Park Life and a religious lesson

I headed to Lodi Gardens this morning full of good intentions to spend a day intensively working on my Hindi. My first mistake was packing a sketch book, ‘just in case,’ I wanted a break from studying. My second mistake was thinking that Lodi Gardens would be the ideal outdoor study environment away from distractions.

I found a spot on the grass looking out over the park towards one of the Lodi tombs and decided to do some sketching for five minutes before getting down to my studies. About fifteen minutes in and I’d been spotted. A large group of school girls were making a bee line for me, phone cameras at the ready. I still don’t really understand the fascination with my skin, hair and eye colour and the paparazzi frenzy it causes. I’m too British to tell people to go away so instead I just smile awkwardly at the camera when prompted whilst a group of strangers gather round me as though I’m their long lost friend. Eventually after many calls, of ‘just eck (one) photo more madam,’ I was left to resume my sketching. About an hour more passed during which I was interrupted for a couple more photo calls from school children and then just when I thought the coast was clear I saw someone sidling up to me, sketch book in hand. He gestured to his female friend and explained, “We are just beginners. I can see that you are a professional artist, can you teach me how you draw?” I tried to explain that I too was a beginner and that I probably didn’t know any more about it than he did but this didn’t seem to matter and suddenly I found myself running an impromptu art lesson.

So two hours later and still no Hindi homework done I drew the art lesson to a close and observed that my pupil’s drawing was decidedly better than my own. A conversation then ensued with the two friends when I explained why I was in India and I was heavily quizzed by them on how much I knew about India, its culture, religion and political system. It felt like an on the spot test that I had not revised for, “What is the Hindu bible called? Name some Hindu gods. Where is Krishna’s birthplace?” and I could see their heads shaking sadly every time I gave a wrong answer. I was then given a lesson on all of the Hindu gods, with illustrations provided by the sketch book and suggested reading material for a more in depth understanding of all of these.

Their reasoning was sound as they explained that in order to really understand India and the Indian people I must first understand the religion, in this case Hinduism. Of course by that token I must also improve my knowledge of the Sikh, Buddhist, Islam, Christian, Jain and Zoroastrian religions as they are equally intrinsic to the makeup of the country. They were perfectly right in making this point though as the more time I spend here the more I become aware of how much religion really is the foundation of so much in India and crucial to understanding the country and its makeup better. So, as I promised my art pupils turned religious teachers, I will go away and do my homework, hopefully slightly more successfully than I managed with my Hindi on this occasion.

Jaipur Literature Festival

Nam Le, Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Having not yet been outside of Delhi since I arrived on 12^th December, I decided that the Jaipur Literature Festival would be my first trip out of the city. It also seemed quite appropriate as it was through literature that I was first introduced to India. Brought up on Rudyard’s Kipling’s ‘Just So Stories’ and ‘The Jungle Book,’ my mum was the one to then later introduce me to R.K.Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Raja Rao, and Adrundati Roy’s, ‘God of Small Things’ and Rohinton Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance,’ still remain two of my favourite novels.

When we arrived in Jaipur I was shocked by how much empty space there was. The streets were relatively clear and even the smallest shop fronts seemed to be about double the size of those you’d find in Delhi. The last six weeks of living in Delhi have clearly turned me into more of a Delhite than I’d realised, as instead of revelling in all this space I found myself thinking, “what a waste, they could have built two shops where there’s only one,” and, “look at all that spare parking space, you could fit in three outdoor markets, some vegetable carts, a four storey apartment and still have room for some camels out the front.”

Arriving at the Literature Festival was like stepping into an oasis of literary calm. We left the street noise behind and walked through tented tree lined avenues draped with brightly coloured fabric. I hadn’t quite known what to expect as I’d never actually been to a literature festival before. I suppose the best way I could relate to the atmosphere and the mixture of people there was a bit like standing in the lobby of the Royal Festival Hall in London where all at once you encounter a mixture of theatre luvvies, tourists, local residents, music and literary students, socialites that are there to be seen and people that have wondered in off the street out of curiosity. Yet again I was thrown into an oddly familiar but out of context world.

The Literature Festival wasn’t quite what I’d expected as it wasn’t solely focused on Indian literature but was a celebration of writing across the globe and involved travel writers, political commentators and fiction writers. I attended some really interesting talks such as one on the issue of Caste in India that included several Dalit writers, a conversation with Patrick French about his latest book, ‘A Portrait of India,’ in which he talked about the process of meeting with and interviewing the various characters in the book and how their stories evolved. I was also introduced by Zoe to Rory Stewart, her ‘hero’ as she described him who wrote ‘The Places in Between’ about his 6,000 mile journey on foot from Turkey to Bangladesh in 2001.

I was quite sad when it came to leaving on Sunday afternoon and if I went again I’d probably extend my stay by a day or two as there are only so many literary minds you can cram into a day and a half. It was a great way to spend a weekend though and even the eight hour bus journey home to Delhi (it should usually take about four hours but we took the cheaper government bus alternative) was an experience. We were fortunate to have seats and did not have to travel the eight hours in the overhead cupboards (sleeper seats which have sliding doors like cupboards and are not quite high enough to sit up in but not quite long enough to lie down in). As we left Jaipur I spotted one, two, then hundreds of children out on the tenement rooftops flying brightly coloured paper kites. This carried on for the next few miles and in between the trees were papered red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink and orange with abandoned kites that had become entangled in their branches. It was just like a scene from a book.

Pavements, curbs and gradients

This morning a colleague of mine who is visually impaired was hit by a motorbike as he went to get on the bus. The bus had stopped in the middle of the road, as where he lives in north Delhi there are very few bus shelters, and the motorcyclist was in a hurry and didn’t see him heading towards the bus. Fortunately my colleague is ok and wasn’t seriously hurt but it made me think again about how safe and easy it is to travel around Delhi as a disabled individual. Are you forced to make a choice between living independently and compromising your own safety each time you go outside?

There have been some brilliant recent innovations to transport in Delhi such as the metro system which has level entrances into the carriages, wheelchair accessible lifts at every stop and audio announcements. Because it was built so recently and with accessibility in mind, it is far superior, for example, to the tube network in London. In London only 121 out of a possible 380 destinations have wheelchair accessible lifts, preventing wheelchair users from being able to reach over half of the available destinations. But what do you do in Delhi if the metro is not an option or if your destination is only a short distance away or requires you to take a bus instead like my colleague?

When I was working on disability issues in the UK one of mine and my colleagues’ favourite topics was pavements. We would spend hours debating the merits of various pavement gradients, tactile paving, the arguments for and against shared pavements, parking on pavements, dropped curbs and pavement obstructions. It sounds geeky and it undoubtedly was, but there was also a very good reason for our obsession. Much of our campaigning work revolved around the availability of accessible transport and physical access to services in the UK. However, as many of the disabled individuals we worked with pointed out, if you can’t even reach your local bus stop or shop in the first place because the pavements are too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair or too uneven to navigate with a visual impairment, then your independence begins and ends at the front door to your home.

During my walk to and from my office in south Delhi to my home I walk on the road, as the pavement appears and disappears in places or is blocked off by motorcycles, fallen debris, temporary outdoor rickshaw workshops, food stands, stray dogs and gaping holes. On the rare occasions that the pavements are clear, they are raised about 10 inches off the ground with no dropped curbs. It would be impossible to safely navigate a wheelchair along them and difficult to go on the roads, as you are constantly having to dodge traffic coming in both directions at considerable speed.

Recently there has been a great deal of heated debate reported amongst disabled people’s organisations in India over a new draft of the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995. The new draft would bring it further in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Despite the tension it has caused, the desire to update the legislation to better protect the rights of disabled individuals in India is a very positive one in theory. However, 15 years after the first Persons with Disabilities Act was enforced in India, the pavements are evidence that legislation does not solve the problem unless it is followed through and implemented. This isn’t exclusive to India as in the UK the same is the case with the Disability Discrimination Act. It is a brilliant piece of legislation when it is taken seriously and implemented, but far too often it is ignored or misunderstood.

The organisation I am working for places great emphasis on the need to change peoples’ perceptions about disability. The bus driver that stopped the bus in the middle of the road, the motorcyclist that knocked over my colleague and the people blocking the pavements with various obstacles, they are all acting on the assumption that disabled individuals are not physically able to access the outdoor environment and therefore don’t need to be accounted for. What they don’t realise is that their attitudes and actions are the only thing disabling that person. 

Katie doesn't share food...at least that was until I came to India

This is just a reconstruction of an empty plate and not the actual plate of
potato curry mentioned in this post

My work has a really nice daily routine of everyone breaking for lunch around the same time and eating lunch together in the office. It’s great because it’s given me the opportunity to get to know people better and vice versa. What slightly flawed me on the first day though was that everyone got out their tiffins and tupperware and rather than tucking into their own food, they turned to their neighbour and started taking forkfuls of their food. I thought at first that perhaps this was a pre-arranged thing, that the day before they’d all had a discussion, one person had said “I’ll bring the dahl if you bring the masala dosa.” As it turns out, this is just the accepted way of eating. You bring your food but it’s also perfectly acceptable if you like the look of someone else’s food to stick your fork right in without uttering a word. 

Now it’s not so much that I don’t share food. I’m totally fine with it if there is a pre-agreed arrangement of food sharing, for example, a buffet, a picnic, ordering in take away. But there are certain occasions such as when I order my favourite dish in a restaurant, or bring my lunch into work, when generally sharing doesn’t come into it. The general principal being, if you like the look of what I ordered then you should have ordered it for yourself, or if you like the look of my sandwich then I’ll recommend the ingredients but please don’t take mine.

However, I’ve sort of grown to like the idea of this lunch sharing and I realised this today when for the first time one of my colleagues asked to try the homemade potato and lentil curry I’d brought with me. It was a real moment of triumph and I felt like I’d finally managed to integrate into the inner lunch circle. After several weeks of being given pitying looks for my odd lunch choices of cucumber and cheese spread sandwiches with chilli chutney, and my first attempt at making a curry which looked like watery cement with bits of potato floating in it, I’d finally made something that someone else wanted me to share with them. 

Ode to the Hot Water Bottle

There are a lot of things I have my granny to thank for; my pretty ok baking skills, sarcasm, a love of orange lollies and choc ices and last but not least, introducing me to the joys of the hot water bottle. I can still remember going to stay at her house and the amazing feeling of getting into bed and it already being warm, then realising I could barely breathe because the sheets were tucked in so tightly.

Packing my hot water bottle was an afterthought as someone had mentioned to me during the vso training course just how cold it can get in India during the winter months. As it turns out over the last few weeks it has become possibly the single most useful thing I packed. Delhi may not get cold by UK standards but the houses here are built to refrigerate. Perfect for those sweltering summer months, not so good when it’s 5 degrees outside.  Having left snow and blizzards behind in the UK I’d thought I might be completely immune to winter in Delhi, I mean really, how cold could it actually get? This morning I woke up and the first thing I saw was my own breath steaming up the freezing cold room. Last night I even found a way of keeping the hot water bottle tucked up inside my fleece so that I could circulate the flat and still be warm. Yes I did look ridiculous but I was warm. So for anyone reading this who is likely to be in India during the winter months, I'd recommend a hot water bottle. It doesn’t stay cold for long (or so I’m told) but when it gets cold it’s really cold.

Bargain hunting

Bargain hunting, haggling, neither are things I’ve ever been very good at. I’ve been known to haggle in foreign countries before and when the vendor has asked me to suggest a fair price for the item I’ve felt too guilty suggesting a really low price, so I suggest what I think is a fair price but I know is still more than I should be paying. If a store in the UK has a Sale on I usually walk in and walk straight out again. Just the thought of sifting through racks of paisley purple and orange boob tubes only to buckle under the stress and buy a lime green cardigan that’s two sizes too big but it’s such a bargain at only £2. No thanks. But here in India it’s part of everyday life. There are even specific terms to denote whether or not something is an item that you can bargain for. If it is ‘fixed price’ then that generally means it is a fixed price and no bargaining is to be had, although the exception to this rule is when they say, “300 rupees fixed price, 250 rupees with discount.” This means that the fixed price is actually 250 rupees but occasionally they’ll charge 300 rupees if they can get away with it. Then there is the real haggling which I am still very new to, and bad at, which is why I haven’t yet attempted to buy many items that are not either fixed price or discount. This is when a market vendor will start by telling you that an item is 3000 rupees but there is a good chance that if you are prepared to wait it out long enough, whilst pretending all the while that you’re not that interested in the item anyway, you can sometimes get them down to about a tenth of the original price.

My favourite of these occasions so far has been the other day when I went to buy some sheets from my local market and rather than bargaining with the price the shop owner kept upping the quality of the sheets he was offering, despite them being the same sheets. “Madam these sheets are 100% cotton, very good quality, only 250 rupees.” I paused to look at the good quality sheets. “Madam, very good quality, 200% cotton only 250 rupees.” I stifled a smile and tried to bargain down the price. “Madam, no. Very good quality, 500% cotton, only 250 rupees.” I could no longer stop from smiling and I’m slightly ashamed to say that despite his unique selling point of presumably being the only vendor in India, if not the world, to sell the impossible sheets made of 500% cotton, I did not buy them on this occasion. I had to admire his business acumen though. I think it must have been a man much like this one that sold the Emperor his new clothes.