Lado Sarai, 21-22nd February 2011
Another very loud wedding downstairs, much more bass than the last one (the windows are shaking), and the all-night whirr and clacking of the diesel generator outside to look forward to....L’s just come downstairs (it’s now nearly 10 pm) in despair of sleeping, so I’ve given her the I-pod with stories to listen to...M and W sleep through soundly (M the next morning, “What noise? No big deal!”). We keep hoping that events are building to a climax (and that the noise will then mercifully stop?), but all the drumming and discordant brass-band and whooping keeps on going. And even when the wedding ends, then the men will strike the tent overnight.
We’re planning our escape from the megapolis (Delhi is fast approaching a population of 20 million, without counting the new satellite cities, and is catching up with Mumbai and Kolkata’s urban monsters). WD has pretty much finished with the archives: he’s going back out to Gurgaon tomorrow to look at a photo-archive there and is doing lots of mad zipping around Delhi to take teaching slides, trying to make sure he misses nothing, as well as meeting potential PhD students and, and, and.... He’s looking a bit wrecked and red-eyed this evening, exhausted by the place – so what he needs, what he really needs, is a techno-themed, village wedding tonight. I could tell he was having a bit of a bad day when he got upset by a young woman begging with a baby, who was a bit too persistent with him, this evening. He’s generally pretty calm about the irritations India chucks up but it gets to him too sometimes.
So, assuming we can get tickets on the shatabdi (superfast express train, i.e. it may travel at more than 50 mph, for some of the journey at least) out to Jaipur or Ajmer for break-of-dawn on Saturday, that’s the plan....Then a bit more time in Rajasthan, and a lot more monuments (including, inevitably, the Taj Mahal) around Agra in the next week, then 24 hours+ on a train to Orissa (Eastern India), a few days or so there and a week in Calcutta, before going to Cambodia for a fortnight and back to India for L’s birthday and Darjeeling and Kalimpong in the mountains as our final fling here. Lots more travelling – M very keen to get going again (she isn’t keen on cities), L sad that she won’t be having more home-cooking for the rest of the trip (the rest of us are rejoicing at the thought of no more flavourless tomato slop with cheap macaroni and omelettes) but also looking forward to going back to Rajasthan, and W, I think, would quite like to go home (England). But we’re not planning to come back to Delhi, other than an overnighter near the airport on our way back from Darjeeling in April, and through to Blighty, so I’m doing military logistics – packing bags to pick up as we come through and anticipating the safest, most convenient spot to leave them; doing book post (finding tailors who will stitch WD’s academic tomes into hessian); clearing up here; shopping and finding a suitable thank you present for N (still not back from the mountains). We have discovered we collectively have a massive, 10 bag, 230 kg baggage allowance on the flight home!!! L was a bit worried that we shouldn’t use it all as it might tip the plane out of the sky but her great passion for handicrafts and nick-knacks (marble elephants, wooden snakes, key rings...) and cheap jewellery (bangles, pendants, bead necklaces) may significantly contribute. If anybody out there wants a (really massive) bronze dancing Shiva, tribal pottery, a 6 foot stone Nandi, or a wickerwork love-swing, do let us know.
We went to Dilli Haat on Saturday night – a craft market with food stalls from all round India. There was a Comic Fair going on and I can confirm that Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons is a Universal Archetype, alive and well in the New India, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Guy if you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about) with (mostly) men dressed up as their favourite superheroes or arch-villains. We managed to eat our way from Tamil Nadu to Rajasthan to Hyderabad to Sikkim, via dosas, shami kebab to momos and still had room for kulfi! Thanks Fergus for the recommendation. And then we stumbled onto another Craft Fair on Sunday at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Craft has a big significance here, partly the mythical status accorded to the ‘Village’ and home-made, partly the development agenda – but it can all end up looking like the same, just another mass produced commodity. Please not another puppet from Rajasthan or shawl from Kashmir. But then I did feel a bit humbled after chatting to a lady from Himachal Pradesh who was doing intricate embroidered folk scenes, to discover that each cloth took her at least two months of stitching. (And her embroidery is reversible, the back looking as good as the front) We’d gone to the IGNCA to see a great exhibition of photos by Lala Deen Dayal, an Indian photographer in the 1880s and 1890s. Lots of fabulous photos of monuments and landscapes, some of which we’ve already visited, as well as studio portraits of Indians and Europeans (the art of the moustache) and princely boasting (tiger shoots, interiors of palaces, polo)...
We met up with Y, one of WD’s current post-grads, at Lodi Gardens, mostly so that the children could play with her dogs again and also so that she could angst to WD about her upcoming viva. L is completely in love with these geriatric pedigrees – I’ve no idea what sort of breed they are – small, fluffy, black and white with very upturned tails, huskie-lite. They have dreadful cataracts and consequently, they think she is one of them – small, ungroomed, quite smelly (L, that is) - and have taken her into the pack. Not quite Mowgli with his wolf pack though - this is South Delhi at its most elegant and swanky and these are pampered pets. We are struck by quite how posh the Lodi estates are, on return visit – it’s taken three months in India, to recognise how one patch of bare park grass can differ so drastically from another. Y had brought a servant to do the dog care (sort out dog fights, wait for them to cock a leg round the park, hold the leads) and to drive the car around in the rain. I was concerned that M, L & W might over-excite and over-exercise the elderly dogs and my role was to keep the kids to heel, hold them back from rolling in muddy puddles and biting each other.
L: The man let me hold his lead. The dog that loved me best’s name is Dilluc. He’s really soft. You’re wrong mum, they aren’t smelly, they’re lovely. Dilluc likes to smell EVERYTHING! They wanted to play in the rain.
WM: Unfortunately, there was an unscheduled thunderstorm (another ‘winter monsoon’) which sent everyone running into the ruined tombs and mosque for shelter. The romance of the situation was rather spoilt by the crowds and birthday parties, and the inconvenient persistence of the rain. Having got a bit bored, we made a dash for the very smart Lodi Garden Restaurant (positively the best place to get a martini in Delhi, apparently) and sat in the dim there, dripping and figuring out if we could afford 2 coffees and a Sprite shared between all the kids. L looked at the menu and was very disapproving of the fact that it was all liquor (she was reading the cocktail menu): “I’m never going to drink wine or beer when I’m grown-up, mum” Hmmmm.
We’d been for lunch with WD’s old supervisor and his Indian wife the day before in Gurgaon. Taking the metro out to HUDA City was a bit like flying (the metro becomes overland at Qutab Minab) with seats the whole way. There’s a small amount of dirty scrub and the odd ‘farm’ separating Delhi from Gurgaon, but it’s basically one big continuous sprawl. W very excited to see so many temples (actually they were the fabled malls of Gurgaon), giant statues of Hanuman, tower blocks and huge hospital complexes (the best hospitals in India apparently). M was deeply unimpressed and carried on reading about prehistory in her Penguin History of India. She had been reading an adult comic about the Dalit experience but she was so tortured by the inhumanity to the untouchables I’ve had to remove it for a few years.
Gurgaon is a city less than 20 years old. It’s where all the international business start-ups and banks are based and is the newest reinvention of Delhi (so many previous cities built and destroyed), its most current face of modernity. The roads are wide and poorly surfaced with anarchic roundabouts and hand painted adverts for a local pest control firm on every wall. The optimistic (given the considerable distances between sectors) cycle rickshaw wallahs and cows remind you that this is still familiar territory. G and V live in a flat in a sector that once (only a few years ago) was the rural fringe of Gurgaon. No longer, but it was surprisingly peaceful sitting on their balcony with the pot plants and a glass of Indian wine. W had been looking forward to some ‘boy time’ as G and V’s son is a week older than him, but it wasn’t really the successful play-date we’d hoped for – he was hiding under a desk as we arrived and things went downhill from there. The children were fantastic at coping with the strange boy and strange food. We have discovered W can hit a ball with a plastic cricket bat – where does this eye-hand coordination come from with no obvious genetic precedents? L did a Marathon around the small dusty park (26 laps) and got progressively more flushed and sweaty and wondered why her legs ached so much the next day. M supervised small boys’ play (and was incredibly patient with them under the circumstances) and was a picture of social grace under pressure. It was fascinating for me to meet WD’s old supervisor (I’ve heard a fair deal about him over the years, but never met him) and to watch WD still deferential despite a merging of relative age-differences and roles. So a weekend spent considering the teacher/mentor/guru relationship.
Next morning: So WolfGang, are we sad or happy to be leaving Delhi this week?
W: I want to go to the Himalayas! I want to cut them in half with my big scissors (he’s making plasticine mountains)! I liked Delhi ‘cos it’s really smelly. I got a Delhi metro. It’s now officially on mum’s bed. I’m going to take it to Nursery to show my friends and even other people.
M: Disco because we’re leaving Delhi! Disco! (WM: so I think that mean’s she’s happy?) Delhi is a woeful place of horrid memories (of dysentery). Maybe Khan Market’s okay. I have to say I much prefer Rajasthan and can’t wait to be in Jaipur and Ajmer. I’m finishing off my Hindu Gods book at the minute and I’ve only got a little bit of Durga’s tiger rug to finish. I’m not so keen on N’s place because it’s so loud but I do like Lado Sarai village because it’s got more friendly. I’ve liked having supper with mum and dad but I think we’ll have more exciting food when we’re travelling, especially when we go to Restaurant Le Posh (as featured in L’s Bollywood film).
L: I am really tired today because of the noisy wedding last night. I want to go travelling again. I want to go to Cambodia. I’m looking forward to my birthday in the mountains. I’ve liked staying here because we get to eat your food. Pasta was great. I expect I’ll live on rotis again when we’re travelling.
WM: I’m ready to go, or else to stay here another year or two. I feel like I’m only just beginning to figure out this Super City after 6 weeks here on and off – and that’s only the basics of survival (orientation, transport, food) – but it’s been quite an experience. London is quiet and under-populated in comparison and I can’t imagine how scarily peaceful Beckley will be. I’ve enjoyed the amazing relics of Ancient (and less ancient) Delhi and seeing them with WD. There’s been a formidable amount to see here, even as an amateur, and I’m always of the opinion that the monuments are not so much the point, as the journey there and the strange and curious things you learn of other people’s lives en route. Delhi’s parks and tombs have been a great resource for the children and whilst it’s not perhaps an obviously child-friendly city, hoping on metros and autos has made getting around reasonably straightforward even when we’ve been living in Lado Sarai, on the very Edge of Civilisation. There’s a continual friction between the tectonic plates of aspirational superpower and long-time developing nation. Everything and nothing has changed since I first came here in the 1980s. We’re caught in a strange reversal, fast becoming the poor Old World cousins in this boom city, but with the perpetual and out-dated assumption (even by WD’s colleagues who’ve lived abroad, let alone the villagers here or the auto-rickshaw drivers) that we are loaded because of where we come from and our professional backgrounds.
We’ve also managed some lower-key, steadier living here, which has benefitted us all, even though the noise and pollution has made things hard. I have mixed feelings about N’s house. We feel very grateful for a month of our own space – but it’s been hard managing the unpredictable intrusion of N’s staff (to the extent it hasn’t actually been our own space), dealing with the ever-present dirt (the children look like ragamuffins within two minutes of a fierce scrubbing with a flannel) and domestic disasters (a putty-less pane of glass falling out of the glass doors onto the balcony, the kettle cord being burnt by contact with the hot hob, a quilt stained with pen ink). So, time to go?
WD: Mmmm, yes.
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