But as I haltingly begin to use the phrases, Rachel laughs, Abraham startles, taxi drivers stare at me and the local beggars retreat in shock. I ask the ABC office researcher – a young funky woman called Simi – what I’m doing wrong and try out a few sentences on her. She tries to stop herself laughing but her eyes twinkle and her shoulders shake.
‘Sarah, the thing is this. Harry Lal is teaching you formal Hindi and Urdu, no-one speaks it here. You should speak Hindustani. You are being too polite.’
I feel like an idiot. I’ve been talking a language that died out with the British Raj. When I thought I was asking a taxi driver to take me somewhere I was really saying, ‘Kind sir, would thou mind perhaps taking me on a journey to this shop and I’d be offering you recompense of this many rupees to do so, thank you frightfully humbly.’ And I’ve been greeting filthy naked street urchins with, ‘Excuse me, oh soul one, but I’m dreadfully sorry, I don’t appear to have any change, my most humble of apologies.’
I carefully and respectfully suggest to Hari Lal-ji that perhaps I could learn the informal way of talking and perhaps some street Hindi.
His cup of chai clatters into the saucer, he pulls himself up to his full height of four feet ten and sharply and sternly states, ‘Madam, please, these people of Delhi are uneducated and rude, we will not speak like filth, we shall speak properly, as befitting your station, I will not talk like that, I absolutely refuse.’
There begins a battle of wills that keeps me from communicating with the locals for months to come.
When I ask him how to tell a taxi driver he’s ripping me off, he suggests a phrase that translates as: ‘Is your taxi made of gold, dear man?’
When I want to tell a man to stop staring at me, he suggests: ‘Haven’t you a mother or sister at home?’
And when I ask what I should have said to the man in the visa office, he suggests: ‘You are making my moustache droop.’
‘But, Hari-ji,’ I protest, ‘I don’t have a moustache.’
‘No, madam, but it means “you are threatening my honour”, moustaches must always twirl upwards.’
As Hari sticks to his principles, fewer and fewer students stick with him. He’s a relic of a forgotten India, a gentle, congenial land of courtly poets, and he’s slightly lost in the increasingly crude and brutal present. I keep having lessons to protect him from the world and because I like his company. He even encourages me to get fit and get out.
‘Sarah-ji, life for an Indian woman is like a frog in a well, you should jump out before you forget how.’
But getting out is not easy.
It’s almost spring and a weak sun is striving to lift the winter smog. After taking three sets of anti-amoebae antibiotics, I’ve gained some weight and strength and I want to walk. Rachel tries to talk me out of it, Abraham wants to drive me, and Lakan doesn’t want to open the gate. When I finally get outside, I’m only halfway down the street when the General’s driver pulls up beside me in his car, beseeching me to get in.
‘The General doesn’t like madams walking, please get in, please, madam, it’s not looking good for the house.’
‘No, I’m walking, don’t worry, it’s okay.’
‘No, please, madam, please, pleeeeeeeazzze.’
I’ve learnt to ignore. But the driver won’t give up. He cruises behind me for three blocks, waiting for me to change my mind.
A rickshaw rattles up.
‘Yes?’ smiles the driver as he sticks his head around the wind-screen.
‘No,’ I snap.
He drives ahead one metre and maintains speed in front of me.
A taxi pulls up.
‘Yes?’ the driver grins.
‘No!’
His face falls and he drives beside me. I now have an escort convoy and am exercising in a pall of black smoke. I give up and get in the back seat of the General’s car. The driver smiles proudly, chauffeurs me around for twenty minutes and takes me home.
A compound conference is held and a yoga teacher is hired to help me work off some steam.
Yogesh is not what I’d expect from someone whose name translates as ‘King of Yoga’. He’s less a stretchy sadhu and more a King of Camp – a pouting, pooncy, slim spunk in a polyester body shirt and tight pants that show off a great little behind. Yogesh’s voice is exactly the same as the gay salesman on ‘Are You Being Served?’ but with an Indian accent. I loved yoga in Australia and had a great teacher who taught gentle moves and deep breathing, but Yogesh’s style is less slow stretches and more Jane Fonda aerobics combined with British Army calisthenics and a high-octane bitch and gossip session. In Yogorobics we do leg squats, leg circles, pushups, sit-ups, back-bends, toe points, tummy tucks and repeat each ten times. When I try to make it a bit Indian and spiritual by putting on a mantra CD, Yogesh flips and flusters.
‘Saaaaarrrrrrrah, I hate this stuff, it’s too religious, have you got anything funky?’
Yogesh’s favourite soundtracks are Café del Mar, the Cream Nightclub collection and his own voice. Jonathan is his favourite subject.
‘Jonaaaathhhhhhaaaaaaaaan (giggle giggle), lift your buttocks up, loverly, Jonaaaaathhhhhhhaan (giggle giggle). Oh you are stretchy for a boy, Jonaaaaaatttthhhhhannn. Don’t push it too hard, you don’t want to strain yourself. Ooh loverly.’
If Jonathan’s away or busy, Yogesh goes into girlie gossip mode, giving me a running commentary about all his other expat ‘ladies’.
‘The Bhutanese ladies are sooo skinny, Sarah, the Singapore ladies are toooo fat, the French girls are too thin, and they always talk about this and that, and as for those Punjabis, I won’t teach them, they are so crude and flabby, and they have no style, no style at all.’
I stretch, pant and puff out ‘really?’ a lot.
Yogesh is Bengali. Born in Calcutta, his parents died when he was young and he was sent to a private Christian boarding school near Delhi.
‘I was so lucky to keep my name, the non-fee paying orphans were converted and re-christened Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It was drrreeadful and, you know, really, on weekends they would take us to the village and tell us to bribe the people to turn to Christ by giving them chocolate milk. I don’t even like chocolate, you know.’
Hence Yogesh is anti-organised religion. But while he may not go to temple, he is a good Hindu; he exercises the body, doesn’t eat meat or dairy or any foods that make the genitals hot, like onion and garlic. And he knows the philosophy of yoga and follows it.
The poses we do in the west are only one miniscule part of yoga. Yoga is a Hindu philosophy of attaining super-consciousness that can involve work, breath control, meditation and asceticism. The stretches are asanas or poses that were copied from animals and compiled in the Veda scriptures written hundreds of years before the time of Christ. But Yogesh says it’s best to start slowly on the path to enlightenment.
‘Make the body healthy and the soul will follow,’ he chants.
‘What soul?’ I tease. Yogesh giggles.
‘Oh Sarrrrrrrah, everyone has a soul, just let it breathe and relax before the next crrrash of karma.’
‘Karma crashes?’
‘No, you’ll crash into karma. One-minute tra la la la tra la la la, and the next minute crrrassh bang smash, so you need to be fit, now pant with me: OohhAhhOOhhAhhOohhAhh.’
‘I’ve had my crash, Yogesh, my brush with death.’
‘Ah yes, but your bang and smash are still to come.’ Yogesh smiles and his eyes sparkle. This yogi is not bringing me inner peace.
CHAPTER FOUR
Three Weddings and a Funeral
New Delhi’s winters are short. By February the smog has gone, the shadows shorten and shawls are abandoned as spring springs. This is the season for love to bloom, but preferably after the wedding.
Sunday mornings we sit sipping chai and laugh at the newspaper’s marriage classifieds. Razoo drops in to teach me how to interpret the spouse ads.
‘Tall’ means above five feet five.
‘Handsome groo
m with green card’ means butt-ugly brute with an American work visa.
‘Homely girl with wheatish complexion’ is an ugly girl with fair skin.
‘Broadminded match wanted’ means the person on offer is divorced.
‘Extremely beautiful girl wanted’ means a vain but probably funny-looking bloke wants a babe better than Miss Universe.
‘Caste no bar’ means we are lying.
‘Wanting a homely wife’ means a mummy’s boy and his family want a slave who’ll cook, clean and massage their feet every night.
Razoo reads, wobbling her head like a multi-jointed puppet, throwing her arms around like a mime artist and twisting and turning her fingers like a Balinese dancer. She is furious grace.
‘Sarrrrrrrrrrrah, these drrrreadful boys get beautiful girls and it drrrrives me mad.’ (When Razoo’s upset she rolls her ‘r’ much more.) She summarises her thoughts on marriage with the Punjabi adage ‘Look at God’s carelessness, that donkeys always get the cream.’ Razoo knows many women like Padma and she’s frustrated that brides should be fair-skinned and gorgeous with a couple of degrees, a high-paying job and a big fat dowry, while most grooms should just be ready, willing and, hopefully, able. I try to calm her down.
‘Razoo, don’t be upset, you have a fiancé.’
She grimaces.
‘I’ve got to get out for a while, I’m going to New York to work, they love the ethnic thing. I’ll get a great job and trade on being a poor and put down Indian woman. I’ll get married later, maybe next year.’
She leaves for the Big Apple and I lose my only girlie mate.
But luckily it’s the wedding season and Delhi is becoming a party town with plenty of opportunities to meet and greet. White horses with gold saddles canter through the traffic, baggy grey elephants with pink-painted trunks lumber along major roads, and houses are lit up like fairy kingdoms. Restaurants are full of awkward first dates chaperoned by older sisters and toothless grannies, and the shops are crowded with women buying saris and gold jewellery and silver toe rings.
Jonathan and I explore Wedding Street in Old Delhi. It’s a winding narrow alleyway smelling of sweet onion, rotting garbage, boiling milk and acrid urine, and crammed with cycle-rickshaws tangled up in pedestrians. Tiny alcoves are stacked to the ceiling with crowns, hand-made invitations, Indian sweets, gaudy red and gold silk saris and lengas (skirts), silk suits and turbans, tiny lights, plastic and wooden bangles, necklaces made of money, miles of fabric and mountains of gold jewellery. A man squats to feed old wedding saris into a fire while an old lady watches her past burn; she will collect the heat-resistant gold to decorate her grandchild’s dowry box. Gold is a girl’s best friend – an Indian woman’s social security, insurance and alimony if abandoned or divorced. The street’s finery and the frantic fuss are overwhelming and I understand why Razoo wants to escape all the work involved in getting married.
Moolchand dances on our doorstep giggling and jiggling as he hands us a card emblazoned with the Hindu swastika. It’s our first wedding invitation.
‘Madam, I’m veery haaaappy, soooo happy.’
He claps his hands and wiggles some more; his grin beaming so wide his face must hurt.
‘My daurrrrrrtttttter marriage is coming, I have found good boy who has a house, a good govERNment job, he doesn’t dreenk or smoke and is verrrrry young and sooo handsome, you should see, sooo handsome.’
Moolchand is now jumping, dancing, clapping his hands and head-wobbling so much that I’m getting dizzy just watching.
‘Is your daughter happy?’
He stops his jig, stands still, cocks his head to the side and looks confused.
‘Of course.’ He shrugs his shoulders and gestures at Rachel as if to ask ‘is this a trick question?’.
Rachel shuts the door and tells me it’s possible that Moolchand’s daughter wasn’t asked if she was happy, but she most likely would be. She’d have met the man and trusted her father’s choice.
The day before the big night, though, we see Moolchand’s grin is gone. His face is shut, his eyes are red and he hangs his head with grief. The father and the bride have been up all night weeping, for tomorrow she will leave her home and live with her husband’s family.
‘They will be her family now, my daughter will liiiive with them, coooook for them, love fooor them, not my daughter anymore.’ He sniffs as he melodramatically collapses onto the office couch and pounds the pillow.
The following evening, the ABC family leave together for the wedding in a jolly mood. Abraham is driving, and Rachel and Mary sit primly, dressed in their gold jewellery and best silk saris. Jonathan is in a suit and I wear a shawl over a western evening dress that’s a bit too sexy for an Indian party. We travel for two hours alongside rickshaws heading for weddings all over the city and bulging with entire orchestras – bottoms, arms, legs and trumpets stick out and bass drums balance on top.
The wedding we’re going to is to be relatively small; only five hundred of Moolchand’s closest friends, relatives and neighbours are attending and they are all there buzzing with excitement as we get out of the car. The entire street is blocked off with a long white tent erected along its length. At the entrance a massive mechanical peacock welcomes us by opening and closing its fan-like tail in a shuddering motion; powered by a huge noisy generator belching at its rear, the auspicious bird looks like it’s farting black smoke. Glittering plastic chandeliers hang from the roof, garlands of bright orange flowers are twisted around every pole and two long blocks of row upon row of red velvet chairs face a stage where two gold thrones await the couple. Moolchand must have spent a fortune on showing off for the neighbours.
For an hour Jonathan and I sip warm Coke, surrounded and stared at by a huge circle of guests that jabber and comment on our each and every movement. Rachel listens in and translates: apparently they like my shawl but think my hair is far too short and I’m too skinny; Jonathan is very tall but far too young to be a bureau chief. We’re saved from inquiries about our marriage and childless condition by a great commotion at the tent entrance.
The groom is approaching.
Uncomfortably lopsided upon his white horse, he’s dressed in white silk, topped with a gold tinsel crown and his neck is garlanded with a necklace of money. The horse stops at the tent entrance and ten men stand below it struggling to hold up massive neon strobe lights that bathe the groom in glare. His baby face sweats with the heat but is frozen in terror. The wedding band – twelve men in white starched uniforms with red and gold epaulets, cummerbunds, pith helmets and grand moustaches – tumble out of a rickshaw and start blowing and banging on their instruments.
It’s the worst music I’ve ever heard; a discordant, anti-rhythmic blast of twelve different tunes in the key of off. Somehow the groom’s family finds a beat to dance to, and swirl their saris and suits in a circle around the boy, gesturing and yelling to him in Hindi, ‘Stay with us, don’t go in.’
Moolchand’s family comes to the front of the tent and start screaming back, ‘Come on, time to get married.’
The bride’s family try to pull the groom’s family towards the tent while the band blasts faster and faster and at a higher and higher pitch. It looks like there’s going to be a fight. But Rachel tells me not to worry; it’s a ritualised performance and all in good humour. Indians are great actors (if a little melodramatic).
Of course the dutiful boy, his family and his friends finally enter the tent and the horse bolts off to the next event. The boy, who’s aged about twenty, is repeatedly blessed in a huge huddle at the door of Moolchand’s house; the women anoint his forehead with sandalwood, throw rice into his hair and chant up a storm. Moolchand pushes me to the front.
‘See how verrrry handsome he is, madam?’
‘Yes, Moolchand, very good-looking and he has very pale skin.’
I’ve said the right thing; the father of the bride cheers and claps with glee.
The guy is cute but he’s freaked, caked in sandalwood,
green with fright and reeling from the clouds of incense, as his drunk friends hysterically jostle him while somehow managing to balance sacks of presents for Moolchand’s family on their heads.
The bride emerges into the melee. Her baby face is heavily made up, her body weighed down by tradition, expectation, a red and gold sari and tons of bracelets, nose rings, earrings, necklaces, head-pieces and rings on her fingers and toes. She keeps her head bowed but tries to take a covert peak at her husband before they’re jostled and pushed onto the stage above a mosh pit of blessings.
We royal white employers are crowd surfed towards the front and pulled onto the platform by Moolchand’s bouncers. The punters roar as we stand behind the thrones and make the V sign above the couple’s heads for photos. When we get down, everyone follows us to the wedding buffet to watch us eat; the bride and groom are left forlorn and forgotten. Worried we are stealing the newlyweds’ thunder, we give them an envelope of cash, wave to our fans and leave. Most of the guests are also heading home – the actual wedding ceremony won’t take place until five in the morning; the auspicious but anti-social time selected by the pundit (priest).
In the morning, still sleepy from the night before, we are handed another invite. This is for a love match wedding. Simi from the ABC office is marrying Vivek, a freelance filmmaker with a goatee who often comes to pick her up from work on his motorbike. Simi is always giggly, fun-loving and friendly and I begin to drop by her office daily to hear her tales of wedding organisation delivered with a dimpled grin, a tinkle of her earrings and a banging of bangles on her desk.
So far things have been going well – the venue is booked, the invites are printed, her mother has bought the jewellery, and hundreds of forms have been filled out for the bureaucrats. But a week before the ceremony Simi comes into work less and less, then not at all. She’s been missing for two days when Jonathan expresses concern, but no-one in the office seems to find this unusual or unprofessional; it’s assumed she’s too busy with preparations.
Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure Page 6