In India

I spent a long time in India the past few months and truth be told I wasn't sure whether to return.  A lot of this time was spent at home with some family stuff thrown in.  This time around I also headed East, principally to meet an old friend D, who I had last visited in 1997. D was my MSc classmate and the brightest chap ever and this hasn't changed much with time.

But first stop Kolkata to meet old colleagues of mine. When you aren't exactly working full time in the profession there are a lot of awkward pauses but on the whole it was interesting to be back in the city and meet them.

As always parts of Kolkata look like they are falling to ruin. Kolkata always makes one feel so till you make a few rapid visits and cease to notice this.  Despite it being early January, there was hardly a chill in the air though the evening dark fell as quickly as I remembered it.  Park Street looked even more run down until you noticed bits that had changed, like the revamped Flurys. So changed was the cafe that I did not venture in. The much anticipated visit to Oxford Bookstore was a damp squib, it was hard to believe that 14 years back I used to binge shop for stationery and books here. And though I picked up a few Bengali movie DVDs, even this was a meagre selection.

I took a few photographs but walking around I felt that some cities are meant to be photographed, some to be written about and Kolkata is the latter.

On the way to the airport my cab driver a Punjabi Kolkatan (who overcharged me - though I got used to this, Mumbai probably being the only place where the meter has any meaning) told me well to do Bengalis were fleeing the city and migrants coming in from elsewhre.  The feeling that things were never going to change was certainly a predominant feature of my conversations with my colleagues.  Perhaps like my driver's joke about his Ambassador car - on life support but still going - Kolkata goes on.

From there on I went on to Guwahati. Which had changed a bit of course, given I had last visited in 1997. Still, it is light years away from India's metros in terns of crowding and traffic.

 

The Bramhaputra, Guwahati, 1997. 

Looking across to the Ugra Tara temple, Guwahati, 2015.  

Guwahati, 2015. 

The last time around I had visited during the April Bihu, this time around for the January one (fun fact: I once knew a girl called Bihu named for her parents Assam posting at the time of her birth).  As always D had planned a trip - the last time we did Umananda, Madan Kamdev and Shillong, this time around Kaziranga.

 

Madan Kamdev Temple, 1997. 

Bonhabi, Kaziranga, 2015

 Bonhabi, Kaziranga, 2015

Around Kaziranga, 2015.

The resort we stayed at, Bonhabi, took me a bit back in time given it reminded me of the many Inspection Bungalows we stayed in, down to the kind of meals.  Though we had of course come for the Park it is entirely possible to while away a week doing nothing much except reading or walking around the adjacent tea gardens.

We did of course do the safaris, an afternoon jeep safari and an early morning elephant sari.  To take good wildlife pics you need a good camera and I had my phone on me. On the other hand having a good camera you are so focussed on the shot that you tend to lose the pleasure of the moment. A good number of jeeps passed us with people with really big and expensive cameras, all in pursuit of that one shot and at some point it just seemed part of the rush of modern life and its relentless documenting (of course I am doing it here too!).

 Rhino, Kaziranga, 2015

 Morning over the Diphlu River, Kaziranga, 2015

Diphlu River, Kaziranga, 2015.

Despite the poaching and fall in numbers, there is a good deal of rhino spotting possible in Kaziranga. As also deer and water buffaloes (the latter are very shy).  The guides aren't entirely focussed on the biggies, they take time to point out turtles or birds in the trees.  The biggie of the Park is of course the tiger, the reason those big barrels of modern cameras are out in full force in Kaziranga.  At one point we thought we might get to spot one given the agitation of the deer but it was not to be - no doubt with about 50 odd noisy people across the stream waiting for the tiger, it decided not to emerge:)

But the actual joy of Kaziranga is just to be there. Of course you can't walk around but the sky, the trees, the birds all conspire to make it wonderful.  In the early morning - though the elephants calmly carry us around - you do regret disturbing the animals out for a first meal but the forest itself is beautiful, wreathed in mists, the early morning cold pleasant against one's clothing. And the night brings a pleasant tiredness that is alleviated by a hot bath and a small bonfire (literally!) at the resort.  On the trip, I was reading Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles which constantly contrasts old Japanese ways with the Western influences taking over the country.  There is no East/West dichotomy that I felt in Kaziranga, rather something of the old and the new.  Like the feeling of a hot water bath after a dusty day in a forest versus one in a hotel room, the warmth of a bonfire versus central air conditioning. These are not things one normally contrasts, hot water is after all hot water, and yet it all feels different here.In effect, you notice the feeling of the bath, the warmth of the flame.

I returned feeling entirely refreshed but also a bit regretful that I was soon to be plunged back into city life.

Drinking Ladies

There seem to have been a a lot of drinking ladies in Ancient India. There are apparently plenty of sculptures of drinking women. And plenty of verses going on a fair bit about wine being a major beauty enhancer, in Kalidasa's plays for e.g. and especially in the Sattasai. (no face in the gutter modern women in the old texts!).

The above extract is from Malavikagnimitram.  Iravati is kind of famous for making a dramatic entry in an inebriated state in this play. Though who can blame Iravati, the second wife? There is already a senior queen, Dharini. And there is pretty Malavika who the king is courting and who is so going to be the king's favourite. And there is poor Iravati with only a maid to extoll her flushed with wine beauty. And a few passages where she berates the useless Agnimitra.  Who likens her to a crocodile while Malavika is a lotus flower. Pity Iravati didn't employ the crocodile teeth!

So what is a woman to do? All my sympathies lie with Iravati. I say ditch the King, get an ancient vibrator and embrace the bottle, it is far more constant!

[X] [X]

A. Madhaviah's Padmvati

The National Library in Singapore stocks more than a few Indian titles that are not so readily available in India. Or at least I haven't spotted them in the usual bookshops. One of the books I borrowed from the library was Padmavati, one of the first few novels in Tamil. Apart from the milieu and the time it is set in, it is not very interesting as a novel. In fact it made me wonder if a certain timidity is inherent in Tamil Brahmins that makes for safe literature. In Bengal for e.g., the novel was already established when Padmavati was written. And despite certain conventional elements, Bankim's works are complex and morally ambiguous. OK Bankim is a master but you get the drift. Padmavati on the other hand tends to get a bit preachy and the characters are a bit black and white. And despite being billed as a reform movel about the education of women the novel is really about the friendship between the eponymous Padmavati's cousin and later husband, Narayanan and Goaplan. Nevertheless it was fascinating to me because the whole world of Tamil Brahmins at the end of the 19th century is captured in the book. And it speaks of the types in the community that many of the character traits described in the book are familiar to me from my own relatives and acquaintances. And of course it has the usual Tamil Brahmin male preoccupation with devadasis though of course the upright hero doesn't succumb to their wiles. 

It's primary interest to me therefore lies in its portrayal of  South Indian brahmins at the end of the 20th century.  In the deeply conservative community, there are two forces at play forcing some kind of change. One, modern education, largely in the hands of missionaries.  Two, the administrative setup under British rule with its minor officials who wielded a good deal of power over small communities. There are plenty of sharp vignettes throughout the novel that highlight this. To me the most amusing bit was the North-South divide i.e. the divide between Tirunelveli (the setting of the novel) and Thanjavur that is up North.  None of the Thanjavur folk in this are up to any good which was kind of amusing given my family firmly has its origins in Thanjavur. 

This illustration below for e.g. is of a naughty married Thanjavur lady all ready for a sneaky rendezvous with Gopalan. Her equally amorous husband is planning to seduce the virtuous Savitri, sister of Gopalan. Elsewhere in the novel formidable Thanjavur parents masterfully use their children in increasing their worldly wealth via marriages. What can I say, Go Thanjavur! Just kidding.

There is also a fairly long section on drama companies. There is again that faint ambivalence present in Tamil Brahmin novels.  This world recurs in so many texts but there is also a moral stigma attached to it, little good can result by entering it.  I suppose it was a concern for families - our family folklore has a relative who burned his way through the family fortune - leaving his wife completely destitute - in just such a manner.
 

The dissonance between the changes brought about by education and actual community mores occurs throughout the novel.  Because the school is run by missionaries, the students are exposed to and aspire to the values of the West. On the other hand there is the world at home and one's own culture that cannot be denied. While this manifests itself in many ways in the novel, the many references to clothing interested me.  For e.g. the below paragraph describes a groom's attire which shows the norms of masculine attire prior to Western influences.

After his ritual bath, Gopalan was decked in silk and zari, with sandal paste and kumkumam on his forehead and sweet scented jasmine in his hair. He wore jewellery too - a double stranded waist chain over his silk veshti, a jewelled pendant strung on his golden punul, the scared thread, a pearl necklace intertwined with a flower garland, diamond earrings and gem studded rings. Gold bracelets accentuated his youth and natural charm. The kohl, applied by Savithri, made his eyes appear more beautiful than ever. With lips reddened by the juice of the betel chewed and a complexion aglow with shy happiness, he looked enchanting, like Manmathan with his body restored.

For us today, the flowers in the hair and waist belts for the veshti may seem excessive and even feminine, but they seem to have been common in Madhaviah’s time. This description in fact reminded me of the way idols are decked in temples.  Gopalan’s English education makes him embarrassed to be so decked, on the other hand he is secretly pleased to be the traditional bridegroom.  And of course it is interesting that bride and groom are equally bedecked,  bar the fact that saris were probably more coloured and elaborate than a veshti.

The novel of course isn't about fashion at all. Rather it is of its time and the stray references here and there provide clues to clothing norms of the time.  For example, I often wondered about the origins of the half-sari in Tamil Nadu.  From the novel it appears that it was a fashionable outfit worn by young Christian girls. This appears in a section where one of the characters seriously contemplates converting to Christianity.

 After a few days, he began to visit the boy’s home in Palayamkottai and met his sisters who, dressed in the daring new style of pavadai, blouse and dhavani (emphasis mine), strolled about book in hand. 

That is the kind of detail that is hard to come by for folk like me who blog on history. Happily, the translated novel is available because it was done by one of the author's grand-daughters (the illustrations done in the 1950s are that of his nephew M. Krishnan). It's one of those moments where you have serious thoughts about an education that privileges English over regional languages, almost all one's literary history is a black box if a translation is not available.

A handsome young man of twenty five, dressed in a vannan washed zari veshti, muslin shirt and uppada angavastram arrived after awhile. Such was his appearance that even the old hag in the kitchen would have concluded that he was an English educated government official. Else would he wear ritually unclean, washerman washed clothes or a chandu pottu on his forehead? Without a government job, how could he have sported whiskers or acquired Tiruchirapalli footwear or a silver wristwatch. 

The illustration and text above is of a minor functionary who arrives for Gopalan’s wedding (Padmavati, A. Madhaviah). Though not senior they apparently wielded a good amount of power in the districts, far far more than a senior functionary in say Chennai, and were therefore to be appropriately appeased at all times. It's a fascinating paragraph providing visual clues of status in his dressing, both in terms of wealth and a departure from orthodox.

 There is also  descriptions of jewellery of the time now and then.

All in all despite a very weak plot, the book was enjoyable because of its familiar milieu. And of course I was over the moon with those few throwaway lines on the davani!

Things We Find When Moving

While packing up my place in Sydney, I found an old storage box with partitions that I sometimes use for storing jewellery.  It is made of hard plastic and probably dates back to the 80s. My father would sometimes be gifted Diwali sweets and the tin or box it came in was reused. Particularly because these were often decorative, at least by the standards of the time.

In fact pretty much any packaging that we received was rarely thrown away.  Even cardboard boxes which my brother and I would gussy up with leftover wrapping paper.  Painting over things was a Sunday afternoon past time for us, be it a cheap earthenware vase or just little paintings for our wall. Sometimes my grandmother would give us a print from a Japanese calendar, my uncle had been to Japan and a calendar would often be sent to him. We would get a single print which we would mount on left over plywood.   All of this was far cheaper than buying a curio or a print - even a Taschen calendar poster was unaffordable.

I discarded a lot of these when I moved to Sydney a decade back except this box.  And for a cheap plastic throwaway it has lasted a long time. What's more it is in perfect condition despite being in careless hands. 

In Goa

Till November of last year I had never been to Goa. There would be rapturous reports of parties, weekend visits. beach sports, food, the lifestyle and yet I had never been to the state. When I used to admit this, everyone I knew would be incredulous.  That too when you live in Bombay! You must go! Its heaven! Its awesome! Etc. Etc.  I am not sure why I never did make the trip but it seemed hard to believe that it could be less than paradise in the face of so many glowing reports.

Well reader, it is less than paradise.  Despite the photographs this post is going to host.

This was a trip I was looking forward to because I was going to be spending several days with close friends of mine.  They are building a house in Goa and the plan was to motor around a bit and also look up their place and a few local architects.  All the planning had been done by them from a place to stay to things to see and do.  Eventually most of my pleasant memories of the trip are of time spent with friends.

The places we stayed in were homestays which in  way mitigated some of my negative feelings about Goa, had I stayed in a hotel I might have fled the very next day.  The one in North Goa was a bit of a fancy affair albeit in an idyllic setting.  The one in South Goa on the other hand was unpretentious, the family more casual and the children unaffected. It made for a few happy hours.

Starting the vacation in North Goa was perhaps not the best thing to do.  It is a place over run with tourists and suffers the malaise of famous beach towns.  That is it is just another party town, an away place to get drunk (or perhaps smoke something stronger), have a fling and more.  It isn't just the foreigners, there is a steady stream of cashed up Indians (yeah some Goans still refer to us as Indians) for whom this is the place to sport short shorts, kiss discreetly but openly and be "modern". It's the closest thing to being abroad without actually leaving the country. In this Goa is quite liberal, there are none of the other unspoken constraints of travelling elsewhere in India. But this also gives a sense of empty and even sad decadence to the place, it is all body and no soul.

To add to my unhappiness, the background score for all this was pop hits of the 80s and 90s. Everything I managed to avoid as a young adult now follows me everywhere!

The Goan countryside is pretty, there is little doubt about that. So are the houses, in this the Portuguese have left a far greater legacy than the British.  And architecture seems a fairly serious (and creative) preoccupation judging by the visits my friends made. And things improve as one heads south even though there are murmurs of beaches here and there being taken over by the Russians or the Israelis or the Indians and how things were far better before some unspecified time. 

Part of  my lacklustre response is because there is little that engages one intellectually (and yes I know no one goes to Goa to sip coffee and peruse bookshops - there are other places for that!).  What I really mean of course is a sense of place that arouses one's curiosity. Goa's most famous son is Mario Miranda. And while the permanent display of his early works in Reis Magos Fort are a wonderful and amusing insight into Goa in the early 50s (thank you friends), he is so ubiquitous that even an illustration like Street in Fontainhas that seemed charming becomes overused.  Other artists are little known, I only found some fading postcards of Angelo da Fonseca's work for example and in fact I only knew of the artist because of my vintage clothing blog.  Perhaps these are mere initial impressions that will stand corrected on further contact, on the other hand I had gone with friends who had avoided beach party tourism and taken pains to locate museums and artwork and bookshops.

Everyone goes to Old Goa. And the complex of churches at its heart is quite spectacular. Of these Bom Jesus which houses the body of Francis Xavier is by far the most popular. Were there not photography restrictions, I fear people would be making V signs and posing in front of the long departed saint. Outside though everyone poses against the edifice. In fact there are a large number of honeymooners here, rustic girls in skimpy clothing taking photographs with their husbands, no doubt to be secretly savoured once they return home.

As always the better parts lie in the fringes. There are the ruins of the church of St Augustine. There is something a little eerie and spectacular about it.  The quiet convent on the other side which was undergoing some restoration work when I was wandering around. The small and perfectly formed Italian church, St Cajetan (everyone seemed to be trying for a Goan toehold). This place in fact has the gate of the old Adil Shahi palace.  So strongly associated is Goa with several centuries of Portuguese rule that everything before is barely mentioned in the tourist pamphlets.

As my friends were busy that morning, I had taken the bus from South Goa to Old Goa.  The buses are cramped but its fairly easy to travel by the bus.  Again I am struck by the absence of middle class India, almost everyone in the bus appears blue collar, a few locals and most workmen from outside the state.  From Old Goa, I took the bus to Ponda which is not really on the tourist route. The only reason I knew about the Mangueshi and Shanta Durga temples was because I had friends from the state and they often visited the temples for the usual Hindu rites of passage.  Ponda as it happens is more or less like rural parts of Maharashtra or Karnataka and decidedly the less glamorous cousin of Goa by the Sea.  Partly this is because the temples are not as spectacular as their counterparts in many other Indian states though they are a little different with their blend of Hindu, Islamic and Portuguese influences. Later my friends met me at Ponda and we drove around a bit. It felt a bit like being in a 70s movie, say Chitchor, right down to little kirana shops and Marathi programs on radios and little B&W  TVs.

Ironically despite a recent ban on foreigners entering temples, it was the Indian visitors who were in Western clothing.

Not much after I returned to Mumbai, the happiness I had felt in the wake of being in Kumbakonam felt a little diminished. And for a long time after I felt a certain aloofness towards Goa. Maybe this was because after travelling elsewhere I felt even more strongly the contradictions and underlying ennui of Goa.  Maybe it is because Goa is a de-stressing holiday, the kind you may look forward to after being stuck week long in traffic in Mumbai. Not therefore a holiday for someone having a mid life gap year. But largely it maybe that places are like people, sometimes we just do not get along. Looking at the photographs for this post, I thought perhaps I had misjudged Goa a little. But when I think of Goa, I can only recall the feeling of listlessness, even a lack of joy, that I felt at so many moments. Everyone is there to relax and have fun, to chill in current parlance, we are assured over and over again that this is the state of mind we all long for and yet at almost every moment you feel that vital life, the life that truly nourishes us, is elsewhere.

In Tiruvidaimarudur-2

I was aware that my great grandparents neighbours still lived in Tiruvidaimarudur. But it hardly seemed right to knock on their door given our tenuous connection.  As it happened, they spotted me on the street taking pictures of the other half of the house and called me in.  A cup of coffee was made for me, a lunch invitation was extended.  Their grandson, a cute little scamp, hung around to play with me.  It turned out that the little kids I had played with were all now grown up with families of their own. They had kept in touch with other branches of the family.  So I stayed a bit, we chatted a bit about this and that, about our lives at present. When I left they gave me the customary gift of a small sum of money as my elders. I myself had arrived empty handed, unsure of who I might know in the village. The house itself, rather their part of it, was as I remembered it, right down to the tubewell, the fields at the back. The road that led to the river was green with growing rice and small groves of coconut trees.  The pathashalai opposite the house was now a school, albeit run from Kanchi. It was hard to sit there and not remember the past. At the same time, life had moved on and yet a continuity remained. Normally a sense of detachment is part of all my interactions, at this point though my emotions felt inexplicably stirred.

This feeling was only intensified by a visit to my mother's aunt (much younger than her though) who lived in Kumbakonam.  The old house here was much discussed in our family but I had never been there. Nor had I ever met the aunt.  The house had been demolished to make way for a newer model but otherwise the family's manners and habits seemed pickled in time. They remained a vaidika family with all its attendant rituals and prejudices.  The lane their house was in led to the Kaveri and I strolled down for a bit.  The girls doing their washing at the river (in salwar kameez, now an approved dress for young girls in Kumbakonam), fell into an easy conversation.  As did the men painting the old temple at the end of the lane.

My aunt herself was a bit quiet, perhaps unsure as to how to treat a woman she barely knew, but as the hours progressed she felt more at ease. Later we went to meet the daughter-in-law who lived in a rented portion of a small house.  The daughter of an orthodox man with many daughters, she was married to the eldest son who was a purohita. All kinds of conflicts raged in her and she was not shy about discussing them.  Every conversation was an assertion of the life that was hers, though the assertion only made her happiness suspect.  Everything about her was different from me-her decrying of education, her caste obsessions, her narrow definition of acceptable femininity-and yet I felt drawn to some inner warmth and truth in her that was warped by her upbringing.

Just before I left I went to the Darasuram temple. I regretted leaving it to the last, it was incredibly beautiful.  It's a small but perfectly formed temple that holds its own against larger, grander temples. By all accounts like Banteay Srei, yet barely visited.  There was far too much to see and far little information.

Travel isn't a preoccupation of mine of late.  Too often in our times it is just a few days in a town. a rush through the sights captured in photographs, a bit of eating out, a sampling of the local capture. I prefer to stay for awhile or just meander in my own home town. But some trips have resonance, they take you to a different place internally.  Going to Kumbakonam and Tiruvidaimarudur was such a trip, I came away with my heart and mind full of a certain kind of happiness that I have not felt for a long time. The colours, the light of the land stayed with me for many days. Though this happiness wasn't entirely due to the people I met, I thought of them often too. Most of all of Vidya's life and her kindness.

At the start of my trip I took a cycle rickshaw to my hotel. Mr Murugesan my driver was perhaps in his late 50s. The rickshaw is kind of "low class", a cheap alternative for short trips.  Anyone with a little money takes the motorised "auto".  Due to several reasons, largely Mr Murugesan, I ended up taking a rickshaw. It was a long ride to my hotel, Mr Murugesan had misheard me and had not anticipated that he would need to cycle a few kilometers.  This left me a bit agitated because of the effort Mr Murugesan had to put in. Still he had committed to the job and he was determined to reach me to my destination. Once we reached, we parted. A few words of appreciation, a little bit more money than he had asked for left him happy. I asked for a picture.  And he let down his veshti, combed his hair a bit and posed, a dignified man in a lowly trade. I felt moved, a little teary even.

Everything flowed on from then, touched with a little magic.

In Tiruvidaimarudur-1

Almost all of my family can trace their (known) roots back to a clutch of villages in and around Kumbakonam. Because my parents themselves were not brought up in the south of the country, these were mere names to us. Or would have been had it not been for my great-grandfather's "country-change", much like a sea change or tree change, in the 1950s.  In doing this my great-grandfather moved back to a house in the village of Tiruvidaimarudur which had belonged to his mother.  My mother had been exceptionally close to her grandparents and had spent a good part of her childhood with them. In turn, she had wanted us to be better acquainted with them. Additionally my parents were related so my great grandparents served as elders for both sections of the family. So though most of our holidays were spent with our own grandparents in Bombay, we did make the occasional trip to Tiruvidaimarudur. These trips remain etched in memory being few and far between and to a place that was entirely different from both genteel, incestuous cantonments and the louder delights of the city. The last visit I made was in 1988 as a young woman. Without the freedoms of childhood it felt a bit restrictive. Most of my visit was spent writing letters to friends in Mumbai and playing with the gaggle of kids next door. At this point, the house had been partitioned as my great-grandparents found its upkeep difficult. The subsequent year my great grandfather died, the house was sold and my great grandmother moved to Bombay.  And though I had every intention of returning once I never did until last year.

The Day Express was the train we took to Kumbakonam from where on we took local transport to Tiruvidaimarudur.  This has been replaced by the car for most people I know.  But it had also been years since I took a train. I had the time and the inclination so one morning I took the train from Egmore station and was on my way.  And cliche as it is, a different India takes public transport, especially if it is second class. I had been warned of course. Do not talk to strangers! Do not give out your own name! Do not accept food! As it turned out, everyone was voluble with the details of their own life leaving me little time to explain my own. As for the food, it was delicious:) No doubt the lack of a marriage and my travelling on my own was puzzling to most people I met, yet most accepted it or in the odd case went out of their way to be helpful.  After the dust and chaos of Chennai, it was comforting too to see clean stations, an endless stretch of greenery with the added bonus of pleasant weather.

I had little idea what I would do in Kumbakonam where I was staying bar booking a car at some point and making my way to my great-grandfather's place. As it turned out, the time I had proved to be very little. Kumbakonam itself was half-remembered. I wasn't very interested in the town as a child though the women in the house would make a trip now and then to escape the confines of Tiruvidaimarudur. We would tag along to the sari shop or to the temples (the minute I spotted the temple lake I remembered sitting on the steps with my mother), the trip made tolerable by the promise of dosai and ice-cream.  As a young adult I never found it pleasant, my Bombay manners and clothes attracting more than a few comments. Now as a much older woman I found the  town changed. There are a few swish resorts and it takes some time to take in the fact that a breakfast of muesli and toast is possible.  There are more than a few foreigners as well as Indians on the temple trail.  But it all felt familiar, quiet and soothing. Beneath all that is the hint of a stifling small town though this is unlikely to impinge on the average visitor.

Returning to Tiruvidaimarudur itself, I was surprised by how little had changed.  Of course the place had grown, the demographic had changed. It seemed more prosperous and yet poverty persists.  But more than the physical changes, it was something of the spirit of the place that hadn't changed.  Perhaps too I had come in the right season, the region had had two weeks of rain and everything felt green and promising.  The river, which I last remembered as very dry, had water. Everywhere one turned it was green. And though narrow roads and tiny houses remained, the courtyards were swept and tidy.  And above all this the temple loomed, still the same and so vast that parts of it are simply locked up.  Here, as in Maruthuvakudi which has a small temple that is my father's kuladeivam and where I stopped by briefly, you wonder why at a particular time the region had such an efflorescence of temple building. Few temples compare with the sheer size and variety of those found in and around Thanjavur.

Leaving Sydney

It's been more than 5 months since I left Sydney though I went back for a few weeks to wind up and clear out my flat.  The years since I came back from a brief stint in Brisbane and resumed my old life seem to have coalesced into one. In between there was an incapacitating illness, deaths in the family, a very blue year, travel back and forth.  The mid point of this marked a transition, a new phase in life where everything is quietly hopeful, quietly hopeless. Yet I could not say I was unhappy.  Rather if I felt afresh the shock of grief, I felt happiness. And too keenly at times.  At the point when I was ill and had days to myself and the year was blue, blue, blue I would often walk around slowly in the afternoon. The day as often in Sydney would be mildly sunny, small pink eucalypt flowers would litter the ground, my niece would come rushing to the door of her house if I was in the neighbourhood and dropped by and life would feel absolutely simple for a moment.  I never feel this way elsewhere.

When I was a child, my brother and I lingered at a house with a TV, a rarity those days.  A documentary on the Nullarbor plain was screening and something in it held us rapt. My aunt had moved early on to Australia, to us inured to American tales it felt suitably distant and different. My Brilliant Career spoke to me as a teen. Years later in my first serious relationship which happened to be long distance, my then boyfriend was briefly working in Perth. It was the only time I considered dropping everything to move.  In a way the country held a place in my imagination.  It lay in wait for me as I for it.  I am not Australian, rather there are parts to the country that suit me. And there is no other place outside of India that feels this way. For the moment it is goodbye and there has been much to feel happy about by way of family and being home. Which is the reason for moving. But for all its distance Sydney remains a second home and I think about my years there often.

Life, Circumscribed

Three things that linger on from my India visit:

Lecturing Pyaremohan, bro's driver, on educating his children, in particular his daughter. On one such day, Pyaremohan slightly wistful and telling me that his social milieu did not permit the freedoms my brother and I enjoyed.

R Mall at Vikhroli, a vast cavern in which staff were stationed like so many chess pieces - much like a game with live chess pieces as played by Mughal emperors. Harrassed staff at the Bata store in the mall who earned 3000Rs a month and dared not ask for a raise - for nipping at their heels were people ready to do the same job for 2000Rs.

My cousin in Pune who seemed to inhabit the worst of both worlds. Her husband does not work - at home or elsewhere. She works for a meagre wage and comes home to cook, scrub and raise the child.

Driving Ms Moulee - III

Given the nature of Mumbai traffic, I spent a lot of time on the roads. And had plenty of time for chats with Pyaremohan (nickname for my bro’s driver).

Pigs seem to feature in many ways in Pyaremohan aka PM’s life. He had bought a piglet a few months back intending to fatten it up for Diwali. The pig had been duly photographed and looked rather fetching. His wife, who fed it daily, had grown attached to it but the pig, showing good sense, hid behind her whenever PM approached. I suggested to him that in the home movie playing in the pig’s mind he was the dark, evil villain. For some reason this made him laugh no end. Sadly the pig was killed on Diwali for a festive meal.

One afternoon was so hot that I decided to get a fix of sugarcane juice. We took ourselves off to the best purveyor of the stuff in Mumbai from I don’t know – time immemorial – the Rajawadi Rasvanti Griha (RRG). PM had never had the ambrosia offered up at this place and promptly stretched himself out on its spindly bench, drink in hand, and started querying the owner. PM does this all the time, seeking to affirm that he is a man of the world who can get something for nothing. The RRG owners are characterised by their vow of silence so wringing conversation out of the owner proved way harder than wringing juice out of the sugarcane. RRG Owner: 1, PM: 0

Thanks to a loan from my bro, PM now had a motorcycle. Which he polished and kept lovingly and referred to at least as often as his wife.

Karwa Chauth was on during my visit. The proceedings of the day and on PM’s return home were explained in great detail to me. So tender was this that I am quite sure the man is still very much in love with his wife. I asked him why he didn’t keep Karwa Chauth but received no answer.

I had bought a pot of Australian cold cream for PM's wife and sister. Only to find that he intended to use it to help soften and lighten his complexion.

The wife wanted a gold necklace for Diwali, which fact PM mentioned to me everyday. Each mention was followed by his observation that “Sir” (my bro) was the greatest employer in the world. It is widely known that I am dim-witted and take everything at face value. Nevertheless his persisting with the story and a few other incidents finally attuned me to the PM way of thinking which was intended to make me apply my wayward mind to the problem of what could be done to benefit his family. In this case it was of course arranging for the necklace. This simultaneous exaltation and request for handouts can be faintly exasperating (I think Robyn Davidson’s Desert Places touched a bit on this). On the other hand the social system in India works in this very same mysterious way and those of us not adept at deciphering the language of supplication and favours may well be foreign and exasperating to the likes of PM. And to be fair, a few tales of evil employers rung true, rare is the person in India who is not anxious to extract every last bit of a rupee paid and even rarer is the person who does not confuse a salaried domestic employee with a slave.

We went a couple of times to Powai and PM sadly proved true all stereotypes regarding his gender by refusing to ask for directions and getting us lost each time.

On a Building Site

I am still jet lagged but thought I should post something before the month slips by. India was of course hectic and it will take awhile to unpack my thoughts. This time I did manage to meet a few people and make a few out of town visits. One was to Poona which has changed a lot since the mid 80s when taking the Army bus into town every fortnight from Kirkee was the highlight of our lives. Poona remains a slow city, a trait it shares with Bangalore, perhaps the coolness of the air is responsible. Vaguely alarmed by the vast number of people we know with more than one property in India (we have our old flat and little else), we did a mini recce of "investment" flats in Poona. It makes sound economic sense but the idea of multiple residences is something I am still not fully comfortable with. Plus the residences in India suggest nothing other than monotony and ennui. From singularly unaesthetic building blocks to independent houses that are mainly concrete with touches of the grandiose, nothing made one want a second home. Inevitably, we came to no decision on buying a flat.

One of the places we went to was still in the early stages of construction. As is common in India, the hired workers lived on site. Apart from the nascent building itself which served as transient accommodation, there was a small, temporary brick establishment which boasted a garden of sorts (at another such place, our driver scored a couple of free gourds). It was clean and well tended and the garden was probably a source for much of their diet. People who build these residences are considered marginal and displaced. In my youth many a middle class writer, filled with burning anger at the injustices of life, felt compelled to point out the inherent irony in people without houses building houses for others. And yet, without romanticising the poverty, the workers seemed to have a camaraderie of sorts and their ability to create this temporary life - and share it as with our driver - was to me remarkable.

Apart from the vegetable patch, we also came across the goats below as well as a couple of chickens. Both looked well fed and I have no doubt they are intended for the cooking pot. As it happened, our driver too had been looking after a piglet which was fat enough by Diwali to cook a festive biryani. In Sydney, they would be part of an "alternative" ecological lifestyle, here they were the persistence of old patterns of life which require economy and prudence in managing a home.

Election!

Every now and then well meaning people of English origin will tell you that the British were “good colonisers” as opposed to the dull and brutal Dutch, the rascally French, the corrupt Belgians etc. The English, common wisdom goes, left behind some really good stuff. And the most important of course is the great English democratic tradition. To which one replies by pointing out the failed states (in the current parlance) they left behind. And adds the fact that India is unique in having taken on these good things and fashioning it to its own needs. In other words, the democratic tradition survives in the country, in whatever bastardised form, because we as a people have always understood it intellectually and are deeply invested in it. And each election in India only confirms this view. Usually I eschew the notion of taking pride in one’s nationality but in every election I can see the good common sense of the land of my birth. And also why its founding fathers are near iconic in so many developing nations. So for today, Vande Mataram! - yes, I know the term has a saffron tinge these days but I simply didn’t want to use a phrase in the language the rest of the post is in :-)

Driving Ms Moulee - II

Conversations with Pyaremohan were not extensive this time around given the nature of my visit. Still, seeing me limping around with a bad foot, he joined countless others in giving me medical advice. Apart from recommending a hot compress (cold compresses apparently are for delicate parts like eyes whereas the lowly foot needs a shot of intense heat), he also hesitantly offered to provide me with some pig fat balm if Dad (as he calls my father) was willing to tolerate it in his apartment. Dad it turned out wasn't inspite of his carnivorous youth but I left the possibility of some pig on me (pun purely unintentional) open. Coincidentally a book I was reading at the time, Cloudstreet, also served up pig fat as a recipe for burns so the Pyaremohan Apothecary had some basis for its medications.

Pyaremohan in fact seemed to be in slaughter mode. Having returned from Haryana where his kids had been shorn of their locks, he now needed to sacrifice a goat (if I remember correctly) as a follow up. This was to take place on a Sunday.

Me: So will you get someone to sacrifice the goat?
PM: No, I do it myself.

The headless goat and defatted pig left Dad in some distress and he swore to lecture Pyaremohan, then desisted. Dad is after all a lamb at heart, and there is no saying what Pyaremohan would do to a lamb.

The Haryana returned native also saw it fit to once again delight me with the dubious charms of Haryanvi music videos uploaded on his mobile phone. These chiefly consisted of some rustic lad singing lustily to his lady love, a shimmering vision purely due to her bright and sequinned dress. Mostly he described her charms, she responded coquettishly and it wound its way to a predictable end. The backdrops were of some interest. In one, a college, students sat in outdoor classrooms. Young love blossomed in natural surroundings but the video had little to indicate that the college had lofty aims like Santiniketan. Many had a large white house, obviously an architectural mistake popular in the state (or perhaps the producer was on a limited budget). I mentioned to Pyaremohan that the videos appeared to be repetitive. I suspect no more will be shown to me, though I remain intrigued as to what passes for entertainment in the provinces.

Before I left, Pyaremohan invited us for a quick lunch. He lived fairly close to the airport in a wadi, which had a number of tightly packed residences and was also almost entirely Haryanvi. A clutch of children made quick salaams and ran off to play, the women dutifully served us. It turned out that all of them were good looking in a delicate fashion (Pyaremohan's sister-in-law was in ghunghat, a fact he mentioned with great pride, inexplicably she threw it off when he left the room though Dad and my brother were around) and also capable young women in a patriarchal system. Some elements of patriarchy were familiar but also mildly shocking, Pyaremohan's sister for example could only make limited use of her training as a beautician, her husband deciding what could be "allowed". In fact the whole visit left me with the impression of a family and culture where the men were swaggering, macho duds prone to drink and the women, within the constraints of their lives, marshalled all their intelligence to raise a family.

I think I do not need to know anything more about Haryana for awhile. But for anyone interested, youtube hosts one of Pyaremohan's beloved songs.

Map of India

Waiting at Bandra, I was accosted by a long haired youth selling maps. I bought one. Like everyone I met in Mumbai, he began telling me his story. He was from Rajasthan and had been in the city for 9 months. He earned Rs. 5-10 for each map he sold, on most days he did not sell a single map. His time in Mumbai had been a failure. His bearing, the long hair hinted at another occupation - poet? actor? - but I am being fanciful. I wanted to speak to him, quiz him on the maps, but was swept in by our desultory and decidedly more boring wedding party.

He may still be loitering around Shoppers Stop not selling maps. If you see him, buy one.

Driving Ms Moulee - I

most often was Shibu's driver, Pyaremohan. This was our nickname for him once I took the precaution of asking him if he had seen "Chupke Chupke".

PM: Haan, woh Ajay Devgan wala picture?
Me: Nahin, woh purana picture, Dharmendra aur Amitabh ke saath.
PM: Nahin maloom.

Which clearly indicates how old I am. He was religious too and seemed to have a fascination for TV serials that featured reptilian deities, particularly when played by comely Southern women (in one of my numerous cringe inducing moments, I lectured him on the serpent as a recurring religious symbol across cultures thus neatly demonstrating the divide between a lived faith and an academic one). Apart from providing me a rapid update on soaps (Woh rehen wali mahlon ki I believe is a hot favourite), he also took me on a mini tour of all that lies between Kandivali and Ghatkopar, prompted no doubt by my gawking at new edifices. I attempted a few debates on regionalism and chauvinism prompted by his extended praise of the charm of Haryanvi women, their graceful dances, the beauty and modesty of the veil and the like. His moth balled idea of chivalry meant a polite acceptance of all my contrary views, which oddly enough left me more amused than enraged.

Almost everyone in India starts a conversation with the lack of money thus indicating that memsahib had better make up the deficit. Rickshaw drivers from the airport are particularly adept in the art of whingeing for their daily cake. I caught a rickshaw and no sooner had I sat down I was informed that he had waited endlessly for a customer and that "police wale sab chor hain" (delicious juxtaposition of terms) and really it was up to me to ensure that he stayed in employment.

Me: If the police guy takes from you and you take from me, who do I take from?
Whinger: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

For appreciating my wit, I gave him more than he deserved.

All rickshaw drivers talk. The sweetest was the guy with whom I did a slow crawl through Asalfa (can I ever make a visit to Mumbai without spending hours on its narrow roads?). He was - as most are - from UP and more precisely from Kanpur where I lived briefly. He talked in a good natured kind of way about his travails and also provided an incisive delineation of the psyche of the UPwala and the Mumbaiwala. Which is - No sooner does a UPwala do well, his neighbour has cast a covetous eye and then spends sleepless nights wondering how to literally blast him out of body and property. The Mumbaiwala, on the other hand, has little use for his neighbour and is only concerned with getting his own body and property to the next level. This, my driver believed, was the reason UP would always be hell and Mumbai heaven. The heaven of Mumbai was belied by his punishing working schedule but he seemed happy enough. Rather surprisingly, he was childless at age 30. His wife worked and they intended to save enough for the child.

Talking to so many people, I found myself switching with ease between Mumbaiya Hindi, UP Hindi, Tamil and English. A sort of English that is, it will take me at least a month to slip into the English I speak here.

Godless in India

SEBASTIAN D'SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

One of the unexpected elements of my visit was the overt religiosity of almost everyone I encountered. The religious element is a non-sequitur in the Indian context, what was different was that some viewed my laxness as at best an aberration, at worst a sin. This was most pronounced in the succession of women who looked after my grandmother. Most did not boast anything but a rudimentary education which probably accounted for their beliefs, which admixed superstitions, rituals, gurus and a rudimentary philosophy of living. However, no domestic help I had ever had in India when I lived there had been so bold as to declare me godless or forced their beliefs on me. Certainly no one was like the woman who believed I had terminated her employment because I did not believe in God - I wouldn't like to think of my fate if I did live in her midst. Others declared fasting to be the solution to all my perceived ills, indeed all seemed to have a peculiar attachment to fasting though it wasn't clear to me what new dawn the act would bring. An eclipse was a calamitous occuring. Dreams were interpreted, my grandmother moved through all of them. And all were keen on caste as an indicator of their own social status. I did try to provide my own point of view but this was clearly pointless. Much as I enjoyed listening to them and admired their spirit and tenderness, it all left me a bit despondent.

In my own family, I felt myself plunged right back into the world I was brought up in. My father, much like my mother, had traversed a full arc from agnosticism to belief so the family altar was offered flowers every day and no day passed without the lighting of the lamps. The act of discarding papers on which gods were embossed or printed was fraught with anxiety, as it is in many Indian houses. My uncle was probably symptomatic of many of us in attempting to reconcile an education in science which taught us that planets were compositions of matter with the belief that they exercised an impact on day to day life. Yet, they were models of rationality (and indeed which of us is the purely rational being) compared to many others in whom I found a slavish devotion to brahminism, the categorisation of people and animals as unclean and a near complete adherence to the Hindu calendar, auspicious times and endless poojas. Most were part of a rising middle class and their children had done well but the belief system remained and was merely admixed with a new prosperity and superficial cosmopolitanism. Parts of the family took to chanting God's name in my grandmother's ears in the belief they were easing her passage into the next world. My grandmother, at heart a cheerful agnostic, parroted this for their satisfaction but never took God's name of her own accord. More warmly, more humanly she thought endlessly of those she had been intimate with in her life.

With so much religion around, so much fear of mis-stepping (that pooja not done, that forgotten rahu kalam time), "family problems" and sometimes just the sheer difficulty of getting around town, I found myself hailing roadside shrines, rashly promising coconuts to Gods, surreptitiously moving an ill placed God, lighting the evening lamp and the like. A confession - I don't eschew Hindu religious practice altogether. I employ it as and when it pleases me though never in accordance with any calendar. I have a cultural attachment to many aspects of the religion, they induce in me that warm feeling of nostalgia and beauty that all childhood memories do. Yet I cannot take it seriously. The offered coconut is a symbol of grace and humility but it will not change anything. The idol is richly symbolic of human hope and desire but is little else than clay and sometimes their multitudes in India fill me with an odd sense of unease (like New Zealand sheep they must outnumber people). As for the rest, the caste divisions, the superstitions, the gurus, the unquestioning religiosity, these I can do without. Neither do I wish to be disabused of my own beliefs. Hindus like to boast that atheism is part of the religion but this is academic. The man who is rational is surely in a minority (though he need not be alone - he too can form his own atheist caste and participate in the Indian Matrimonial Bazaar).

Back in Sydney some equanimity has been restored. India is shaped by society, in our daily lives and indeed even in our idea of life we are as far removed from nature as possible. In contrast, in the simplicity of the barbecue, in its slavish devotion to sport, its mythology of sea and bush, this most urbanised society is repeatedly called back to the elements. Its hard to imagine a multitude of gods here but its perfectly easy to envisage the natural cycle of life without the mythology of suffering, rebirth, tapasya and release. I am a person, the lone tree and the reef and they all coexist and then pass. I cannot ever call myself Australian but I am not sure if my bemusement on this visit is merely because I am an Indian imperceptibly shaped by the country I live in.

Vogue Log

Vogue India seems to be attracting plenty of criticism for its photoshoot. Also here.

The models, sadly unnamed as noted by most commentators, looked quite fetching and a lovely counterpoint to the high gloss of everything else - one hopes they were paid for their efforts. I think all the photoshoot effectively did by integrating the product with pictures of ordinary Indians was to highlight how ridiculously overpriced and ordinary designer tat is. The rest of Vogue India was equally unimpressive though India Shining does seem to have spawned all kinds of empty glossies (who, however, can be immune to buying them when they are offered up by paper boys at traffic junctions?!).

Reliance Mumbai

In the year that I have been away, the biggest change in Mumbai appears to be that the city has sold itself to Reliance. The Reliance name is everywhere, most of all on surging power bills. No one seems to remark very much on the fact that the city may very well rename itself Ambani Town. And where the name is not so apparent, you suspect that the Ambanis are backers at the very least. The day cannot be far when, much like the fad with affixing sponsor’s names before soaps, the country itself will be Reliance India (though the Reliance World outlets may well suggest that the Ambanis ambitions are not that limited).

For the rest, there are the ubiquitous malls (I didn’t quite recognize Vikhroli), the sea link, the Reliance Metro, the hotels like the Grand Hyatt and the like. Our chauffeur and my old maid live in wadis that are earmarked for development (they hope to get a flat or at least money out of it). And though the landscape has changed, most of the architecture is dispiriting, none ambitious in scope. The skywalk at Bandra East is an incongruous yellow and green and as far as I can see does not seem to function as anything else (e.g. as a space for local art). The city itself seem old and musty, Colaba distinctly so. The bookshops are the same soulless Crossword chain everywhere - I very much missed Lotus. Bandra, which could have easily been like Sydney’s Paddington, is instead a mess of large signage and stores. In fact much of Mumbai is an endless vista of hoardings. The suburbs are as endlessly dreary as anything Sydney has to offer, only unimaginably crowded. Only its people make Mumbai, otherwise there is little to suggest that this is one of the great metropolises of the world.

The heavy rains had at least washed the city clean and the green tenaciously clung to roads, buildings, and any available patch. Nature itself is a guerilla gardener here – for all the concrete, for all the people crammed into its space, were it to be vacated Mumbai seems a city that would be easily swallowed by Nature leaving no trace of what once was.

Returning home

After very many short holidays, I spent a straight five weeks in India - more specifically Kandivali and Ghatkopar with a brief visit to Kolkata. Much of that time was taken up by my grandmother who was briefly in hospital and then required care. So much happened that its been a bit difficult to unwind and record my thoughts and I hope to do so over the coming weeks. And whilst much has changed since I first lived in Kandivali, the rains had resulted in a profusion of greenery which made me remember our lane as I first saw it*. The rain trees and gulmohur remain, but the mango grove has made way for a building complex rather ironically called Kalpavriksha.

*When we first lived in Kandivali circa 1990, this lane was not much more than a dirt track with a few temporary structures. At its end lay a swayambhu Ganesh Mandir which was little else than a hole from which a shy looking idol peeked out. No rickshaw driver knew our buildings, no one knew that this lane existed. Based on the cover of her copy, my mother dubbed the lane "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Inspite of the new buildings and the changes over the years, the title often seems oddly prescient.