The Invisible Indians

GK II and Alaknanda are among the posh colonies of south Delhi. Every house has cars, some have guards outside and the houses are big and beautiful. There is an army of invisible persons, running around like ants, opening doors, collecting refuse, cleaning cars, taking out the dogs to walks, cooking dinners, selling vegetables, repairing all kinds of things, etc. that holds up this world of well to do. If you stay here long enough, you stop seeing them too. I am here only for 5 days and I see them all around, these invisible Indians, with hope in their eyes, an occasional envy and a rarer anger.

 

Do the poorer Indians accept much more easily and placidly, this living in close vicinity of the rich? Why? This is the question I have been asked in countries like Brazil and Kenya, where the rich need to be afraid when they venture out of their homes.

 

I have been to slums in many cities in India, including in Delhi and Mumbai, but I don't recall ever feeling afraid of being attacked or robbed at gun-point. OTH, going out to slums in Brazil or South Africa or Kenya is scary. A few years ago, I was coordinating a multi-country research project on persons with disabilities living in slum areas. I remember that persons working in slums of Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai, were really shocked during our visit to a slum in Salvadaor do Bahia in Brazil, we needed to move in a group and surrounded by persons from that slum community.

 

So probably, it is in Asia, where people are more accepting of inequalities while in Africa and Latin America, people react to inequalities with violence? Is it a cultural thing or because of our histories or because of religions? What do you think?

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I was at the Bookworm in Connaught Place, when I saw her. She must have been fifty. Slim, her eyes lined with kajal, her greying hair in a single plait, a tatty worn out purse in her hands. She seemed to be speaking to me. I looked around, I didn't know her.

 

"Pagal hai saab", the boy at the bookshop told me.

"Buy me something", I think that is what she said, in English. "She is educated", the boy in the shop said. She started to dance, moving her hands gently, nodding at me, listening to the music coming from the shop next door.

I came out and she came forward, "Come on, buy me something. It is festival season, everybody is buying something, I also need to buy. I need some shoes. Look at these, these are completely worn out."

I was afraid of her and I hurried away.

"It is disgusting, every body can buy and I am left like this. No one to help me", she called after me.

While I walked away, I was talking to myself. Stupid. Why can't you help her? It is so little for you. Offer her an ice-cream, perhaps? I turned back, but she was gone.

***
I was in auto-rickshaw on Barakhamba road. The construction of a metro line is going ahead furiously and the traffic moves in bits and pieces, getting stuck after every few meters. At one such stop, she came to me. Light blue sari, middle aged. "Please help me buy medicines for my child." She held a paper in her hand. "I am not a beggar. I work here but I don't have enough money to buy medicines", she began to cry, "my child will die."

I gave her a ten rupee note. "It is not enough for buying medicines", she said,"I don't want money, help me buy the medicines for two days."

"That is all I have", I said, lying. 10 rupees is just 20 cents. May be I can ask her to come in autorickshaw and go to a chemist shop, I thought. The traffic started moving and the auto moved. Her face streaked with tears looked at me, as I left her behind.

 

It was my fear of being called a stupid.

 

When people ask for help, how do you find out if they are genuinely needful or they are conning you? Play-acting that you are in great need to con people is the worst thing anyone can do, because it means that when someone is in real distress, people do not believe them.

 

  ***

Dusshera and the New Delhi Metro

Saw the burning of Ravan-effigy in Delhi this time after I don't know, how many years. I think that the last time I must have seen it was when we used to go to DCM Ramleela grounds near Rohtak Road, 30-35 years ago. After that I had seen it in the TV. But to be there in the middle of the crowd, feeling the excitement and the anticipation, the first wave of heat as the effigy takes fire, the deafening noise of the fire-crackers... is some thing else. Mika was there with me and we cluctched each other's hands when the flames suddenly engulfed the effigy.

On the way back, near the temple, trucks with the Ramleela actors was passing. Ram and his sena were on one truck and Ravan and his sena were on the second truck. Even these kind of processions were such old memories and I felt thrilled in spite of myself.

***
The days of India-stay are rushing past so quickly. Today I hope to go and see Anita Ghai, my friend, who is a disability activist and a university professor. Rajouri Garden, where she lives seems so far away but I am hoping to travel by the new Delhi Metro.

Took the metro for going to Delhi university the other day. The train is exactly the same as they have in Rome - they must be buying it from the same source! And the travel is so quick. Metro network has changed the way we used to travel in Delhi. The advantage is that one can reach the outskirts of Delhi, that would have taken a couple of hours at least, in less than half an hour. However, from my experience with London metro, I think that metro travel means that you have no idea of the places you pass through, you form an imaginary idea of the city which is very different from the real city. But that is probably a small cost to pay for the saving of time.

 

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Here are some images from the burning of Dusshera effigies from Alaknanda in South Delhi. 

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No Sex Please, We are ...

I arrived in Delhi on 10 October, three days ago. Here are some glimpses of how India is changing and yet unchanging, going in one direction and then in another. We are Indians and so no sex please, is followed by songs and dances with explicit sexual references.

I spent some time in CP going around the central park, where a group Hijras (transgender women) were asking for money. They have so few possibilities of finding any kind of employment, so I can understand why need to ask for money.

 

 

* 

 

Explaining the way to the taxi driver, a young man who has come recently from Bhagalpur in Bihar, made me realise that my memories of Delhi are getting rusted. I was confused between Vasant Kunj and Vasant Vihar.

 

As the taxi passed through the Mehrauli road, it was clear that if India is indeed shining, its light has yet to reach certain parts of the capital. May be the cellphones and satellite TV and digital cameras have arrived, but the signs of old smelly confusion, narrow roads, shops encroaching on the streets, heaps of garbage, wandering cows, traffic with horns-blaring, brash and aggressive car drivers, poor kids standing at crossings and asking for alms, etc. are all still there.

 

Mahipal Pur, the village where I used to come for my preventive and social medicine posting in the village health centre in 1976, is now an unending stretch of houses, shops and traffic.

As the taxi turned towards Munirka and the flyovers of the outer Ring Road, it was good to feel the changing face of urban India, even if the quality of roads, pavements and railings over the new flyovers seemed to be not very good. These two Indias, the shining one and the one still in the dark, live close to each other, at times mixing together.

*
While people in Tamilnadu have forced actress Khushboo to apologise for her "insult to the Tamil womanhood" by talking about pre-marital sex, the song-and-dance routines on the Indian TV have become more daring.

 

I saw a girl on the TV, showing her backside, moves it seductively and then slowly enlarging her buttocks with her hands while singing a remix version of the old Rishi Kapoor-Jayapradha song, "Daphliwale, daphli baja..", and I am flabbergasted by this unexpected meaning to the old song. How naive I must have been not to see the dirty meaning of the song before, I thought. Or perhaps, all songs can be dirty, all words can be bent to give them another sexual meaning. Every thing is about sex!

The promos of a new film are even more shocking. They are for a new film by K-lady Ekta Kapoor, the lady who makes all the serials about Bhartiya sabhyta like the "Kyonki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi" kind of serials. They have yesteryears' star and Kapoor's father, Jeetandra's face splashed on them. One scene has the hero, Aftab Shivdasani, standing up with his bleeding finger held in front of his crotch being licked by a girl on her knees, another girl looks at them from behind and thinks that the girl is sucking something else. This promo is repeated about 15 times during the day, without any warning that it is for adults or any such thing.

This sexually liberated India coexists with Bajrang Dal-Shivsena-controlled "no sex please, we are Indians" kind of India.

*
There were pandals every where in Alaknanda in south Delhi, for Durgapuja. For Dushehra, big Ravans are standing in each park, full of loud crackers, waiting to be burnt. 

 

In one park I saw the Ravan Puja. It was being performed at the feet of Ravan's effigy and at the end, people took turns to touch Ravan's feet and held their hands in prayer in front of it.  I have been to Ramleelas all my life and I had never realised that there is a puja in front of the Ravan also and people ask blessings to it before burning it! Isn't Ravan the bad one, why are you touching his feet, I wanted to ask them but then I stopped myself. May be that is the American or western way of thinking.

 

We know that Ravan was a great vidwan, perhaps, it is good to pray to him, recognise the good parts of him and then burn him for his bad deeds. It is completely different from the way they think of devil and satan in the west.

*

Watching a performance of the Birju Maharaj's dance troupe against the background of Purana Kila was a highlight of this Delhi visit

 

* 

Homelands and Old Friends

On Sunday I am going to India. For 8 days. Meetings and appointments will eat away most of the time, and the remaining will go for shopping and chatting in the family. It is the prospect of the journey and my own ambivalent feelings about it, that I am thinking about.

Perhaps, I am tired of being a stranger to my own land?

 

The excitement of going back in the initial years, I still remember it. Waiting for months, counting the days, thinking of all the things that I was going to do. Call Munna, call Rahul's home, call Naresh, call Devender, see Rajkumar,... calling up on all the friends was high up on the list. So what is Ravi doing? Did you hear from Anil? Have you any news of Narayan? There was so much catching up to do about all the old childhood friends.

Last year I saw Munna after 8-10 years. Rahul I had met him after ages. When we meet, all the words come out tumbling and rushed, in the beginning. And then they start to dry up. Perhaps, it is because there is no continuing dialogue, no exchange of things happening in our lives. My old childhood friends have become strangers to me.

To visit old houses, old streets, is the same as meeting old friends. They have changed. Some times there is a completely new building. In Rajendra Nagar, all the old houses have gone, in their place there are 3-4 storied buildings and streets choking with cars, blocked with iron railings and no one seems to know me any more. The old shops are gone, along with the shopkeepers.

The circle of things that included familiar persons and places gets narrower each time. In the end, it is just an anonymous city with anonymous people and I am a stranger in my own town.

 

In the end, it is just close family persons with whom a link remains, and a feeling of familiarity in Connaught Place and old monuments like Lal Kila and Qutab Minar, because I still recognise most of them - I can pretend that nothing has changed.

And there is hardly any excitement, no counting of days. Perhaps, it is because I am not spending enough time there, all my visits are short trips, running around for work and not having time to spend with people? May be it is just this day, the rain and the autumn leaves falling down that makes me feel sad, and tomorrow, it will be all right once again.

This gaping hole in my being, I will close my eyes and it might go away. A bad dream.

***

Rains, Feeling Low and Depression

When we had just come to live in Italy, I found that clouds had a different effect on me, compared to the way others living here reacted to them. They would say, "What a pity, it is cloudy" and I would say, "Lovely, it is cloudy today!" So people asked me if I didn't like the sun and I would answer, "No thanks, I am from India and I have had enough of sun to last me a life."

Now, after about two decades in Europe, I share the gloom around me when summer ends and autumn comes with its lovely colours, cold winds and rains. The joy of listening to thunderstorms, waiting for the hard pitter-patter of the rain drops, I haven't forgotten those joys from my days in India - they are like words read in a book, they are there and yet not very real. There impact on me is different now - they are not joyful!

I haven't been depressed ever. I mean, there are days that I feel low but I have never experienced that bottomless pit of gloom that is depression, where nothing seems to touch you. Yet it is one of those things that make me most afraid.

 

Pietro, our neighbour has that kind of depression. His whole body changes. Becomes kind of stiff. He doesn't look up or move, remaining in the same position for hours, gazing into nothingness. He feels guilty to be alive, guilty that he did not die when the Germans killed his sister because he had run away in the forest. His sister wanted to come with him. "No you go back to home, you are safe there. Here you will slow us down", he had told her. Germans won't kill young girls he had thought. Maria, 17 years, was shot dead in the village square with 34 other persons, as a reprisal for the Italian Resistance's attack on German soldiers.

Today is the anniversary of that massacre. It was 4th October 1943. Pietro will go there to Monte Sole near Marzabotto, some kilometres outside Bologna, for the ceremony. Hopefully, after a few days, he can come out of this depression.

So many persons around us have to take anti-depression medication, I can't believe how many of them are there. It is as if there a silent epidemic all around us. It waits behind comfortable houses, perfect marriages, smiling picture-postcard families.

Perhaps we human beings have not evolved enough? We are still the hunter-gatherer-fighter needing challenges and if things go too well, if we don't need to run and rush, we get depressed?

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In-tubed in London

I have already written something about my last visit to London. As the president of ILEP, the international anti-leprosy association, I am back there very frequently. This second post about this visit is dedicated to the London Tube networks and the tube stations.

 

 

Travelling up and down the city in the tube, I saw an ad  on the tube wall about "Paternity testing", advising women that if they had any concerns about the paternity of their child, DNA testing is now possible to identify the father. For a company to put an ad of this kind and to invest money on it, it means that there is indeed a market for it and sufficient number of women (and men) are interested in finding out if the child is indeed of that particular man. Seems like a commentary on these times!

I can bet, that such an Ad would never be accepted in India. Anyone stupid enough to put such an ad in a public place, is likely to be prosecuted for corrupting the impressionable public, if not already lynched by angry mobs. In India, we don't have adultery, do we? Or worse, women having multiple partners. It is against our culture!

*
In London, they have this nice initiative of putting up poems in the tube. Read a lovely poem by Chamon Hardi there.

I can hear them talking, my children.
Fluent English and broken Kurdish.

And whenever I disagree with them
they will comfort each other by saying
Don't worry about mum, she's kurdish

Will I be the foreigner in my own home.

*
In the tube, I saw a man, white and very English, wearing a jacket with a lotus designed on it's pocket, underneath it was written PUNJAB. On both the sleeves of the jacket, there were stripes of the Indian flag. Probably he did not know what the colours of those stripes meant? Indian made jackets are nicer and cheaper. Boys in Punjab, stop asking friends to bring you the jacket from UK, get it from Ludhiana!

*
In Europe, only in London, you can get away by carrying an Indian take-away dinner in the bus or in the tube. It's smell is so strong. Yet, no one looks at you in London. The curry restaurants are so common and seem to be always full. Found a new Sagar Restaurant, famous in India for south Indian food like Idli and Dosa, with only vegetarian food on King's street in Hammersmith. Yet even this was full - I had to wait to get a table.

Here in Italy, neighbours complain about the strong smells coming from Asian kitchens. May be they need to eat more curries and get used to them!

*

Here are a few pictures from this visit.

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Vintage Motorbikes' in Como

I am fascinated by motorbikes. I am also afraid of them. I love to watch them. I like the idea of speeding on them with the wind flattening my hair. Whoooooooooom. But since I am afraid, so I'va never actually driven one. I am convinced that if I get on one, I am going to have an accident and end up with broken legs or worse.

Yesterday, we were visiting Como in northern Italy close to the Swiss border. My cousin's husband, Manish had come from Delhi for an overnight stay and was going to catch a flight for Spain from Milan. So we accompanied him to Milan and then went on to Como for a walk along the lake. It was wonderful, cold in the shadows, barely warm under the sun, with crowds thronging the path going along the lake.

Laura, who lives in Como, told us that George Clooney has asked the permission to clean-up the beach in front of his house (or rather houses, since he has bought three villas).

They say Bard Pitt is going to get married to Angelina Jolie in one of those houses of Clooney in the next spring (if they manage to stick around till then!). Any way, Clooney is a favourite with the locals - he brings all the tourists from USA, they say. And tourists, may be noisy and dirty, but they bring money. Plus people can brag about meeting Julia Roberts or Madonna, buying apples and oranges at the local verduraio (subziwalla).

While we were walking, along the river, in one of the villas, there was an exhibition of old motorbikes. The villa had a lovely sculpture called Medusa, dedicated to Giorgio Armani.

 

In between the old renaissance style statues they had placed old bikes. Bikes from fifties, sixties and seventies. Old Harley Davidsons and Ducatis. With men walking around as if in a dream, looking at the bikes with such wonder and rapture, sure to make their girl friends jealous. Perhaps imagining themselves as James Dean or Marlon Brando.

Bikes have that power. Even prince Williams had got himself photographed with a motorbike a la Marlon Brando for his 21st birthday. Last week in London all newspapers had that picture.

Here are some images of the lakeside in Como, including some from the vintage motorbike exhibition.

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