Lado Sarai, Delhi, 5th Feb 2011
I’m writing this in the dark. Strange geometric light patterns flash across the wall as headlights filter through the metal shutters on the windows. It’s 6.30 am and dawn’s not so far off. WD is just about asleep under all the quilts. Delhi nights are cold still, 10 degrees or so – heaven! I’ve been awake listening to South Delhi wake up. It’s still so unfamiliar and noisy – but we’re swiftly adapting and already I sleep through the neighbours’ 4.30 am water pumping (where the walls vibrate as water is drawn up into their tank), the local muezzin, street coughing and spitting, noisy crows and dogs,.
We’re directly under the flight path to Indira Gandhi airport and down a dusty, unpaved track from a major Delhi artery (think the South Circular) so there’s a constant vibration and screech of traffic, as well as the usual racket of horns. Lorries and autos here have hand-painted signs on their rear saying ‘Use horn!’ and drivers will constantly do that, to let other traffic know they are behind (since mirrors are pretty much a redundant driving accessory). Using your horn like this in the UK would mark you out as a road rage maniac and get you arrested but here is pretty much mandatory, another thing we all but take for granted. I was thinking this yesterday how absolutely terrifying the traffic had seemed on arrival in Delhi the first time, with vehicles crazily weaving in and out but now see that there is a flow and rhythm to it – and yes, still some awful driving (the blind overtaking still gets me) and I’ll still avoid crossing a 6 lane highway with 3 children on my own, wherever possible…
We’re staying for the next month here in Lado Sarai. It’s a village (but not a village in the Beckley sense) on the edge of Delhi, essentially a ‘working class’ district (although I struggle with class descriptors here where wealth and caste are thrown into the mix and the majority of people have jobs in the ‘informal’ sector) that’s gradually being gentrified and pulled into South Delhi proper. The metro has arrived here (well in Saket, down the road) and there are a few contemporary art galleries along the main street, strangely at odds with the buffalo pats drying on the wall outside our house. Think Hoxton a while ago…The Quatb is not far and that and other monuments of ‘ancient’ Delhi are scattered around the skyline as seen from our roof top – including one, a small square shrine, right outside our bedroom window just the other side of the lane in a small, extremely dusty park. It’s been thoughtfully floodlit in the evenings for our benefit. Our neighbours on one side are architects and lawyers apparently, on the other side the buffalo owner, and looking over the back wall from the roof, there’s a load of poorer housing though still with satellite dishes. If you walk down the lane, through a back alley and jump over the open drains, there’s a row of amenities including a small supermarket, tea and samosa shops, and a place to buy mattresses. We feel a little conspicuous – definitely not a touristy area and we’re obviously ahead of the game, in terms of places expats might rent! We get stared at as we explore and people are much less ready to smile at you, than in South India it appears. I wish I could speak more Hindi, though a reasonable number of locals speak at least some English. We’ve been told to lock up well at night, so the entire front of the building shutters down with bolts and padlocks and the roof goes back on (mostly to keep out monkeys and cats though).
We’re renting from a friend and Indian colleague of WD’s, N. He lives with his mum elsewhere in South Delhi but has bought and gradually done up this house. It’s his bohemian bachelor pad with N’s office, a small kitchen and pottery studio downstairs, bedroom and bathroom on the next floor and open plan space (that can be screened off to make another bedroom and bathroom) on the floor above and then the roof top. There’s a central light well and staircase and the entire roof can be peeled off using a huge winch. Yesterday, firecrackers started raining in (there was a wedding procession outside) and we had to winch the roof back quickly. The children think it’s the coolest house they’ve ever been in and want to bungee jump on long elastic from the top floor.
N is also on sabbatical and is working hard finishing various projects. Originally he was to have been in the UK, but actually is still here which is great and he’ll come in most days to work with his large entourage of assistants and staff downstairs. We marvel at how some segments of society here are still entirely dependent on their servants to facilitate their lives. Imagine a world where you didn’t drive, do shopping, cooking, clearing up and cleaning, washing and just sorting the minutiae of a household out yourself. As well as having childcare on tap – we think this is why upper class Indian ladies become so powerful professionally round here in middle-age. It’s odd coming from the UK where the economic and social changes of the Second World War and the rise of labour saving devices (hello happy housewives) banished such master-servant relationships. I know that my life at home runs more smoothly with good ‘help’ (Thank you Kate and Caroline and Claire, if you’re reading) but it’s a frankly more equitable deal, I hope. Dippen, N’s ‘batman’ comes to do a few hours here most days, just to keep on top of the dust and to take away the rubbish (no regular weekly collections here). He earns 4800 rupees a month (nearly £70) and I would guess it’s a reasonable job. He’s a sweet, smiley Hindi speaker who is incredibly shy of us, and me in particular. M tries to help him and he’s gently amused by her.
WD plans to use the archives lots and is doing some teaching at JNU as well this month. School has resumed – there’s a big table on the rooftop so we go up there once the day has warmed up enough and the background soundscape just becomes white noise. The girls have been ploughing through lots of maths and M has been doing some water related experiments. W is amazingly self-contained when the attention is focussed elsewhere, doing thousands of dinosaur stencils and making Lego model after Lego model.
Everyone is a bit run down and over-tired at the midway point. The WolfPs especially – both of us have stinky colds. I think the Delhi dust and pollution gets into your sinuses and lungs and it’s direct physical irritation as much as infective, but we’re trying to take it easy. The wood smoke from all the surrounding cooking fires also makes me cough. The children are all well, but I don’t take it for granted. Even W’s mozzie acne is clearing up. They get absolutely filthy here – partly it’s the dust but also the unfinished concrete floors downstairs – so I’m having to be a bit officious about washing. Doing face paints (thanks for that one Kerensa!) yesterday also meant I had to scrub that bit harder. W was Harry Potter, with what seem to be indelible specs. We’re going to get stared at even harder today? M was Shiva and L Parvati, his consort, complete with nose ring and rosy red cheeks, again which seem to be permanently ingrained.
No one seems greatly inclined to go out and do mega-sightseeing at this stage so we’ve been keeping it local and exploring by foot from here. We’ve been researching parks – there’s a Children’s Park (think more bit of scrub with one slide and a broken swing) within easy striking distance, thanks to the Delhi Development Agency. Sitting there, a few evenings ago, as the sun headed down through the dirty pink haze and with the planes roaring past overhead, it struck us we were in Hounslow. So really exotic. The children made friends with a gang of local boys on their way back from Taekwondo – who were happy to throw and catch and show off their googly catching as well as include W. They turned out to be 11-14 years old, despite being much shorter than M, but were fun to play with and didn’t end up pinching our tennis ball. We also went looking for the Garden of the Five Senses – which sounded more of a sensory feast than the Children’s Park. This was said to be over the busy highway and we found more scrubby park, stinky drains, broken swings and school kids – not the sumptuous gardening, sculpture installation and shopping extravaganza described by N. So maybe we weren’t in the right place?
WD’s just brought me a mug of tea in bed. Actually we’re all relishing being able to unpack our bags and be in one place for a bit. We retrieved our luggage from Y’s – and couldn’t quite believe how much there was – surely it had been breeding in our absence? We’d managed with 2 bags and a small rucksack for the last 6 weeks, so am a bit appalled by how much ‘stuff’ we thought we needed to bring to India. Indeed, we’re contemplating shipping some of it (books and heavy stuff), back ahead of us. The children, however, were absolutely thrilled to find toys and books we’d left behind and played with them like it was Christmas (again).
And to eat pasta with tomato sauce, as cooked by their dad, was another cause for celebration – the meal took forever to make on a gas ring, starting from raw ingredients (no passata or ‘convenience’ tins of tomatoes here). Shopping in the local (limited) supermarket is an education – have I come home with wheat, rice or chickpea flour? We feel hugely conspicuous going in to stock up the fridge, spending several hundred rupees at a go. Inflation, and particularly food inflation, is big news here. Baseline rates of inflation run at about 8-9% and food inflation at about 18% according to a report WD read yesterday. For us, that means that everything is more expensive than even when WD was here last autumn as the Stirling exchange rate has stayed about the same for a long time, at about 70 rupees to the pound. For Indians, it means living costs rising, pressure on wages and hunger for some. People worry about food riots. The onion crisis has been averted though – a few months ago onions had hit an all-time high, due to poor harvests, and this was serious in a country of so many vegetarians….
When we don’t feel like cooking, we can go out and buy roti and dal and some very spicy and extremely salty North Indian food from the street stalls in the village. We’re yet to sample the momos, Tibetan dumplings, as sold by the guys from Darjeeling. There’s a lot to be said for the convenience of ‘parcel’ food (takeaway wrapped up in newspaper or plastic bags). According to N, there are fancy restaurants in Meroli, down the road a bit more, but no one’s that keen to go out anywhere at the minute.
W&L have just come in – ‘Is it breakfast yet?’ – and are noticing how cold it is out of bed. Houses here are designed for coolness in the heat, not winter months. It’s getting a bit squished typing – W on my right, playing with Play Mobil knights and gladiators (‘His spear is a bit like Shiva’s trident, Mum) and L on my left, playing with a few Sylvannian kittens in lace and floral. Holly is turning out to be a reasonable mother, rather than the completely feckless one I’d feared. So that’s good news.
Love to you all from Delhi. Should you wish to try Skyping us, we have a much better internet connection, and now run to sound and vision without too awful a delay and sound distortion (but no promises)! We are 5 and a half hours ahead of the UK and it feels like we are on-line for most of our waking hours at the moment.
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