by Aline Dobbie
I have given the most cursory of explanations because it would take a huge book to truly explain the festivals and rituals of the Hindu faith, and I am not best placed to do that despite my respect and recognition of that ancient system of belief and values.
Waking up on Diwali morning everyone is wishing everyone else ‘Happy Diwali’ with affection and good humour. It is so like our Christmas ritual and absolutely essential to greet everyone you meet that day and wish them well.
Martin drove off to Tikli accompanied by the faithful little Yash, who had made sure she had been greeted and had greeted everyone. Yash says ‘Happee Diwalee’ in a lovely singsong way and Graham and I grinned and adopted her way of saying it to just about everyone we met that morning. We decided that we had some important shopping to accomplish and, as Annie was very busy, we walked out on to the street and flagged down an auto rickshaw. Naturally, we greeted the driver, but he responded with a great diffidence. I asked in Hindi if all was well in his house and wished him good fortune and he smiled shyly and thanked me. I instructed him to take us to The Imperial Hotel, or just outside it, and we chugged along and then suddenly alongside came a much more vigorous auto rickshaw driven by a smart confident man, beautifully dressed. We became aware that we were sitting in a rather shabby CNG- converted vehicle that seemed to be held together by an elastic band! The other driver and I conversed whilst driving along at approximately 30 km an hour, until he finally commanded our own driver to stop and suggested that he could take us to an alternative shopping centre. He really was a cheeky but likeable fellow! Interestingly, our original driver seemed totally submissive and did not demur. I wondered if he was of a much lower caste, or perhaps a man of tribal origin because he just accepted the other’s rather arrogant behaviour. We decided that perhaps the other vehicle was a better proposition so we paid off our chap the agreed amount and moved over to the smart one.
We arrived at the Cottage Industries Emporium and were effusively greeted. We were the first customers of the day and, after all, this was Diwali. The jewellery was disappointing so we withdrew from that and went with Mr Butt to look at carpets. After a long dilemma when we had viewed a number of beautiful carpets we came to a financial agreement, once the boss intervened and made the price right for all parties! There was huge rejoicing, drinking of masala chai and hugging and handshaking. It was very propitious to do a good deal that early in the day and our various documents were marked with red swastika like marks to demonstrate that it was a Diwali deal. We jumped back into the auto rickshaw and went as fast as possible to the house, where a patient Naveen was waiting to finalise our travel arrangements.
Naveen’s careful scrutiny flagged up a discrepancy in our plans and we had to resort to plan B. This happens so much in travel throughout India that one has to be philosophical about it. When an airline suddenly decides to change the departure time of an internal flight, this can have a huge impact on the follow on arrangements. This had happened to us and had he not looked carefully at all our prearranged tickets we would have been sadly inconvenienced in two weeks time. I valued the fact that Naveen had taken the time to come on Diwali day. It was one of the last times that we met on this occasion because he was to be married in two weeks time, and was taking leave to help organise the wedding celebrations. He invited us to his wedding and we would have loved to attend, but we had to be hundreds of miles away for something equally important to us.
We ate a hurried simple lunch and departed with Annie for Tikli. On our arrival it was lovely and simple and peaceful. All the families of the retainers assembled to have Coke, crisps and sweets and receive a razai, an Indian form of quilt that is both colourful and warm, for each family. I took photographs of the children in the afternoon sunshine against the vivid colours of the bougainvilleas. The women and children were all dressed in their beautiful best – a myriad of bright colours in saris and salwar chameeze. Yash being small had started out in her best burgundy outfit but must have had a water fight or something and was now in tomboy dress.
Martin and Graham went on to the roof to start lighting the little oil lamps with which the roof would be outlined. This proved more difficult than anticipated and I think Martin has decided that next year he will adopt a more foolproof method. It was lovely. Gradually the sun set, the neighbouring peacocks called, and the horses in the next door stud could be seen quietly grazing. There was the gentle buzz of chatter and happy laughter from the servants’ houses and I just kept an eye on Yash and another small child who were larking around on the roof.
As dusk approached, Martin and Annie put candles and lamps at the entrance to their home and we opened the wide gracious doors and quietly stood there, each of us silently welcoming the goddess Lakshmi into the house. It was a timeless moment, with a gentle breeze moving the trees and no other noise – even the two dogs had fallen silent. The children were awed by the moment and quiet and well behaved. It was very special.
Martin and Graham lighting Diwali lights
We said farewell to the servants who were anxious to return to their festivities. Sometimes, it must seem to the traveller that India is in a permanent state of festival or ritual. The day before Diwali had been the day for puja, that is prayer and supplication, for the dogs. Both house dogs had been garlanded with flowers round their necks. This is a particularly Nepalese custom and they ensure that on that day the dogs are fed and garlanded before any of the human family eats. The day before the dogs was the special day of the crows. The day after Diwali is for the cows and so it goes on.
We drove off in the two jeeps to yet another Diwali party. This time we were to be the guests of the Thapars. Of course, I knew this well known name, and indeed had already met Karen Thapar, who is a media personality, but my memory was nagging me and I asked a few questions. Bimla Thapar is the widow of General Thapar who had been the army chief and a friend of my late father’s. Bimla is a most gracious beautiful old lady with enormous charm and warmth. Bimla and Martin are brother/sister bonded with rakhi, which is an amulet, usually a thread tied round the wrist. There is, quite obviously, a mutual admiration between these two wise and friendly people. I asked if there was anyone in the family called Premala and, indeed, there was; Bimla’s daughter, who was named after her own young sister. That was the connection for me. ‘Aunty Prem’ as she had been known to me was a dear friend of my own mother’s. When this was told to them a ‘phone call was made to Aunty Prem and I spoke and told her who it was. ‘Little Aline!’ she said, Hmm, not so little these days but awfully glad to hear her youthful voice and indulge in some shared memories. It was over 40 years since I had spoken to Aunty Prem. She has promised to come and visit us in Scotland and I very much hope she finds the opportunity to do that.
The party was in full swing with an endless barrage of fireworks being set alight on the lawn. One landed on fire at my feet whilst I stood on the terrace – that was a bit alarming! I retreated inside to hear what a fellow guest was saying, because the noise on the terrace was so loud, and also because I am fond of my eyebrows. Bimla and her late husband had been Ambassador to Afghanistan in the 1960s. Again, we found people we knew: my school friends had been daughters of the then British ambassador – it truly is a small world. There were some lovely photographs of HM The Queen on her last visit to Delhi taken speaking to Bimla; there is still a huge respect for the Queen in India.
Among the guests were the Belgian Ambassador his wife and daughter, the British High Commissioner, Sir Rob, and his wife Lady Young, Catherine as I shall call her. Her book ‘Letters from India’ is an absolute delight. She has the artist’s eye for observing all sorts of little things and a warm appreciation of all her experiences in this country. ‘ Letters’ represents the alphabet so naturally there are 26 chapters each on a subject the name of which starts with a respective letter, i.e., a is for ayah, b is for buffalo, etc. It is such a good read illustrated by Catherine’s whimsical little drawings. She was kind enough to inscribe a book to me an
d I had done so with one of mine for them. This couple are hugely admired and liked in Delhi and people will be sad to see them leave later on this year.
The third diplomat was the Acting High Commissioner for Pakistan and his charming wife. They are a handsome and intelligent couple and I warmed to them very quickly. Rather diffidently in a discussion on the probable Iraq war I put forward some theories and the High Commissioner was immediately interested. As a student of history, I was easily able to recall my studies on imperialism in the generic form, going back to the first ‘imperialists’. Ironically, this was probably the land we now know as Iraq, but was then the ancient kingdoms in Mesopotamia. In India, it became obvious through archaeological excavations that great cities such as Mohenjo Daro and Harappa (now in present day Pakistan) and Kalibangan in India had risen above a purely agricultural economy and conducted trade overseas with places as far afield as Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. The Dravidian peoples, who spread into almost every part of India and Sri Lanka, were a mixture of native populations of India and Proto-Dravidians, who appear to have entered India in large masses from approximately 4000 to 2500 BC.
The so-called Indus Valley civilisation developed from a Neolithic village culture based on agriculture or hunting in Baluchistan and Sind. This incorporated elements of the Mesolithic culture as depicted in the earliest known paintings in rock shelters of bison, elephant and buffalo – as indeed Graham and I were to see in our travels in Madhya Pradesh. This influence stretched from Afghanistan to beyond present day Delhi and down into Gujarat, and we cannot tell whether some of the remarkable visual similarities indicate beliefs derived from Mesopotamia or are the results of iconography borrowed from that ancient civilisation.
Imperialism, to quote the dictionary ‘is the policy or practice of extending a country’s influence over other territories by conquest, colonisation, or economic domination.’ Throughout history, the strong have sought to conquer and aggrandize their own countries, it is a human instinct sadly to prey upon the weak be it nationally, internationally or individually. In the Middle East, there are states who wish to subjugate their own people and there are those who forget their own tragic recent past and appear to have no empathy for the aspirations of other neighbouring people.
It is worth reflecting that, exactly 400 years ago, the Scottish king James VI succeeded to the English throne in 1603. The Tudor dynasty ended in the death of a raddled old woman whom history has variously called ‘the Virgin Queen’, ‘Gloriana’, and ‘the woman with the heart of a man’. Yes, Elizabeth I of England brought stability and pride to a little nation, but with a despotic rule that tolerated no threats to her position, or the form of religion in which she believed. Her cousin, the Scottish queen was executed on her orders for the threat she posed to Elizabeth, and ordinary men were hanged, drawn and quartered for the integrity and courage of their differing beliefs. Her coterie of ministers and advisors sanctioned and indeed encouraged her actions. Power had to be absolute and to be seen to be absolute. Elizabeth had learnt her lessons about survival and supremacy through a harsh insecure childhood when she had been at the mercy of her father, who had ordered her mother’s execution. Henry VIII, we all know, was a tyrant, and then he was closely followed by the reign of her half sister Mary Tudor, who was a religious bigot, probably as a result of her insecure and miserable childhood, the only girl child of a ‘cast off’ queen alone in her undeserved misery.
Curiously, some of the religious bigotry and racism that still sadly bedevils modern Scotland is the residue of that tumultuous period in Scots and English history. Within fifty years of the Union of the Crowns a civil war was waged, and a ruling but very foolish monarch, Charles I, was put to death publicly. After an unsatisfactory interregnum, his son Charles II was acclaimed king, but his brother, James II, soon after his succession, was deemed to be unsatisfactory and removed by the intervention of the king of Holland, William of Orange, who happened to be James’s son in law.
Suspicion, terror, brutality and a cruel disregard for the ordinary man or woman’s aspirations to live a life according to their beliefs and aptitudes was the norm centuries ago in much of Europe. Now we are witnessing the end of a brutal dictatorship in Iraq, after a war, the total consequences of which we will not be able to fathom for some time. Maybe that country’s ethnic, tribal and religious divides will prevent true democracy as we in the West now enjoy but we hope it will evolve in the coming decades. It is also a fact that, in Anglo- Scottish history, it was the Union of the Crowns that led to further stability in our island nation, and the first real imperialistic forays as Great Britain.
Most of us would have considered Russia and China to be the last imperialists, but now the United States is making a very good job of demonstrating her super power strength. I hope she will have the maturity and wisdom to learn from the mistakes of others who have already been down that road. Dreadful, cruel, greedy psychopaths and megalomaniacs who appear to have dominated the world scene within the last 70 years have to be destroyed, be they in Europe, South East Asia, Russia, Africa or the Middle East, but one only hopes the Americans will have the honesty and generosity of spirit to achieve their goals and then allow an ancient race to find itself again in its own form of democracy, in what is considered the cradle of civilisation. Liberty and democracy are the two beacons of American belief, but they have the benefit of great wealth as a nation which naturally leads to great power. Liberty and democracy are concepts that are not yet recognised throughout most of the Middle East especially amongst those who have enjoyed considerable wealth in recent times. Yet intelligent thinkers in the Arab world consider a western version of democracy that stresses elections and free speech yet tolerates social and economic disparities, for example in health care and welfare in the United States, unhelpful to their progress. Forward-thinking Arabs want a greater chance to hold rulers to account for improvements in basic services and rights, within an Islamic tradition of consultation, non-discrimination, moderation and tolerance. I am convinced that theocracy has no place anywhere in this modern world.
Hindu scholarship, apparently, had little interest in history as such; mythology and sacred lore meant more and, thus, actually serve as the records of India’s ancient past. Indian mythology is distinguished from that of most other lands, and certainly those in the West, by the fact that it is still part of the living culture of every level or society, as I have tried to explain. Over the millennia, invaders with superior military techniques have entered the subcontinent from the north-west and have largely been assimilated into, yet influenced, the more advanced but deep-rooted culture of the peoples they conquered. India is to my mind the sleeping giant of this new century with far more promise long term than China, who currently occupies the focus of attention commercially. If India’s ancient value systems prevail and meld with the sensible desire for economic progress, she will be the colossus of the twenty-first century, but she must safeguard her wonderful status as the world’s largest democracy and work actively towards achieving social and economic parity. If ‘communalism’ or religious divides continue to be actively promoted in Indian politics it will be so tragic and regressive. Recent history has demonstrated that economic and military strength is nothing without democracy, civil liberty and tolerance between races and religions.
With intelligent and well informed people, it is possible to talk all night, but we had a very early train to catch the following morning and, besides, we had little Yash in the car asleep. The various drivers had kept an eye on her but by the time we came out she was awake and shivering, although so good and uncomplaining. As I was travelling in Martin’s jeep, I wrapped her in my pashmina and, on arriving home, carried her into the house. She was muttering away and rubbing her eyes and, finally, Annie and I were able to make out that she was upset at having missed the British ‘Embassy’ party! Sleep was indicated for us all.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Fruition of my dream
&n
bsp; We were up very early for the start of our quest to see tigers in their natural habitat. It was a bright sunny morning, with all of Delhi waking up to the detritus and let down feeling post Diwali but we were bright eyed and bushy tailed at the start of our journey. When Naveen arrived, we said our goodbyes to the household saying we would see them again in three weeks time and set off for New Delhi railway station.