The sun burns bright in Chennai politics

Udaipur

Udaipur's lake is shrinking under the pressures of drought and overuse. Some summers it is completely empty. But the upside to an empty lake is extra space to play cricket. I'll have to rent the Bond film Octapussy to see if cricket figured in it at all... I'm guessing not.

Be very careful where you buy your next pair of glasses. I'll be sad when India moves away from handpainted signs - even if the sales pitches might be a little more effective.

I was puzzled by this glowing-shield-thing. Then I discovered that the rulers of Udaipur once considered themselves sun-kings. Armed with this fact I found references to their solar lineage littered throughout the palaces of Udaipur, just in case they or their subjects forgot. Sun-king.... Hmmm.... Given it was about 50 degrees the day I was there I think I'd prefer to be a cloud-king.

Pinkish

After living in Africa and now India I am very conscious of one thing - white blubber ain't cool. Exhibit A: Seen through my hotel window in southern India. Someone buy this man some shorts!

Grace under shower

On saturday is rained and rained until my street was a flowing torrent. My neighbours adopted a variety of fixes, but none surpassed this lady for grace. She waltzed slowly through the flood as though it were nothing but a light shower.

Manholes in monsoon

Dreaming of her

Back...

Bidip was silent for a few months. Some wondered whether delhi's summer had hardbaked my will to write. They're not far wrong. Delhi in summer is a tough place. The Brits escaped to the hills. And the modern Indian middle class escapes to the south of France or New York or wherever their diaspora connections take them. I escaped to ANYWHERE air-conditioned. But now the monsoon has broken, and the city is livable once more, I feel like sharing my stories again.

Today I visited old Delhi, a place that restores my faith in India like nowhere else. I played a few overs of laneway cricket, and smiled at strangers, and soaked up the wondrous multiplicity of the place. It is everything at once, woven, mosaiced and trampled into one. South Delhi with its posh shops and shiny cars feels like another country, separated by choice and chance. The latter is more pleasant by most metrics, but the raw goodness of old delhi draws me back again and again. People with nothing, and no agenda, are so disarmingly friendly. And the walls and cars and sunglasses of south Delhi, which inhibit so much communication, are gone. When I leave India it will be the smiling chai wallahs and the cheeky kids that I will remember, not the shiny malls or blinged up frumps in german sedans.

Old-school chai wallah..

Summer is here, so the frequency of my interaction with the chai wallahs of northern India is likely to dip a little. I shall soon begin my 'tales of the pani wallahs.' But for now, here is one of Rajasthan's most popular men-of-chai, Mr B.R.Choudhuri of Kerwa village. He can be found at a truck stop somewhere between Jodhpur and Pali. B.R is notable because he retains the old-school clay serving cups, which by reputation add much flavour to the sugary tea. Mine certainly had a little more smokiness than usual and when i got to the bottom I could see the charcoal residue of an open fire. While we sipped a villager was unloading thousands and thousands of these clay cups into a storage shed. I asked B.R whether these would last him a month and he laughed loudly in a 'where-did-this-amateur-come-from' sort of way. "Three days" he said, "a thousand cups a day". I handed the empty cup to B.R with thanks, but he gestured for me to throw it away so I placed it on the ground gently. But B.R said "no, smash it." So I did. When I went for a post chai pee, (Me: "where is the bathroom?", Driver: Bathroom is everywhere sir") I stumbled across the evidence of the thousand chais out back. 100% biodegradable, though I note that not all B.R's clients were forced to smash their cups violently on the ground. Such fun can be had with foreigners eh!

In search of a pitched roof

When I first arrived in Delhi I was struck by the glorious straight lines of the rooftops, as though every centimetre of height allowed by building regulations was being utilised. I played 'spot the pitched roof' - and I'm still looking. When I return home I'll try the reverse - 'spot the indigo washed walls'. I suspect the strike rate will be similarly low, sadly.

Cristo wraps a building in Delhi?

Running Backwards Man

Delhi has many mysteries. One that I'm yet to see featured in a William Dalrymple book is Running Backwards Man, who does his 'retro-running' on Shantipath (one of Delhi's grand boulevards). Here he is. Note his most excellent headphones and wrist bands (in national colours which begs the question... is there an Indian running backwards team and if so who do they compete against?)



I googled 'running backwards' to see if anyone else was this nuts. It turns out backwards running is a more than a sport - it is a social movement. Here is a sample -

"The emergence of backward running is not a matter of chance, it is both a sign and the symbol that something “in the air” is becoming reversed. This new way of running announces the beginning of a new civilization. To reverse the most basic and common act of man, walking or running, is tantamount to touching his essence. What could be more effective than this simple exercise which will modify our view of everything? It can change our human relationships, our relationship to money, our conception of time, and at the social level can alter the face of our cities, our transportation and exchange systems, etc. At a time when an unprecedented human mutation is taking place before our very eyes, if practised as an exercise conducive to a change in our perceptions, the advent of backward running can bring down the certainties that underlie the general escapist movement. More than words can, a backward motion of our bodies will provoke a fundamental questioning of our commonest attitudes and bring about the social change that the urgency and gravity of the problems of our day require."

Well how about that! I guess that makes me, a forward runner, part of the embedded 'escapist movement.'

And then I discovered this... an awesomely amateur video demonstration of Delhi's running backwards man, Puran Chand, with a few interview fragments. He says he is training for the Commonwealth Games. The interviewer points out running backwards is not part of the Commonwealth Games. Chand replies that he hopes to provide a demonstration of backwards running in the main stadium. Book your seats for that one folks - or just go visit him on Shantipath.

A canvas most large

The walls of India would make fine art if they were chopped up and displayed in a posh western gallery. People would ooh and ahh over "the luscious textures" and "bold use of colour," the "hints of the figurative" and the "post-modern comment on the impermenence of commerce." They are the work of many hands, and many brushes, of many colliding purposes, and of India's heat and dust and bleaching sunlight and cleansing rains. In fact, I might take lots of wall photos and test this theory on return: You are invited to an exclusive viewing of "A Canvas Most Large - The Walls of India."

Rajasthan is:

.... hot, dry, beautiful and quiet. We soaked up the evening stillness from the top of a rocky peak, gazing out over dusty plains where farmers battle concrete-dust soil, and on to an ancient Aravalli mountain range that runs into Pakistan. After the bussling chaos of Indian cities, it was magic to soak up the silence as a hot breeze ran through our hair and the sun set for the day.

Hard yakka in a sari

It is hard not to notice how much hard manual labour gets done by women in India. I'm not sure what to say about it, apart from noting its sad inevitability as families scratch out a livelihood in adverse circumstances. I remember reading a particularly touching story of the transformative effect tap water had on a woman in rural South Africa. She had walked 5km to fetch water twice a day, taking six hours. When running water was connected to her house she was suddenly liberated - she had six hours every day, forty two hours every week, to focus on bringing up her kids and earning money. Such a simple improvement in her life, but so transformative to her human existence. May such good things come to many more women who toil hard for little reward.