now back in the air…)
Our second night train was okay – everyone knows what to expect now and Wolfdad even succeeded in buying blankets (though whether or not they are ‘top quality’ as claimed seems a little dubious to me) so we froze a little less. L wasn’t travel sick on our blankets this time – though there was a moment where it looked in the balance (we’re re-appropriating a whole lot of airline sick bags for future use)…
Arriving at Delhi Junction in the cold and mist was hard, and the taxi-drivers were mean bastard negotiators (WD needs to learn the Hindi phrase approximating to ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’) about taking us to the elite Government area in Delhi where we were going for breakfast with Y, one of Wolfdad’s PhD students, and her eminent Civil Servant mum. I had quite some reservations about this: exhausted and dirty children and parents arriving for the first time in this respectable home. I was utterly, happily wrong – my children behaved impeccably, reading TinTin and playing with the elderly, fluffy tailed dogs (there was a mutual love fest between them and L) and eating muffins and boiled eggs. We and our luggage were taken to a Government Rest House, so kindly arranged by Y’s mother, and WD and I got a real kick out of being driven there in the back seat of a government white Ambassador, complete with curtains and flag. I felt like doing royal waves.
So we’ve left fleeces, jeans, trainers and a whole heap of other stuff behind in Delhi. It’s light cotton all the way in the South – daytime temps of high-20s-low 30s, night time low 20s…We’re hoping the Penninks make it to Cochin from Beckley – Heathrow is apparently open now but they’ll need their wellies or a four wheel drive to make it out of the village as the snow is still thick on the ground there. M is reading weather reports and worrying…
Father Christmas (or Farmer 'Tismas as W used to call him) is on his way looking at the NORAD-Google satellite tracking (check it out!). We need to hang our stockings up tonight and hope.
L: I like aroeplanes and slidy floors at the airport. Don’t belive dad hes always wrong. Were on a aroeplane and were about to touch down were kochin is awaiting. Mayas reading on the kindle and im doing the blog right at this moment. The troble with aroeplanes is your ears hert on the way up and the way down. By the way they are herting right now. Well bye bye.
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