I’ve had two dreams involving people off Neighbours in the last week, one a terrifying nightmare featuring Larrikin Lou and 4 different women he had on the go at the same time, in a sunken stone jacuzzi. This is worrying, have I been watching too much Neighbours and am I having withdrawal symptoms.
I woke up yelping and shaking after the Lou dream one night in the flat in Delhi to hear my Uncle Sultan going “Rasheeqa? Screaming?” and my sister next to me murmuring “I am gonna rinse you for this in the morning” when I told her what I was screaming about.
But never mind, we are far away from Neighbours right now and in the big squishy bosoms of INDIA!!!!!!! YAYYYYY!
Spent a week in Delhi where it was cool and rainy, in fact the day we set off for Calcutta on the train it was pissing it down, England-style! It’s funny and lovely being back again after last year’s escapades. We visited my dad’s family at Moradabad which involves a brilliant road trip for four hours along the highway past ox-carts and teetering lorries piled up with sugarcane and roadside markets, and went to the cinema in a rowdy pack of 21, mental. Came out of the cinema into the foggiest night, many giggling cousins and aunties tripping along the road with orange trucklights appearing out of the mist and screeching past. We got about 4 cycle rickshaws to carry us all home through these mysterious silent dark streets, you couldn’t see a thing, it was proper atmospheric and dramatic. Moradabad is like an Arabian Nights town, all bearded men red-teethed men sitting around tea stalls and perched on elevated shop fronts selling silver and embroidering glittery pieces of cloth. I visited my dad’s ancestral ‘Dawakhana’, a homeopathic ‘Unani’ medicine house that has been in their family since the 1930s. In the gloomy back-rooms are shelves of old dusty jars and bottles with Urdu labels, full of strange herbs and pungent spices, and at the wooden front counter my Uncle Atheeque and one of his sons talk to black-burkha’d ladies holding babies in woollen headscarves, doling out concoctions of paste and powder wrapped up in newspaper. My cousin said I could come and learn about it if I wanted… can you imagine, living there in the family house in Moradabad and sitting in the dawakhana learning all about these sugar-filled preparations for ‘loose motions’ and other ailments. That would be ace. It’s such a mad different society.
We always have a great send-off from that house though, about 30 people waving us off from the narrow dusty ‘galli’ (alley) and tearful aunts surrounding us with huge love. My Auntie Nazhat put a big lump of purply crystal in my hand as we got in the car – rock salt, for gaseous problems. You just dissolve a bit in warm water if you’re suffering from too much rich Moradabadi dal. Or an overload of food in general, which NEVER happens here…
We went to the Surajkund Mela, which happens every February in this woodsy, rocky place around an 8th-century sun temple, just near our Delhi flat. It’s a huge fair of music and dancing and handicrafts from all around India, a spring feste of amazing mad colours, unfurling flags and lanterns and monkey-dancers and big drumbeats. I love it. There’s BUCKETLOADS of bunting there.
And now we’re in Bengal again, staying with Auntie Leila, my mum’s sister, and her family in Sheoraphuli. And back to Serampore where Nani was and so sadly isn’t anymore, and where Ana and I spent our magic 2 months this time last year. I have to go visit the school and see all the kiddies.
My cousin Babu (who I haven’t seen in about 14 years or something) is home this time, he’s in the Navy and was away on his ship last year, he’s telling us tales of Korea and teasing Saira for not getting out of bed and we all sneak cigarettes on the balcony.
Even since a year ago India feels a bit different. The family places are quieter, cousins have left and married and moved away, mobile phone advertising hoardings have multiplied by millions, Delhi looks even more modern with plush cinema complexes and our friend Yasmin’s little son chirps “Uncle Donal’… Uncle Donal’!” (there’s a McDonald’s near their house and apparently he loves it). I even read a horrible article in the paper about how the Delhi government wants to ban all street food and outside cooking - ?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!. What a complete nightmare disaster that would be. Street food is the BEST thing about this place, without a doubt. My mum is bemoaning India’s headlong rush into western-ity.
But also every time I come back I discover more of this insane richness and complexity of culture, it’s so mountainous and varied. The other day I heard for the first time the phrase ‘Scheduled Castes’ which apparently dates from British times and refers to the lower-caste folk, whom they call the ‘Backward Classes’ - the ‘Dalits’, ‘untouchables’ of the Hindu religion. They’re doing ‘reservations’ at universities and in employment, holding certain percentages of places for these Backward Classes, which is causing protest in lots of places. Saira and I read an article in this weekly paper ‘Tehelka’ – ‘the people’s paper’ – about a group called the Puthirai Vannars who are apparently one level lower than even the ‘untouchables’ and live around the fringes of those people’s colonies in Tamil Nadu in the south. They are not allowed to grow or buy their own food and have to beg their daily bread from the Dalits, for whom they act as washermen (dhobis). In the past they were made to wear coconut palms around their bodies to sweep away their footprints and leave no trace of their presence, and could only go out to work at night (they were supposed to be ‘unseeable’). Laws abolished discrimination against them in 1930 but to this day these people face massive difficulty in moving away from their perceived status, finding employment or changing their lives, partly because the state government does not even recognise their ‘caste’. Madness.
(www.tehelka.com)
Then we went to an exhibition of puppets of India, which I knew nothing about before! Apparently there are rod, string, shadow and hand puppets in traditions dating back hundreds of years, they had some wicked modern ones as well. And the same evening went to a crazy Kathakali performance done under a huge gorgeous peepul tree. This is the dance/theatre artform with massive shiny elaborate costumes, jingly ankle bells, singing and drums and dramatic neck and eye movements, done by all male dancers. This show was a story from the epic Mahabharata involving a lustful army general trying to woo a woman who already had 5 husbands by jiggling his cheeks naughtily at her for an hour. It didn’t work though and he came to a sticky end. Very weird and striking. Apparently in Kerala, where the dance originates, Kathakali performances go on all night in temples at special festival times.
It was probably about as weird as entertainment goes as Neighbours has been recently. But with better facial expressions.
Khuda Hafiz!
X
P.S My pauncha is getting round with all this food…
