Traveling, Part 1: Bangalore

When I left off, the family was – as Travis Bayer put it to me – in turmoil. It would be incorrect to stop the story there; things certainly calmed down. But at around this juncture, Chris and I took off on our own.

Our plan was to travel through southern India, where my family is from. We flew down to Bangalore with the intention of making our way back up to Delhi by train.

In Bangalore we stayed with my friend Ashwini. She has a servant named Kamala, a lady with a girl’s face and grey hair who never does what she is asked. Ashwini's family has tried to make her leave the position, but she always comes back. Kamala was intrigued by me and Chris the minute we entered. She shuffled nearby us and giggled.

Our purpose in Bangalore was mainly to attend the engagement ceremony of one of my childhood friends. Chris had purchased a long saffron kurta top and beige pyjamas for the occasion. I borrowed one of Ashwini’s saris. The engagement was in a temple on a hill. There were several Dallas families there. One aunty mistook Chris for my previous boyfriend, who is also named Chris and looks similar.

“Your boyfriend is looking different somehow,” she said to me. “Taller, I think! And did he used to wear glasses? He looks older. Maybe it is just the beard.”

I was embarrassed, so I nodded vaguely.

We left the engagement with my father. He had arrived only the day before, and the three of us were to stay in my family’s flat in Basavanagudi, a leafy neighborhood south of Bangalore’s center.

Our flat is in a building called Kumar Paradise. It has an open, black-marbled lobby where a gnarled security guard sleeps every night on a sheet laid onto the entryway floor. My father’s maternal aunt lives on the top floor of Kumar Paradise. She is my great-aunt, or Maosi, which you could pronounce mousey if you’re lazy, but should actually be mau-shy. She is the youngest of my father’s aunts, only a little older than him, and her pet name is Baby. She is my Baby Maosi.

She has a warm smile and a thick little ponytail, which is only slightly grey. She is a fantastic cook.

Chris met many members of my father’s mother’s family. He was introduced to everyone as my “friend.”

“This is my friend Chris,” I would say. “No, I don’t work with him. No he’s not in my masters program either. He’s just my friend who lives in Delhi. Temporarily, like me.”

The only thing we were clear about was that we stay in different apartments. That was our favorite fact to share.

“I live in Lajpat Nagar,” Chris would say proudly.

Two days after the engagement, we were in Maosi’s apartment, having finished a tasty lunch. My father was already downstairs in our place, and Chris and I were taking turns checking our e-mail. Our flat had no internet connection.

I went first and took a long time, which Chris claims I always do. Then Chris started to use the computer. I realized what time it was and that we had to go, so I started to hurry him.

At this, he got angry. He asked me why I hadn’t told him earlier that we had to leave.

“She always does this!” he said exasperatedly to my second cousin, Anand. “It takes her forever to check her mail and then I never can."

Anand smiled nervously.

“You can stay and check yours Chris,” he said.

“We have to go!” I said. I stood up and pouted. “Chris, we have to go.”

"Why?!" he shouted.

When Chris and I recalled it later, we decided this was the moment they all knew for sure that we weren’t just friends.

Living with servants, Part Four (drawings pending)

A storm has been brewing between Gajendar and Prasad.

The workings of it were set in place before I arrived, but the damage is only now becoming clear.

In case you don’t remember and because there are things I left out in previous posts, I’ll give some brief background on the two.

On paper, Prasad would qualify for the title, “Old Faithful.” That is because he came all the way from Bangalore to Delhi to act as my aunt’s driver, leaving behind his wife and two small girls. He is dark and smiling, and looks an awful lot like a wolf. He often claims he would beat up anyone who bothers my aunt, the twins or me, and that he thinks of us as gods, because we are his masters.

Gajendar is from a village outside of Delhi. His wife has something like a cleft palate, which he fixed by borrowing money from my aunt for an operation. He has young children, one of whom is a very clever boy. That boy speaks good English, Gajendar tells me, and will grow up to be better than him. Sometimes Gajendar yells at the twins and swats them, which I find inappropriate. He is stubborn and gets upset if even one person chooses to go out for dinner rather than eat the food he has cooked for everyone. He asks me to teach him English words.

Prasad is different. He loves his little girls, especially the way their tinny voices sound over the phone. He also loves money.

Prasad left my aunt’s service in Bangalore briefly to start up his own driving service, which operated several cars. At that time, he told me, he was able to afford gold rings on every finger and a mistress.

He took both hands off the wheel and held them up to help me imagine the rings.

That mistress ended up being his downfall. Somehow, she managed to take all of his money, and he was forced to return to my aunt for his old job and paycheck. That was when he realized that if he wants to keep wealth and happiness, he must properly worship both my aunt and his family. Mistresses, he said, are only meant to tempt.

Sometimes Prasad asks me to buy him fantastical things, like the best cell phone in America or a big black Mercedes. He laughs after he says it, but I always worry that maybe he wants me to try.

I have not yet learned exactly why Gajendar hates Prasad, but Prasad is clear about his feelings. He believes that something is wrong with Gajendar’s brain, which he indicates to me whenever he can by twisting his finger into his temple and pointing in Gajendar’s direction with his other hand.

My aunt was in Beijing for the closing ceremony of the Olympics, during which time she left the house and children in the care of Gajendar, Prasad, Ishvar and Dhanvir. That is when Gajendar and Prasad began to fight.

Strange things started to happen soon after.

Each week a new hole turned up in one of my aunt’s pieces of clothing. Gajendar is in charge of the ironing. He couldn’t remember making any of the holes, but the explanation was put forward that he leaves the iron flat when he rushes to pick up the phone. Prasad supplied the explanation.

A few clothes went missing. By now my aunt was worried that the servants were conspiring to kill her. She insisted no one iron the clothes except her.

The day of the twins’ school show, I came home in the afternoon. Prasad was at the front door holding a purple water bottle. We exchanged greetings and he asked me where I had been.

I told him I had been at Chris’ house. “Krish!” Prasad replied.

Krish is the name of a superhero character in a popular Bollywood movie.

He asked me if I wanted any water. I said, sure, why not, and he tossed me the bottle. I went inside, straight to my aunt’s room where I sat with the water bottle until it was time to leave for the performance. The twins had to be at school early, so they left before us.

On the way home from the show, Chirayu complained that he was thirsty. Chirantan had a bottle of water, but he didn’t.

“He must not have sent it, madam,” Prasad said in Kannada from the wheel.

It had been Gajendar’s task to pack the twins’ bags with a change of clothes, apples and water.

“My god, these servants, they want to kill all of us,” Prathibha Aunty said. “How could he not have packed it?”

“I don’t know, madam,” Prasad said. “It’s not right.”

“I've told you so many times Chirayu, he's not your friend, he's your cook!" Prathibha Aunty said. "You laugh and laugh with him in the kitchen and he doesn't even do his job!"

Chirayu was quiet.

"He doesn't even iron anymore," Prathibha Aunty said. "What does he do all day?”

“He doesn’t do anything,” Chirayu said, turning to me. “Just sleeps and eats.”

“No he doesn't,” Chris whispered from my other side.

I turned to Chirayu. “Gajendar does so much," I said quietly.

“Just sleeps and eat!” Chirayu said. “Mama!” He tapped Prathibha Aunty’s shoulder. “He doesn’t do anything – all he does is sleep and eat."

She said she was going to fire Gajendar. Then she asked Prasad to pass back Chirantan’s water bottle, so she could give it to Chirayu. He did.

“I saw one just like this,” she said, when it was in her hands.

She turned to me.

“You had it.”

I looked at the purple water bottle. She was right.

“Prasad gave it to me,” I said. I was remembering. “I came to the front door, and he offered it to me.”

“No, no, madam,” Prasad said from the front. “That was a different one.”

“That was the one, Prasad,” I said.

“No madam, it wasn’t this purple one,” he said.

“It was, Aunty,” I said.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “They all want to kill me.”

Sad things

Chris’ mother wrote an email to us pointing out the date of our last posting. She is funny and gentle that way.

At least once a day I think about the blog and how I haven’t been updating it, even though I promised myself this wouldn’t happen. But instead of talking about how horrible I am at being disciplined, I will just try to be more disciplined.

The latest news that everyone knows about is to do with the attacks in Mumbai. They were terrible, as we all know by now.

In my office, where I used to sit next to a TV, everyone stood around me and watched the massacre. They debated whether war should be waged on Pakistan. Only one woman said it should. She was dismissed by the crowd, and even insulted. People asked her how an educated woman could say such a thing.

On the TV, a reporter told us where Sabina Saikia was. She was on the sixth floor, the reporter said.

Most of the people standing around me knew who Sabina was. Some of them were even friends with her. Sabina was one of the best food critics in the country. She was funny and loud, and a good friend to many people, it seems.

“Friends who are in touch with Sabina through text messages say she is hiding under a bed,” the reporter said.

“Can she even fit under a bed?” said the man who sits across from me. He wears a different colored turban every day and trims his beard so neatly it looks like a solid thing. He is always making jokes.

Someone told him to shut up.

A few people moved in closer to the TV. Pictures of Sabina flashed on the screen. In one, she was wearing a red life vest and standing by a kayak. She had a big smile on.

The next day I read that Sabina had died. One of the terrorists threw a hand grenade at her while she was under the bed. The media was criticized for broadcasting her location as a good story.

That day our building became a different place. We got frisked at the door and could not move from floor to floor without ID cards, which many of us – like myself – had never been assigned. To get into the cafeteria, I had to prove to the Nepali guard that I was a valid employee. I called several supervisors, and finally one of them answered and vouched for me.

When we sat at lunch, my friend told me that our building is on a terrorist hitlist.

“Somebody here published an investigative piece that pissed them off,” she said.

Our building is drab and gray. It is strange that terrorists know about it. It is called Videocon Tower.

When I came home, Chirantan was busy writing a letter to Santa Clause. Everyone else was working on my aunt’s festival.

Every so often Chirantan would look up and announce that his letter was not just for him, but for the country. The few people around nodded, but didn’t seem to care. I was checking my email.

I read an article by Amitav Ghosh on why Mumbai is not India’s 9/11. I sent it to my aunt.

At that moment, she came home. She was in a gold sari and wore chunks of turquoise around her neck.

“Mama I wrote a letter to Santa Clause,” Chirantan yelled. “For me and for my country!”

“Good job darling,” she said.

On Salon, readers had written mean things to Camille Paglia. They didn’t like her description of Sarah Palin as a be-bopper.

“What is this?” Aunty said. “This is disgusting.”

I turned in my swivel chair. Prathibha Aunty was handing the letter to Arshiya Aunty. Her eyebrows were raised and she shook her head at me and said, “What has happened to the world?”

Arshiya Aunty began to read the letter out loud.

“For Christmas this year, Santa, please send the following things: 100 AK 47s, 100 nuclear bombs, 100,000 soldiers.”

“Not for me,” Chirantan said placidly. “For India.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Prathibha Aunty said. “Little boys shouldn’t say such things!”

She turned to me.

“Mallika, please talk to him. What do I say?”

I took the letter. There it was. 100 AK 47s. And some more things I'd never heard of, like "salted bombs."

I told Chirantan that the terrorists are poor, and that they need clean food and water.

“We don’t need to kill them, we need to feed them!” Arshiya Aunty said.

“Not for me,” he said. “It’s for India.”

“Do you know how Sabina Aunty died?” Prathibha Aunty said. Her voice was soft. “She was crouched under the bed texting everyone saying, ‘I don’t know what to do. They’re in my bathroom.’” Her voice had become louder. “And then one of those terrorists threw a grenade at her and she blew up right there, under the bed! Is that what we need, Chirantan? Is that what India needs? More grenades?”

Chirantan nodded. He flattened the letter out on the table, smoothing the parts where his mother and Arshiya Aunty had grasped it too tightly.

“I’ll write another letter,” he said.

Hello from India

Hey everybody. It's me Chris. I'm living in India, and I'm writing you this blog post to tell you all about what's going on here. I don't think I'm as good at stories as Mallika, so I'm going to start out by telling you about where I live. Maybe after warming up with that, I can tell you a story.

I live in a section of town called Lajpat Nagar 1. It's in South Delhi, which is where most of the nice parts of town are, that aren't in the suburbs. At least that's my current impression. Lajpat Nagar, in its current incarnation, was settled around the time of Partition by Punjabis fleeing parts of their state that had been given over to Pakistan. So we have a restaurant called Raunaq-e-Punjab (Glourious Punjab) downstairs, serving standard North Indian fare. They seem to have about 20 employees - I'm really not sure why they need that many, but this is something of a theme in India. They, like most of the other restaurants in the city, offer free delivery. They seem like basically nice guys, but it's hard to communicate because they speak Hindi and we speak English; sometimes my roommate Jon and I suspect they are laughing at us.

I live in a double in the top floor of a four story building with my new friend Jon. Like Mallika, he went to Medill Journalism School, and sort of like Mallika, is now working for India Today. He's a very nice guy. Maybe Mallika should tell you a story about him. Below us what seems to be a regular upper-middle class Indian family. Below them, two businesses seem to share apartment space - I don't know what they do.

Right outside the house there's a large area walled off for Metro construction. Delhi is hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and so they're working very hard to complete their metro system by then. I am told it is going very well, but I have seen little evidence of this personally. A few days after I got here, a couple of guys dug a giant hole right outside our front door, exposing a pipe. A week ago, I returned and the hole was filled in, and the space that used to have a hole in it was now a little hill. This is the only sign of metro construction I have seen.

About 100 yards from my house, past the construction corridor, is a market called Defence Colony Flyover Market. You can see a little bit of it in the picture of me posted below, but only a little bit. I get the feeling that it would be a lot more popular, but many of its stores are now hard to access because of Metro construction. The entire market is located beneath a highway. It's got several restaurants, some travel agencies, a couple of liquor stores (there are 5 brands of beer here, and they all taste the same), a sari store, and a few business that I still haven't figured out what they do. The only restaurant that I've tried yet is Nirula's, an Indian fast-food style restaurant. In India, fast-food restaurants are much classier. They're relatively clean, relatively expensive, and it's safe to drink their water. T.G.I.Friday's is more expensive here than it is in the United States, and it's where everybody likes to go to party.

On the south side of Lajpat Nagar is Lajpat Nagar Central Market, where auto-rickshaw drivers always assume I want to go when I tell them "Lajpat Nagar". It's like a combination of a mall and a flea market, the size of a city block. Fancy stores selling wedding clothes or high end electronics or jewelry are situated next to unnamed stores that sell a random assortment of things at heavily negotiable prices. On the south side of the market is a movie theatre; last time I was there, it was advertising "Dostana," an Indian remake of "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." Nobody else seemed as excited about seeing this movie as I was.

I hope that everybody in America is doing well. Please forgive me for not contacting anybody at all basically. I hope to convince everyone to come visit us in Delhi.

My ride to work

I usually take the train to work, but the other day I took an auto rickshaw and snapped pictures during the ride. I thought I’d put them up and explain them, even though they are not drawings.

Chris is walking with me to get an auto. He lives near heavy metro construction, which you can see to the right. There is a gaping hole outside of his building. It is not clear what it is for, but it does reveal a pipe.
The metro, which will extend throughout the city, is clean and efficient and scheduled to be completed in 2010.

This is from inside the rickshaw. You can't see it very clearly, but the driver has pictures of Hindu gods pasted in front of him. The one to the right is of baby Krishna.

In this picture, a man has a kerchief tied around his face to keep out the dust and smog. I should probably do the same.

The birds rise up in large numbers in this city, like in any other. But in Delhi, which is full of fog in the winter, the movement of the birds is a good, sharp swell to focus on.

I like how easily people move against traffic. Chris and I took a bike rickshaw the other day, and our driver biked on the wrong side of the highway, against very fast cars and trucks. He was off to the side, but it was still exciting.

A pink brick building with blue shutters that looks like a mosque. Pink is a cheerful color.

This Hindu temple is pink with blue shutters too.

The Indian version of GQ is not very Indian. Indian Vogue recently did a bridal issue "starring Victoria Beckham as the Indian bride."

There are so many trees in Delhi.

As long as this tree stays marked by the government, it cannot be cut down. There are many such lucky trees.

Gas stations, like coffee chains, look the same all over the world.

We are in a traffic jam. They don't happen as often in Delhi as in Bombay or Bangalore, but if you are riding in an auto, with its open sides, you do feel stuck.

A little girl takes advantage of the traffic to beg. After stopping at this car, she performed a few cartwheels with a hoop around her waist. Then she came to me. I refused, though I wanted to give her something. She cartwheeled away.

This is India Gate, a monument to the Indian soldiers who died fighting in the British Army. They fought in World War I for the Indian Empire and in the Anglo-Afghan wars. The last line carved into the top of the gate is impossible to read without binoculars, as it is obscured by the protruding ledge below. Chris and I observed that fact as we stood there one night, with people trying to sell us twirling lights.

A reflecting pool across from India Gate.

Good view of a shady road.

Two women work with road construction materials. It looks like they are loading gravel into a wheelbarrow.

This is a mural on the side of the National Philatelic Museum in Delhi. Philately is the study and collection of stamps. Many newspapers here also report on chess in the sports section, which is the other famous quiet pursuit.

I don't know anyone here with an electric dryer.

This is the building I work in, called Videocon Tower. It houses most major media outlets. I work on the fifth floor, where blown up magazine covers like Indian Cosmopolitan and Indian Good Housekeeping line the elevator doors.

These are just a few of the bikes people have ridden in to work. I wanted to get a scooter for my time here, but friends in the U.S. indicated they didn't feel I was up to steering myself, and asked me not to.

The disappearance of Ishvar

Ishvar has now officially disappeared. It began on Saturday night, when he asked permission to sleep at a friend’s house. He promised he’d be back in the morning to make breakfast. He is the cook, after all.

Sunday afternoon he remained vanished, but my aunt welcomed the absence, as it’s very rare for her to have the apartment to herself. By evening she was worried, and asked Gajendar to make calls to find out what was going on.

While Gajendar sorted it out, my aunt, Chris and I went to the twins’ annual school function. Chirayu was playing a Kashmiri papier maché seller. He and Chirantan call it “paper mash.” Chirantan was in the choir.

The show was a big trial for Chirayu, who speaks quickly and without articulating. His teacher instructed him to practice hard at his lines. When he was on stage, I became very nervous in a way I did not expect, and then he said the lines and they were perfect!

“See this elephant I have to sell!” he yelled. “It is hand made!”

Chirantan was very sweet. He looked distracted throughout the show while he scouted the room for his mother. When he found us, his face got bright and he sang louder.

The finale began with two little girls singing Imagine in front of the stage. The lights dimmed, and all of the hundreds of children who had performed streamed through the aisles with little electric candles in their hands. They sang as they took their places on the stage. It was dark, but full of pinpricks of light and little voices.


We left in a good mood.

At home, Gajendar told us there was no word on Ishvar. He was still gone.

When I came back from work today there was a new cook in his place.

Chris worries he may have instigated the escape when he jokingly chastised Ishvar for giving him an empty glass instead of a full one. “Kali hai, Ishvar!” Chris shouted when the glass was placed in front of him.

That happened the day of Ishvar’s disappearance, but Chris and I both know it’s not what caused it.

I have heard from some of the other workers in the house that Ishvar had always planned to go to America. I like to imagine that's what he's done.

Yes, Maloney! Mal-ris is reunited!

Chris is here, and it's great. His Hindi is more precise than mine, but I speak more often. We have had several adventures already, and though I’m behind, they’ll all be up here pretty soon.

I keep asking Chris if he will post. He says yes.