|
|
|
I have glimpsed India |
| In |
random glitters of lights in the night, necklaces of fallen constellations; |
| In |
mothers being motherly, babies being babies, and businessmen being businesslike; |
| In |
fragments of an airport, deracinated and international; |
| In |
a thorough bureaucracy ordering chaos, and a sign "DIPLOMATS/PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED"; |
| In |
coolness within and heat without, softened by a gentle breeze; |
| In |
a splendid chorus on the roads, autorickshaws, Ambassadors, bikes, and buses honking with joyful abandon; |
| In |
the sareed women side-saddle on the backs of motorbikes; |
| In |
the graceful namastes of hotels staff and workers, and their courteous grace |
| In |
the black and white butterflies almost as big as birds, and the neat dull birds, almost as small as butterflies; |
| In |
Bala, Hindu, to whom there is one God - Shiva to him - but an absence of the man Christ Jesus; |
| In |
tables and shelves of flavoursome food, ready at my disposal; |
| In |
a mother side-saddle, clinging, one hand to the bike, and the other to a sleeping toddler; |
| In |
a toddler on a bike in front of his father - and sister, and mother; |
| In |
a dusty man, dark as a negro, lounging near a shrine of Ganasha; |
| In |
words used perfectly correctly, but not in the British way; |
| In |
a saree sash used to cover the eyes of a tearful girl; |
| In |
the eager eyes and hunched back of a beggar whom I could pass once but not twice; |
| In |
the massive hoardings for films, insurance and religion - even, "Jesus gives new life"; |
| In |
a plethora of craftwork, row upon row, in the Victoria Technical Institute, and in the pitiful prices; |
| In |
injunctions ignore; if to reduce speed, ignored by speeding: if to sound horn, because they would have sounded it anyway; |
| In |
the rich and destitute meeting together - Jehovah is the maker of them all; |
| In |
a brother, chaffing with his brother, nudging him - and assuring us that as the elder he was entitled to beat him; |
| In |
bricks carried by head, hay almost swamping a lorry, a crowd borne standing in the back of a truck; |
| In |
gaudy lights in the night - neon advertisements, or the celebration of an idol; |
| In |
black-robed Muslim women letting the waves of the Bay of Bengal soak their robes; |
| In |
the Malal Heart Foundation, and the Kidney Stone Hospital, and the General Hospital - miles apart; |
| In |
buffalo grazing in a scrubby patch deep in the city; |
| In |
a vastness of land, the Deccan, stretching below the aeroplane - hills and mountains, mile upon mile of ridges, dry valleys - broad brown scars snaking through the plateau, waiting for the monsoon to rush down them, and jagged-edged lakes, some with one straight edge for a dam; |
| In |
a fine meal - on our own, with Simon as spectator; |
| In |
an insistence that we should sit down, however long a seat we'd had already; |
| In |
shabby shacks, a neat villa, and a spacious villa, spare in its decoration; |
| In |
a superbly efficient airline, yet with the plane to Vadodara announced as to Baroda; |
| In |
a person whose mother worked a field now owning a fine villa in that field; |
| In |
a patch of scrubby ground - with a peacock in it; |
| In |
buffalos tethered by thatched cottages, near a modern building site; |
| In |
a villager courteously running to get a seat for us from her hut - and bringing plastic chairs; |
| In |
one woman swinging on a covered chair on a covered veranda, while over the wall a villager works by her shack; |
| In |
a brother assuming command in his younger brother's house; |
| In |
ox-plough, camel-cart, and horse-carriage; |
| In |
slum urchins clamouring to be photographed, and running off happy when it is done; |
| In |
women eating, cross-legged, on the floor in the kitchen, after the men have eaten; |
| In |
richness, and variety, in food; |
| In |
a younger brother attending his brother's home to be host, and to be ready to care; |
| In |
a chador-clad woman working in the veranda's coolness, and calling to her neighbour; |
| In |
a flight of parrots landing on a tree in formation; |
| In |
a large clock, prominent over the door; a small clock decorating the table: both within twenty minutes of the correct time; |
| In |
the women, elegant in garb and motion, although crouched to clean the floor; |
| In |
the caterwauling of heathen music, and a Christian who will not let the name of a heathen god pass his lips; |
| In |
care and attention so close that it keeps you off your sleep; |
| In |
a woman ironing a shirt, cross-legged on the floor, without losing her dignity; |
| In |
houses clung to a crumbling cliff above an expressway; |
| In |
villagers using the expressway hard shoulder as a cycle path; |
| In |
the women who, in spite of their poverty, wear sarees or chadors with colour and pride; |
| and in |
saree after chador in which the combination of colours seems never to be repeated; |
| In |
the way in which the journey may be marked out by a succession of smells; |
| In |
the elegant hotel stenched at low tide by seaweed; |
| In |
in a shabby tenement sporting one brilliant purple patch of washing; |
| In |
oxen patiently hauling their cart through the city's impetuousness; |
| In |
a man with a broken leg launching into the traffic as if to collect the set; |
| In |
smart, satchelled children coming from shacks; |
| In |
gay clothing wafting around the shacks in a national park; |
| In |
stone-breakers hammering by the roadside; |
| In |
a child safely walking alone by the stone wall on an expressway, and dodging across the other track; |
| In |
the large vehicles bullying forward, and the small weaving to the front; |
| In |
the safari park where you drive through the woods to see lions and tigers as well caged as in a zoo; |
| In |
the safari bus conductor contemplating the ticket long, before deciding to accept it; |
| In |
being met in the street by Isaac calling out "Praise the Lord!"; |
| In |
the women vigorously hauling from a filthy well within fifty yards of an unused water pump; |
| In |
women and children washing clothes in water I would not wish mine to be dirtied in; |
| In |
Christian Mennonites in a community around a hall of which they are proud; |
| In |
a sign for "Perfact Construction", emblazoned with "Praise the Lord"; |
| In |
a marvellous hotel reception, light, glitter, and colour, with the stink of seaweed wafting over it; |
| In |
in a Hindu shrine endorsed "Blackberry" and "Airtel"; |
| In |
in a row of shabby shops in a compound marked as "Shopping Complex"; |
| In |
the modern traffic system indicating the number of seconds until the light change - to allow the drivers to start off with ten seconds to go; |
| In |
the smile of a beggar child for whom I did nothing but take her photograph; |
| In |
the swimming pool changing room signs "his" and "hers" |
| In |
a row of people using the central reservation of a dual carriageway as a place to sit with their feet in the road; |
| In |
a shabby, one-roomed house, unrepaired after monsoon damage, with a massive sound system below the high water mark; |
| In |
someone, amid light jumping, ducking and weaving, and lane-madness, being cautioned for not wearing a seat-belt; |
| In |
the news headline, "Pathan fit for WC"; |
| In |
the toilet attendant helpful to the point of ridiculousness - and expecting baksheesh for it; |
| In |
the pale Indian with a wispy beard, white hat and tunic, and his white-shawled wife; |
| In |
the policeman directing the small traffic to cut corners past the cars and trucks; |
| In |
dia! | | | | | |
