Mrs Poppadum

Bleak House

2008-12-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

“Dear Sir,” writes Mr Roland, “We are moving out today. Please would you allow the removal van in the compound?” It’s not the enemy, at the gates, it’s Writer Relocations, and the security men won’t let them in. India’s India to the last gasp. Mr Roland takes the letter, hot from the printer, down to the spat in the foyer, and leaves all the uniforms to sort out their differences, in Hindi. Eventually, Sachin, chef d’équipe in orange, arrives with his team, in yellow. They kick their shoes off at our door, and begin to wrap our eastern world in tissue paper, ready for home. With toothpick-sized knives, they make cardboard boxes in situ, round our chattels, using up approximately a hectare of rainforest - still, my Rs 300 vase from Life Style should reach Nottingham in one piece. I say Rs 300, it’s worth a fiver of anyone’s money...

Head Honcho, Xerxes (who does the smooth talk and the measuring, and doesn’t sully his hands with sticky tape or bubblewrap) tells me, when assessing the original estimate, that the difficulty lies not in transporting, but in transporting intact. If they open a box, at Customs, things are inclined to grow little legs... The solution’s simple: grease palms. So, palm grease is included in the estimate. It’s good to know where we stand.

It seems we roll around India, accruing worldly goods, like a hedgehog collects leaves. Mr Roland signs over nineteen boxes, to Sachin. Our materialism’s very spiritual, though, at least half the boxes are full of Ganesh, with his chums Buddha and Shiva, a carved OM from Nepal, and a quarter of a ton of incense sticks. It could be worse – we’re leaving the bronze Hanuman behind, to keep an eye on Monu.

And then it’s done. At breakfast-time, it’s home. By morning coffee, it’s a bomb-site. By lunch-time, it’s a shell. Sachin and his boys put the “apart” into “apartment” without breaking into a sweat. The place has never been tidier, or cleaner. Under every piece of furniture the men move lurk huge dust-wallabies - like dust-bunnies, but three times bigger. Having no common language absolves me of the need to explain my sluttish ways, which is very liberating. I’m definitely ringing the Reykjavik branch of Pickfords for a quote, next time I move house.

When they go – leaving me one or two trees’-worth of tissue-paper, for wrapping plates to give to Monu – the flat looks unbearably vacant and lugubrious. We go out, to find solace in retail, while there’s still a rupee in our pockets.

The man, cleaning the mirrored walls of the lift, is 4’10”, so there’s half a yard of grimy glass out of his reach, a dado-rail of dust. You can see how wallabies might prosper round here. Outside on the pavement, a man in shorts feeds street dogs, with what looks like bread, out of a Haiko carrier-bag. (In case you’re interested, I give them my defrosted goat-cubes, too, to prove that terrorism will not win, and that the streets of Mumbai belong to the citizens of Mumbai - canine solidarity and faith in peace, with one cast. Obviously, it worries me, introducing unreproduceable richness to the scraps and gravel they're used to, but Mr Roland says, it’s a nice problem to have. I also buy a large bag of Rose and Jasmine-flavoured Tide, the day after the bombings, to indicate that we’re not going anywhere until we’re ready. And when we go, we’ll have clean clothes.)

The universal female panacea – a two-hour soak in extremely expensive bubbles – is unavailable to me here, with our three bathrooms and no bath, so I opt for the next best thing: the hairdresser’s. At the Renaissance Health and Beauty Salon (aspirational on all counts), I have a farewell eyebrow-threading, or, as we call it, in the West, torture. Vela The Impaler patters across the tiled floor, all smiles, with her little lacquered box of talc, and her innocuous bobbin of cotton. “Hold here, please,” she says, and you are thus an accomplice to the crime, while she rips out follicles with a twist of thread. I’m grinding my teeth to calcium powder, reflecting on pain-barriers, when I play back conversation with Monu, on the way here. His brother-in-law-to-be, Shikha’s soldier-brother, is shot, fighting terrorists in Kashmir. Only a flesh-wound, it takes him out of the action for a month – if I were Shikha’s Mum, I’d be seeing nothing but silver lining, here.

Reassuringly, the hair-dresser – even if he’s only a boy - looks at my hair dry, rather than the spritz-and-snip approach I get, last time I came here. (Chop-chop-chop: “You want trim, right?”) I mime what I would like (when did that ever make any difference, once you’ve got the free-size overall on, and a rubber mat round your shoulders?) – Layers, please, I don’t want to look like Crystal Tips, and leave the fringe alone (following ill-advised fringe DIY, don’t ask -). He mimes back his version of the Plan of Action – “Fringe, small small cut? ........ No, Ma’am, please...” He’s not impressed by my self-coiffing, then. I engage in jolly hairdressing-banter – “How long have you been a hairdresser?” “Are most of your clients here western?” “Does your Mum live near here?” He answers, “OK, OK!” every time. “WOULD YOU NOT CUT MY FRINGE?” - It costs me more than the sari for Rani-didi and the salwar-suit for Shikha, which Monu buys on my behalf. Mind you, if I’d done my own shopping, I could probably have had woven highlights, a couple of teeth crowned and a botox injection, and still had change.

You’d think, after switch-to-max Diwali only a month ago, our fire-crackers would be spent, but you’d be wrong. Christmas is coming, to Mumbai. This isn’t India being ecumenical, this is India loving to party. (Oh it’s Thursday, let’s put fairy-lights on the building society! It’s my brother’s wife’s pedicurist’s wedding anniversary, let’s make it a National Holiday and have cake! Hinduism alone has thousands of gods, so it’s never no-one’s birthday.) Before Diwali’s last diya’s cleared off the remaindered shelf at HyperCity, you can buy a fluffy snowman, brandishing a picket, saying “Let It Snow!” Christmas is still tackily Christmas here, the fake trees gaudily draped in multicoloured tinsel. If designer-trees are out of place anywhere, it surely has to be in the Land of Sequins.

HyperCity also boasts the thinnest, brownest Father Christmas you have ever seen. What’s the current UK stand on having your darling Snugglebum sit on the knee of a complete stranger, for a secret chat? Santa’s subcontinental surrogate strolls up and down the aisles, waylaying small children to offer them sweets from his satchel. I don’t qualify for a sweet, but I do get a photo.

All this frantic shopping for souvenirs, but what I most want to take home won’t go in a cardboard box. Don’t think I haven’t asked.

Jobs For The Boys

2008-12-13T04:36:00.000-08:00

At the Post Office, we’re shocked to have to lick our own stamps. It appears self-adhesive hasn’t percolated the sub-continent, yet. The glue on the back of the stamps is too busy sticking your tongue to the roof of your mouth, to do a proper job on an envelope, so there’s a handy yogurt pot of extra paste, with a dibber, to make up the shortfall. Here, self-adhesive envelopes mean exactly what they say, get your own glue: it’s Blue Peter time. We also have to hand-write “By Air Mail” on nine hundred and forty-two Christmas cards, but we’ve long understood that stream-lined and automated are never going to happen, in India, while laborious and time-consuming still have breath left in them.

It’s easy to get into trouble, by not understanding the system. We go awry constantly, in the early days, helping the cashier’s sidekick, to pack our bags, at the supermarket, or opening doors for hotel doormen, who are carrying seventeen suitcases. Nearly a year on, we still stub our toes against common practice, although the check-out pantomime’s wilful self-harming, these days. Even so, repatriation will be a culture shock, next week.

Pakistan and India continue to circle round each other, growling and snapping at heels, but I’m glad to see Verona’s stepped down from Red Alert. This morning, I don’t have to turn sideways to slip out of shackled gates, in the basement, they’re flung wide again, to let in sunshine and street dogs. Just inside the entrance, the security guard, in epaulettes and peaked cap, sits on a wonky chair at a wonky table, armed with phone, pen, and water-bottle. He nods and waves, when he sees me, before standing up to say Good Morning. He doesn’t salute, but it’s only a matter of time... I struggle to remember the set-up, in the basement of the building where I live in England, and then it comes to me – it’s my house. There isn’t a basement, just a cellar, where people over the age of nine can’t stand up - full of spiders, and dusty demi-johns, from when Mr Roland was going through his home-brew phase. And there certainly isn’t a doorman, or anything in the way of security, not since the dog lost interest in barking at strangers, or even in getting off his bed. Catapulting down thirty degrees of heat, overnight, is going to be the least of our re-adjustment problems.

In India, the level of service is over-whelming, but you get used to it, just like you get used to having tea without milk, by habit. Helpful insistence on independence can cost someone else his job, so keep your hands in your pockets – if you’re uncomfortable, look the other way. We salve our conscience by making a point of saying thank-you, which marks us as alien more clearly than our white faces.

My third favourite shop, in Mumbai, is Star Wines, down on Daffodil Row, Powai. (First favourite, the al fresco Lighting Shop, on Adi Shankaracharya Marg, for chandeliers and lifting of sorry hearts: second, Something Special, in Bandra, for everything you need from hand-rolled paper to candles which blossom into lotus flowers, singing “Happy Birthday To You” – and third, our local offy.) When we darken their not-door, the shop front, they swat thirsty construction workers out of the way, to clear our path. The builders’ tipple of choice - a medicine-bottle of GM (Government Made, apparently, although that doesn’t mean that the Government actually Made it, any more) costs twelve or thirteen rupees, whereas a bottle of Kingfisher’s sixty-three. We buy a box of beer at a time. You work out Mr Star Wines’ priorities. They even bring us a present for Diwali - liqueur chocolates we can’t even give to teetotal Monu, and a set of glasses ironically inscribed “Apple.” We never feel this loved, at Oddbins or Bottoms Up.

In Haiko, this week, a three-generation shopping expedition, in front of me in the queue – grandma’s paying for groceries, mother and child entertaining each other while they wait. Grandma puts her purse back in her bag, snaps it shut, then the whole family moves off. The maid steps up to the counter, collects all six bags of shopping, and falls into step behind them. Am I the only one who thinks this is unfair? I look round at the busy shoppers, busily shopping. Yes, I am. I’m not born into the system, and won’t buy into it, but neither can I opt out of it; it’s been a year on a tight-rope.

Next week, in Loughborough Sainsbury’s, there’ll be riots in Christmas queues, anxious to get home to their turkeys. I’ll be standing gawping, as my shopping piles up and tumbles off the end of the conveyor belt, with no smiling assistant to pack for me. You won’t be able to get in my house, for the sacks of rubbish spilling out the door, without an anonymous refuse-fairy, to whisk it all away in the night. I’ll sit in restaurants, hungrily looking at dishes full of food, trying to remember how a serving-spoon works. It’ll be a novelty, in the Ladies, turning on taps, squirting soap, filing used paper-towels in the bin, without assistance. I’ll break my nose cannoning into shop-doors, with no maharajah to sweep them open before me. Worst of all, I’ll sit in the back of my little blue Ford Focus, waiting for Monu to turn to me and say, “Today, Ma’am, what plan?”

With this particular deficit in mind, I buy a Monu-in-a-Box – a 3-D digital photo in a Perspex cube, so he can sit on a shelf, in my English kitchen, and watch me cook, at home. Well, we buy two, in fact, one for me, one for his Mum. “How did you persuade Monu to sit for it?” a friend asks, amused. Strange he should mention it, because I work out a very subtle plan. I say, “Monu, I need you now... Sit there... Smile... Thank-you.” The boy from Lucknow clearly thinks I’m as mad as a box of frogs – pagal, my new Hindi word – but he suffers gladly, there being no alternative. The final artefact is a thing of beauty thus a joy forever, we all agree. Well, Monu smiles and goes “Tch!” so I think he thinks so. I know his Mum will.

Per Ardua ....

2008-12-11T07:40:00.000-08:00

After yesterday’s Mexican wave of vomit, we’re up for a bit of grown-up culture, today. We head out of Mumbai, in search of ancient Buddhist caves, exercising what Monu calls “temple-interest,” with neither a child nor a crisp in sight.

We pull up, in a cloud of dust, in what appears to be a building-site. Monu says inscrutably, “No speak the people,” before cruelly abandoning us to the tourist touts. It’s the car, which attracts them. I’m sure if we wound our way up the hill, in a dusty tuk-tuk, or sitting on a pile of cotton waste, in the back of a ramshackle camel-cart, we’d slip through unnoticed. As it is, we seem to look like we need an alabaster Shiva, or a Taj Mahal keyring, everywhere we set foot. (Don’t panic, if you’re on our Christmas list, we’ve hardly bought any keyrings, and we like our Shivas in wood...)

Karla Cave is a rock-cut Buddhist temple, dating from around the second century B.C. The Lonely Planet promises it’ll be impressive, and so it is. What they fail to mention, is that you’ll have your alveoli hanging out, on the end of your tongue, by the time you scramble up nine thousand uneven cobbled steps to the entrance. Happily, there’s a panoramic view available every other cobble, so you can pause, and pretend to admire the vista, while your respiratory tract relocates itself where it belongs, every so often. Small stalls line the route, but who’s going to believe you’re interested in examining peeled cucumbers, or scummy pots of lassi, really? The cafe set in a cranny, halfway up, definitely takes the khari-biscuit for unpretentiousness, with its modest pair of sun-bleached garden chairs, for the comfort of passing patrons. There aren’t any, at the moment, so the waiter polishes his bottles of Fanta, again. I understand some of the retail opportunities on offer - for instance, a garland of flowers, a coconut or two, perhaps even a fresh tub of red kumkum powder, are all perfectly logical requirements, on the way to worship - but which pious Buddhist suddenly needs a new sari, at the temple-gates?

We arrive, only slightly rosier than when we set off, and don’t turn a hair at the two thousand percent mark-up on the entrance fee, for being pasty-faced. They clearly aren’t inundated by visitors from the west, or there’d be more evidence of maintenance. As it is, they slap on a bit of cement, when the cobbles are conspicuously falling apart, although I imagine tourist casualties have to hit double figures, before they crack open a bag of Birla’s finest. Still, we don’t begrudge them a hundred rupees a-piece, so we slide a couple of Gandhi portraits across the counter, and we’re in.

Sadly, so are about four hundred grey-uniformed school children, pencils and notebooks poised for cultural input. We create a ripple, just walking along. As they spy us, they put education on hold for a minute, to say hello, and ask us how we are. It will be a shock, being back in the UK, where very few people care how we are, and even fewer ask. However, all representatives of the Little Flower High School of Thane are fascinated to know, so we bask in pretend fame, while we can.

In the upper chamber of the caves, India finally gives in to graffiti, and I’m delighted to see that it’s in transliterated Hindi, so even I can get the point. - Scrawling on walls really isn’t a big thing, here, apart from hand-painted adverts for The Speak Well English Academy, or for Lux Cozi Innerwear For Men, which are creeping green with mildew, just before, just after, and during the monsoon. The one bit of graffiti you can’t help but notice, as soon as you step off the plane, is the word “Beanbag” and a phone number, sprayed in aerosol-paint, on every available piece of corrugated aluminium. We ask, and ask, wondering about this obsession with floor cushions, but no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming for ten months. Then, enlightenment: “Beanbags” are Ladies of the Night. Perfect. We’re given back-word, a fortnight later, but it’s too late, and “beanbag” has passed irretrievably into the family lexicon. – Here, on the cave-wall, it says, in the manner of lovesick British schoolboys, “Raj Prem Atish” – Raj loves Atish. I don’t know Hindi for “4 EVA” but I expect that’s there too.

While we’re peering into monastic cells and admiring stupa, up above, the beggars arrive for business. We hit Beggar Row, flaunting stumps and hollow-flanked babies. “Namaste – hello – hi – bakshish – money – bakshish – hello...” The litany follows us down the steps. Received wisdom recommends giving to an organised charity, not through car-windows to a syndicate, but round a bend, we pass an ancient lady, who takes up less room than a floor-cloth. We both turn, remembering the same line from the guide-books, and tip the coins from our pockets into her lap. Give to the old. We look at each other and laugh, because we now have no money for the sulabh-wallah, who guards toilets, so we’ll have to cross our legs all the way home.

Today, Buddhist temples are on a two-for-one offer, apparently, because we climb back into the car, and Monu says, “One more!” He doesn’t believe Mr Roland’s map, so we stop to ask for directions of every paan-seller and stray cyclist on the way. This time the car-park’s only vaguely within sight of the mountain trail leading to Bhaja Caves. – “See this stairs? Go!” says the boy from Lucknow, so we do.

There’s no big entrance, the wonky path just melts into caves, at the top. On the way up, we pass three goats, sprawled across the steps, enjoying the view, in the midday sun. I’m quite glad to see them, because, this week, it’s the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha. Think “turkey” and “Christmas.” “Cut the goat!” says Monu, slicing his finger across his throat. We see goats in their hundreds, led by the ears, along the street, or in double-decker lorries, all heading in one direction, to slaughter. Goats, with tinsel woven into their fringes, and ribbons tied round their silky ears, goats in necklaces. We see a child, kissing his goat goodbye, while another pulls the heads of two tethered goats together. Monu laughs. “Make the fight,” he says. Outside Mankhurd school, a boy straddles a branch, twenty feet up a tree, to cut leaves, for his goat’s last supper. On the road, I see small hooves sticking out of a sack, in the vehicle alongside us, then realise the whole truck’s filled with corpses. No refrigeration, nothing more subtle or hygienic than a hessian bag for a shroud. Lentils have increasing appeal. – So it’s good, to see goats still breathing in and out, after Tuesday.

When we get there, panting again, Bhaja Caves are empty, except for the man on the gate, who welcomes us in, then, before our shadows are well clear, hawks and spits on the floor. I’m almost certain it’s a coincidence. We look down into the valley, where bullocks are pulling a ploughshare. Or, plugging, according to our Delhi guide, Amit. I ask him, what they do with all the boy calves, since (Cow is God) they can’t be of use at the table. “They plug the field,” he says, simply. Outside Mumbai, just before we join the motorway, the sign reads, “No bullock-carts on the expressway.” They’re allowed in the maze of city roads, though. We often see them, impervious to seven honking lanes of maypole-traffic, trotting on with their water-tank or cartload of melons.

I peek over the parapet, down the hillside. You can peer over any ledge or wall, in India, however remote or sacred, and never not see an avalanche of litter below. It’s not that no-one cleans up here - they do - but then someone else come and tips it all out again, to sift through, and abandon. This country has the most picked over litter in the world. Picked over, just not picked up.

The caves are brilliant, better than the famous Kandheri Caves, in Sanjiv Gandhi National Park, better than the Elephanta caves, a boat-ride over the Arabian Sea. And, no crowds. On the way back down, we meet maybe a dozen culture-vultures, on their way up. A long way, we tell them, but worth the climb.

No Jhan-Jhat!

2008-12-10T10:43:00.001-08:00

The coast of Kerala’s trimmed with mile after golden mile of sun kissed beach, lapped by crystal sea, but we’re not in Kerala, we’re in Mumbai, so we go to Juhu instead, where the sand’s pale black and the sea’s soupy. It’s still more scenic than Mankhurd, though, so nobody minds.

“We will leave at eight o’clock, because the traffic will be small, early in the morning,” ordains Bhavika-didi, whose word is law. “You will come at a quarter to, do you follow?” Every child’s mouthing the catechism of rendez-vous, dress code, and kit-bag instructions, while slithering into chappals at the classroom door, two days before. I feel obliged to point out to Bhavika, that with such an early kick-off, I may well still be in my pyjamas. “Come in your pyjamas, Caroline-didi, why not? As long as we have your presence!”

This is my second marine day in a row, if you can have a row of two. Mr Roland and I make Monu drive for almost three hours, so we can dip our white toes in the Arabian Sea. The beach at Alibaug is black, too, but I’m thinking volcanic, and am happy to paddle. I find out later, it’s oil-dumping, but my feet are salty by then, it’s too late. At the water’s edge, buggy-drivers queue, offering rides across the sand spit to the island fortress of Kolaba, their ponies rake-thin, with coats rough with salt. The nearest pair have rainbow-coloured feather-dusters, stuck to their pommels, which nod, as they gallop through the shallows. Mr Roland and I go rock-pooling instead, and a meagre trawl it is. We find fish, only marginally more important than plankton, and crabs so small, they’d have to be polite to the spiders we get in the bath, at home. The rocks are covered with limpet-shell wreckage, but there’s not a gastropod in sight – either the locals are partial to fruits de mer, or the swell’s more brutal than it looks. On the other hand, there’s wild life under the rocks, along the promenade. Monu finds a litter of round-bellied puppies, playing in a rock-den, in the rubble, while their mum sleeps, unconcerned, under a concrete bench nearby. I’m just choosing the brown one, when I notice that Monu and Mr Roland are sloping back off to the car, in a disowning sort of way.

Back in Mankhurd, we pull up outside the tenement block, seven minutes late, ready to apologise, but find only Mehul and Rahul, sitting on the step of the padlocked door, clutching their waterbottles. Monu shrugs, “Indian time!” We’re shrouding the back-seats in bedsheets, just in case, when Rani-didi arrives, with a red rose tucked behind one ear, clearly in the mood for a party. Roll-call might take some time, at this rate, so we assemble in the upstairs classroom, away from the street with its decaying litter and opaque puddles. Rani-didi has this quaint notion about sitting quietly on a mat to wait, but Khaja arrives, with his built-in nuclear reactor, which only works on “Max,” thus knows nothing of “quiet” or “sitting.” We therefore rocket round the room in wild laps, pausing only for a cartwheel of joy, when exuberance overtakes us. Not me, obviously, the under-eights. I’m ready for a sit-down and a chocolate Hob-Nob, just watching them.

Finally, we crocodile off downstairs, with bats and balls and an orange Frisbee, to pile into the Monu-bus. We’re only an hour later than scheduled - quite punctual, by Indian watches. There’s a minor scrimmage, to decide who’s with me, in the front seat. I’m feeling flattered, and popular, when I remember the fascination of the dashboard, with all its switches and buttons. In the end, I promote Nikita to sit on my lap, because she has bones like a sparrow’s, and I’m not sure she’s up for the hurly burly of the back-seat. You forget what a novelty it can be, opening and closing an electric window. Before we hit second gear, Monu meanly disables all door and window controls, so Nikita has to make do with the AC fans and vents. She makes her hands icy cold then presses them on my face, for a few miles, until she’s distracted by a roadside hoarding, advertising pension schemes. “Do you have a plan?” she reads. Would that I did...

When we arrive at Juhu beach, an hour later, Ashish-in-the-back is olive green, and his eyes are dull. To be fair, there’s not a lot of sick, nothing that half a yard of wet-wipes can’t sort out, but Monu clearly thinks that some is more than none, in this case.

We decant, and corral the children in a wobbly circle, on the gritty beach. They park their bottles and chappals, pêle-mêle, and run off to play ball, and Frisbee, and cricket, all at the same time. Ashish sits on a mat, in the shade, a small heap of woe. We sift the sand for shells, and label everything in sight: helicopter, water, umbrella, dustbin. I-Spy, without the guesswork. Then Bhavika-didi says the magic word, “Sea!” and Ashish is cured. Salt water generally makes you sick, but in Ashish’s case, it does the reverse, and he’s in there up to his knees, before Bhavika’s finished saying, “Stay holding hands, in your group!” Sadly, his jeans are only wound up to mid-shin, but the sun’s got nothing else to do.

Saris have to be the least convenient thing to wear, for a paddle, I think. Then I notice Rani-didi, whose sari’s mysteriously eight inches shorter than a minute ago, although it’s beyond me, what she’s done with the spare bit.

The children squeal in terror and delight; the waves overtake them, then suck the grey sand from under their feet, on the way out, leaving a trail of cappuccino froth. Anand and Mayur grip my hands so tightly, my knuckles are fusing together. I soon discover, that it’s considerably easier to get the children into the water, than it is to get them out again. I marshal two of my group beach-wards, and turn back for a third. The first two instantly run away to sea - great fun for everyone except me. I see, yet again, that my discipline only applies, when I’m asking them to do something they already want to do. I have no control whatsoever over these briny brats, shrieking with laughter and running away from me in seven different directions. In my defence, I don’t lose any of them.

Back on the mats, there’s the silence which only comes with food. Let them eat crisps. (Or wafers, in Bhavika-speak.) A policeman comes to address us, while we munch, then we give him a hip-hip-hooray before he goes back to his patrol van. I assume it’s “Don’t touch strange objects!” – a slogan we’re seeing more than enough of, since 26 November – but I’m wrong, it’s a recruiting campaign. You’re never too young to be a police cadet, in Mumbai, it seems. His best bet would be to give away free sunglasses, as worn by all Bollywood stars and traffic policemen, that’d have them signing up in droves, but he’s gone before I can tell him.

Then we make our cardinal error. Orangeade. They guzzle gallons of fizzy orange, to wash down the last crisp crumbs, before we brush the sand off our feet and head for home. It’s hot, the car’s jerking in the stop-start traffic, and soon Kavita - whose name means “Poem” – is sick, in the back. Rani-didi’s closest, and she waves it off airily as nothing. I don’t find out how copious a nothing, until we’re in Mankhurd again. Halfway home, though, Salim’s sick, too, and before you can say ipecacuanha, I’m on the verge, sluicing vomit off rubber car-mats with Bisleri, with curious tuk-tuks whizzing past my ear. I tell Monu, it’s good practice for when he’s got Shukti and Pooja, but he doesn’t look convinced.

When I get back in the car, fragrant as a baby-wipe, Rani-didi’s telling Monu, that it’s all my fault. It’s in Hindi, but the words “Caroline-didi” and “biscuit” aren’t hard to isolate. We're talking gingernuts, here, not Waggon-Wheels. What I swill off the mats looks a lot more like orangeade, I say, pointedly. Then we need to change the subject, because the whole back row’s turning green.

“Sorry about the car, Monu,” I say, being careful where I sit, driving home.
“My car,” he says, sadly, “tch!”
“Never mind “My car!” - you’re supposed to say, “No jhan-jhat!”” I say - No problem! He looks at me, in the rearview mirror, and shakes his head.
“No jhan-jhat!” he smiles.

Mumbai Meri Jaan

2008-12-03T05:04:00.001-08:00

It’s a week on, and, although you couldn’t say things were the same, they’re making a good job of trying. The Leopold’s open, and thronged with defiant Mumbaikars. The Taj is cordoned off, but determined to rebuild. I can’t help smiling.

When they dig a road up, in Mumbai – usually before the tarmac’s set – to lay the cable or water-pipe, which they forgot in the first place, they then pat all the debris back in the trench. Well, except for this little pile here, which they leave in a tidy heap at the side of the mended road, to show where they’ve been: MMDC’s calling-card. For about four months, it weathers by attrition, and cows sitting on it, and dogs seeing if there’s anything to eat, under it. By then, it’s nearly time to dig everything up again.

So, clearing-up and rebuilding south Mumbai will be fascinating. They don’t need mementoes, there’s enough stored digitally by passing Kumars and curious Guptas, to paper the Taj inside and out. The Mumbai Mid Day carries a photo of people, taking pictures of bullet holes in the walls at CST station, with the caption “Titillation” – journalistic double jeopardy: clearly it’s not ghoulish, taking a photo of other people being ghoulish.

Even in leafy Powai, feeling’s running strong. This morning, a demonstration passes the foot of our building, with marching soldier cadets, waving banners and chanting, followed by ranks of uniformed school-children, in their ribboned plaits and snowy-white bobby-socks. There are candle-lit vigils, and the ubiquitous flowers-tied-to-railings. I’m still moved by posters on roadside billboards, with cameos of the dead framed in golden laurels, to applaud the mighty fallen and inveigh against evil. I’m duped, because I can’t read the small print. Let’s face it, in Hindi, I can’t read the foot-high capitals, either. The whole campaign’s condemned as party political inanity, capitalising on tragedy, as parties fall over themselves to out-mourn each other, or to be seen to out-mourn each other. Civic tenderness degrades into tastelessness.

“The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke, quoted in Mid Day, to launch their campaign of resistance: “Don’t stay Mum-bai!” I think it sounds more like an inducement to mass exodus, but they’re trying to urge everyone to have a voice. “Don’t stay mum – speak up!” Resilience is essential to survival, but picking up “old life” is not enough. “... that’s what cattle do after being attacked by leopards – go back to grazing.” I don’t think the world’s in danger of not knowing what Mumbai thinks, in these troubled times.

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, the BMC, is rewarding all firemen who participated in rescue operations, to help NSG commandos during the attacks, with two pay increments, plus two months’ salary, in hand. Bravo.

Mumbai Police only have one speedboat, I’m stunned to discover. In case you’re forgetting, this is the Mumbai which is built on a series of islands, with more water-front than Venice – THAT Mumbai. The one-boat police flotilla has no searchlight, no siren, no wireless set, and no night-vision binoculars. What, I hear you ask, have they done with the £4M handed over in 2006, labelled, Speedboats for Mumbai Police?

I have a theory: the Police probably spend most of their money on text-messaging. We get so many from them, I’m beginning to think we’re on their Best Friends listing. During the Ganpati festival at the end of September, they send us this: “For Ganesh immersion day: 1. Come early. No fire crackers on beach. 2. Entry on beach only for the car with Idol. 3. Drivers to remain in car.” Frankly, this worries me, more than reassures me, and I cast about for bubbles of riotous behaviour, but Monu says everyone gets the same message. At Diwali, in October, the Anti-Terrorist Squad send us this: “Be alert Mumbaikar! Look for any suspicious object and inform police on 100. Do not believe in rumours. Do not accept any article from unknown person. Join hands with the police in fight against terrorism. ATS.” At Diwali, the streets are littered with unexploded fireworks, and shells of spent crackers. It sounds like Beirut, at ground level – every street-dog and dead rocket looks suspicious, what do they want us to do?

Today’s offering from the police is hopeful oil on self-inflicted troubled waters. “False rumours are being spread thru SMS of possible attacks on schools and hotels.” - I know at least one lady, who keeps her children out of school, because of it - “We assure all citizens, city is absolutely safe. Pls don’t panic, nor add to rumours.” Quite tricky, this last, because there’s still only one topic of conversation, over every cup of masala chai, round here, how could rumour not be getting fat on it?

Rumour should be classified as a weapon. On Friday, in the middle of the siege, CNN abandons live action at the Taj, the Oberoi and Nariman House, to report fresh firing, at Victoria Station (CST). People glued to their televisions ring their nearest and dearest, in transit, and pandemonium breaks out, on the trains and the quays. False alarm. CNN apologizes for scaremongering.

So, what are you doing, tonight? If there’s nothing on tv, come and make a stand for peace. “Walk for Mumbai” starts at six - indomitable citizens are invited to meet at the Gateway of India, to march for peace and harmony, for not giving in, and for carrying on in spite of everything. The “I want my Mumbai back” rally is opposite the Taj, at the same time. You don’t need to decide which one to go to, you’ll already be at both, because opposite the Taj IS the Gateway. The ad can’t be accused of subliminal brain-washing, it says simply, “If you give a F***, then walk!” (To be fair, the asterisks are included, and it is a half-rhyme, technically... It comes quaint, though, from a nation of English-speakers who happily lay their tongue to words like “thrice” or “misfortunate” or “lest” in everyday speech.) You are asked to wear white, and a “Mumbai Meri Jaan” t-shirt.

Mumbai Meri Jaan’s a film, released a few months ago. Based on the 2006 serial blasts on Mumbai’s suburban railway network, it’s almost too pertinent. The lives it follows, coping with the aftermath of the attacks, are ironically those of a journalist, a policeman, a businessman and a coffee-vendor. I ask Monu, what “jaan” means. “Life,” he says. Then, at the next traffic lights, he says, “Jaan mean, you know...... love.” Life and love, in one word, how apt. I look it up, when I get home, and find it also means spirit, understanding, strength, essence – even wizard. I tackle Monu on the economy of language, the next day. He laughs and shrugs. “This is Hindi!”

So, Mumbai Meri Jaan – I love Mumbai. Mine’s a Medium, please, and a Large for Mr Roland.

Old Life

2008-12-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

Today, to borrow Monu’s phrase, old life start, a week late. Mr Roland goes to the office (albeit in a playing-out shirt, because he’s only going to say his goodbyes and collect his tea-cup), and I go to Mankhurd, in the hope of a bit of normality, on the straw mats, in the upstairs room.

Bhavika’s late, so we play Hangman until she arrives. I’m quietly confident, with my fourteen-letter word, and indeed, my chalk-man is dangling, with only one leg to go, but I’m reckoning without Swapnil (Prime Minister of India, circa 2045). He springs into the air from a cross-legged start (you try it), shouting, “RESPONSIBILITY, didi!” How can you not be impressed?

Bhavika arrives, and tries to slip in behind Anand and Kajal, who are also late. I’m not having this.
“Bhavika-didi, you are late! Go stand at the back, take your punishment!”
“Shall didi stand here, she is late?” Bhavika asks, laughing. “Come Anand, come Kajal, stand at the back with me, we must take our punishment...” The children drum their heels on the floor, for joy, and I realise, that’s what I’ve not done for five days, smile...

“What did you see, on the television news, this weekend?” Bhavika asks. Khaja – never loath to be first – is on his feet, spraying the class with imaginary bullets, before she gets to the question-mark. I don’t think on-the-doorstep terrorism’s any more real to them, than James Bond or Harry Potter, they’ll certainly not be in need of counselling. Older, wiser, we didis exchange scandalised looks, before we turn to composition.

Bhavika says her aunt and family live near the Taj (“this hotel, backside”) and hear every last bullet and grenade, of the three-day siege. I practically need sedating, watching it all play out on television, fifteen miles away: having live action at the bottom of the garden doesn’t bear thinking about. Mumbaikars are clearly made of sterner stuff, and pride themselves on their resilience: within hours, cafes, shops, offices, are all open again. On Friday, a hawker looks sadly at the empty street, as the traffic-lights wink pointlessly through their sequence. “I’m just waiting for a traffic-jam,” he says, “then I can sell my flowers.” His roses wilt, unsold, so the terrorists find their mark, here, too. Today, though, he’s poking bundles of flowers, scented with exhaust-fumes, through open car-windows, and the world’s the right way up, again.

Ashish pushes his book onto my lap. “My name is Ashish,” he writes. “I am a boy. I stay with my family.” So far, so good. His next sentence leaps off the page at me - “My Akanksha is war.” Maybe he is traumatised, after all? I read on. “My didi is war nes. Caroline-didi is war nes.” He beams at me, “I no help, didi – one star?” Bhavika, cruel but fair, only rewards DIY work. He reads aloud. “My didi is very nice....” So, not psychologically scarred by atrocity, after all. Relieved, I draw him a turtle and a milk-bottle (his request) to go with his star. Ashish is war nes, too.

The politicians continue to wrangle and snipe, but there’s no hope of their being stopped by Black Cat commandos. The latest SMS doing the rounds says, “Don’t be afraid of the men who got in with boats, fear the men who got in with the votes.” I fail to understand all the retrospective finger-pointing, about slack security, sea-side, at the Gateway – even Swapnil could have worked this one out. The little boats jockey for position in the harbour, and tourists pile on to the nearest one, until the plimsoll-line disappears, then it chugs away, grating along the seawall, ricocheting off neighbouring boats, whose crew fend it off, with their bare feet. Organised, it isn’t. Ticket vendors at the top of the steps have no allegiance to any particular boat, no one counts passengers on or off. Crisp-sellers, chai-wallahs, sun-hat merchants, all follow you on board, wheedling, cajoling, haranguing, and have to take a running leap at the disappearing harbour steps, as the boat pulls away, belching diesel fumes. You could smuggle in a bull elephant wearing a golden howdah, and no-one would blink twice. It makes a mockery of all the metal-detector doorways, and the mirrors on sticks, land-side. Small wonder they landed an arsenal, unchecked.

“Mumbai safe,” says Monu, stoutly, although his Mum wants him back in Lucknow, NOW. Being mobile again’s something of a novelty, so we drive to one of our early haunts, in Mulund, for a bit of affirming retail. On the way home, the opposite carriageway’s at a stand-still, blocked by dozens of men, marching in their shirt-sleeves. It looks like a political demonstration, and I’m about to duck, in case tempers are raw, when Monu says, “This funeral. You know, policeman, killed in troubles? This his funeral, local people come.” Behind the marching men, in their off-white shirts, a tow-truck, strung with orange flowerheads. Men in the cab, men on the cab, men in the truck-bed, keeping company with the departed, under his blanket of marigolds.

By the roadside, posters showing cameos of five of the officers who died last week, asking for contributions to help the bereaved families, in the hope of offering them each Rs 15 lakh. I’m sure they’d rather have their Dad back, than a twenty-thousand pound bonus, but it’s a good thought, and Mumbai’s digging deep.

Despite which, I come home tonight feeling saner and more whole. The past five days have been wall-to-wall bullets and blood, desecration, death, man’s inhumanity to man - and while they are part of life, they are not all of life. I just remembered that, in Mankhurd.

Just Another Day

2008-11-30T06:57:00.000-08:00

It all looks very normal, peering down at Powai from our poured concrete eyrie. Being nonchalant’s easy in the sunshine, but confidence leaches out, as the light fades. In the wee small watches, it’s a different matter.

The construction workers don’t stop, just because it goes dark round them. They release the rubble skip, which hurtles thirty floors down in its shaft, and you’d swear it was a building collapsing. The midnight dogs scream, and we turn up the fan to drown them out. At five in the morning, I wake to the sound of a plane landing on the roof. I have never noticed our being on a flight path, until this moment, so I get out of bed, to make sure it’s not trying to come in through the spare room window (directly the fault of CNN reporters: the phrase “Indian 9/11” seems to follow every comma for the past three days). It isn’t, but I’m up now, so I check out Powai. All quiet on the eastern front. I flick on the television, to catch the news. Ironically, but unsurprisingly, there’s nothing new. So little, in fact, I suspect the network of plugging in an old tape, to run through the night, so they can all slope off home for some well-earned shut-eye.

Climbing back into bed, I’m felled by pains in my chest. I considerately kick Mr Roland (because, to quote our driver-friend Sanjay in Delhi, “it he job...”), for a bit of sympathy. “I’ve got chest pains!” I say. “Where?” he says, pretending to be more or less conscious. I don’t say, “In my foot,” and this is the most worrying symptom of all, but we doze off, before I can work myself up to a full cardiac infarction. As you can see, though, we’re skittish.

I try to ascertain how legitimate it is, being out and about again. Our French friends have emails and texts, from their caring representatives at the French Embassy. We have lots of emails and texts, too, but all from people on our Christmas list, and none of them is an ambassador, as far as I know. I do a little spirited research, to find advice, and there it is: they do care, after all! The British Consulate has a reception centre for British nationals at the British Council Library, in Mumbai, and it’s open all night. How much more solicitous could they be? Let’s get our coats... Hold on, where exactly is it, this haven of ex-patriate refuge? Nariman Point. Now that’s what I call handy. If you draw a triangle joining the Taj, the Oberoi and Nariman House, what’s in the middle? Right, the British Council Library. They want us to leave the safety of leafy Powai, to queue up for advice in the killing zone. Suddenly, I feel less cherished. Suddenly, I decide we can look after ourselves.

On the street, it’s just another day. Outside KFC, in the Galleria, the security guards are nursing rifles, but they’re still sitting on plastic garden chairs, to show their human side. The cricket’s back on, in the park, if not on the India-Pakistan Pakistan tour. At the side of the swimming-pool, a white woman’s painting her toenails red, with every appearance of unconcern; I decide it’s safe to assume the two boys hosing down the path and walls are, in fact, pool attendants. I can get back to concentrating on being annoyed by the chubby sons of Powai, who like to bob-bob-bob across my path, every second length. No point waiting it out, either: in my experience, boys don’t get out of water until they grow gills or get hungry. I resign myself to swimming self-righteous banana-lengths, before going home to pick up the marathon television vigil.

Nothing happens, while I’m deserting my sofa-post, except government ministers resign from this and that, before they’re pushed. East and west have more in common, than I imagined, it seems.

In between political finagling and analysis, they screen the funerals of “the brave hearts of India.” They don’t go in for muted mourning, here, the unshed tear, the bitten lip, the averted gaze. They don’t do discreet or contained, they do weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, pulling out hair and clawing at clothes, and I’m with them every sob of the way. There’s no shortage of pomp and ceremony, with fanfares on silver bugles, and solemn wreaths of funeral lilies. I can cope with solemnity. What takes the dhurrie out from under my feet, is the ordinary tenderness. They say goodbye to the man on the open bier, stroking his face, kissing his hair, patting a stray garland into place - little last tidying twitches, to give their hands something to do, while they’re thinking, like tucking a child into bed. And then, they light the pyre. Anaesthetising flames.

There’s fireworks, tonight, too, across the other side of Powai Lake. The explosions make us jump, until we see the sparks, flowering over the Renaissance Hotel. A wedding. At first, I think the timing is unfortunate, then I decide, it couldn’t be better.

So, Where Were We?

2008-11-29T04:50:00.000-08:00

At dawn, it rains, a benison on beleaguered Mumbai. In the morning, we wake to wet pavements and a free city. The temperature drops from the mid-thirties to a gentle twenty-eight - at home, we’d be rootling out the charcoal, and ringing round to see who’s got a bag of buns, to go with the sausages in our freezer, but here, it’s just nicely do-able.

The gates in the basement of Verona are still locked; the security guard has to unbolt them, to let me out. The air’s soft with rain and a new lightness, as yesterday’s determined chin of defiance sags with relief. Everybody goes about their business, not jubilant, just quietly glad.

“How difficult was it, for you?” a Times Now reporter asks a commando, as he hops onto a bus with his comrades, once the Taj is secured, and they’re allowed to clock off. He grins, and shakes his head. “For us, nothing is difficult.” Before the translator reaches the end of the sentence, I have tears in my eyes.

The Black Cat commandos are out, blinking in the morning sun, after sixty hours of unimaginable strain. They look like they could do with twenty-four hours’ sleep, a shave, and a hug from their Mums; not necessarily in that order. The camera catches one of them, mobile in hand, leaning on the harbour wall, overlooking the Arabian Sea. His smile says everything.

Azam Amir Kasav, sole surviving terrorist, is only twenty-one years old. On its front page, the Times of India refers to him, in a matey way, as Azam, but by page two, they’re calling him Kasav. Either way, he’s from Pakistan, and confesses the plan to blow up the entire Taj hotel. According to him, the team undertook the assignment, in the belief that they would come out alive: this was no suicide mission, the police find the chart of their proposed return route, by sea.
Word now is, the terrorists were heavily drugged. What is this drug, which will remove all fear, but leave a person capable of operating an AK47? Mad, misguided, barbarous, clean-shaven and well-pressed – yet every one of them, some mother’s son, as my Nan used to say.

Every visitor we have wants to see the Gateway of India. It’s disappointing, I always say. It’s in the Lonely Planet Guide, they always say back. So we go. “Gateway of India, please, Monu,” I mumble, as we climb into the car, avoiding his eye. Monu doesn’t say anything, but he can go Tch! with his shoulders, and does. The Gateway’s a two-hour drive, even with three Ganeshes on the dash-board and a following wind. (This is what I say to Worried of Stokesley, when the terrorists land in Colaba. Even if they had our actual names on a hit-list, we could be in London, with time to take in a show, before they reach Powai by road...) We pile out of the car, crumpled, and take in the grubby glory of the Gateway. In practice, you can hardly look at it anyway, you’re so busy swatting away touts, flogging everything from plastic Eiffel Towers to dubious ice-cream out of a bucket, as well as photographers brandishing digital cameras, with tiny portable printers round their necks, and picturesque child-beggars in rags and bare feet. I have yet to see the Gateway, not shrouded in tattered tarpaulin and bamboo scaffolding. Now you’ve seen that, I say, turning our visitor round, look at this. The Taj Mahal Hotel. The doormen wear puttees, and have moustaches as wide as buffalo horns – they’re very smiley, even when you’ve got a red nose and mad hair, straight off the boat from Elephanta Island. The Taj is an oasis of civilisation.

And now it’s gutted, despite all its tinkling chandeliers and priceless antiques. The cameras are allowed in again. In the ruined hotel foyer, where so many people died, a tall vase of gladioli stands, untouched, on a side table.

Security in India is stricter than in the UK. You enter every mall through a magic doorway, and have to surrender your bag for scrutiny. “What are you doing reading this poster?” chides the billboard on the steps of In Orbit, “when you could be looking around for suspicious objects?” I am routinely waved in with a smile, whereas Mr Roland gets frisked, every time – not because I am lovely and he looks shifty, it’s a boy/girl thing. Terrorist organisations across the world are coming to realise this loophole, and are using not only women, but women with mental handicaps, in burkhas, on suicide missions.

Five-star hotels are the regular stamping-ground of ex-pats, in a country which does neither pubs nor street cafés. We turn into the drive, and stop, while the security men give the car the once-over. Monu pops the bonnet open, and they look inside, to discover that that’s where we keep the engine. They run a handbag mirror, lashed to a stick-on-wheels, under all four sides of the car, in as many seconds. If they’re really rigorous, or short of things to do, they tap the boot, and Monu surrenders the ignition key, inscrutably, while they check out the monsoon box and the emergency umbrella. I sit in the back, smiling, trying to make the guards smile back. They always do, waving us on. “Just because the boot’s full of kittens and lollipops,” I say, “it doesn’t mean I haven’t got a grenade in my handbag.” Monu laughs. – It hasn't seemed so funny, since Wednesday.

The death toll stands at 195, as I write, comprising crack anti-terrorist officers, policemen, tourists, businessmen, waitresses, even children. Every Indian we speak to is angry, not scared. Now the guns are cooling, the name and shame game has begun, and politicians abandon the united front they assumed in troubled times. Obvious suspects, like Pakistan and Al-Qaeda, are top of the list, but Britain is also implicated, because two of the dead terrorists are carrying British passports. Even Taj staff are accused of complicity. It’s going to take longer to sort out, than it did to live through.

Our year in India is so nearly over. We won’t be bullied into scuttling home early, nor do we want to stay out of stubborn foolhardiness. When the dust settles – sadly, literally – we will see, and decide. Until then, a waiting game.

A City Under Siege

2008-11-28T00:21:00.000-08:00

High temperature, no appetite, listless, subject to mood swings – all the symptoms of cabin fever. Being besieged is less glamorous than you think. I recall gloomily that “siège" is French for seat, and that about sums up our crisis so far - glued to the sofas, noses to the small screen. We’re becoming couch aloo.

On Wednesday, we drop my brother at the airport. “Last guest gone,” Monu smiles, edging the car back into the seething traffic, heading for home. “Old life starts.” He couldn’t be more wrong. Just as Michael’s plane is taking off, terrorists put the “bomb” back into Bombay, with co-ordinated attacks in ten locations across the south of the city. “Old life” goes on hold.

Thirty-six hours later, the National Security Guard’s still operating to “sanitize” the three remaining occupied buildings. It’s difficult to know what’s happening – the NSG has gagged the media, because terrorists are tracking operations via television, but that doesn’t stop twenty-four hour coverage of the events. Old footage is played in permanent loops, with live voiceovers, and the flashing strap-line “Breaking News” – you get blasé about being on tenterhooks, after the first twelve hours.

We’re told to stay indoors, until advised otherwise, although the attacks are centred miles away in South Mumbai. I try to rustle up a sock-knitting, bandage-rolling attitude, and am grumpily ironing (in thirty-five degrees of sunshine, Stoicism doesn’t come near the mark...), when I discover that a colleague has gone outside to shop. If she can, I can, I think, reaching for my goggles. I know going for a swim would hardly cut the mustard, with the Maquis, but it’s a small gesture of defiance. Also, if I have to stay indoors a minute longer, I am going to start making friends with the cockroaches...

The heavy iron gates in the basement are bolted, but the security guard smiles Good Morning, and lets me out onto the street. And there is Powai, with his wife and golden Labrador, going about his business. Everything looks normal – the road diggers are digging the roads, the vegetable-man’s sitting on his stall, selling custard apples and guava, and a woman’s chasing dust-heaps, with a whisk-broom, back and forth. The only difference, today, is the tuk-tuks at the side of the road. They’re gathered in their usual nest, like a pile of beetles, but their drivers aren’t sleeping, with their legs looped over the handlebars and their feet poking out into the fresh air. The men in khaki are poring over the news, six heads bent over one paper. Something’s definitely up.

I peer into every young brown face, looking for the telltale signs of Deccan Mujahideen membership. It’s tricky because no-one had heard of them until now, so they hardly have a signature look, yet. Rumour’s running away with itself, with a microphone in its hand. Pakistan’s mentioned, the LeH, but officials won’t be drawn into speculation, and are prioritizing saving lives over apportioning blame, for the time being. Good for them. The bullets don’t fly any thinner or slower, for knowing whose finger’s on the trigger.

Yesterday, Bhavika rings in the early morning. “Akanksha centres are closed today,” she says, “so I will see you tomorrow.” I find solace in her supposing we’ll all be here by then, to tackle our three times tables down in Mankhurd. In the event, schools are closed, today, too, although the Indian Stock Exchange is trading again, I note.

Monu checks in. “Sir, you want this car?” More than anything, I want to see him, breathing in and out, but have to concede that this is perhaps not a good reason to drag him across a besieged city, so he stays in Malad. I assume he was breathing, to make the phonecall.

They even nip and tuck the advert breaks, on CNN, so the coverage is unbroken. The drama unfolds maddeningly slowly, it’s more padding than news, but you can’t not watch it, in case.... Every hour, a new tag-team takes over as co-ordinating front-men, in the studio. They edge in, from the wings, rustling an important fistful of A4 sheets. The veterans slide off their stools, and include them in the conversation, “So give us an update on what’s happening at the Taj right now, Yogita...” Then, as the new team take up the narrative, the retiring team nod sympathetically, without taking their eyes off the newcomers, whilst moving, crab-wise, out of shot. Le roi est mort, vive le roi. Seamless.

Within the hour, registration numbers of terrorists’ vehicles are on screen (MH01 ZA 102 and MH01 BA 579, if you’ve that kind of a memory and you’re in the Colaba area) followed by numbers to ring with information. We also wake up to chilling and very real requests for blood donations, from St George’s Hospital.

There’s more gore on screen, than in “Saving Private Ryan”. A man’s bundled into the back of a car, his head lolling, the pavement behind him red. “Is he....?” I start to say. “He’s unconscious,” says Roland, firmly. They fold the man’s legs in, like tidying up a trailing sleeve, escaping from a suitcase, and slam the door. We both know he’s dead. In the next half-hour, we see him summarily despatched at least a dozen times, by way of screen-saver to the unfolding news.

In the first gun-battle at Cama Hospital, the Anti-Terrorism Squad loses three of its top officers. The screen splits into three, playing over and over the last footage of each of them, alive. Ironic, poignant, ATS chief Hemand Karkare is shown being fitted with a flak jacket and hard hat, which clearly did him no service. Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte was India’s answer to Bruce Willis. The CNN journalist reporting his loss was at college with him, and says he remembers ACP Kamte winning the record for eating the most bananas in a day (18), because he wanted to be a body-builder, before he decided to join the force. This irrelevant, irreverent detail is very moving, somehow. Ridiculous, frail, human. We see the officer in his combat hat and fatigues, addressing troops, then the screen flickers to his funeral, where this man of action is still at last, his stern face peaceful, framed in garlands of flowers.

The police recover bags dropped by the terrorists. Money, rounds of bullets, RDX and survival supplies. I’m charmed to discover that these boys are armed not only with AK47s, but with bags of peanuts, too. A local shopkeeper now comes forward, and says the terrorists bought Rs 50,000 worth of dried goods, a couple of days ago; as if they were laying in for a siege, in fact. Almonds for Vitamin E, apricots to keep them regular. We, on the other hand, without the luxury of foreknowledge, are living on what’s in the cupboard. Unless the situation’s recovered soon, we’ll have to resort to the goat cubes I bought in a fit of ethnic enthusiasm, months ago, and which I’ve had neither the heart nor the stomach to cook. They’re in the freezer, with half a tub of ice-cream we got in, when Jacob was in residence. Don’t worry about us, though. We’ve also got two bottles of Kingfisher and half a bag of Bombay mix, we’re sorted.

I'm glad you're a camel too, Mabel...

2008-11-17T06:31:00.001-08:00

No turbaned maharajahs by scented fountains, no welcome leis, no bindi – we’re wondering what five-star tourism has come to. This is Osyan - we’re sleeping in tents, in the desert, tonight. Not what you’d call “grand luxe” but not exactly slumming it, either – as a veteran of the Dharavi tour, in Mumbai, I can confirm, this is definitely not a slum. Electricity and water on demand, there’s even an en suite bathroom, with canvas walls, and a stone pit for a shower – what’s not five-star about that?

Our welcome drink – the ubiquitous nimbu-paani, lemon water – hisses on the back of our parched throats. We’re on the edge of the Thar Desert. I suggest a swim, for a cheap laugh, and our host spins round, “Swimming-pool is here. Come, I show.” We’re so surprised, it’s some minutes before we get the wind back in our sails, to enquire about the ice-rink, for later.

We’re handed over to our personal minder, who has big brown eyes, and a small speech impediment. It’s a winning combo, I’m charmed already, and he’s only told us his name. Micky. I know, not very Indian, maybe his real name’s Suresh, and he’s given up the unequal struggle. He is, he says, at our service.

“This is your programme I have made for you.” I feel cherished already. “First, have the relaxing swim. Next, you will have the camel safari, one hours. Then, after one hours, come back, go to tent and fresh up.” You try this with a lisp, a stammer and an Indian accent. I ask him a question, just so I can hear him say it all again. “Next, seven o’clock, the entertainment. The singing and the dancing of Rajasthan. Then you will eat the dinner, no?” Sounds like a plan, to me, Micky.

We fall into the unlikely pool-in-the-desert, and warm it up a couple of degrees, only climbing out again when we reach thermal equilibrium. And then, we’re on safari.

Wading through the soft sand to the camel-park, I ask if all our worldly goods will be safe, back at base camp. Micky stops and turns, on a 50-paise piece, shocked. “All security men here is Rajput,” he says simply. He peers at me, because I don’t look impressed enough. “You see the earring and the moustache, no? This is Rajput peoples.” Rajput – warrior caste, race of kings. NOW I’m impressed. “Rajput peoples very honourable. Your things is safe.” So we drift off on safari, leaving our goods and chattels in the trusty hands of the sons of princes.

We hear the camels, before we see them, rumbling to one another. It’s all very well, hopping onto a low-slung camel, with his legs folded under him. You have then to stay on, while he stands up, back end first. I find muscles I’d forgotten about, trying not to catapult over Mr Roland’s head. I don’t exactly stay in my seat, but I don’t bite the sand, either, so I count that as a success. I have bits of string, instead of stirrups, which are doing a cheese-wire thing to my bare feet, so I abandon them. Then I nearly fall off again (it’s a long way down), so I opt for stability over comfort. In fairness, no-one said this was going to be a ride in the park.... Oh, no, wait, it IS a ride in the park....

“This is boy. This is boy. Both boy,” says the boss. (Unnecessarily, at least from where I'm sitting.) “This one Bappu, this one Moti.” Baby and Pearl. Perhaps it was more obvious, when they were what Monu would call “camel-child.” Also, you wouldn’t call them Scarface and Stinky, just to be honest, would you? Well, not in the nicer parts of Rajasthan, anyway.

The camel-keepers spend all day, every day with their beasts, it’s not surprising the novelty’s worn thin. I still think their nonchalance borders on neglect, though, as they stroll along, with a frayed rope draped over one shoulder, guiding ten-feet of bored camel a-piece. What if Bappu and Moti decide to have a race, just to relieve the tedium of the afternoon? Our keeper’s mobile rings, incongruously, in the middle of the desert, and he chats to that, on and off, as the signal dips in and out, for the whole hour. It dispels the Lawrence of Arabia feel, somehow.

At the furthest point from home, they bring the camels to a standstill, nose to nose. “See. Is sunset. Take picture. I take picture, you want?” So here we are. Moti’s the one with the coquettish red bobble, on the bridge of his nose.

It’s dark, when we get back. The floor show’s cranking up, so we slither into place, on one of the wide, backless settees, fringing the courtyard, camel-scented just as we are, with no time to “fresh up.” Flames crackle in a huge cooking-pot, in the centre of the courtyard, the musicians in a row behind, the dancers in front, bare feet on beaten earth. We’re all rapt, until the dancers peel off to recruit volunteers, then we all suddenly find the middle-distance fascinating. Robin-Sir isn’t quick enough, and we’re still laughing, when we’re all conscripted. She’s only four feet six, the dancing-girl, but I bet she’s Rajput, too. Without missing a beat, she slings a ladleful of kerosene on the sulky embers. It livens things up no end. As we whirl round, I’m too busy trying not to be sucked into the inferno, to feel self-conscious.

“What time you want the dinner?” asks Micky, solicitous.
“Eight o’clock, please,” I say.
Micky makes a note. “Eight o’clock, ok,” he says, then pauses. “Seven-thirty is also good time....” He works along the row, discovering dining preferences. We all sit down to eat together, at seven-thirty. Why didn’t he say so, in the first place?

After dinner, we’re herded into the bar, where Micky’s holding a trayful of glasses. “House on the rum!” he smiles. “What time you want the breakfast?” We’ve only got a plane to catch, tomorrow, so I think a late kick-off’s in order.
“Nine o’clock, please,” I say, foolishly thinking it’s up to me.
“Nine o’clock, ok!” You know what’s coming next. “Eight o’clock is also good time....” and he even has a programme, to prove it. “Eight o’clock, eat the breakfast. Nine o’clock, have the swim. Small swim. Ten o’clock, pack the bag and pshht!” He flicks his hand, as if he were swatting a fly, to indicate the parting of the ways. Resistance is futile.

The night’s broken by trains and mosquitoes. Local train-drivers like to play “Name That Tune” with a fog-horn at three o’clock in the morning, we discover, and anytime’s right for a bite, for a mosquito with the munchies. So, sleep doesn’t come into it much, but we need an early start, because we have a programme to get through. It’s not as if we’re on holiday, after all.

If you can’t get down to the gym, this week, have a go on a camel. Wear six pairs of trousers, though, it’s quite demanding on the saddle (yours, not the camel’s). Two days later, we all still walk like John Wayne, after just one hour on the hump.

PS: Jodhpur's Pants

2008-11-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

I bet you thought Jodhpur was one leg of a pair of dubious baggy trousers, which fit everywhere and nowhere, didn’t you? In fact, Jodhpur means, the City of Jodha (you can work out for yourself which bit means “city” then...) because Rao Jodha founded it in 1459. Jodhpurs, as worn on polo fields the world over, were invented here. Today, Shivraj Singh, the Crown Prince of Jodhpur, is captain of the city’s own polo team, the Jodhpur Eagles, so the tradition carries on. I like a bit of continuity.

The road to Jodhpur is long and often unmade. Mano’s a top driver, and the Innova’s newer than our own, in Mumbai, but the air-conditioning’s either temperamental or defunct, and any more than ten minutes driving anywhere leaves us all limp.

Along the dusty track, we pass a woman, toting a baby on one hip. She’s towing three more children, between two and five, and a goat, all on the same piece of string. (This is exactly why women aren’t in charge of UNESCO or the G8, or even ASDA – they are irreplaceable, multi-tasking and managing, on the domestic front.) I give her a sisterly wave, as we sail by, and she smiles, and waves back.

You can’t drive for two minutes, in Rajasthan, without meeting a cow. They drift along, with their own bovine agenda, unaware of the traffic whistling by their horns. Are English cows exceptionally wussy and skittish, or are Indian cows coolly phlegmatic and nonchalant, in the safe knowledge of their protected status? When they learn to talk, these Indian cows, their first words will be, “Two years in the clink, mate, mind the fetlocks....”

We swerve to avoid a stranded truck, flanked by four loose cobbles. It’s only the third time I see this arrangement, like Contrary Mary’s cockleshells, all in a row-ho-ho, that it comes to me – it’s a red triangle, Rajasthan-style. In Mumbai, they use a torn-off tree branch, as a Distant Early Warning of trouble ahead, but here, cobbles are clearly the way to go. Very pragmatic, since everyone’s boot’s usually full of passengers and goats.

We go round Mehrangarh Fort together, but not together. We have separate audio-guides, so we drift along in a pack, without speaking. We’re all more or less at the same spot in the tourist-blurb, focussed on the middle-distance, listening to a disembodied voice, and you can guess when we each get to the amazing/saucy bit, because there’s a small Mexican wave of silent gasps/giggles. We stare at the grim plaque, by the inner gate, where Rajiya Bhambi was walled in, to secure prosperity, when the fort was built. He volunteered to be buried alive, and his descendants still live on the estate, gifted to them by a grateful Jodha, more than five centuries ago.

From the walls of Mehrangarh, much of the housing you can see is painted blue. In Jodha’s day, only members of the Brahmin caste were allowed to use indigo emulsion – it is not only cooling, in the heat of summer, but it also acts as an insect-repellent. These days, I’m glad to hear, any old peasant can paint his house blue, if he likes.

Within the fort is the Chamunda Devi temple, where hundreds of worshippers lost their lives only weeks ago, during the Durga festival. There was a stampede, in the men’s queue. Our papers, in Mumbai, said it was because the stone path was slippery with coconut milk, from the ritual offerings, but the current theory is that an explosion nearby caused panic. They couldn’t get the death toll right for days, because people came to recover their own dead, without telling the authorities. In Mumbai, there were collections, even in Muslim communities, for the families of the Hindu victims.

While the boys are absorbed by cannons and scimitars, in the museum, I drift off to look at a nineteenth-century cosmetic box. It comes complete with an ivory-inlaid exercise-club, which I’d have trouble fitting into my make-up bag. I begin to realise that my four-minute wash-and-brush-up may be inadequate; there are apparently sixteen rituals of adornment for a woman, from painting the lips with beeswax, to placing the final tikka on the forehead, before she’s ready for love. This box clearly belonged to a woman who was not responsible for rolling out the chapattis or swilling down the fort sulabh, then.

In the courtyard, a man takes his hat off, and everyone applauds. We’re not so starved of entertainment, here in the far reaches of north India, that a bloke with his cap in hand creates a ripple of delight – this is millinery like you’ve never seen before. His mate holds the loose end, and by the time the bareheaded one has unravelled his hat, they’re at opposite ends of the courtyard. He then winds eighty-two feet of fabric (I know: I asked) back round his head, into a neat turban, and tucks the end in. More applause.

We admire the hookah, in its little alcove, complete with a real-live sheesha-wallah, with his curly moustache. He has a downcast look about him, probably because of the new smoking ban. Does it count as smoking, if your tobacco’s water-filtered? He’ll be relegated to weddings and bar mitzvahs, at this rate. I’m charmed to note, that the guide says, “Opium and hospitality go hand in hand.” Not in the East Midlands, they don’t.

When we finish our communal-but-separate fort-tour, there’s the unexpected bonus of a market, on the way out. Some of us are a little less up for this bizarre bazaar, than others, so they sit around looking bored, while I buy seventeen scarves and a pair of curly-toed camel-leather shoes. I only stop then, because Mr Roland squirrels away his credit card, before I find the jewellery stall. Look away, if you’re expecting a parcel, under my Christmas tree, and feign surprise and delight, when you open one of Ishfab’s tie-dyed specials. Ish is the craftsman, but his brother, Rav, has the patter off – well, pat, really. He switches to French, then Dutch, as variously flavoured tourists pass by. I ask him for “Look at these lovely scarves!” in German, then in Italian, and he doesn’t miss a beat. He can do Russian, and Korean, if you ask nicely, too. I ask him to say, “I’d like a cup of coffee!” and he admits defeat, laughing. He’s brilliant, if you want to know about washing instructions, or wax resist techniques, in a dozen languages, though. Camilla stopped to shop, when she was here with Prince Charles. I wonder if she got a free one, for buying in bulk? I did. Don’t worry, it’s not the one I’m giving you.

Then, glutted with culture and retail, we find Mano again, and head north-west, for the desert. Follow that camel.

Happy Baal Diwas!

2008-11-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

Nikita invitingly pats the space next to her, on the mat, in the upstairs room, at Mankhurd, so I sit down beside her. She smiles, and sighs, and leans against my knee. I could sit here forever.

Bhavika’s catechizing the assembled troops, meanwhile.
“Whose birthday is it today?”
“Chacha Nehru!”
“Right, Chacha Nehru! What is Chacha Nehru’s other name?” This one creates a ripple of dismay, and I have every sympathy. I know the answer, but I can’t get my tongue round it, either, even if you write it in four-inch capitals on a piece of paper, and stuff it into my fist, so I’m not rating their chances.
“Chacha Nehru is...... Jawaharlal Nehru. Who is he?”
“Jawaharlal Nehru!” No one else on the floor seems to find this unpronounceable, now they’ve had a steer from didi. Just me, then. I’ll stick to Pandit, I decide.
“And who was Jawaharlal Nehru?... He was the first Prime Minister of India! What was he?”
“First Prime Minister!” At least one person’s listening.
“Well done, Swapnil!” (Wouldn’t you know? With a bit of luck and a following wind, Swapnil will be Prime Minister himself, one of these days.) “Of which country was he Prime Minister?”
“India, didi, India!” Politicians can’t all be bad, it seems to me.
“And what did Chacha Nehru love?... He loved children. What did he love?”
“Children!”
“So what is his birthday, what do we say, Chacha Nehru’s birthday is.....?”
“Children’s Day!” We all smile so much, our teeth go dry, congratulating ourselves.
“So didi has brought cake!” The mats fizz with joy, and everyone’s tidy padmasan falls apart. Cake.

“Who will have cake, yes or no?” No-one has much of a problem, working this one out.

We’ve only just got over Diwali fireworks, and now it’s Baal Diwas, Children’s Day. It’s not news to me, they’ve been advertising it on the tv, all week, promoting a day-long cartoon orgy for all the family. And on the way into school this morning, we pass a fairy princess in a spangly crown, trying to tame her frothy layers of tulle and wave her wand at the same time, as she trips along at her mother’s sari-end. She strikes an incongruously exquisite note, in the detritus of the gutter, which laps at her tiny slippered feet.

The rest of the world celebrates Children’s Day on 20th November, but India makes a bid for independence, and lights her fireworks a week early, on Nehru’s birthday. It’s nearly fifty years since he died, but all the children of India still call him “Uncle” – Chacha Nehru.

“Celebrate Baal Diwas!” cajoles the poster on the hoarding by the link road. “Banish child labour!” A sobering thought, amid all the balloons and chocolate bars. “Make Children’s Day happy for all children.” If only. One of the cuties, on the mats, here at Akanksha, was found abandoned, two or three days old, in a dustbin, by the woman he thinks is his mother. It’s all I can do, not to package him up and mail him to myself, in the UK.

At the traffic-lights, Monu points to a child, hobbling down the central reservation, his foot swathed in filthy bandages, a padded crutch under each arm.

“See this boy?” We both watch him hop-skipping along, for a moment. “His foot complete.” So, the dressing and the crutches are his professional props? Monu nods. “See, this girl, too.” And sure enough, there’s his sister, equally misfortunate in the matter of sound limbs, crutches flailing. I say, someone should tell them to work different sets of traffic-lights, they add nothing to each other’s credibility. Unless they’re just a really accident-prone family. Still, I don’t expect there’ll be much in the way of Baal Diwas cake, doing the rounds, on the pavement where they live, tonight.

In our Values lesson, we’re doing Respect. What is respectful, what is disrespectful.
“If you want didi to teach you something, do you say, “Didi, teach it!””
“Yes!” says Sachin, and he’s right, that’s exactly what he does, except in mime. More exactly, he pokes you with his book, and pushes everyone else’s book off your knee, then pinches your arm, to make sure you understand. That’s Sachin’s normal MO.
“You will say, “Teach me!”?” says Bhavika-didi, scandalised. Sachin loves either/or questions, because when he gets it wrong, there’s only one answer left, and it’s always the right one.
“No, didi!” he bellows, and looks round for applause. He’s sweet, really.

We write respect words in our English note-books. Sorry. Please. Thank you. Excuse me. Not for the first time, I wish I had a video-camera, to make a salutary short, for Year 9 Citizenship Lessons, in the UK. Come to think of it, some of the favoured sons and daughters of leafy Powai could do with a bit of revision, in this module, too. At the swimming-pool, I’m just dripping towards the changing-rooms, when a boy of about twelve hurtles round the corner, and cannons into me. Without looking at me, or missing a step, he scrambles on. “Excuse me!” I say in my loudest, school-missiest, most sarcastic voice. “That’s ok!” he says, airily, over his shoulder. Indignation, more strong than a belt in the solar plexus, quite vanquishes me.

Meanwhile, Bhavika’s waxing warm to her theme.
“When Caroline-didi gives you little bottles of shampoo and soap, do you take one and say, “Didi, I have no gift!” – is that what you should do?” I think of the free shop, disappearing hand over fist, last lesson, and wonder if this rings a bell with anyone.
“Yes, didi!” says Khaja the Snitch. “Sonal, two soap!” He tugs on my sleeve, and points at Sonal, who pulls a face and turns away. Either she’s innocent as charged, or she doesn’t understand. It has to be said, her English isn’t that hot, though. “Hair-comb, didi, me?” Khaja croons, his nose pressed to mine. Forget thirty pieces of silver, the price of this super-grass is a plastic comb. I harden my heart, and refuse. I would give this child the sun, moon and stars, if I could find a piece of wrapping-paper big enough, but he’s not having a comb, today.

Before we go home, a game. We split into three: Team Sachin, Team Salim and Team Ashish. Each round, a player is nominated, who chooses which level question he wants, worth 10, 20, 30 or 50 points. After two turns, caution goes out of the window with no glass, and everyone’s bidding for tops.
“For fifty points, if I have ten sweets, then I get five more – wait, I haven’t finished, keep it in your head – then I give ten to my Mother, how many sweets do I have?” I hold my breath, but Khaja doesn’t.
“Five sweets!” Team Ashish do a war-dance of victory.

Swapnil goes for broke, too.
“If I have twenty-five sweets, and I want to give forty, how many sweets do I need?” He’s allowed to do it on the board, instead of the back of his eyelids, but even then has to have three goes, to get to fifteen. It’s not the maths lacking, it’s the nerve, but perhaps he should think of an alternative to the premiership, by way of career.

It’s looking like a walk-over for Team Ashish, raking in fifty after fifty. Then Khaja gets a ten-point penalty for dancing up and down to distract Rahul, so the race is on again.

It all hinges on Kunda, the last question of the last round. She’s a wobbly ten-point person, at heart, but she’s carried away by the madness of it all, and bids wildly for fifty. Didi writes “-ag,” “-ot,” and “-ip” on the board, and Kunda has to find three words for each. She’s thinking about it. I have to gag Naina with one hand and Khaja with the other, as Kunda begins to write “tag” in uneven nano-letters. By the time she gets to the last column, we’re all miming “sip” or “dip” or “pip” like it was New Year’s Charades, but she has her own ideas, and finally writes “lip,” bagging fifty for the team.

Final scores: Sachin’s team - 230; Salim’s team – 190; Ashish’s team – 240. Much cheering and laughter. No-one says, “My question was harder than hers!” or “He had help with his!” and mostly they don't say, “It’s not fair!” - so the respect lesson is well learned. I don’t know that the dangerous ten-point dock has taught Khaja anything about sitting-down and shutting-up, but the whole world’s out there, waiting to knock the stuffing out of him, there’s time yet for a bit of irrepressible joie de vivre.

Kunda’s so overwhelmed by her success, she gives me her cake, on the way out. She’s had a baby brother and a brutal haircut in the same week, I’m surprised she can still spell her own name. I put the cake back in her hand, and she gives me a shy smile.
“Happy Children’s Day, Kunda!”
“Thank-you, didi!” she says, and scampers off down the stairs.

Rajasthan, Land of Kings

2008-11-13T10:28:00.001-08:00

Our guide du jour is the silver-tongued, snake-hipped Karan Singh Rathore. He wants to be world-famous, and he might well be, one of these days. He’s learnt all his admirable English, not at school, but from tourists – he’s evidently had some street-savvy customers, over the years. His Pink City patter’s interspersed with snippets like “No wife, no life!” and “No money, no honey!” He’s not married, at the time of writing, so if you need a Jaipur guide, or a husband, ask me nicely, and I’ll give you his email address.

Jaipur has a population of five million. Most of them seem to be at the Amber Fort, with us. The walled city has seven gates, Karan says. “You know why seven? Because heaven itself has seven gates.” Obvious, when you know. The city’s painted “pink for happiness” and has been rosily so, since the Prince of Wales’ visit in 18-something – so he left his mark in Rajasthan in no uncertain terms. If you indulge in a bit of chromatic rebellion, here in the Old City, and splash out on a pot of mauve shellac or fuchsia gloss, for example, you’re up for a Rs 5000 fine, and two months in jail. And there’s you, all this time, thinking you can’t go wrong with magnolia...

We pass through the marketplace, where dairymen bring churns of milk to sell. Aluminium lids are wedged tight with a fistful of straw, straight off the floor of the cowshed, by the look of it. They’re prised off, for a potential buyer, who – here’s the tasty bit – dunks his hand up to the wrist in the milk, to test its quality with his bare fingers. What if he says no – what if the next punter, and the one after him, say no? By the time it gets to your breakfast Weetabix, your milk could have been through dozens of hands. – So, next time you’re in Jaipur, if anyone asks you, “How do you like your tea?” – say, “Black!”

We drive up the hill to the Black City, wiggling the Innova through tiny cobbled streets too congested for a push-bike. It’s most interesting, when someone else’s Innova’s coming the other way. Brinkmanship’s still the only rule of the road. Mano’s a passed master, and yields to none. There are shops selling rice and peas, full of veiled and sari’d housewives, jostling next to shops full of bermuda’d tourists, selling Rajasthani puppets and camel leather shoes. Eclectic retail.

Karan says, “Do you want to go to Fort by car, or by elephant?” Oh, Karan..... We drive to the elephant park where some of us are so excited, we can hardly get out of the car. Mr Roland and the boys tolerantly join the queue, trying not to look bored. We’re three steps up the elephant-mounting ziggurat – so close, I can smell the poo – when disaster strikes. Karan nips nimbly up the steps with a Don’t Shoot The Messenger look on his face, and I accept defeat before he opens his mouth. “Is too hot for elephant. This is last ride.” He points to the porky tourists climbing aboard even as he’s speaking, and I hate them. I don’t know who they are or where they’re from, they just look despicable. “We go by car,” says Karan. “Sorry...” Well, that’s better than having some poor pachyderm lumber up the hill, in the heat of the day, with a bunch of gora on his back, isn’t it? – No, frankly, it isn’t, but I work myself into believing it, by the time we get to the Amber Fort, prosaically on four wheels.

We’re just in time to nip into Ganesh’s temple, inside the palace, before closing time. We have to take off not only our shoes, but cameras, phones, and leather belts, before crossing the threshold. Between the statues on the back wall, and the rail to keep out the yeomanry, monks shuttle back and forth, ferrying offerings one way to the gods, and blessed Prasad the other, to the faithful. Not only fruit and flowers, we see one man hand over a bottle of gin (unequivocally labelled “Gin” to take the guesswork out of voyeurism) – which a monks upends into a flask. Incredulous, we ask Karan, and he says, “For Hindu, the fruit and the wine, is all offering.” Broad church, indeed...

We admire the Hall of Mirrors, its tiny mosaics winking in the sun, and the royal bathrooms, where you could swim in rose-scented water. The walls are tinted, but not with paint. The sixteenth century decorators ground up the off-cuts of semi-precious stones, from in the inlays, and mixed the powder with lemon juice and oil and seventeen other secret ingredients, to form a paste, which they used to paint the marble. I salute their parsimony. Like making jam tarts, with pastry scraps, I say, but no-one quite sees the similarity.

The Maharajah who built the fort, Raja Man Singh I, was a man of many talents. Not least, he ran twelve wives and two hundred concubines, simultaneously. (Mr Roland says that he has trouble running just the one. It’s all very well, being witty in company, but he’s going to have to be alone with me, sooner or later...) Each Mrs Raja Man Singh I had her own quarters, and her own kitchens. One woman, one kitchen, you can see the wisdom of that. When RMS was in residence, the wives weren’t allowed to talk to each other, which proves that, despite having two hundred and twelve women all to himself, Raja knew nothing about the fair sex. When he was off, going to war to have a rest, of course they talked to each other. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? “So what did he get you for Diwali, then?” “Is that a new tiara, or have you had it ages?” - The queens, he visited in their separate chambers, but the concubines were slumming it, three or four to a cell, so they were summoned to his rooms, as required. It comes as no surprise when Karan says, “You want to see the secret passages?” RMS has a rabbit-warren of interconnecting hidden corridors, so he could think his business was his own. Men, who’d have them?

The Crown Palace

2008-11-12T10:05:00.001-08:00

I look around the lift, on the way down to the lobby: we’re an unprepossessing lot. In all fairness, it’s still dark outside, but the muezzin’s up before us. As far as the boys are concerned, there’s only one 5.30 in any twenty-four hours, and this isn’t it. No-one speaks, but “It Had Better Be Worth It” is ricocheting, loud and clear, off the mirrored walls. The Taj Mahal will be up for the photo-shoot, but the camera lens will need more Vaseline than a baby’s bottom, to soft-focus the bags under our eyes. Then I remember the magic that is photoshop, and chalk up one to technology...

Downstairs, Niraj is waiting for us, in his crisp cotton shirt and pressed jeans. You can’t not notice, that his face and chest are badly scarred by burns. I lean in to catch his words, watching his mouth, then look away, in case he thinks I’m staring, so I miss the next bit, and have to look again. This delicacy ping-pong continues, until I understand that it’s my problem, not his. Niraj, with his disfigured face, spends every day showing off the most exquisite building in the world, with no thought of irony.

Mano takes us halfway, up to the combustion-engine exclusion zone, where we hop into an electric tuk-tuk for the last lap. The ambience teeters between surly and laconic. The conversation’s not monosyllabic, though, because someone would need to say something for that...

The day dawns, as we join the queue. It’s fully light, but with a blue filter. The early birds are opening their shops for the tourist worms. We watch the stall-holders, with their whisk brooms, sweeping up dust from the shoes of yesterday’s customers, which they leave in tidy piles at the doorway, for today’s customers to walk through and bring back in. I love recycling.

Most of the silent queue’s as pole-axed as we are, except the talkative American lady behind me. She’s clearly a morning person, but she doesn’t have long to live. Then, just as I’m going to have to stab her, the kaleidoscope of fate turns, and the queue moves forward, so she lives to chat another day.

We’re herded into separate lines, men on the right, ladies on the left, and at first, I’m winning, because my team’s numerically challenged. The advantage is temporary, though, because the men’s queue processes at walking pace, a quick flick with the bomb-detecting paddle, then, Next Please! The ladies, however, are all carrying enough stuff to put Mary Poppins’ carpet-bag to shame, plus a family picnic in the other hand. I’m twitching irritably, watching kitchen sink after kitchen sink clatter onto the security man’s desk. Do these women know nothing? My capsule handbag contains a lipstick, a phone, a tube of mints and a hundred-rupee note, folded small, for emergencies. (In England, £1.25 would not get you out of many emergencies, I know, unless you were desperate for half a cup of coffee, but in India, Rs 100 pretty well has you covered.)

It’s the last Saturday of the Diwali hols, and the turnstile’s spinning. There’s a queue inside, for posing on the Princess Di seat and looking wistful, with your head on one side, but fortunately, we don’t want to. On Fridays, the Taj Mahal’s closed. The mosque on its left, looking from the gate, is still used for prayer, by the workers who live in the outer courtyard. The mosque faces west, which puzzles me, until I have a geographical epiphany, and work out that Mecca is only to the East, if you are west of Mecca...

Niraj shows us sneaky Hindu lotus blossoms, in the inlaying, inside the central dome. Shah Jehan was Muslim, but his mother was Hindu, and this is a wink to her. Niraj cups his hands round a section of curling fronds of petals and leaves, in the carved wall panels, and there is a perfect marble OM.

The four towers on sentry-duty, at the corners, tilt outwards, so that, in an earthquake, they would fall away from the central dome. They think of everything, these seventeenth century Mughal architects, don’t they? You used to be able to climb them, until fifteen years ago, when some thoughtless love-shorn desperado threw himself off the top of one of them, onto the unforgiving marble beneath. I trust SHE was satisfied. One more copycat suicide, and the authorities drew the bolts for good, to prevent a stampede of unrequited lovers. Not very nice for Mumtaz.

I thought this was the fairest of Indian monuments, but I was wrong. Not in the mirror-mirror sense, I mean racial equity for tourists. Foreigners pay Rs 750, and, last time, I thought Indian residents paid Rs 520, which makes the mark-up for pasty-faces a reasonable fifty percent. In fact, Indians pay Rs 20, you can do the maths yourself. Don’t be indignant, though – they have to pay two rupees, to use the toilets, by the exit, and we get in for free. I don’t find this out, until we’re leaving, or I’d have gone twice, to get my money’s worth.

Shah Jehan also built the Red Fort, at Agra, so we give that the once-over, before hitting the Jaipur trail. The Fort has twin towers, where the royal princesses slept. The first, for Jahanara, is of white marble. Its partner looks identical, but is made of red sandstone, painted to match. This was the bedroom of Gauhara, whom Shah Jehan was never able to forgive, because his beloved Mumtaz died giving birth to her. Explain that one, to a four-year-old...

On the way to Jaipur, we linger longer at Fatehpur Sikri, to complete a hat-trick of World Heritage sites in one day. It’s a whole city, built in the late sixteenth century, to be capital of Uttar Pradesh, but abandoned after only a decade, for lack of water. Even though I’m still not speaking to Akbar the Great, after yesterday’s revelations, there’s no denying its loveliness. I especially like the open-sided five-tiered palace, which looks like a Buddhist temple. This, the guide informs us, is where Akbar would retire to take the evening air and, “have joy with his wives.” Small wonder it needed to be five-storied, then.

Next stop, the Pink City.

On The Road Again

2008-11-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Before we leave the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Delhi, I raid the free shop in the bathroom, and my conscience keeps its own counsel. It’s amazing how rapacious you can be, in someone else’s name. As I scoop all the little bottles, for my Akanksha cuties, into my free Taj Mahal Palace bag - how thoughtful of them to provide a bag, too! - I notice a tempting invitation from the hotel spa, hooked on the back of the door. “Try our exclusive massages at our wellness centre, by our professional masseurs, as they take you to a world of private bliss.” I don’t think they have “wellness centres” in the slums of Mankhurd, back in Mumbai, or if they do, they’re very discreet about it. “Relax, Relive, Rejuvenate,” oozes the brochure. The advice on the wall at Akanksha’s mission control is similarly alliterative, I recall, if slightly less hedonistic: “Rigour, Relevance, Relationships, Reflection.” Back in the hymn to hygiene, which is the tiled bathroom attached to Room 256, at the TMP, I tally the cost of gratification. A “Classic Swedish” will set you back Rs 2000, or, if you’ve had a bad day, and need more pampering, you can restore the balance with a “Balinese Massage” (don’t ask!) for a mere Rs 3,500. The star prize, however, is the Special Spa Package imaginatively called “Indulgence” which lasts a hundred and twenty minutes. It’d need to, for Rs 4,500. It’s difficult to square that, with what’s lapping up the marble steps, just outside. Two hours of “Indulgence” costs nearly as much as Rani-didi earns in a month, working six full days a week, at the Akanksha centre, and she keeps herself and four children on it. I look into my TMP bag, bristling with freebies, and tip in all the bedside pads and pencils, and the sewing-kit, too.

To make up for the shambles of yesterday’s sight-seeing, we fast-forward, this morning, through the edited highlights of Delhi’s World Heritage Sites. The Qutb Minar’s still standing, though Dinesh laments that the public’s no longer free to scamper up its unbanistered spiral staircase, inside. In 1981, a child slipped and knocked down all his classmates, climbing up behind him, like so many skittles. Eighty-five children suffocated, and the tower was shut. The warmth goes out of the sun, for a while.

The adjacent Muslim mosque is built resourcefully from bits of ransacked Hindu and Jain temples, as you can see from the carved pillars. Muslim architecture usually scorns animate subjects, preferring geometrical or floral decoration, but here, human figures and animals are sculpted into the stone. Before they incorporated these borrowings into their Mosque, though, the Muslim builders thoughtfully chipped off the faces of the Hindu gods. Quelle finesse.

Dinesh abandons us to the rest of our lives, at this point, so we say a golden goodbye to him, and head off for Agra with our tour driver, Mano. (I know, so near, yet so far...) The road’s a string of grit and hardcore, welded together with the odd stretch of tarmac. No-one’s fussy about which carriageway to use, which makes for a bit of extra-curricular cardio-vascular exercise in the passenger seat. It’s a long drive, it’s a good job that camel-carts are so charming. We while away the miles playing “Spot the Over-Loaded Tuk-tuk,”- an oriental variant on standard in-car Eddie Stobart hunting - as the road unravels before us.

Mano reckons we’re not going to reach Agra by sunset, when the Red Fort will be more in the way of being the Black Fort, so we console ourselves, en route, with Akbar’s Tomb, instead, where we mop up a bit of culture while the sun’s still shining. I’m very fond of Akbar. He was a mighty Moghul king, famous for contriving harmony out of strife, binding Muslim and Hindu into co-existence if not unanimity. I know this, not from the Tomb Tour Guide, but from Bollywood, having munched Bombay Mix and swigged Kingfisher, through three hours of the film epic “Jodhaa Akbar.” (Very nice frocks, but a mite over-long, and more gory than need be, in places – grand finale with elephants, though, so ultimately redeemed...) I imbibe the romantic fantasy wholesale, as I do the beer, and am thus Stunned and Dismayed to learn that Akbar had two other wives, one Muslim, and one Christian. Is this not taking ecumenicalism to the point of attenuation? Jodhaa the Hindu was his documented favourite, because she produced his first son, but this doesn’t cheer me up much. Bollywood also failed to make even the most passing of references to Akbar’s three hundred and fifty concubines. Absent-minded, to say the least. It’s too late, though: I’ve gone off Akbar big time, I don’t care if he was a peace-maker. He’d hardly have the energy to make war, after all....

We star in Other People’s Holiday Albums, on our way out, holding grizzling babies, embracing some random Grandma/daughter/uncle and saying “Cheese!” (I always wittily say, “Paneer!” but no-one ever, ever laughs.) Robin and Owen are much in demand, and have to bracket giggling brown beauties, one by one, while trying to look casual, relaxed, happy, and white. Why would you want a photo with a complete stranger, whom you’ve never met before and never will again, whose name you don’t even know, and whose face will clutter your holiday snaps and puzzle your friends forever? We wait for strangers to get OUT of the frame, before we click, where I come from. I am at a loss. I could live here for another thousand years, and still not understand.

If I could say one word to you about the Taj Hotel at Agra, it might be “don’t!” The turbaned fortune-teller, in the lobby, and the sitar-player, in the bar, lend a certain ambience, but the food’s lamentable. The menu’s more fun than the meal, though, every line’s a gem. I am tempted to slip one into my gooodie-bag, for future delight. Maybe we should have opted for the champagne dinner, instead of fish and chips? “Sparkle your love with cheerful personal evening discovering each other through the flight of culinary tastes.” - A tall order, for a prawn cocktail, by any standards. - “Treasure this evening as memorable moments of your life and make your better half realise how much you love and care for.” Care for what? It doesn’t say. If the sentence had stopped after “realise,” I reckon it would be worth Rs 5000 (plus taxes) for Mr Roland’s and my cheerful personal evening.

The first thing I check out, upstairs in our new room, is the free shop. Just as I suspected, lean pickings. Good thing I picked up the shoe-shine kit and the slippers, in Delhi, then. It'll be like Diwali all over again, for Rani-didi, when I get back.

PS: Delhi Revisited

2008-11-10T06:13:00.001-08:00

Dinesh is Our Man in Delhi. His eyes aren’t quite interested in the same thing, behind his pebble-glasses, and he comes up to about Mr Roland’s third rib. Within a heartbeat of his whipping into the front seat of our Tourist Innova, we learn that he has two sons and a daughter, 18, 16 and 11, that he used to be a jeweller, in Bandra, Mumbai, that he speaks Japanese, and that he’s lived in Delhi for twelve years. We’re well out of the diplomatic area, with its spacious embassies and copiously-sprinkled lawns, and into the Mumbai-familiar scurry and scramble of Old Delhi, when Dinesh sees fit to mention his wife, before segueing smoothly back to his tourist patter. It seems the Presidential Palace of Delhi was home to the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, who employed more than four hundred gardeners, to service its grounds, and fifty soldiers, as human scarecrows....

At the Jama Mashid Mosque, we feed single file through the bomb-detecting door-frame, and up the wall of stepped slabs beyond. The threat of terrorism's never far from anyone's mind, here, so it's not surprising, that they're so hot on national security. What is surprising, though, is that the bomb-dectecting door-frame's not wired up to anything other than fresh air. Indian security's so... Indian.

We’re just kicking off our shoes, breathless, before entering the central courtyard, when we’re shooed away by sentries – it’s four o’clock, and the muezzin’s revving up for the evening call to prayer. As we’re littering the doorway, with our mouths hanging open like bumpkins fresh in from the west, a posse of youths clatters up the stone stairs, three at a time. They flick their shoes to the chappal-wallah without breaking their stride, pulling their lacy skull-caps straight: they’re late.

Dinesh, apologetic, offers to bring us back in half an hour, when prayers are said, and the faithful no longer need protecting from the taint of prying observers, but I point to the schedule of house rules, by the entrance archway. “Number Eight: Women are not permitted to enter after the evening prayer.” I am the only female fly in this particular ointment, so I consider offering to wait outside, while they go in and fulfil themselves touristically, but I think better of it, before my kindness gets past my teeth. So, we peek in at the gateway, and that’s as much mosque as we see today.

At the foot of the steps, a whole Muslim community springs up on every side. If you don’t spot the crocheted cap stalls, the butchers are a dead giveaway, their counters curtained with grim carcasses, and laid with strings of dark meat. I turn away quickly, but not quickly enough, I’ve already seen the basket of goat-heads on the floor. Dinesh says, “Very danger area,” and flips the central lock. (Does that remind you of anyone you know? Anyone from Lucknow, for example?) At night, here, our man from Delhi says, only Muslims walk abroad.

We crawl through the maze of packed streets, happy to drink in local colour now we’re locked in - small shops, wooden stalls, or even bits of rag, spread on the bare pavement, then arranged with fragrant piles of garlic or heaps of toasted nuts for sale. There’s a whole unglamorous row specializing in car parts. “We keep the car moving,” says Dinesh, sagely, “We stay still, ten minutes, all car gone.” Just like Liverpool, I think... “Then, we come here, buy car back again, one piece this shop, one piece next shop...”

We drive to the Gandhi Memorial, and our afternoon of untourism is complete. It’s closed. The guard slouches on his plastic chair, his rifle leaning cosily against his khaki knees, but he wakes up for a consultation with Dinesh. Thus we learn that tomorrow’s the anniversary of the assassination of Indira Gandhi – 31 October – so the park’s secured twenty-four hours in advance: you can’t get in to mooch round the mausoleum, in case you’ve got a bomb stuffed down your salwar. Fair enough. “Is just square of black marble,” Dinesh says dismissively, as we do another U-turn, “... and eternal flame.” I wonder, why we were going to see it in the first place, since it’s such a non-starter, but I don’t say...

Plan C’s Birla’s Temple, and – desperate for some sights to see – we agree before Dinesh reaches the question-mark. We screech away from the lights, as soon as they turn green: dust and exhaust-fumes shroud the motley crew of somersaulting beggars, lady-boys, and coconut vendors, plying their various trades. An occupational hazard, if you live at the cross-roads.

Happily for us – and even more happily for Dinesh - Birla’s Temple’s a winner. Mr Birla’s big in construction, second only to Mr Tata, here in India, so the temple’s by him, rather than to him. It’s also known as the Lakshmi Ganesha Temple, but you could guess that from the statuary at the gate. Mr Birla has a statue of his own, but it’s in the back garden, to eliminate any possible misunderstanding.

Indian enterprise is ever alert to a retail opportunity. Before being overwhelmed by spirituality at this place of worship, they slip in a tourist shop by the front entrance. It doesn’t say “Tourist Shop,” obviously, it says, “Foreigners this way!” and by the time you realise it’s actually a shop, they’ve got your shoes. And, in our case, your mobile phones and your camera, too... There are elephants-in-elephants on sale, and pashminas, and sandalwood Buddhas, but there’s no obligation to buy. Not unless you want your phone back, that is. The temple’s dedicated to Ganesh, the God of Business, and to Lakshmi, the Goddess of Money, so how could there not be a shop on the way in?

Dinesh kisses the steps, and makes for Ganesh’s shrine, for a private word. With the ring-finger on his right hand, he presses a red kum-kum bindi, first on his own forehead, then on each of ours. His wife must know where he’s been, I say, when he gets home, of an evening.

The bell above the central arch, on the way into the main temple, is suspended out of reach, so you have to jump, to hit the clapper and make it ring. A French lady asks Owen to pick up her friend, to help him sound the bell, so he does. The Frenchman’s fairly substantial, and I’m just wondering why he needs a lift, when I notice, he’s blind.

On the way out, I buy a lacquered elephant, to redeem our shoes. In my own defence, it’s very small and blue, and therefore inevitable. Or, that’s what I tell Mr Roland.

We’re staying at the Taj Palace Hotel, in Delhi. So are the Australian and Indian cricket teams. We draw up at the grand entrance, and are swept out of the car and into the hotel, by Maharajah doormen in cockaded turbans and curly moustaches. The marble steps are flooded with reporters and random passers-by, brandishing cameras and mobiles, but I don’t twitch my kurta straight, or even pat my mad hair. Dinesh jostles importantly past the liveried flunkies. “So, tomorrow,” he says, avoiding the chief doorman’s eye, “we meet here in the foyer, nine-thirty, right?” I’m almost sure that’s right, because it’s what we agreed in the car, less than fifteen seconds ago. Dinesh needs a passport beyond the plate-glass doors, though, and we’re it. He abandons us instantly, and scuttles off to harass cricketing legends, and to be swatted out of the way by their minders. I’m thinking, it’d be nice to take some photos, too, for our cricketing boy, back in Mumbai, but there’s a small snag. I wouldn’t recognise Sachin Tendulkar if he served me my breakfast egg, unless he was labelled. Mr Roland contrives to catch Australia between floors, though, without getting punched, so our happy conjunction is not lost to posterity, after all.

School's Out

2008-10-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

On the way to school, I point to a man, carrying a sleeping child across each shoulder. “Look, Monu, could be you, this time next year. You, with Pooja and Shukti.” Monu laughs. These are his favourite girl’s names. “But I bet you have a boy, first!” He slaps the wheel and shakes his head, “Boy very danger!”

“Danger” is the most useful not-adjective I have ever come across. In Monu World, it describes urban decay, local traffic - and local traffic police, for that matter - the Aarey Milk Colony after 9 p.m., muslims, lemon juice from the street vendor, tuk-tuk drivers, Dharavi and all its million residents, alcohol, beggars, pollution in general, Mumbai railways, Kashmir, and now boys. That’s a lot of work, for one little word. I’d be surprised if it didn’t want to go to bed early, tonight.

Boys are not danger, in my book, but Monu’s still going tsk! tsk! and shaking his head, so I tell him my wysiwyg theory, about the nature of your basic boy. “A thought comes into a boy’s head,” I say, miming Ashish doing his takeaways, putting a number in his head, “and it comes straight out of his mouth. No problems. Direct.” Monu nods, being a bit of a wysiswg boy himself. “A thought comes into a girl’s head, and stays. Think-think-think, then yak-yak-yak.” I make my hands bicker with each other, on the back seat. The driver of the tuk-tuk, pulled up next to us at the lights, is mesmerised, and forgets to drive off, when the lights change. “Girls, all time thinking,” Monu says. He’s wising up, the boy from Lucknow. “Boys have a problem,” I say, warming to my theory, “Boy Number One hits Boy Number Two on the nose, problem sorted. Carry on with the cricket.” It’s getting like Punch and Judy, in the back, but without the hand-puppets. Naked Punch and Judy, then. “Girls have a problem, no punch, just yak-yak-yak, all day, and the next day, and the next day.” I mime infinity. I love charades. “Girls mouth-fight,” Monu nods, “very danger.” Too right.

Today, at Akanksha, we break up for Diwali, so everyone’s demob-happy. Bhavika-didi writes some sentences on the board, for copying into our English books.

At Diwali we pray to God.
We wear new clothes.
We eat sweets.
We light diyas in our homes, and burst crackers in the street.
We wish everybody a Happy Diwali.

When we get to the “new clothes” bit, Ashish lifts up his blue Ananksha t-shirt, to show me the yellow one, underneath. Two bags of Diwali goodies, one from Bhavika-didi and one from me, are glowing, gently radioactive, at the front, drawing all eyes. How can they concentrate on seven minus nine won’t go, borrow ten? I’m so excited, I can hardly do it, myself, and I stopped using my fingers and toes as an abacus, years ago. The air’s simmering, but we still have to do ascending and descending order, and fractions. Khaja solves his excess of energy, by tickling my feet, every time Bhavika’s eagle gaze is elsewhere. I might have to go and stand at the back, in a minute, for laughing. “Go, take your punishment!"

Instead of punishing me, though, Bhavika presents me with a gift – a photo-frame, and a little embroidered bag for my mobile phone – together with thank-you cards made by the children, laminated for posterity. I promise to keep them forever.

We fold our legs, join our hands and close our eyes early, today, because we have one last Diwali treat, a Medical Check-Up - not as laugh-out-loud jolly, as a picnic or a theatre trip, for example, but more useful. The medical’s sponsored by Larsen and Toubro - the largest engineering and construction business in India – proving that a conglomerate can have a face, after all. Good for them.

We crocodile through the tenement blocks, waving like royalty. The doctor’s in another Akanksha classroom, in an adjacent street. We tiptoe over rotting rubbish and foetid grey puddles; I note that Aanchal’s barefoot, but she’s not bothered, so what right have I to be fastidious? We pass the crowd, gathered round the policeman, beating a man with a stick, and pick our way up the littered stairs, to register and queue. There’s a class before us, and the one after us is already at the door. It’s a long wait, and it’s hot.

At last it’s Ashish’s turn. The doctor holds his hands, looking into his eyes, as if no-one else in the world existed, gently asking him questions, sounding his chest, checking his glands. Ashish is a little soldier, I’m bursting with pride. Next up’s Khaja the irrepressible; I’ve never seen him so quiet. I whisper to Bhavika, that we could do with the doctor in all our lessons, maybe...

The children are given a paper, which serves as a prescription, for the mobile medical van, waiting on the street, downstairs. Ashish gets a bottle of medicine for worms, and stuffs it precariously into the top of the plastic bag he uses, to carry his books. He’s long since chewed off the handles, so has to cradle it in his arms.

“My home, didi, come!” He’s desperate to show me where he lives, and I spare a fleeting thought for his poor mother, unsuspecting of her son’s lavish invitation, nursing the pot of dal at base-camp. Bhavika says it’s ok, though, so we go.

We climb three flights of stairs, stepping over broken furniture, paintpots, abandoned shoes and assorted debris. The fragrance is indescribable. Ashish disappears in front of us, on his little dancing feet, then pops his head back out, to make sure we’re following. He’s the Distant Early Warning System, so his Mum and his sister, Savita, are on the landing to meet us. They’re both small and beautiful, unsurprisingly. Then, here we are.

Inside, all the walls are bubblegum pink, and everything’s picture-perfect. To the right of the door, a sofa, where Ashish slings his tatty school-bag, and on the left, above head-height, a small temple with a Ganesh, all pooja’d up for Diwali. Through a doorway, I see a little kitchen, but can’t investigate, because Ashish whisks me behind a curtain, to show me his bedroom, which is also pink. He points at a tiny table, and a mirror, “Didi, see, didi!” - all the mod cons, in fact. “For makeup,” Savita says. Not Ashish, surely? Nor Savita, I tell her, she’s already sundar.

Now I’ve met his Mum, I feel guilty about wanting to take Ashish home with me. I’ll just have to be firm, that’s all.

In the car, on the way back to Powai, I show Monu the children’s cards.

“Didi helped me in English. – Mehul”

“Didi, thank you for helping in Maths. - Kajal Brijesh Gautam.” Sunday-best name, too, Kajal. Good job I won’t be here, when you’re tackling differentiation and integration. My mathematical savoir faire stops with goes-intos.

“She hep me in learning. - Sachin” I think we should all hep each other, if we can, don’t you?

"Thank you to help us in all the things. – Naina” I’m just beginning to feel like Mother Theresa, when I see Sadabh’s offering.

“Thank you for the choclate, didi.” I applaud his spelling, and his honesty. See, boys are not danger, after all.

Riotous Times

2008-10-22T09:36:00.001-07:00

I nearly rang you yesterday, to tell you that we were ok, despite all the riots in Mumbai, but then it occurred to me that you wouldn’t know who Raj Thackeray was anyway, if he jumped up on the table in front of you and stuffed a paratha down your patiyala. RT’s got very big for his Size Tens, this side of the Arabian Sea, though. Also, it was 4 a.m. where you are, when you’d be still hopefully pushing out the zeds, so couldn’t possibly have started worrying about us yet. Now you’re awake, you’ll be glad to know - we’re ok.

Thackeray – the press chummily call him “Raj,” as if he weren’t a criminal – has been arrested again, charged with provoking hatred among communities and endangering public safety, so his MNS cronies are up in arms. The basic posit of Raj’s party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, is that jobs in Maharashtra belong to people born here, not interlopers from the North. A lot of tuk-tuk drivers are Bihari, it turns out, and our very own dear Monu’s from Uttar Pradesh. Raj hasn’t got global monopoly on territorialism gone mad, we’ve heard it all before, but India’s political palate is less jaded than ours in the blasé west. Things are getting so heated and so sticky, we’ll be making treacle toffee before long, just in time for Bonfire Night. It’s no longer just words and insults flying about, either, it’s sticks and stones. Real sticks, and real stones. Tuk-tuks overturned and set alight, tyres burned in the road, generally Much Unpleasantness, out and about. The word to the wise is to stay indoors. So we do.

Thus it is that I do the first politically active thing, of my entire life. I’m feeling quite cutting-edge and urbane, except that it’s not really an act, and I’m not really the agent. I consider trail-blazing women, standing up and being counted, like Joan of Arc or Emily Pankhurst, and the glamour fizzles out of my staying at home instead of going to school. I had to change my plan because of a political situation, then. Except, I didn’t change it at all, Monu changed it for me.

This is the pattern of all my days. Monu says, “Ma’am, tomorrow, what plan?” So I tell him what I want to do, the next day, and he unfocusses his eyes, and wags his finger to and fro, tick-tock, while he has a think. Then he tells me what I am, in fact, going to do, which quite often has a passing resemblance to my original plan. It works very well. Don’t be thinking I’m being bullied, here, it’s merely submission to the Voice of Reason. Well, Reason and Geography. I’m inclined to concoct unlikely schedules – for example, Mankhurd school in the morning, Good Earth for lunch, then a quick whisk round In Orbit in the afternoon. This is the Mumbai equivalent of going to Nottingham for a couple hours, then to Plymouth for a bowl of soup, then popping back to Brent Cross for a browse. You can see why I leave it to Jeeves.

We’re nearly confined to barracks, today, too, because Raj spends the night in custody, and the streets are still running with molten tyres, when we get up. But there are eighty thousand police out there, enforcing Law and Order, so we risk it, and arrive scatheless, at office and school, respectively.

This morning, we limp out of Powai, on the wrong side of the road. They’re digging up all the nice tarmac again, mostly, I think, because it’s not been interfered with, for at least six weeks. Where road surfaces are concerned, Mumbai District Councillors are like schoolboys, in a field of virgin snow. They don’t stop us using the road, while they’re working on it, obviously, so we bob and weave, in and out of the pneumatic drills, and the steam-rollers with OM painted on their noses, and it takes an extra three-quarters of an hour, to get anywhere. We’re jubilant to notice that they’ve nearly finished the new flyover, so we have our first go on that, this week. Only on the way home, though, the outgoing carriageway’s not ready for business, yet.

India should have In Medias Res running through its core, like Blackpool rock. There’s never an end or a beginning, everything’s permanently simultaneous or over-lapping. I go to the swimming-pool, this afternoon, and it’s only at the end of my third length, that it percolates through my unlovely rubber hat to my thick skull, that there are swimming lessons in progress. Then I notice twenty-five Mums in saris, perched on plastic chairs, at the edge of the water, encouraging their chubby little snugglebums with the waterwings and floats, to listen to the teacher. I’m parked at the deep end, trying to exude nonchalance, and failing, watching the sun dip behind the building-site next door. I’m thinking they’ll have to get out in a minute, because there’s only so much chlorine a six-year-old can swallow in any one afternoon, so I’ll sit it out. The temperature’s in the mid-thirties, but I’m still beginning to get goosebumps on my corrugated goosebumps, so I sling my goggles back on, and swim across to ask swimming-didi, how much longer they might be. “Three hours,” she says. THREE HOURS. Why don't they close the pool to the public? “Club members can still come and swim,” Aqua-didi adds, graciously. With a dripping hand, I indicate all the small brown people, splashing and floundering their way to mastering the crawl, and shrug. You don’t need words, sometimes. “Come back at six,” she smiles.

India’s very good at interleaving its jobs. When I have the washing-machine on at the same time as the dish-washer, at home, I think interleaving’s a key skill. I’m beginning to think otherwise.

This evening, friend Raj has been released on bail. I thought you’d like to know. Just so’s you don’t worry.

Our Day Out

2008-10-20T10:10:00.001-07:00

I absolutely can’t decide. I’m trying to weigh all the options, but there’s not a chapatti to choose between them. I could do what Mr Roland does, when I’m in a shopping-fix, ie shall I have the blue or the turquoise? Have both, he always says. This passes for generosity, in our salad days, but now I see he just wants to get out of the shop, asap. As a decision-making process, though, the system has its merits, so, OK, I’ll have them all. Nineteen for Heathrow, please. Does Jet Airways do discounts for block-booking? Window-side if possible: these scallywags have barely been outside Mankhurd before, they’ll be wanting to see everything. Get ready to kill the fatted lentil, Akanksha’s coming to England.

Today’s our day out. We bring the Diwali party forward to this afternoon, instead of Thursday, because Kavita’s going to her home village for the holidays, and Bhavika-didi doesn’t want her to miss out. Monu gives up his day’s cricket with the lads, to chauffeur the Monu-Bus. By the time we find out Kavita’s not coming, after all, the picnic’s already packed. What’s Hindi for, c’est la vie?

Monu’s polished the car show-room clean, which is a bit like tidying up before Christmas, in my book. January’s full of pine-needles woven into the carpet, shreds of tinsel behind the radiator, and corks under the sofa; this evening, our car will be up to its axles in crisps and sweet wrappers, paintwork and windows invisible under small smudgy hand-prints. We’re outside school, engine running, at ten to one, and there’s not an Akanksha t-shirt in sight. In England, the kids would have been ready and queuing since ten in the morning, for a one o’clock kick-off, but we’re on India-time.

Our children emerge, one by one, from the tenements they call home, more carefully dressed and coiffed than I have ever seen them, cross-legged on the mats, in the schoolroom upstairs. Their hair’s smarmed down with oil or water, their faces pale with “woman’s powder.” I’m hoping this unnatural state won’t last long: in my experience, children can’t have fun unless they’re making a) a noise and b) a mess.

“New cloth, didi!” says Salim. I agree he’s looking very sundar – my word of the week, beautiful – in his kingfisher-blue trousers, and sparkly shirt. The girls are desperately trying to act normal, when clearly all they can think about is their sequins and frills. They seem very grown up, in floor length skirts, but their matching stoles give them away. Instead of being artfully looped about their necks, they’re pinned at shoulder and waist, so the girls can run around without unravelling. The flawless Miss India poise you see in every shop/office/street, has to start somewhere, I suppose.

Rani-didi arrives, also in her Sunday best. It begins to dawn on me, that it doesn’t quite cut the lime pickle, picking Any Old Thing up off my wardrobe floor, this morning, flicking the dust away, and throwing it on – I was thinking, cartwheeling about the park and sitting on the grass, whereas everyone else was clearly thinking, Night at the Opera. Must get more sequins out, next time...

The children are as high as the kites, which polka-dot the skylines and phone-lines of Mumbai, these days. Just to tip them over into hysteria, I produce my camera. “I photo, didi!” It takes forever, because they clamour to see each picture as soon as it’s taken. We’re just starting to hyperventilate with joy, when Bhavika-didi decides we’re quorate, so we can take to the carriages. It’s a good thing Bhavika ordains uniform t-shirts, on top of all the glitz, because I’d surely pack in a few bystanders, otherwise.

Monu-bhaiya marshalls the milling troops, and stacks the car, filing seven small bottoms into the back seat, then seven more on the row in the middle. We have seatbelts for six – a three and a three - but we carry fourteen. Not including Ashish, who’s on my knee in front. Fifteen, then. (Don’t say what you’re thinking, I think it too, but I bet you’d do the same.) Monu’s curiously unencumbered. He’s got his impassive Whose Idea Was This? face on, so I give him a chocolate éclair. He says two words of Hindi to his diminutive passengers, over his shoulder. I’m assuming it’s “SIT DOWN!” – not that I’m getting secretly fluent, or anything, it’s just that fourteen little faces instantly disappear, like bubbles popping, so it’s not hard to work out. Inevitably, after three seconds, it’s Khaja who pops back up first, laughing, then the rest, one by one. It’s good, though, that Monu shows them who’s boss, right from the start. “You beat them with stick?” he asks, hopefully.

Then, with much waving to Mums and Dads and Big Sisters, we’re off, like a royal cavalcade, merely thirty-five minutes late, so, quite good, by Indian standards. We’re in with a chance of seeing most of the film, except we get slightly lost, and prove instead that it’s better to journey, than to arrive.

At Imax Dome Theatre, finally, we still have time for a quick photo-shoot, before crocodiling into the auditorium. We watch Island of Sharks, a wrap-around film about assorted aquatic life on a coral reef. The commentary’s in English, and, since the children’s marine vocabulary only extends to “sea” and “fish,” I can only assume much of it goes over their heads. Literally. Their enjoyment is undented, however. Happily, there are no more than three members of the ordinary public in the audience with us, as our children take it in turns to shout “WOW!” and “Didi, I scared!” every time a hammerhead shark puts his nose up to touch ours.

A hermit crab shuffles up to a new shell, checks out the vacancy, and does a nifty shift. “Crab eating, didi?” asks Swapnil. No, I say, he’s moving house. Old house, new house. Swapnil thinks for a minute, then says, “Crab room-change!” Which makes complete sense, if everyone you know lives, with all their family, in one room.

In real time, the starfish appear to be doing nothing, just drifting with the ebb and flow of the water. It’s a different story, on fast-forward: they’re tumbling and sliding over and under and around each other, co-ordinated and chaotic, at the same time - like Mumbai traffic, but with more grace. Khaja shakes my arm, “Didi, starfish dancing!” I am enchanted, and not just by the fishy cha-cha.

Back in the main entrance hall, Bhavika - out for her money’s worth from the adventure - spies an escalator. We have to negotiate with the escalator man, who’s fearful that we might nip off for a sly pre-view of Quantum of Solace, ticketless, while we’re upstairs, but with eighteen children, four didis and a bhaiya, we’re not going anywhere unseen or unheard. So, we joy-ride the escalator, and come clattering back downstairs again, where the lady in Crossword says we can show the children round her shop. Looking’s free, isn’t it? Bhavika makes each child put both hands on the shoulders of the child in front, so we can conga round the aisles, without touching any books. She makes them read aloud the section headings, “Children’s Books,” “Food and Drink,” “Self Improvement.” I don’t know if anyone else is felled by the irony.

Even having a drink in a plastic cup, from the water-cooler, is an adventure, if you look at it the right light. Crocodiling back to the cars, we break rank only to hold hands.

On the way to Bhakti Park, for our picnic, Swapnil and Sadabh have a knee each, in the front seat, fizzing with excitement. They’ll eat their crisps by osmosis, if they’re not allowed to open the packets, soon. We process through the park – the crocodile increasingly raggedy – until we reach a covered bandstand, where they kick off their chappals, then hurtle back to the slides and roundabouts. They don’t stop squealing and rocketing about, until Bhavika says the magic word, “Snacks!”

Then there’s quiet, for at least forty-five seconds. You can’t say much, with your mouth full of crisps and mango juice.

We wipe the sweat from our brows, and reform marching order to shout Hip-hip-hooray! before winding our way out of the park, singing “Old MacDonald had a Farm.” We pile back into the car, only slightly sticky, and sing along to the radio all the way home. Well, I think they’re singing along, in seven different keys, with child-distorted lyrics. “Singer kin, singer kin, singer kin!” they croon. I look at Monu, since Singh definitely is King, in our car, and he’s laughing, despite what’s happening to his upholstery. On my knee, Nikita puts my lipstick on, and Rahul tries on my sunglasses.

Nineteen for Heathrow, then.

Water, Water, Everywhere......

2008-10-17T07:07:00.001-07:00

Bhavika takes me somewhere for lunch, where I would not boldly go alone: the Cafe Madras, in South Mumbai. At ground level, it’s heaving, so we climb the narrow stairs to the mezzanine layer, ducking under the padded beams. It’s like tiptoeing into someone’s loft. I want to cast about, looking for boxes of Christmas decorations, but it’s 35 degrees out there, that’s no place for jolly robins and fat Santas. We slide along our plastic seats, filing ourselves out of harm’s way, industrial fans whistling round our ears.

Bhavika calls the waiter Bhaiya (older brother), but I don’t think they’re related, and anyway he looks about twelve. Ordering’s so slick, when you know what to ask for. We’re slick-with-knobs-on, in fact, because we don’t even use the menu. Some people love menus, like food pornography. Pas moi. I’ll have what you’re having, unless it’s a) duck or b) artichokes. Bhavika chooses. We have Mysore Sada Dosa, which comes folded onto stainless steel trays, with a crop of satellite dishes, brimming with spicy or coconut sauce. I sit on my left hand, so’s not to show Bhavika up in public, but no-one’s looking, which is as well, since my plate’s carnage within two bites. It’s delicious, substantial, but insubstantial. Then we have Onion Rawa Sada Dosa, which is even deliciouser – lacily crisp, more holes than pancake. Onion, green chillies and coriander seeds, glued together with batter: what could be nicer? We wash it down with tap water, which I don’t remember not to drink, until my stainless steel cup’s empty. I’ll let you know, later.

“You like juice?” Bhavika asks, back on the street again. I’m so used to her in the classroom at Mankhurd, I keep expecting her to say, “Yes or no?” I do like juice, I say, but Monu won’t let me buy any from the street stalls. (“Dirty waters, no washes glass.” The Juice Gestapo.) Bhavika’s juice-stall of choice is a bit more credible than the usual orange crate with a lemon-squeezer, though. I stop understanding the menu, once it gets beyond pure single fruit, and put myself at Bhavika’s mercy - I just hope she’s not a fan of Lassi, that’s all. My good manners reach as far as, but do not include, fermented milk. Happily for us all, she orders a Zoom and a Boom. See, I said you have to know what you’re talking about. The juice-wallah kindly splits both, so we use up four glasses, for the sale of only two juices. I feel like offering to wash up for him. The Boom’s pale green and foaming, made with sweet lime, lemon and khus, which I’ve never heard of, as fragrant as guava. (Vetiver, I later discover, if you care, a relative of lemongrass. Educational as well as scrummy.) We’ve barely wiped off our froth moustaches, when Juice-Boy thrusts the Zooms into our hands. Pink and bubbly, sweet lime and lemon again, but with rose, this time. I thought Tropicana Pure Premium Sanguinello was cutting edge, juice-wise. I have much to learn. Sated, we head for the car.

Last night, at about nine in the evening, a little man arrives on our doorstep, to deliver our gym membership cards. You know, the ones which come included in the apartment lease, THOSE ones. How long is it since our arrival, I hear you wonder. Nine months, exactly. I could make – and have made – a whole new human being, in that time, yet they struggle to laminate two gym cards.... Indian efficiency at its shiniest, I feel. Today, I go for a swim, to celebrate.

It’s a decent twenty-five metre pool, a proper rectangle, I’m glad to see, not amoeba-shaped, like a poncey spa-pool. It’s open-air, as is the building site next door, unsurprisingly, but by the time the chlorine’s clouded up my contact lenses, what I can’t see, doesn’t bother me. A swimming-cap’s compulsory. Which sadist invented these? Getting it to go on and stay on, is more of a work-out, than flick-flacking up and down the pool for an hour. I’m supposing, rather defensively, that Indian heads are smaller than English ones, although curly hair does use up more room, I would have thought. I pop on my new goggles to complete a truly stunning ensemble. Small wonder that I waste no time at all, getting into the water. There’s only so much you can ask, of Lycra. Put your hands up, if you think you’re invisible, once you’re up to your neck in swimming-pool?... So do I.

At first, there’s only me and a pigeon, unless you count the assortment of pool attendants on hand. Whether they’re there to life-save, garden, or spectate, laughing, is anyone’s guess. I’m on my twenty-ninth lap, when it occurs to me that I’m in water. There seems little point, brushing my teeth in bottled water, and refusing ice in any drinks, and not eating salad, then going swimming. I’m assuming, here, that I’m not doing my best breast-stroke in 47,000 gallons of Bisleri but it ain’t necessarily so, as Porgi once said to Bess. I conclude, newly karmic, that it’s a done deal by this point, so there’s no point getting out now.

I’m on my thirty-sixth lap, heading for forty, when half the jeunesse dorée of Powai emerges on the balcony of the badminton hall, at the deep end. Except they’re not golden, they’re brown, obviously. Jeunesse bronzée, then. They’re still there, laughing and chatting, when I reach my target, so I have to stay in the pool, hiding, to do some more. I’m on forty-six, when they saunter off, twirling their bats, but there’s not only Mr Roland with OCD, in our house, so I notch up a half-century, before crawling out, hoping my legs don’t buckle under me, frightening the pigeon.

I linger longer in the shower, wallowing in the wateriness of it, compared with the spasmodic fizzing spout we still have at home. Then I hop about in the toilet, trying to get dressed without breaking one or both elbows. There’s something about communal changing-rooms that I can’t take to. The communal part, I guess. It takes forever, to thread my damp legs into my churidar, and I decide to wear something different, next time, something less taxing. Or, to bring the talc. Or alternatively, to dry my legs properly. I put on my sunglasses, to hide the attractive panda-weals left by my new blue goggles, and slope off home, forgetting to sign out. They’ll be looking for me, come ten o’clock tonight, when they want to close up and go home.

So, today, I have drunk tap water in a cafe, random juice from an anonymous street stall, and a swig of swimming-pool, by way of dessert. I can hardly wait for tomorrow.

Because You're Worth It

2008-10-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

When I slide into my seat today, on the floor next to Aanchal and Kunda, we’re doing subtraction. (I called them take-aways until I was in senior school, but there’s no such namby-pambying here. When we do fractions, in Mankhurd, we do numerators over denominators, no less. The kids aren’t the only ones on the floor to learn something that day...) So, forty-one minus seventeen, then.

“Where do we start, with the ones, or with the tens?” Bhavika asks. The general consensus of opinion on the mats, is that we start with the ones. “Which is greater, one or seven? Seven, right... So can we take seven from one?” Rahul, who has been watching an ant on the floor, not the writing on the wall, accidentally says, “Yes!” and Bhavika pounces.

“Yes, Rahul? We can take seven from one?” Rahul casts about him for moral support, or just a clue as to which way to jump.

“No!” Swapnil says, helpfully. Bhavika’s eagle eye swivels to Swapnil.

“And you are Rahul, no?” She switches the heat back to Rahul. “One is greater than seven, Rahul, yes or no?” Rahul back-pedals furiously, “No, didi!” – and we’re on track again.

“We cannot take seven from one, so what do we do? We go to the tens place, and we say, “Can we borrow some?” – Ashish, do we borrow one, or do we borrow ten?”

“One!” says Ashish. Bhavika’s voice drops an octave, into tragedy.

“We borrow one?”

“No, ten, didi, ten!” Seven voices from the floor. Take-aways were never this dramatic, in my day. It’s King Lear and Aladdin rolled into one, in Room 112.

“So we put ten here, in the ones place. Now we have ten plus one, what do we have?.... Accha, eleven. And here in the tens place, we take away the four, and we put?... Three!” It’s a triumph.

The next bit’s my favourite, I could watch them do this all day.

“And now we have eleven, and we have to take seven. Put seven in your head, and count to eleven.” The young mathematicians smack themselves roundly on the temple, inserting the seven, then count forward to eleven, on their fingers. Then they count their fingers, to get the difference.

“Four, didi, four!” Bhavika pretends to put four in the tens column, to see who’s awake, but no-one’s napping now. The climax is on the horizon, galloping towards us.

“And one from three is? ... Two! So the whole answer is? .... Twenty-four, right?” I feel a round of applause coming on. Maths have never made me laugh out loud before.

These children are six, seven, eight years old, and they’re doing all the functions – adding, subtracting, carrying one - in a foreign language. I don’t think Ofsted have a category called “Tour de Force” but that’s where Bhavika belongs. I can’t wait to do goes-intos, after Diwali.

Khaja’s first past the post with his finished worksheet, as ever, so while the others are still
wrestling with ascending and descending order, he chooses “Rabbit Gets Lost” for a reading book. I point out Rabbit’s chums, Piglet, Pooh and Tigger. He patiently corrects me, “No Tigger, didi, Tiger!” so I let him have the right of it. In a wanton moment, I explain what “bounce” means, and Khaja leaps off like a frog on a rocket, going “Boing!” and landing on anyone too mathematically distracted to move out of his way. “Quiet reading” has no meaning, here.

Libraries should chuck out their “SILENCE!” signs, and tackle literature with Khaja’s zest. I bet it’d get A A Milne’s vote. Go and have a quick flick through “Rabbit Gets Lost” and count the bounces and boings. It’s a serious workout, for active readers, but by the time the happy ending rolls round, Khaja’s energy’s not even dinted. He’s not unlike Tigger, in fact. I mean, Tiger.

“I have some good news,” Bhavika says. “We have the results of the Akanksha assessments today. In English, our centre got 79%! Is that good, yes or no?” We all clap. "And in Maths, we got 89%! What do we say?"

“Thank-you, didi! Thank-you!” they chorus.

“No, we don't say thank-you! We say, HURRAH!!!” So we all cheer, and shout “hurrah!” and punch the air, like we’ve just won an Olympic Gold, and why not? – I’d like a re-run of results day, in the school hall, in August. There should definitely have been more hurrahs.

Down to earth with a bump, Bhavika has to warn the children about playing alone in the compound. A brother and sister have been murdered, and their kidneys harvested, in Mankhurd. I mention it to Monu, horrified, and he says in Malad, where he lives, three people – two adults, one child – have died the same way. It doesn’t bear belief. “If someone you don’t know offers you a chocolate, what must you say?.... No!”

They know me, however, so I’m allowed to give them gifts. On our Kerala trip, Melanie-Ma’am and I scoop up the rows of little bottles of shampoo and shower-gel, in the free shop - ie the bathrooms of all the smart hotels we stay in. Today, I bring our booty-bag to school, for sharing. I’m not sure Khaja and co, with their petal-soft cheeks, will be needing the shaving-kit any time soon, so I take it out, to give to Monu instead.

If you’ve ever felt a frisson of disappointment, opening your fourth bottle of bubble bath on Christmas Day, you need to come to Mankhurd, with your fists full of soap, to find out how fascinating toiletries can be, with the right mind-frame. We have some energetic mimes, of what talc and toothbrushes might be for, but body lotion requires more than re-enactment, it needs authenticity. I open a bottle, dab some on my wrist, and rub it in. A forest of skinny brown arms appears before me, and soon we’re all silkily fragrant. The boys sniff their arms, and do backward rolls of ecstasy. It’s funny, the point of body lotion passes me by, until today. There should be a re-cycling scheme, for hotel toiletries, it would make more of a difference to the world, than nobly using the same towels, two days in a row.

“Join your hands, fold your legs, close your eyes,” says Bhavika. Time for prayers. They thank God for the world so sweet, and run out, laughing and dancing, into the sunshine of the slums, their hotel freebies clutched in their hands. Who needs the perfumes of Arabia?

A Votre Santé

2008-10-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Don’t tell Pakhi the Pigeon, but we have new feathered visitors – four green parrots, sitting on our window-sill. They only stay long enough for a brief squawkathon and a photo opportunity, and then they’re gone. A propos matters avian, the eggs on our bathroom ledge have hatched out, you’ll be glad to know, despite the hostility of the crèche facilities, here on the thirty-third floor. I know the pigeon population of Mumbai’s hardly what you’d called endangered, but it’s churlish, not to celebrate new life. Hello, boys - I mean, Namaste! The hatchlings are already bigger than their Mum and Dad, but that could be all fluff, for as much as I know.

On the way to school, we pass men painting a zebra-crossing on the road. The road’s still in use, of course, this is India; we have to slalom round them. How can a white line survive, unmolested, I wonder? It comes to me, that road markings are cosmetic here, where a three-lane highway hosts seven seething streams of traffic, so who cares what’s written on the tarmac?

Further along, a man’s drinking water, from a stainless steel cup, chained to a tap. There’s a row of taps, each with its fettered cup, for drinking, with the lads. Drinking’s a new skill, for us, here. Bottle or cup, you pour your drink into your mouth, without your lip touching the vessel – you try it. Can I just say, you can’t do it, and walk at the same time.

Speaking of drinking - when we appear at Star Wines (next door to The Great Punjab, long live their jeera rice...), they flick all their other customers out of the way, like ants off a picnic. We demur, but they have good reason, because we are their Most Cherished Clients, with pockets as long as our drinking arms. We order Kingfisher Beer (“Half and half, chilled and room temperature, yes?” See, it already comes ready to drink, how cool is that?), Sula wine (who’d have thought they could make a decent Cabernet Shiraz, in India?), and a crate of Bisleri (we don’t care if this comes chilled or un-, since it’s just water...). We’re swept into the inner sanctum, to make with the PIN number and signature (never one or the other, here, always both), and then they dispatch an unmuscled minion to carry it all home for us. From Star Wines, you could do two cartwheels, then a hop, skip and a jump, and you’d have your feet on our Welcome mat. (OK, a very high jump...) They still insist on freight. We wander home unburdened, then give the beer-wallah ten rupees and a glass of water, which seem to be enough. It’s going to be tough, getting used to Sainsbury’s, again.

The small persons, in dhotis and brickdust, swept aside to make way for Mr Roland’s credit card, are construction men, straight from work. I can’t catch what they order, but it comes in a tiny bottle, from under the counter, and goes into a tiny brown paper bag. A tiny note changes hands, then they tuck their purchase into a fold of their loincloth, and saunter away. I consult the Lucknow Oracle, and he says it’s GM, the local moonshine, guaranteed to take the enamel off your teeth and turn your liver into a pumice-stone within a week. It costs twelve rupees. If you’re only earning Rs 120 a day, any more would be out of your reach. I’m looking for the moral high ground, here, and finding none.

The next time we stop to stock up on eau potable, out of devilment, and spurred on by the presence of Melanie-Ma’am and David-Sir, I ask for a bottle of GM. Star Wines ceases trading for a moment, while all the guys come to watch the white lady buying bootleg liquor. “Twenty-five rupees,” the boss says. Full of glee, I accept what’s clearly the pasty-face price, and can hardly speak for laughing, when I get back to the car. I whip off the brown paper bag, with a flourish, and Monu’s truly gob-smacked. I’m delighted, so far into our relationship, that I still have the power to surprise him. He doesn’t know whether to confiscate it, or laugh too. He puts his head into his hands, with a rueful smile. And our bottle’s twice the size of the worker’s nightly medicine, so it isn’t a rip-off, after all. We have a thimbleful each, later, and it tastes like greasy cherries in gasolene. Come to think of it, that’s probably the recipe. I would definitely buy it again, to polish my furniture, or give the kitchen floor what-for. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

At school, Bhavika’s planning a Diwali treat. We’re going to the cinema, bring on the popcorn. She thinks it would be good, if the children could go in our car. I say, gormlessly logistical, there are twenty of them. She says, “No, no...Nineteen.... And they are so small and so thin.” Well, that’s alright, then... Monu will have one on each knee, then three rows of tiddlers behind. He’s from Lucknow, he’ll cope. I’ll sit in the boot, with the Monsoon Box. I just hope we don’t see the danger Traffic Police en route. Twenty rupees, at least....

On the way home, we see the Dog Patrol Car. I’m fearful of what this may mean, given the huge population of street dogs, but Monu says it’s a Force for Good. “Catch the dog, check the body.” So, not Officer Dibble territory then. I’m relieved, thinking the Dog Patrol may have had more sinister motives. “Kill the danger dog,” he says. Oh.

Nearer home, the cow with the curly horn’s been busy, of late. The calf’s only a couple of days old, when the monsoon’s last tantrum washes us all into the gutter, one more time for old times’ sake. But either he’s made of sterner stuff, or the rain hit harder in Goregaon, where I was, than in Powai, where he lives. Après le deluge, moi, then.

Intermittent Showers

2008-10-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

Today, the taps gush with fresh air, hissing and fizzing. No water. Mr Roland the Unwashed enquires of the concierge, and is told, “Pump problem. Five minutes, fix.” Two hours later, we’re still trying to work up a lather with hiss and fizz. I may bob round to Monu’s, later, to see if I can pick up a slot in his water-line. (On yet another tour round Dharavi, this week, we ask about water supply in the slums. “Water available two or three hours a day,” Krishna says, smiling. “No problem with supply.” In the UK, I say, two to three hours a day would be the problem. We are very high maintenance, in the west.) At midday, the taps burp rustily, and the water runs brown for a minute, then sparkling clean. Good job it’s the weekend.

The magnificent sweeping new entrance to Haiko Mall is unveiled, I note, flanked with lollipop trees in pots, and festooned with the usual auspicious orange garlands. When work first begins, in June, we’re surprised to find the Culture Shop, on the first floor, still valiantly open for business, in the middle of a building-site. When our supplies of elephants-in-elephants run low, we have to infiltrate the shop the back way, using the service elevator, past mingled heaps of discarded boxes and unpacked stock. On the half-landing, amid the debris, a street dog’s having a quick nap, out of the rain. When will normal service be resumed, I ask my favourite assistant. (Every time I put my nose round the door, he arrives at my elbow, and escorts me straight to the elephants and Ganeshes aisle, so I don’t waste any time perusing the appliquéd cushion-covers and lacquered tissue-boxes. That’s what I call Customer Care...) He’s airily confident. “One more week.” Four months later, the sheets of plastic are finally gone, and the plate glass doors are at last flung wide. In quintessentially Indian style, there’s the grand opening, with fanfares and a uniformed doorman, on his plastic chair with his Mumbai Express, yet the marbled foyer’s still littered with workmen’s trestles and decorating ladders, with the odd dusty bucket on its side, in the front window. In India, it’s never over, ‘til it’s over.

I go to see my new Best Friend, Ramona, twice, today. First at hospital, and later at her own clinic in Powai. In Hiranandani Hospital, Dentistry shares a waiting-area with Cardiology, and the Hair Loss Therapy and Replacement Clinic. Obvious, when you think about it. I’m sitting there, clutching my file – patients keep their own case-notes here, not the dentist – and as I’m nudging my contact lens around, trying to make it settle down, I feel someone staring at me. The old lady opposite is watching me. I slide my eyes sideways, Britishly, but when I furtively check again, she’s still staring, with the unblinking gaze toddlers use for the television. Against everything your Mum ever told you, staring’s not rude, here. It’s impossible to be offended, because there’s no malice in it, and it’s fundamentally more honest than the eye ping-pong we reserve for people-watching, on the QT, at home.

Ramona drills away the temporary filling she put there yesterday, which I quite liked, I’m not sure why we’re discarding it. The radio’s playing “Om Shanti Om,” and Ramona’s assistant’s crooning along behind his mask, as he dreamily whirls the suction-nozzle round my gums. He sings like Monu. He swabs my eyebrows and ears, and Ramona says, “We like to make sure you get a shower. Free water!” So I try to be glad, damply. She drills up as far as my cerebellum, and I have to remind myself that she only has me down for a porcelain crown, not a frontal lobotomy. It’s taking me all my energy, not to bite her, then she whips out the drill and says chummily, “Do you want me to inject you?” I’m beyond caring, at this point, so choose martyred pain over comfort. She makes an impression (of my teeth, not à la Rory Bremner) with some clever strawberry-flavoured gak, which turns from pink to yellow as it hardens. I have to see her again later, so she can fit the temporary crown she’s going to make while I’m not-having lunch. The radio launches into “Singh is King” – a big favourite, in our car - and I’m so blissed-out at the absence of the drill in my head, I join in. La, la, la....

Ramona’s other surgery’s in the Galleria. All these months, I have been staring at it, unknowing, as I munch my garlic nan and tarka dal, at Kareem’s, the other side of the galleried courtyard. And now, here I am, at Doc Thakur’s, unable to munch on anything, staring back at Kareem’s. And at Mocha, Powai’s best coffee-shop, which has had to have extensive alterations inside, to cater for the new smoking ban. My favourite bit’s the smokers’ corner, sectioned off with purple organza strips, tapered and beaded, which I love because of its label, “For Hookahs Only.” I’m sad to see that the diaphanous tent’s gone, replaced by glass partitions, to segregate those “desirous of smoking” from those clean of lung. I’m unsure why this doesn’t still count as smoking in a public place, and intend to snitch, as soon as I find an honest bobby. Then again, it was a source of much innocent entertainment, for Mr Roland and me, watching the waiter, with seventeen-inch hips and a pinny down to his flip-flops, lighting and relighting the embers on top of the hookahs; we’re going to have to start talking to each other, now.

The waiting-room chez Ramona’s as big as two phone-booths glued together. You can work out how many patients are already waiting, by counting the shoes, lined up outside, and dividing by two. A couple with a small child, a man on his own, and me. And then we are seven - another man arrives, with a small girl, who has the slenderest feet I have ever seen, her perfect toes like vermicelli. She passes the time, air-writing Hindi script, which looks alien even when it’s invisible. The other three-quarters of the little lock-up form the L-shaped surgery, the other side of the sliding door. In the crook of the “L,” what I think is an unused shelving unit is, in fact, a flight of shallow steps, leading up to a closed trapdoor. Presumably someone lives above the shop - not Ramona, I’m thinking. It takes her two minutes to pop in the temporary crown. She tells me the name of her favourite dress shop in Bandra, and promises to ring. Then I’m out on the hot pavement again, looking for Mr Roland. It’s thirty-eight degrees, all the dogs are asleep and the tarmac’s sticky, yet it’s only four days since the roads ran like rivers. The UK hasn’t completely monopolized the market in Interesting Weather, then. I find Mr Roland in the Culture Shop, panic-buying door-swags for Christmas. It’s already October, after all.

Dasera at the Dentist's

2008-10-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Today is Dasara (or Dasera, or Dasehra), the tenth day of Navaratri, and a public holiday. Well, for everyone except Monu, obviously. And my dentist, Ramona, who brings my appointment forward to eight-thirty this morning, to free the day for festivities.

We segue straight from the Ganpati shindy into Navaratri, with barely enough time to get new candles. Navaratri’s the Festival of Joy, to celebrate the victory of Rama over Ravana, who had captured Rama’s wife, Sita. Rama’s a model of continence and piety during the separation, and attracts the admiration of all, including the monkey-god Hanuman. (Don’t go thinking you understand: nothing’s ever this simple in Hinduism, so Rama is one of the incarnations, or attavars, of Vishnu, as Sita is of Lakshmi. The legends and stories are more intertwined than the ribbons on a maypole.) Or the celebration marks the vanquishing of the wicked Mahisha by the ten-armed goddess Durga. Whichever version you favour, the cause of all the joy (and new clothes, let’s be honest), is the victory of Good over Evil, and every moment of today is considered auspicious. Not a bad day for a dental appointment, after all.

In Powai, the pandal takes forty days to build – this is serious construction, for a transient place of worship and partying – but they whisk away the last stick of bamboo scaffolding and have every last fairy-light and flower-head in place, with seconds to spare. The streets are gridlocked in the evenings, as all Mumbai brings his wife and mother-in-law in their sparkly new saris, to admire and worship. This year, the inspiration – and indeed, the builders and the materials – have been brought from Calcutta. Or Kolkata, if you want to be PC. The end result is breath-taking.

We visit several times during the preparations, and are welcomed by organisers and builders alike, all enjoining us to come back for the grand opening. Free food, stalls, music, dancing. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking about. When we visit officially, we have to join queues for security screening, segregated by gender not creed, to pass through the electronic portal into the pulsating courtyard beyond. To the right of the temple, a concert-arena is set up, where known idols of the Indian pop world will produce enough rocking decibels to crumble the fake plaster off the pretend walls, with a warm-up act of small children, singing and dancing to their loving Mums and Dads on the front row. The programme’s eclectic, and as all-embracing as Hinduism itself.

This replica of the Dakshineswar Mandir in Calcutta, dedicated to Durga, is made of expanded polystyrene on a wooden frame, and will be dismantled after today, leaving scrubby wasteland again, where shining fantasy now has its brief moment. Inside the temple, the centrepiece is a twenty-foot plaster model of Durga in the very act of defeating Mahish with his curly moustache. I’m pleased to note Ganesh gets a place at top table, too.

This morning, the whole world’s pooja’d, even the tuk-tuks. Monu’s horrified at the idea of my walking to my hospital appointment, and I’m just thinking, how dear of him, when it comes to me that he doesn’t think I shouldn’t, he thinks I couldn’t, because I am so lardy and white. I am Trex Woman. I walk anyway, to show him, and arrive in a slight glow. The heat of the morning, you understand.

As I arrive, two dental assistants are climbing on chairs, to string garlands of bells and orange flower-heads over the door. More dentists should consider a bit of pooja, I feel, basking in the festive orange glow. There’s a man already queuing, shouting into his mobile, so that all independent thought’s suspended. Ramona turns up. He snaps his phone shut, kicks his shoes off, and nips under the bells and flowers. Clearly disconcerted, Ramona comes back out of the surgery to explain. He’s pushed in: he didn’t confirm his rescheduled appointment, therefore has no appointment: “I am coming in for you, not for him! There will now be a ten minute delay!” Vodafone boy’s supine in the chair of torture, complacent, but within earshot. I’m just glad to be informed. Can you imagine it, down at your local walk-in clinic? “Mrs Gower, this baby’s swallowed a pin-cushion, so we’re fast-tracking him through A&E. We know you were here first, with your suspected sprained thumb, but we hope you understand.” There’d be a lot less chunnering, at the WRVS stall, is for sure. Information is key.

“Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” croons the radio, as the dental assistant pads about in his socks, whipping a green napkin under my chin, and lining up the medieval ironware on the trolley. Ramona’s doing a telephone consultation, even as she pings on her rubber gloves. They don’t do single-tasking, here. “Catherine, if you feel pain,” she says, “raise your left hand.” I devote my whole self to worrying about her getting my name wrong – what if “Catherine” is rhesus negative, for example, and I get a toxic transfusion, when everything goes papaya-shaped, in a bit? I forget to notice the lack of anaesthetic, until she’s flailing about with a drill. Descaling’s more of a trauma than root canal work, and I’m so tense, I hover six clenched inches above the bed under me. Ramona, meanwhile, entertains a casual visitor with idle chat. “Where’s your dupatta?” she chides, hollowing out a cavity the size of Portugal, where I used to keep my lower right sixth molar. She’s addressing a colleague who’s just sauntered along, in a snowy kurta and pyjama bottoms. He shakes his little pony-tail sadly, “No dupatta. My son already says I look like a girl....”

I’m still in shock, when she processes me through her pooja’d front door, back into the marbled stadium of a reception desk. "Don't you do anaesthetic, here?" I venture to ask, now she's not got a drill in her hand. "Only if there is pain. You didn't have pain, did you?" she says with retroactive confidence. Now you mention it, no, I didn't. Neither did Catherine. I don’t even get an “I’ve been a good girl at the dentist’s today” sticker, and I'm still shaking: Ramona only stopped twice, during the whole half-hour, for me to spit lead and blood into the basin. There’s a flower on the credit-card machine, however, which consoles me for much. “Happy Dasera!” Ramona says. I smile my new smile, and wish her the same.

Nothing but the Tooth

2008-10-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

The flash lunch we have at the Renaissance proves costly, since I succumb to the temptation of that well-known Indian delicacy, lardons, and crack a tooth. I should have stuck with idli-sambar, I realise now; the irony is not lost on me. By way of compensation, a whole new world of subcontinental medical care unfolds in front of me, today, and that has to be worth a molar or two, in my book.

It says on the wall outside, and on every piece of headed paper inside, that the Hiranandani Hospital in Powai aims “to be the preferred choice for healing and good health.” Thus inspired with confidence, I creep into the huge marble atrium masquerading as an entrance hall, where a uniformed receptionist directs me to the first floor - “Take this stair here!” (I obviously don’t look very intelligent, then...) There, another fleet of administrative accolytes waits, one eye on their flickering computer screen, one ear glued to a phone.

The waiting area outside the dental suite is busy, and I have to choose my slot along the row with care. What I think is an abandoned pile of rags turns out to be a lady in a blue and yellow sari, lying curled across three chairs. It doesn’t happen down the Queen’s Medical Centre, in Nottingham, I can tell you. Nor do you have to take your shoes off at the door, before you pad in, barefoot, to open wide and say “Ahh!” When in Mumbai, do as the Mumbaikers do, however. I kick off my sandals, leave them jostling cosily with all the flip-flops by the door, and enter.

There seem to be about seventeen people in white coats and green facemasks, milling about with patient files under one arm, or glinting surgical weapons in their fists. I am ushered into a chair by the desk. A long, low cupboard separates administration from treatment, so discretion is a matter of mutual politeness and goodwill. I haven’t met my dentist yet, but we’re already on first name terms. Ramona. She tells the man on his way out - in English then in Hindi - that he can’t expect to wear the same set of dentures for fifteen years, without causing damage. I think the English is for me, so I don’t feel left out. When he leaves, Ramona chats to a young disabled girl, who’s sitting by me, waiting for her mother to be treated. We like Ramona. She tells me her name and her qualifications, then asks, “Would you like to meet me?” I’m thinking, I just have, but agree anyway. I notice she’s left-handed, and has a particularly nice bangle on, so I relax completely.

I’m not taking such a karmic view of things, three minutes later, when the torture chair flips back and winches up. Over my head, Ramona finishes her consultation with the previous patient - he must use a soft brush, up and down, not side to side. (Please note, the dentally careless among you, it may save you Rs 265 later down the line, not to mention the odd canine.) She pings on her medical Marigolds and fills my mouth with prongs and mirrors. “Oh, you didn’t go for your check-up, last year!” she says, sadly. I hate to disappoint her. She tells me not to worry about twelve times, so I begin to wonder if she’s seen the first stirrings of some dread and possibly fatal buccal decline, but apparently it’s a cracked tooth. Even I knew that.

The entire gamut of enamelled retail possibilities is available to me, because, Ramona says, they don’t have dental insurance, here in India, and all pockets have to be catered for. So, I can have a crown made out of an old clothespeg and a bit of Blutac, for Rs 2000, or a full porcelain job for Rs 16000. Or an inlay, with gold inside the porcelain, for Rs 12000. (Since when has gold been cheaper than china? Someone should tell Hallmark to realign their wedding anniversary range.) I consider the rock and the hard place, and say, like I always do, that I’ll consult my husband. This is not financial dependence or uxorious subservience, it’s my get-out line. Then I have a dental epiphany, and treat myself to the best of the best – not quite such a paradable souvenir as a Mr Raymond suit, but hopefully longer-lasting.

Ramona and I make our farewells, wreathed in smiles, and I head for the door and my sandals. It then takes me approximately three times the length of the consultation, to pay. Shopping at Fabindia’s the same. I have ample time to read the industrial-sized flat-screen on the wall (I skip the Hindi pages), where I learn that everyone has a right to “uniform care, whatever the class of patient,” which presumably explains why I am allowed in, and to “personal dignity and privacy during consultation.” I can’t quite square this with the overhead chats I’m party to, while prostrate on the chaise longue of torture, but no-one else seems to mind, so how can I object? I’m more than tempted by the Body Contouring Clinic, but the screen flickers before I can write down the number to ring. “Anyone desirous of smoking,” it now advises, “may kindly use the open spaces outside the hospital premises.” I smile, because this is newly illegal: India’s public smoking ban will be a week old on Thursday. Monu’s danger-boss gets hauled over twice in a week, for infringement, Rs 200 a pop. (Monu and his mates, need I say, cartwheeling with joy...)

Queuing, still queuing. Fellow patients make and receive phone calls on their mobiles, to while away the wait. I offer the receptionist Rs 500, to cover the Rs 265 charge, but she can’t make change, so I have to pay £3 with a credit card. As I fiddle with my PIN number, she answers the phone, and, between one sentence and the next, dials out on a second phone, while tapping at her computer, and dealing with stray enquiries passing by, thrusting banknotes at her. Small wonder, that it takes forty minutes, to process my piffling account. A man comes to remonstrate – as in all hospitals the world over – that he’s been overlooked in the queue. I think he’s got a plaster on his head, and should be seen immediately, but on closer inspection, I see it’s a very fancy bindi, so he can wait his turn like anyone else.

On the way out, I spy the Mahesh Stores, in the glossy foyer, where you can buy flip-flops, or sheets, or t-shirts, or baby-bottles, or coca-cola, or sponge footballs, or shiny magazines. At the above-mentioned QMC, there’s a whole floor dedicated to franchises from Costa Coffee to W H Smiths, and here it all is, in a stall the size of the Tardis.

I can’t wait to go back on Thursday.