Mal-ris in India

Traveling, Part 1: Bangalore

2009-04-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-12-12T01:56:00.000-08:00

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 talks about his children too. He has two little girls, and he tells me he loves the way their voices sound small over the phone. But there is something in Prasad that is not in Gajendar. You could call it canniness. It is in his face, and in the topic of his conversation. His favorite subjects are all material: cars, jewelry, the good life.

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, so only I could hear.

I turned to Chirayu. “Gajendar does so much," I told him.

Later Chris and I both wondered at ourselves, that we hadn't been louder in our defense. Peace seemed important to maintain in the car, but mainly we were scared.

“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

2008-12-10T03:42:00.000-08:00

Chris’ mother wrote an email to us pointing out the date of our last posting. She was making a point.

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. 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 makes jokes too often for them to all be funny.

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?,” as if she really wanted to know the answer.

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. It was all there, in his little boy handwriting.

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!" She pushed her fingers out to mimic an explosion. "So what do you think we need, Chirantan? Do you think India needs grenades?”

Chirantan looked only a little ruffled. He 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

2008-11-12T23:39:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

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 here, which isn't unusual. But Delhi is full of fog in the winter, and the movement of the birds is one of the few sharp things to see in the sky.

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.

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 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.

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

2008-11-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-11T11:12:00.001-08:00

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.

Bombay for Diwali

2008-11-11T10:40:00.001-08:00

I went to Bombay for Diwali. My grandfather lives there with my paternal uncle and aunt – Jaithirth Chickappa and Neelambari Aunty, and sometimes with my paternal aunt and uncle – Bharati Athe and Manohar Uncle, who stay nearby.

To get from the airplane to the Bombay airport, I had to take a tarmac bus. We made the drive over and stopped at the airport’s glass doors only to find that the bus door was stuck shut. Inside the bus, everyone crowded forward to see what was happening, and it became hard to breathe. The crowd also made it difficult for the two men hunched in the bus’ entryway trying to unstick the door. They didn’t have much room.

By now I was sweating and staring at the woman’s ponytail in front of me. It was the only place I could look. Her hair was held by a black scrunchie that looked like a flower made out of human hair.

After about ten minutes a cry went up. The men yelled something to the driver, and he began driving the path back to the plane. When we reached it, four men crowded around the outside of the bus with some large tool. I couldn’t identify it because I still had little room in which to move. They managed to unstick the door, and we drove back to the airport with it open. Now everyone pushed to the rear of the bus so no one would fall out.

I went to Bombay primarily because it was Diwali, and my cousin Raghavendra would be home from boarding school. But there was another reason. My grandfather is turning 90 soon. It is not clear what the exact date of his birth is, as we are celebrating it several times over the next few months. One of the explanations floated to me on our extravagance is that my grandfather prefers it this way. He will receive many shirts over the course of his birthday year, and he loves shirts.

His love for shirts is not equal. He prefers worn ones. If he spots a particularly good one on any one of us, he pulls its sleeve with his fingers and says, “You must condemn this to me.”

That means we should give it to him, but we rarely do.

Thatha received two shirts this Diwali – one, a bright yellow khadi cotton number from Chickappa and Neelambari Aunty, and the other, an exact copy in white with candy red stripes from me. I don’t know what Athe and Manohar Uncle had for him, but I don’t think it was a shirt.

He complained to me about not being given more. His daughter-in-law and daughter should have presented him with their own gifts, rather than claimed their husband’s. And Raghav, the youngest grandchild, surely had the means by now to produce something of his own.

For his part, he gave us all equivalent amounts of money to spend as we wished.

I gave books to everyone but Thatha. Collections of poetry and novels went to my uncles and aunts. For Raghav, I selected Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, specifically because it is sad.

Raghav has embraced sadness in his final years of high school. To him, it is more profound than happiness, which he calls “jingoistic." He has a bright and shiny face, but when he points out the Joseph Conrad quotation he neatly penned onto a sheet of paper in the dining room, he does it with tragedy in his eyes.

At lunch he brought up the phrase, “cellar door,” which – as it goes in Raghav’s latest favorite movie, Donnie Darko – is one of the most pleasing sets of words in the language. My uncle considered it for awhile, rolling the consonants on his tongue, and then said the whole thing was foolish.

Given Raghav’s current tastes, I recommended we watch Fight Club.

“It’s a very American college movie,” I told Raghav, who is preparing applications to U.S. schools.

At one of the darkest points, Ed Norton is shaking awake his delusion and searching the country for his other self. He encounters a bartender with a chemical burn. Raghav and I held our breath. Thatha stuck his head through the door.

It was 2 AM by then. We were in the room beside Thatha’s, but that probably wasn’t what woke him, as the walls are fairly thick. More likely he had gone to the bathroom and noticed the noise on his way back.

I went to the door.

“Hi Thatha,” I said.

He encircled my wrist with his fingers.

“Why are you still up?” he asked.

“Just watching a movie,” I said.

“You must be punished,” he said. “Ramji has sent an email punishing you.”

Then he shuffled away.

The holiday season, Part Two

2008-10-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

After our Eid lunch, we proceeded to the next event, an Eid dinner at the princess’ house.

Princesses are by definition young – not yet fully-grown, because if they were, they'd be queens. All the princesses I've read about sing and twirl, and are small enough to be picked up when rescued.

So this princess seemed all wrong at first. She's old and fat. Her teeth are stained, with black gunk between each one. She has grey skin and her bouffant seems to have been kept up like that for decades.

When people exclaimed, “Hello, Princess!” they sounded mean.

But then, as it turned out, she smiled. Her eyes changed more than her mouth. They were wet and blissful; she was different. She had just been woken up or doped or, more likely, didn't know of anything in the world that needed to be looked at very seriously.

Hair kept falling out of her bouffant into her eyes, and I thought, but how could she ever take it down to fix it? What servant today could put it back up?
She glided around the party like that, not acknowledging anyone by name, just sort of noting that we were all there with her, with the plates and paintings on her walls. She showed us the food made with butter and cream and rich things that would make any princess fat after sixty years.

She smiled and licked her black teeth and chewed her paan, and I remembered a fact from a book. That in old times, the delicacy was fed to royal men and women by servants in silver shoes, and back then, a princess who knew how to make good paan was the greatest prize for a prince. It put that same bliss behind his eyes that the princess has. And it stained his teeth.

I understood it then. She wasn't a failure of a princess - she was just a princess grown old!

The egg dish in the corner is a specialty made only in this house - someone whispered to me. In no other square inch of the world can one taste such perfectly slimy golden eggs.

Opposite the eggs sat a woman with black hair. She wore one piece of jewelry, a ruby held on her forehead by a string of pearls that clipped into her hair.

Devyani Rana - I’d read about her.

She would have been the Crown Princess of Nepal. Prince Dipendra loved her and planned to marry her, but his family disapproved because of an ancient dispute. He threw a fit one night at his parents' party. He was drunk. They sent him to his room and he returned moments later with two German guns.

He killed nearly all of them, except his mother and brother and some others who hid under an overturned couch. His mother found him later in the garden and that is where he killed her and his brother. He walked a little further and then shot himself.

It sounds like the story of the trained Mako shark. He was once made to jump 20 feet, Chirantan tells me - not an impossible task for an animal known to leap into boats and eat all the passengers. Three trainers thought they could control this particular Mako and tell him when to jump, and in fact they did. On his way down he killed all of them.

Maybe the prince was wild as a shark and should never have been told what to do.

For two days, he was the reigning King of Nepal. He was in a coma. The remaining members of his family did not tell anyone what had happened. As King he could not be charged with murder. The law said he couldn't. And so as long as he lived in a coma, he was innocent.

When he died, his brother took over and told the world the news. This brother had always been unpopular, and the rumors went around the country that he had killed his family and let the dead Crown Prince take the blame.

It didn't matter much to Devyani Rani whether her prince had killed or been killed. She fled to India and married a businessman with the same first name as the dead Queen of Nepal, and one Eid night she went to a party thrown by an old princess.

Meanwhile, the unpopular King of Nepal fell to revolutionaries. The royals lost all control. Nepal is a democracy now.

The holiday season, Part One

2008-10-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

Two holidays fell yesterday, Eid, which marks end of Ramadan, and Gandhi Jayanti, or Mahatma Gandhi's birthday.

For lunch, we went to an Eid party.

It took more than an hour to get there. I sat between the twins in the back of Prathibha Aunty’s SUV. They played for most of the ride, but “withdrew” by the end, a process that involves pulling their heads and arms into whatever T-shirt they have on.

“I’ve withdrawn,” each of them yelled through their neck holes.

The party was in a suburb of Delhi. Suburbs in India are not at all like their counterparts in America. In America, suburban streets are clean and wide. Animals in American suburbs eat nuts, and take care to rarely be seen.

In India, the suburbs have cows and people and stray dogs and dust, and really the only difference between these parts and the urban centers is that the historical monuments here are not given much attention. We passed a medieval arch that Prathibha Aunty’s friend Arshiya told me is being torn down, though it is likely one of the earliest example of an arch in non-Western architecture. She said the people destroying it don’t know its importance.

The party was in an enormous house, a mansion really, owned by a former government minister who ruled sports or health or something, and each of its many rooms was tiled in a different color of marble. Two glass doors opened up from the entryway onto a vast side room, where a young man sang Hindustani music to a crowd of people.

“Vah, vah!” everyone sighed when the man hit a high note.

In the backyard was a sprawling marble patio that spanned the length of the house and gave way to a large lawn, at the center of which stood a tree. Its branches shaded much of the garden, but in the open spots, rusty oscillating fans spun out fresh air.

Very fat, important people sat in cushioned chairs on the patio.

One very fat woman was African. She wore a dashiki.

We sat on the lawn on seats with white cotton slipcovers. It felt luxurious to be out there in the steamy heat, with a breeze on our faces and the chairs we sat on flapping in the wind.

There was a Mughal princess walking on the grass. She is old now and still wears her hennaed hair in a bouffant.

“How nice you look, princess,” everyone shouted as she walked past. “Those amethysts!”

For lunch we had mutton and potato and chicken and cheese and jicama slices coated in lime, and fresh chilies and yogurt and curry and dal. It was all delicious.

But dessert was really the high point.

The twins ventured out to find it first. They returned with six round orange sticky things powdered in coconut shavings and set in blue crinkly paper, five almond barfis and two enormous chocolate éclairs – one for each of them.

Prathibha Aunty was horrified. “People will think I don’t feed you at all!” she said, laughing and shaking her head at the very important woman in white she had been speaking with, as if to assure her it wasn’t true.

“Éclairs!” I shouted. Arshiya Aunty said it next. “Éclairs!”

I set off to get my own. I hadn’t eaten an éclair since I was eight.

“Get one for me!” Arshiya Aunty yelled.

There were only two left, and I took both or them without any shame.

It was the way I remembered it. The cream was light and full and cool all at the same time.

Arshiya Aunty enjoyed hers too. When a very important film director with long thick grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses came to wish us Eid Mubarrak, she talked to him with little bits of chocolate and cream smeared on her chin.

The twins

2008-10-02T06:26:00.001-07:00

Chirantan speaks like an adult, but he looks like a baby. His movements are wobbly – he presses his eyelids down fully when he blinks, so each time he opens them he looks surprised. He wears blue plastic glasses as stylish as mine, and informed me when I arrived that he has five other pairs, each for a different purpose.

“One is for reading, one is for football, one is for biking, one is for playing, one is for school.” He took a breath. “And this pair is for home!”

He has curly, close-set hair like a doll’s. I rub it when I pass him.

I love his baby stomach, his smooth skin, his way of grasping books with his fists as he reads them, like they are tiny, sideways proclamations.

But then he says something, and the illusion disappears.

Standing over me on the couch as I began to read Matilda, he asked: “Aren’t you ashamed to be reading a children’s book, Mallika Didi?”

When he saw me writing and asked what it was for, he said: “You write a blog? I would have expected more from you, Mallika Didi!”

I joined them on their horseback riding lesson. The third time we broke into a trot, I finally felt myself letting go, moving up and down quickly enough that the horse’s rhythm became my own.

“Don’t get complacent!” he shouted, turning back to me. “Never forget – some horses weigh nearly 2,000 pounds!”

Very occasionally, I pass his tests.

“What’s sixty-four plus sixty-four?” he asked me.

“One twenty-eight.”

“One twenty-eight plus one twenty-eight?”

“Two fifty-six.”

“Two fifty-six plus two fifty-six!” He was triumphant.

“”Five hundred-twelve.”

“Five hundred-twelve plus five hundred-twelve?”

“One thousand twenty-four.” I was starting to get tired.

“One thousand twenty-four plus one thousand twenty-four?”

“Two thousand forty-eight, and that’s the last one.”

“Well, I know what two thousand forty-eight plus two thousand forty-eight is!” He was blinking hard.

“What is it?”

“Five thousand, six hundred and four,” he said with finality. “Of course, that’s just an estimate.”

Chirayu is different.

He is taller than me, with a long nose and strong jaw, but he is a real child. After Chinnu belittled my choice of reading material, Chirayu brought all of the books he could find that I might enjoy, before explaining to Chirantan that some children’s authors are respected even among grown-ups.

He speaks very, very quickly, out-of breath and skimming through his words with a constant, bemused smile. Chris called one day and Chirayu told him all about decimals, but Chris couldn’t understand anything he said.

I love all of these things about Chirayu, but the thing I love most is how much he loves his twin.

“I think Chinnu should be a comedian,” he told me yesterday. “Because he’s so good at speaking. But everyone else says politician.”

He reports back all of his brother’s achievements. When Chirantan made swim team, Chirayu told us. When Chirantan made choir, Chirayu told us. When Chirantan got three A pluses, it was Chirayu who told us about it first.

Chirayu did all of those things too, he just didn’t tell us.

“I love zebras, don’t you?” he asked me years ago, pointing a chubby finger to the page in his encyclopedia of animals that described them.

“Sure,” I said. “They’re pretty.”

“That’s not why,” he said. “Zebras are so good because they don’t hurt anyone, they just eat grass all day.”

There were bomb blasts in Delhi a few days ago, the second such incident in the past two weeks. The twins sat next to me as we watched the news, and translated the bystanders’ reactions into English so I could understand.

“They’re saying the police were useless,” Chirantan said. “These people had to take the wounded to the hospital on their own dollar, with their own cars. Police did nothing.”

Three men were yelling into the microphone. Behind them was smoke.

Chirayu took a breath.

“It seems two men on a motorbike threw a bag with the bomb in it,” he blurted out, raising his eyebrows. “Then a little child picked it up to give back to them and it just blew him up.”

He smiled at the strangeness of it all. “Just blew him up!”

“His head went one way, and his body the other,” Chirantan said, gesturing to each side with his hand. “That’s what they’ve said.”

On the screen, a woman wailed and tried to get beyond a rope. The police and crowds held her back.

I had tears in my eyes.

“Would have been cool to throw the bag into the motorbike and stop up the engine and then those terrorists would have died!” Chirayu said.

“Anyway, we can’t,” Chirantan said. “Can’t even go out now.”

He looked gravely at the two of us.

“Terror has reclaimed the city.”

Living with servants, Part Three

2008-09-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

There is a handwritten sign in our apartment building’s lobby that says:

On days when I am in a harsh mood, I always think a better sign would be:

Other days, it’s fine as it is.

I noticed another sign on the drive home from work today. It has bold black letters that say: Stop BREEDING danger in your homes!

Just like that. Below the warning is a picture of a pink and black bug resting on a leaf.

Under the leaf is a list of alarming facts about the pink bug, headed by its scientific name. We were going too fast for me to properly note them.

If those bugs were breeding in our apartment, I am certain Gajendra would stow them away in the cupboards and we would never know. I haven’t written about this particular ability of his yet, because I’m not sure I can describe it adequately. He is like some natural force that without fail or discretion clears every room of any object that is not nailed down or too heavy for a grown man to move.

We have been playing a little game with my bobby pins, he and I. I put them in a new place every night, and he puts them in a new place every day. If I can find them, and he can find them, they keep moving. It’s exciting for the pins, but the upshot is my bangs are often growing out awkwardly for everyone to see.

The other day, I was one of the objects Gajendra put away.

I had fallen asleep on the longest orange couch in the TV room. I love this couch. It is compact and strong. The fan was whirring above me, and life was good.

But couches are just the sort of places that require clearing every so often, and soon enough, Gajendra got on the job.

“Madam,” I heard.

I opened my eyes as narrowly as I could manage.

“Madam, bed,” he pleaded. He pointed towards Prathibha Aunty’s bedroom.

“Madam is in bed?” I asked.

I wondered why he was telling me that fact.

“Nahin, nahin,” he said. He may have even sighed.

“Madam.” He touched my shoulder. “Bed.” He pointed to the room.

Now I understood.

I got in bed. All around me, pins and coins were shifting into drawers. Scraps of paper were stowed in armoires. Not even the tiniest of tiny things was thrown, only hidden until morning, when life would start up again.

If Gajendra had dusted my face with a damp rag right then, I wouldn’t have been surprised, or even offended. He takes care of me, and that's his job.

The story of Arjun Kumar

2008-09-28T22:09:00.000-07:00

The twins used to be obsessed with Hindu mythology. They reenacted the story of the demon King Ravana abducting Sita, and noble Rama working to save her (they traded off who had to be Ravana, but Prathibha Aunty was always Sita). Rama’s army of monkeys builds a bridge to Lanka, where he wins the bloody war and carries his love home. Behind him, the monkey king oils his tail. The wicked city burns to the ground.

Aunty never stopped what she was doing while the twins set about rescuing her, but she and everyone else applauded gratefully each time they finished, thanking them for the very important work they had done. This happened a few times each day for several years.

Now they mostly talk about Captain Underpants, or things associated with him: bowel movements, dirty diapers, ill-fitting underwear. If it makes me feel sick at the table, I ask them to stop. If not, I listen.

Here is Captain Underpants, as drawn by both of them. Chirantan said that his is only a first try, and that those to come will likely be better. Chirayu became frustrated with my computer’s mouse.

He drew a proper version on paper instead, in which Captain Underpants is carrying a toilet plunger and exclaims with a smile, “Taste the power of underwear!”

The other day we got on the topic of when and how and where the good Captain first came into their lives.

“It was in London,” Chirantan said. “We bought a comic of him at a shop there.”

“But Arjun Kumar already had one,” Chirayu said. “He already was reading Captain Underpants even before we found him.”

Arjun Kumar is a friend of the twins. He is also a competitor. No matter how hard the twins try, they simply cannot beat Arjun Kumar. He gets As in math. He gets As in Science. He even gets As in French.

So unstoppable is Arjun Kumar, so unlike all the others the twins know, that they always call him by his first and last name. Arjun Kumar, against whom no one stands a chance.

There was however, one day on which Arjun Kumar was not such a king. On that day, the twins tell me, Arjun Kumar learned what it was to fail.

It became common knowledge in the twins’ fourth grade year that cartoon heroes were cool. All of the boys brought comics of the newest and funniest heroes they could find to read over lunch, and people even began to talk the way those characters did, with accents and exclamation marks and punchy one-liners. The best way then, for anyone to distinguish himself was to make an original cartoon, conceived, written and drawn by his very own hand. It wasn’t necessary that it be amazing, just good enough.

Now Arjun Kumar, aces at nearly everything, was also presumed to be the best cartoonist in the class, though he hadn’t tried yet. He was waiting for inspiration to hit.

One afternoon, having seen Chinnu’s latest attempt at school, Arjun Kumar felt certain that tonight was the night.

He sharpened his pencil and sat down at the big, wooden dining table.

He stuck his tongue out, which usually helped him concentrate. He poured himself a glass of cold water. He even put on a CD of Mozart's best loved concertos - music, his mother had told him, reputed to make children's brains grow.

But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the thought of a certain hero from his mind: the protagonist of the most brilliant comic Arjun Kumar had ever seen, the one he had read every morning for the past two months and that none of his friends even knew about, because it came all the way from England.

It started with only the tiniest borrowed detail. He drew a constipated villain, just like the one in the book. Constipation lent itself so well to evil expressions. It was only logical to call him Constable Constipo, like in the Captain Underpants comic. What else would you call him?

In no time Arjun Kumar realized it made very sound sense to simply trace the boxes featuring Constable Constipo from the comic, and then return to his own hand.

Once he traced the first box – which took some time, mind you – it made practically zero sense not to go on with the second. And the third, and then, of course, the fourth. Now Arjun Kumar couldn’t stop. He copied every line and letter from the comic, leaving nothing out save the original author’s name: Dave Pilkey. It wasn’t such a terrible thing to do. After all, he had drawn all the pictures by hand. If Pilkey hadn’t put them down first, probably Arjun Kumar would have.

The next day, he brought his masterpiece to school.

It was a hit.

None of his classmates had seen anything even half so clever or neatly drawn in their lives, and certainly not from someone their own age. They talked about it for weeks, this hero of heroes Arjun Kumar had brought to life – a feat that made Arjun Kumar a kind of hero himself. Clearly, here was a boy who, aside from being a whiz at his studies, knew a thing or two about being a kid.

Imagine the twins’ surprise then, when two months later at a bookstore in London, they stumbled upon a glossy, professional production of Arjun Kumar’s amazing creation. Only this one said, “By Dave Pilkey” on the cover.

The first day of school that fall, Chirantan and Chirayu marched up to their friend Arjun Kumar on the playground.

“We showed him the comic,” Chirantan told me calmly. “He was very embarrassed.”

“Although no one heard because everyone is so loud at recess anyway,” Chirayu said. “Anyway, we caught him.”

Chirayu took a bite of rice, then looked up quickly, his eyes bright.

“We should have thrown cake in his face and then it really would have been funny!” he said excitedly.

“Enough!” Prathibha Aunty said. “Only cartoon characters do such things. The two of you are becoming like cartoons, and no one wants to be friends with a cartoon.”

“That’s not true,” Chirayu whispered into his fork.

Living with servants, Part Two

2008-09-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

A man stood near me the other day while I waited for Prasad to pick me up. As I started towards the car, the man answered a phone call. It sounded as though he had called my name, so I turned around briefly, realized my mistake and continued to the car.

Prasad was jumpy. He leaned forward against the steering wheel, then made as if to open his door.

“Did he say something to you?” he asked in Kannada, his hand pressing the door handle down almost all the way.

“No, no, don’t worry,” I replied.

I didn’t know how to explain what had actually happened, that the man hadn’t meant to catch my attention at all.

“Let’s go,” I said.

On the drive home, Prasad promised that he would beat up any man who bothered me.

“I’ll hold them down and let you beat them!” he said.

He was cheerful and smiling, but he sounded deadly serious.

“Have you fought before, in your life?” I asked him.

“Yes, many times,” he said.

“You're never scared?”

“Oh no, ma’am, never.”

Prasad has two daughters. My aunt told me about them one night, as we stayed up late in her bed discussing the servants and their lives. They all have children and families back in their villages, who they send money to each week and who they see one month out of every year. Prasad’s girls go to school, and he never did.

I wanted to ask Prasad if he enjoyed beating people up. I’ve wondered before if I might enjoy it, even though I could never do it. But I didn’t know how to ask in Kannada.

Prasad ended our ride on a familiar note, with his hope that I get a little fatter by the time my stay is done.

That night Prathibha Aunty had very important guests come for a late dinner, two women writers. One of them was French.

She had her hair pulled back so it was like a gold swimming cap on her head, and wore a silk tunic.

She asked me in French where the bathroom was, and I responded, “La toilette est ici," which means "The toilet is here." I didn't know how to say the word "there," so I had to point.

While she was using it, I rehearsed the phrases, “I find your top charming.” And, “It’s been many years since my last French class.”

I told her those facts and also a few more things. She advised me to visit the Alliance Francaise, where there is a large library full of books and young people, all of them French.

Dinner was sparse. Gajendra and Ishvar had not accounted properly for all the people. Everyone tried to ignore the spaces between the vegetables on the serving dish.

Prathibha Aunty had asked Gajendra to buy ice cream especially for that night, to offer as a whimsical end to the meal for her very important guests.

He had only ever bought ice cream for the twins, and they like Choco-Bars. So when he went to Khan Market that afternoon, that’s what he bought.

The last vegetable was eaten, and the dirty plates disappeared with Gajendra into the kitchen. Everyone waited while he readied the dessert, and then he entered, carrying two plates. On each of them was a Choco-Bar still in its wrapper.

He presented the plates to Prathibha Aunty’s two very important guests.

“How quaint!” they exclaimed.

Living with servants

2008-09-25T00:56:00.000-07:00

Here’s our cast of characters.

Gajendra: Manages most things in the house. He is tall and lean, with a round red burn on his left cheek like a wax stamp on the envelope of an old, important letter. The twins call him “Gajendra Bhaiyya,” which means Gajendra Brother, and is really just a familiar term for a man who is not quite your superior, but higher than an equal (they call Sid “bhaiyya” too). Gajendra has a toothy smile, and gaps between his yellowish teeth. He knows a little English, and will occasionally teach me the Hindi equivalent for an English word both he and I know, if I press him enough. I would place his age around 36. His name means the king of the elephants.

Ishvar: Slightly below Gajendra in rank, handles the cooking. Handsome and small, with a long torso, he gels his hair in the style of Justin Timberlake circa N*Sync. His voice is high. He knows less English than Gajendra, and always shuts the sink off for me (the flat is old, and some things – like the kitchen faucet – don’t work well). He makes a mean cup of chai, and can't be much older than 25. He is named after Krishna, a God who sometimes looks like a woman, but in fact has many wives.

Prasad: Head driver. I’ve known Prasad since I was about thirteen, when he joined my aunt’s staff in Bangalore. From 2000-2006, I believe he left her service and started an independent driving company – although I may have misunderstood what he told me in Kannada. Then he rejoined her, moving to Delhi. He is dark, tall, and very fond of me. He looks like a kind wolf, with close-set eyes and a narrow chin. We speak in Kannada, and often our conversations are not reflective of what either of us mean to say, due to the disconnect between my actual thoughts and the Kannada phrases I am capable of stringing together. Prasad is very sad my mother died, and tells me that I am just like her in the way I speak and smile. He believes my small size to be a product of prolonged grief, saying that I work too hard, and that is why I look “like that.” I have not changed since he last saw me, he tells me each day. He too, has not changed since I last saw him. My impression is that he has always been about 35. He is sincere and eager in the way most teenage boys are. His name means an offering to God.

Dhanvir: Second driver. He usually drives me to work while Prasad sits next to him (Prasad insists on coming into the office with me; were Dhanvir not there to keep the car idle, it would be near impossible for him to do this. Parking in central Delhi is difficult.). Dhanvir has never said anything to me. He is small and looks like Kevin Spacey. He seems to have a more rebellious spirit than the other workers, who accept my aunt’s often very loud admonishments with bowed heads and “Yes, Madams.” The only time I’ve seen her yell at him, he defended himself – or at least it sounded that way from his intonations. Unlike Gajendra, Ishvar and Prasad, Dhanvir does not sleep and live in my aunt’s flat – that may account for the difference in his relationship with her. He must be in his late thirties. I love the sound of his name, but I don’t yet know what it means, and a quick search on Google is turning up no answers.

Anil: Lackey. He looks like Cleatus on the Simpsons. I think he may have some mental difficulties, or else be very unsure of himself. He speaks slowly, always smiling while he does it, and often makes mistakes for which he is immediately chastised. He oils his hair to fall on either side of his middle part, and is always very nice to me, if a little shy. Must be about 21. His name means something too.

Every morning so far I’ve woken up early. I like to nurture the effects of jet lag, because I prefer sleeping and waking up early rather than late, and jet lag helps me do that automatically. When I wake up, I go to the computer to write, because there is not much else for me to do, and few people here for me to confide in. I like writing everything I think. It’s better for me than speaking, and more productive. The servants ask my aunt what I do so early in the mornings at the computer. They believe I must work very hard. Prasad thinks it is because I’m sad.

By around 8:30, Gajendra arrives at my side with a cup of chai. I’m always surprised at how good it tastes and how rich, more like coffee than tea. By now, I wander from the computer and pick up a book, usually one of my cousin’s Roald Dahls (today I read Danny, the Champion of the World). I shower, then breakfast. Often there is papaya and fresh juice on request. While I eat, Ishvar prepares my lunch. He packs it in what looks like a child’s art supply box. It is green and rectangular.
I feel strange eating rice out of it, like I might get lead poisoning, and have asked Chris to bring a regular Tupperware box for me from Target.

Two nights ago, Gajendra made trouble for one of the twins, Chirayu, during dinner. Chirayu and his brother Chirantan are ten. They read throughout most meals, usually comics about a hero named Captain Underpants, who they love. He fights criminals guilty of disgusting acts, like diarrhea. The twins are very clever and very funny, with adult senses of humor that always surprise me. They seem to be enjoying their childhood as much as I enjoy watching them in it, excited by the things they're able to do now, but aware that those privileges will disappear. I think living in the heart of a major city in the care of a complex mother can give a child that kind of awareness.

On that particular evening, Gajendra became frustrated at Chirayu’s insistence on reading at the table. The book was taking precedence, to the point of being pushed onto the plate during an especially exciting passage. Still, Chirayu seemed to be eating despite his preoccupation, and soon his plate was empty. Gajendra was suspicious. When he passed by Chirayu and saw the plate, he began to yell. He said that the food must have been put back into the serving bowl, that there was no way Chirayu had eaten it all so quickly. He took the plate off the bowl (kept there to protect the food from dust and tiny bugs), and pointed angrily. There was more cauliflower in it than there should have been, he insisted. Chirayu had snuck it back in.

“Nahin, Gajendra Bhaiyya, nahin,” Chirayu kept saying. He continued to read, waving Gajendra’s angry hands away from the book.

Gajendra screamed louder. From her room, Prathibha Aunty shouted, asking what was going on. Gajendra went to tell her.

“Chirayu, tell me honestly,” I said while Gajendra was gone. “Did you put the palya back?”

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Why is Gajendra so sure you did it then?”

“I’ve done it before,” he said. “I hate cauliflower.”

His eyes were wide.

“But you didn’t do it this time?”

“No.”

I believed him.

At this point, Prathibha Aunty entered. “What is all this?” she yelled. She is a dancer, and her temper flashes in her eyes.

Gajendra told her what happened.

“Why don’t you eat your food?” she asked Chirayu, grabbing the book from the table.

“I did,” he said.

“And to prove the point, there is oil still on his fork,” said Chirantan, picking the fork up off Chirayu’s plate and pointing it at Prathibha Aunty. “The oil matches the oil from the cauliflower!”

Gajendra and Prathibha Aunty continued to yell.

“I didn’t see him put the cauliflower back,” I said.

“You didn’t?” Aunty asked. “Did you do it?” She whipped around to Chirayu, pointing her finger at him.

“No Mummy, I didn’t.” He was wailing now. She spooned more cauliflower onto his plate.

“Eat this now,” she said quietly.

He shoveled the food down his throat, tears on his face. When he finished, he tried to leave, but Prathibha Aunty caught his arm.

“Come here,” she said, wiping his tears away. She hugged him and told him how much she loved him.

Gajendra stood in the corner watching.

The role of the servant is confusing.

The Ride Over

2008-09-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

I had a long layover in Heathrow - about nine hours. My father booked me into an airport lounge online, which we all thought would help the hours pass: WiFi, beds and sandwiches were all promised.

The receptionist informed me however, that my €50 pass was only good for three hours. And there were no sandwiches.

I was upset, but I played the cards life dealt me, sleeping on airport chairs with only my three carry-on bags to keep me warm.

Eventually, the gate assignment went up and I made my way over (Not before realizing that my ticket was still at the restaurant where I had eaten lunch. This happens every four or five flights I take, and they've always kept the little guys waiting for me. In fact, it struck me that I'm better off leaving my tickets at restaurants for safekeeping during layovers than carrying them with me.).

Waiting for the flight was interesting. Indians of all shapes and sizes were queued up nearly an hour before they should have been, much to my surprise. Indians never do things early. The mystery was solved once I boarded the plane.

Two things happened:
1. An Indian man's bag fell on a British man's head.
2. I had to stow my bag at the very back of the plane, for which I was roundly chastised.

Now to explain.

Both incidents happened for the same reason. Just as I had pushed the British Airways limits for my carry-on bags, so too had my ethnic brothers and sisters. "Twenny-five pounds?" they no doubt queried to their spouses while packing with abandon. "Make mine twenny-five ninety-nine!"

Each overhead bin fit on average 1.5 Indian bags. By the time I arrived at my seat, my savvy fellow passengers (remember how they stood in line for so long) had already managed to shove everything they could above 21 JKL.

So to the back I went, and let me tell you, it's no easy task to navigate the aisles on flights to India. People want to have a good time over the next ten hours. They get to know their neighbors, including those who can only be accessed by getting out of one's seat.

Two women were insisting to each other that they had met before, though they weren't sure where or why.

"It's like your soul makes these connections," the one said to the other.

"I think maybe it was at a medical conference," her friend replied.

As I made my way through the party, a commotion began.

An Indian man in a puffy jacket was trying to push his backpack into the bin above an elderly British man. The bag had fallen on the British man's head, the side of it, he said, afflicted with a "medical condition."

The British man was dressed for the summer, in his natty Panama hat, and the Indian man for the winter.

The fight kept going even as I reached the back, although the Indian man had by this time returned to his seat.

When I tried to put my bag up, the same occurred, only this time, it was a group of Indians angry at me.

"How can you use our space?" one especially vocal fellow asked. "This is specially for us."

"Someone has used mine," I replied. It occurred to me that I had to fight harder for my space, being a solitary passenger. Those groups with two or more members had strength in numbers. Fewer people to compete with in their little arena, more allies per square foot.

My bag in, I left the muttering protesters and reclaimed my seat.

I had a window seat. The woman to my left was old. She seemed never to have been on a plane, as she asked me through gestures how to fasten her seat belt and move her seat back.

She was fascinated with the window, and peered over me throughout most of the flight. Which meant she stared as night fell, and nothing showed out the glass save a black patch of sky. I offered to switch seats with her, but she declined shyly. When we reached Delhi, she pointed to the water accumulating on the window pane.

"Barisa," she said. That means rain.

A Mal-ris without a ris is only the French word for bad

2008-09-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

This blog is about me and my boyfriend Chris going to India. He's not here yet, but once he comes, get ready. Till then, just me.