An Indian Holiday

My post last week was written as an observer of sociopolitical scene, not as a person returning to visit his family. This piece is a personal documentation of the trip and may be of some interest in a personal way.

I have two brothers, three nephews, one niece, innumerable cousins and their progeny living there. By and large, they are all doing well financially and belong to what is termed upper middle class. They all have cars, some with drivers; own their comfortable homes and no credit card debts. Older relatives are retired with good pensions and/or substantial investment incomes; younger ones in good jobs in industry. Money is not the issue with any of them, except a nephew and his wife who deliberately chose to be a political and social activists living frugally on contributions of supporters to their cause. I don’t believe any of them feel they have done worse financially than yours truly. They have servants for housework and don’t use washing machines for clothes and dishes even when they own them.

Delhi was hectic, partly because going anywhere is time-consuming. It takes an hour or more to go to my brother’s home in Noida from Delhi airport a distance of 15 kilometers. During a stay of four days there we saw my other brother for half an hour, visited a cousin for the afternoon, attended a wedding and visited the village of Sarurpur. The village is located 35 kilometers from Noida, it took almost three hours to get there in a private car. A Calgary family has raised funds to build a maternity clinic in the village. The clinic was officially opened in last October. Although equipped with beds in several rooms on two floors and accommodation for the medical personnel on the third floor, the hospital is working as a day clinic because it is unable to attract qualified staff. The village has electricity for eight hours a day at unpredictable times. Thus, the medical equipment is inoperable and the hesitation of professionals to live and work in the village is understandable. Two doctors and a nurse currently operate the clinic and plans to operate it as a hospital are on hold. My wife Evelyn is a doctor and has an international reputation as a human lactation expert. She was welcomed at the hospital with great fanfare and spent seven hours attending to about fifty patients with a variety of ailments, only a few related to lactation. Still, she had always wanted to work with the poor and this was one of the many high points in her career.

We attended a wedding reception for the brother of the wife of my nephew. In middle class business communities grooms are bought in something like a silent auction. Parents of eligible girls bid for the grooms euphemistically stating what they will ‘spend on the wedding’. Since most of the money is spent on the dowry, a price is being set for the groom. In this wedding, bride’s father gifted the family a home in Delhi, a car and unstated amount of gold and diamond jewellery. Most of the relatives of the groom received the gift of a package of expensive candy and an envelope with five hundred rupees (ten dollars). Total money spent on the wedding was estimated by my sister-in-law at five hundred thousand dollars, a huge sum in India where a cup of tea costs five cents. Traditionally, daughters do not share in the inheritance; the wedding expense is usually much more than their share would be. It is not unusual for a bride’s family to take on huge debts to place her in a ‘good’ home.

The weddings in other communities are simpler. We attended another wedding in Dehradun. The marriage was arranged in two families of prosperous ‘warrior’ community. The dowry was not a consideration. Ceremony was much simple and the reception was elegant but not pretentious. Total expense on the wedding was a few thousand dollars. Father of the groom was gracious and thanked the family of bride for the gift of their daughter, a gesture unthinkable in most Indian weddings.

We travelled in Kerala for a week. Flight from Delhi to Kochi was cheap and comfortable. However, the flight of nephew and his wife from Bombay was delayed and we waited for four hours at the airport for them. We drove to a resort located on the inlet of Arabian Sea. We got up early to visit a bird sanctuary, heard many bird songs but saw none. We did see the village life on the other bank of the inlet with women washing clothes, pots and pans and men themselves and getting ready to face the world. The homes were small but looked neat. Later in the day, on a three hour boat trip we saw a number of kingfishers, egrets, snakebirds and millions – yes millions- of ducks in the inlet, rice fields and coconut groves. The musicians of considerable talent performed to an audience of four to six in the evenings. The swimming pool was not heated but it was warm and the view of the sunset while floating in it is an unforgettable experience.

Train ride to Trivendrum was followed by a car ride to the southern tip of India called Kanyakumari. There were almost as many churches and mission schools as the temples and quite a few mosques. The hotel room had a view of the temple of Swami Vivekanand, an Indian sage of late nineteenth century who preached Hindu philosophy in California. There was also a magnificent towering statue of Tamil poet Periyar. Both are located a few hundred meters from the coast and small boats ferry visitors to them all day. However, unseasonal monsoon rains cancelled all boat trips and we could not visit either. We did have a pleasant walk down and up the crowded market with stalls on both sides of narrow streets. We spent a couple of nights in a beach resort but couldn’t do much due to downpours. We had dinner in a restaurant with thatched roof and makeshift appearance where one course of a ‘catch of the day’ cost more than all restaurant meals on the whole trip.

We returned to Delhi by air and took a train the next day for Dehradun, the capital of a new province Uttarakhand. Main reason for the visit was the wedding of the granddaughter of a very close family friend since the days of our childhood. We were treated royally by the hosts and the wedding was a grand affair without being showy. The day before the wedding, four artists spent several hours decorating bride’s arms and legs with green henna paste which left red designs after it dried and peeled off. The artists hid the name of the groom in the design and he was expected to find it when they met. Evelyn also had her arms and hands decorated and the colour lasted a week. There was no mention of the dowry but the groom’s party did arrive with the usual pomp, groom on a horse surrounded by a band and followed by about two hundred guests. The bride came an hour later looking like a princess dressed in a gorgeous red sari and jewels from head to toe. She was conveyed on a palaki carried by her brothers on their shoulders to the groom waiting patiently for her on a divan. The cameramen, amateurs and professionals hired for the occasion, got busy snapping all possible combinations of the families. Soon it was almost midnight and the groom was having a hard time staying awake. The word spread that the ‘phera’ ceremony in which couples go round the holy fire seven times while the priest chants Sanskrit mantras praying for the couple’s happiness and advising them on how to cope with whatever the future brings, was to be delayed till several hours after midnight. The guests who had eaten a sumptuous meal long ago now started to take their leave. The members of close family rested for a few hours before the final public ceremony in the midmorning when the bride leaves her home to become a member of her new family. Plenty of tears were shed by every one present and after the bride had departed with the groom. It was at this moment when the father of the groom thanked bride’s family for the gift of their daughter.

One of the highlights of our trip was the visit to the home where I was born and lived till I was eight. Once an elegant home, it was now dilapidated but almost as I remember it in general appearance. It has been divided into three apartments and is habited by families in difficult circumstances. We were invited in by the elderly lady owner and treated to tea and snacks. She told us all the hoops she was going through to make one of the tenants leave and of the plans to renovate the house after the tenants had left. The city as a whole, just like most buildings in the country, has a worn out look.

We spent a few days in Nainital, a popular summer resort since the glory days of British Raj. Again, the streets are crowded with vehicles, even on the mall which used to be an avenue for pedestrians only and where the families strolled around the lake admiring the beauty of the turquoise water reflecting the surrounding peaks and enjoying the cool fragrant air. The distant Himalayan peaks are visible only rarely now. Still, the views of lakes and surrounding peaks are wonderful and visitors return home to their humdrum life refreshed.

Day after returning by train from Nainital, we flew to Calgary with a five hour stopover in Frankfurt. It took more than two weeks to get over twelve hour jet lag. The trip was tiring but refreshing too.

A Bad Dream

Lying on a couch with the remote in his palm to flip through five hundred channels is Laxman’s favorite activity. But he was not facing the big screen TV; he was in the clinic of Dr. Mac, a psychoanalyst known all over the continent for his interpretation of dreams. Laxman was fortunate to get this appointment. Actually the fortune was in having Sophia for a wife who had many strings to her bow, one of them connected to Dr. Mac.

Sophia had a problem with Laxman which was getting worse by the day. In fact, she had two problems. First, Laxman did not concentrate when she talked to him. Not only did his eyes wander, even when there were no pretty faces around, he tapped pencil on the table, clicked his tongue, hummed some rotten Indian melody or made other disturbing sounds. The consequence was that he bought meat at the grocery store when she had asked him to buy milk and drove over to the hardware store at the other end of town to buy nails when she wanted him to pick up the mail. Second problem was his speech. He spoke to her facing away as if mumbling and the strange accent was not bad enough and then sulked when she complained. It had got to the point that Sophia was losing patience with him every hour of the day and even their sex life, never great at the best of times, had hit a new bottom.

Then came the last straw; the dream. Laxman had frequent dreams of being at his college in India. In these dreams he was having problems like not finding the wash room, shower running out of water, long line up for meals and losing large sums in the games of bridge. He would wake up sweating all over as if from a nightmare and describe it in great detail. Sophia listened patiently and patted him back to sleep as she had done with their sons when they were babies. But this new dream shook her up; she had read in a magazine article that older men in early stages of senility start craving for what they were fond of in their childhood and wish to return to places they loved then. She wondered if her husband of forty years was, in addition to becoming partially deaf and inattentive, also suffering from some mental disorder. After Laxman had gone back to sleep she made a note in her bedside memo pad to investigate the issue. She let it simmer in her head for a couple of days before discussing it with a few of her friends knowledgeable in such matters. On their unanimous advice she arranged an appointment for Laxman with Dr. Mac a month after the nightmare although the waiting list of the celebrated dream surgeon was known to be longer than nine months.

Dr. Mac’s opening gambit in the examination surprised Laxman. “Are you comfortable? Does the headrest need adjustment?” the famous doctor asked.
“Thanks you for your concern, sir. I am so comfortable I am afraid I might fall asleep,” Laxman replied.
“Please don’t do that. I might think you are considering a reply to my query and time will be wasted. My time is precious although I only charge five dollars a minute. Now let us get down to business. Am I right in thinking that you had a dream recently that has your wife worried about the soundness of your mind?”
“Yes, that is true although I do not really see it that way. I have often had dreams of my old haunts in India which wake me up because I don’t really have any pleasant memories from those days. This new dream sends me back to earlier days but there is nothing particularly creepy about it.”
“Interesting, very interesting. Goes back to earlier days. How early?
“The frequent dreams are from my late teen years in college. This dream is from preteen days.”
“Interesting. Before we go into the dream itself, have you had it again?”
“Yes, several times. It scares Sophia every time.”
“And not you?”
“Not really. It does wake me up and I am happy to realize that it was but a dream. Unfortunately, Sophia wakes up too and she insists on knowing what disturbed my sleep. I happily go back to sleep after the episode.”
“And Sophia doesn’t. Interesting. Does it appear again when you have returned to slumber land?”
“No it doesn’t. In fact the sleep is unusually sound, no dreams whatever.”
“It is like letting the steam out. Once it is gone you can relax.”
“I never looked at it this way. This is also true about my scary dreams of teenage years.”
“Interesting. Now you can describe the bad dream, or the nightmare, whatever you call it, in its most usual form?”
“First a preamble. I was born in the foothills of Nilgiris in a then small town called Anmora. Tall peaks dominated the view in the South, white in the winter, grayish blue in the summer. An hour by bus, about 30 kilometers is a famous summer holiday town called Sensous where the rich families of south India spend the summer to avoid the scorching heat of the plains. I was never impressed by Sensous even when I was a child. It seemed too pretentious somehow. The hill town that I loved was Rotipur, about a hundred kilometers from Anmora on a narrow road which looked from the top like a winding ribbon lying on the side of mountain. It took three hours and every passenger on the bus was sick at the end of the journey. But what a view once you got there. I was there only once and only for a week when I was ten. But the memory of the majestic mountains all around me at the glorious sunrise in the East or the fantastic colours of the sunset in the West; and yes the rainbow after the noon drizzle. It was as if a great artist had taken his pallet and brush and drawn an arc of seven distinct colours in the bright blue sky. It is perfectly possible that the time has improved what I saw, but this is what I remember. I felt throughout my teens and twenties that I was born to live at Rotipur. Not like a poor boy that I was then but like a rich man of independent means with maids and servants to look after my every whim. Strange thing is that the prospective family never made an appearance when I day dreamed of this life – no wife, no children. However, Rotipur receded from view when I migrated to Canada and married Sophia, only to reappear a month ago.”
“Interesting, very interesting. Carry on.”
“As I said in the beginning, the dreams of late teenage life at college persisted, mainly reminding me of the struggles in those days. In the dream that Sophia suspects is indicative of approaching senility, I am standing on the balcony of my palatial home on a hill top looking into the distance. Sometimes I have a glass of red wine in my right hand, sometimes a cup of steaming tea but most often nothing. My appearance is similar to what it was twenty years ago, in my fifties. Mountain peaks are without doubt Rotipur peaks. I look right; I see the sun rising slowly from behind the peaks, the sky becoming brighter as the white disc rises above the horizon. Then I turn left and see the sun going down behind the peaks in the West, sky becoming darker as it grows pink. There are no clouds, no rainbow and of course no stars. Then the sun sets completely and everything goes dark. The curtain falls on the dream and I wake up.”
“Very interesting. The dreams as vivid as yours have some meaning. We have to work together to find out what it could be. One thing it is not. It is not the onset of senility. You said you look in the dream as you did in your fifties. Can you tell me what was happening in your life around that time?”
“Those were the good years. Our two sons were at colleges in Toronto and Montreal. Sophia had her business under control and I had enough time for afternoons at the club most days, golf or bridge, depending on the weather. Perhaps it was the best time of our lives.”
“How is your life now? How do you get on with Sophia?”
“Sophia has two distinct personalities. She is an angel when she is relaxed, you would not find a better person anywhere. She makes every body around her feel good. She makes me look a great father and a good person altogether which in itself is a miracle. But when under stress she becomes temperamental and has outbursts worse than a cannon fire. That is why our life together has its ups and downs, more downs than ups in recent years. We are from very different cultures and have never been a homogeneous couple like many of our fortunate friends. Over last twenty years we have been growing further apart because our interests have been diverging further. We do things together on occasions but it is more to be obliging on part of one or the other than out of his or her personal interest. Sometimes it works, other times it adds to the stresses.”
“Interesting. Is this divergence the only source of stress or there are others too.”
“Illness of a son and the grandson, the marriage break-up of the son and the illness of Sophia have all contributed. They continue to stress Sophia and it adds to difficulties between us because I want to detach myself from situations where I can’t help. Sophia has deep emotional roots and she frets when her interventions are misinterpreted.”
“How do these stresses impact on you?”
“It is not the events themselves; it is the reaction of Sophia to them. She gets upset with sons or the daughter-in-law, becomes tense and takes her anger out on me. I understand what is going on but feel pretty depressed all the same. I am not willing or able to stand up to Sophia and fight when she is being unreasonable. I take her snapping and bullying without protest – in fact I try to appease her. But it does hurt and I wonder why I stay in that situation.”
“Why do you appease her rather than stand up for yourself?”
“There are several reasons. First, I think her temper tantrums are more extreme due the almost fatal disease she had five years ago and the effect of drugs prescribed for it. Second, she has been very kind to me in our first few years together. She helped me settle in the West by helping me when I needed it. Not only that, she uprooted herself to move when my career was helped by it. Third, she was an excellent mother to the children and a great role model to them. Fourth, she showed great concern as if her world was falling apart whenever I was ill. There is so much gratitude I owe her I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“This is an interesting angle. Nothing you have said so far gave the idea that you were sensitive enough to have such feelings.”
“I am often told that I need to be sensitive to others and I have been trying.”
“You have had some success. Any thing more to add?”
“I have been thinking of late that there may be some truth in what she often says when she is angry – she would be better off without me; a butler would be cheaper and better in every way. If that is indeed true I would be doing her a favour by leaving. If she is indeed better it would offset some of the burden of gratitude that I carry.”
“Yes, one could look at it that way.”
“Then the old American saying – Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Should we be making each other’s present and future miserable because of the past kindnesses?”
“You have a point. A relationship can be great at one stage of life and a misery at another. While raising the family, couples work out how they share the load. As they start wilting in old age one may start to feel burdened by the other not doing his share.”
“What you say is frightening. What happens to the notions of love and understanding in such cases?”
“Love is an abstraction and understanding is fleeting. Practicalities and burdens of daily life are always the first consideration.”
“Social implications of what you just said are immense. Marriage is for raising children, not for life. After kids grow up each is on his own.”
“Not always. In old days people did not live long and this was rarely an issue. These days many couples adjust to new realities and carry on. Not because they love each other more but because adaptation is easier than the complications of a break up. Some struggle but carry on regardless. Separation and new relationships may be better when both are driving each other mad. No one can tell you where you stand and what the best course is for you. That is for you alone to consider. Anything else!”
“I think I have said all there is to say on this issue.”
“Then let us move on. Do you have any financial stresses?”
“I wish we did. Then divergence in temperament and hobbies would probably take the back seat. We have ample funds for our retirement in our separate accounts for all foreseeable needs.”
“Interesting. Well, I can have you in that couch for several consultations and charge you a bundle. But I won’t because I do not have time to waste. I will tell you my interpretation of your dreams. After you have given my summary some thought we can meet again if you wish.
“Your dreams of late teen college days are expressing your fears of returning to India and reverting to being single. I am certain you had them after unpleasantness in the family and when you were wondering ‘what am I doing here’. Those dreams encouraged you to work at pleasing Sophia in spite of poor results. A month or so ago you concluded that your relationship with Sophia is beyond repair and your future happiness lies in being single. This is why your dreams carry you to an earlier happy period. They show the idea down deep in your mind. Yet, you are not certain what to do. That is why you look to the right and the left and not straight at the rainbow. To help you in making a decision is another issue and I am not in the right profession to help you with that.”
“It is not far from what I was thinking. How to present it to Sophia is indeed a problem. I need to give that some thought too.”
“Sophia is no fool. She has her suspicions and she arranged this visit is to confirm them. Tell her the good news that senility has not touched you yet. Then discuss the issues between you. As I indicated I am not qualified to tell you how to do it. In any event, my next patient has been waiting for ten minutes and I must say good bye.”

Dr. Mac opened the door with left hand and offered Laxman the right for a handshake. Laxman accepted it with a wry smile. He stood still outside of the door, not knowing whether to go to the right or the left, East or West.

Return of the Native 2

I left India in 1961. Over fifty years of my life as immigrant in four countries I have returned on average every four years for about three weeks each time. I was there for nineteen days this year in November and December and my previous visit was in the same months of the year 2007. I was keen to see how the country has changed during this interval. According to the media reports the economy there has grown annually by 10% for many years. It has been pointed out by some that the middle class has expanded while others have insisted, and I shared this opinion, that just like the West, rich have grown richer while poor have grown poorer and also more numerous because the economic growth has not kept pace with the population growth over the long term. The population has indeed grown at an alarming rate; at over one billion it is three times it was at the time of independence in 1947. Although there is a small decline in the growth rate, population is no where near stabilizing. An unfortunate side of this growth is that it is concentrated among the poor who have no incentive to limit the number of children they have and more of their children now survive, thanks to the availability of better basic services and medical care in the villages and slums.

To get some idea of the real situation, and to spend time with the family as well, I spent four days in Delhi visiting relatives, a week travelling in Kerala at the southern tip of the country with my social activist nephew and his wife and a week in Uttarakhand in Himalayan foothills to attend a wedding in a village near Dehra Dun, my home town and enjoy the beauties of Nainital, a celebrated mountain resort since the glory days of British Raj. India is known as a country of contradictions and true to form it offered many surprises. It was pleasant to find that there were very few beggars except near the temples where begging is big business operated by the Indian mafia. There was little cow dung on the roads because most of the unclaimed stray cows have been exported to the Middle East. There are fewer mangy stray dogs but plenty of well-fed monkeys. Contrary to my fears, poor in cities and villages I visited or passed on my travels were better fed and clothed than ever before. Majority of women now wear salwar (baggy pants) kameez (knee-length long tunic) rather than cumbersome sari, jeans are worn by some teenage girls and a few young women in major cities. Niqab (face covering) is rare indeed, even in villages. A simple proof of trickling down prosperity is that there were very few bare feet on the streets and children looked healthier and cleaner. Groups of teenage girls in school uniforms going to or coming back from schools were a pleasant sight every where. Even the coolies proudly talked of their children, girls as well as boys, going to private schools at their expense. One of our cab drivers had a post graduate degree but he did not complain about his lot. He is happy that that he and his school teacher wife can afford to send their two children to private schools. The sad aspect of this story is the general distrust in public schools who suffer through siphoning off by corrupt officials of already meager funds.


The other side of the happy economic situation is that even the medium size cities like Kochi and Dehra Dun are choking with ever growing vehicular traffic clogging their narrow streets. Large cities like Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi and Bangalore with population exceeding ten millions are virtually at a standstill for many hours in a day. Thankfully, majority of buses and trucks have converted to natural gas from diesel and ancient cars have largely disappeared. Therefore, obnoxious fumes these cities were notorious for in the past are now rare. But breathing is not any easier anywhere in India, not even in pristine Himalayas. The air is heavily polluted with dust and invisible but deadly gases emitted by stalled vehicles. Fogs are a constant presence throughout the year making air and rail transport unreliable. A heavy mist almost completely masks the Himalayan peaks which were a sight to behold only a few years ago in Nainital. The sewerage is dumped untreated into the streams which people use to wash themselves and their clothes and to draw water for cooking and drinking. The ground water level in areas surrounding the cities is dropping fast; for example the wells go down to more than four hundred feet in suburbs of Delhi rather than a hundred feet a decade ago. Major population centres have uninterrupted electricity most days but towns and villages are lucky to have power supply for eight hours. Therefore, professionals like doctors and teachers stay away and hospitals and schools can not offer services citizens need. The solution of the shortages appears to be a long way off since the plans for nuclear power generation are facing insurmountable local opposition after Fukushima disaster.

Indians are generally outgoing people. Yet, although there is great awareness of cleanliness inside the home they do not see the dirt, dust and human and animal refuse beyond the front door. In spite of economic boom, most streets have more dilapidated appearance than on previous visit. Beautiful temples and mosques which are visited by thousands of visitors daily are spotless inside but their surroundings are repulsive to any one concerned with hygiene. To add to the hardships of dense population, residents live in constant fear of theft which is rarely reported due to a general distrust of law enforcement officials. Rule of Law is embedded in the constitution bit it is of little practical value for general public.

Corruption is visible at every level in India from an orderly who must be tipped for a message to be conveyed to the receptionist to cabinet ministers, even senior judges. Ironically, educated and intelligent persons claim to be honest while taking pride in how they avoided taxes or secured other favours by cozying up to the right officers. A new high in two-faced attitude was reached when Rahul Gandhi, son of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was murdered (martyred?) by Tamil Tigers and Rajiv’s Italian wife Sonya who now runs the government through her puppets. Rahul is next in the dynasty which has ruled ‘democratic’ India since independence except for a few short terms when Congress party lost the election. Unfortunately, he has shown little aptitude for anything other than claiming his right to rule the country. In an address to the delegates from the youth wing of the ruling party he preached that the only way to eliminate corruption in the country was to modify the democratic system. He did not care to elaborate but one would be forgiven to assume that he wishes to be given a free hand when he ascends to his rightful place at the helm. No one in the audience, either the delegate or the media, dared to ask the questions on the lips of ordinary citizens – How did his family accumulate the fortune estimated in hundreds of millions of dollars without ever having been in a successful venture or what qualifies him for the positions he occupies in the ruling party and the government?

My overall impression is that the drastic reduction in state controls on production in final decade of the last millennium liberated the suppressed native ingenuity and the economy developed rapidly. It helped most of the population to live better in a material sense. While there is optimism among people I met, there is also a growing awareness that rapid exhaustion of basic resources like water and clean air, corruption in administration at every level and governance focused on shortsighted economic goals are driving the country towards a cliff and no one has an inkling of how to stop it.

Having just returned from India after a three week trip I am writing my impressions of travel from Himalayan ranges to Kanya Kumari. To set this in context here is what I wrote after our last visit in 2007.

Return of the Native.

1.

A new immigrant from India has a hard time. First, he must learn to drive on the wrong side of the road. Then he has to get used to the freezing weather and all that goes with it. If he is young and hot-blooded he falls in love and marries a wonderful local girl. Before he knows it, she is training him. He learns to enjoy the fine points of bland Western food and to honour her wishes unlike in India where a wife anticipates her husband’s whims and fulfills them before they are expressed. What is worse, he can’t join his wife for holidays to exotic places on this continent because he must go ‘home’ to see his family.

I was not your typical immigrant though. I did marry a Western girl and undergo strict training. But I went on holidays with the family and gave my former home a skip. Last time I was in India was four years ago and Monica was there with me part of the time. Monica is currently recovering from a debilitating illness and needed a long rest. My sister-in-law Nirusha invited us to visit her in India. We were in complete agreement except that I suggested three week recuperation under Nirusha’s care while Monica wanted to travel to explore opportunities for volunteer activity. After long discussions carried on in bed instead of more interesting activities, we reached an agreement – ten days in Delhi with Nirusha, a visit to the ancient Jain temples in Northwest India, a few days with my social activist nephew Rajneesh, a safari to a tiger sanctuary and a few days in Singapore with my niece. I sent the provisional itinerary to Rajneesh and he made reservations accordingly. There was a last minute scare. The visas did not arrive and I had to make several cajoling calls to the Indian consulate to receive them on the planned day of departure. Finally, we set off on a twenty hour journey made to appear even longer by the twelve hour jet lag. Thanks to travel during midweek, we had empty seats on our flight to Frankfurt and slept comfortably all the way when we were not being fed. The combination of long sleep, good food and favourable jet lag is hard to beat. We were bursting with energy when we pushed our luggage cart to the reception area at Delhi airport a little after midnight. My niece Sarala and Rajneesh’s wife Manju were there to greet us with broad smiles and open arms.

The realization that we were in Delhi struck with a new force when we walked out of the building and breathed the heavy warm air. Taxi that had been arranged to take us to my brother Vijay’s home did not show up and after waiting for an hour Manju engaged another one at the exorbitant rate of five hundred rupees (thirteen dollars). The trunk was loaded with the driver’s personal belongings but a little rearranging made room for the large and heavy case. Four of us squeezed in with smaller cases on our laps. The roads were busy even at this hour and the fifteen kilometers ride took an hour and a half. The journey from the airport was more tiring than the twenty hours of flying. I was snoozing and Vijay and Nirusha waiting in the driveway when we turned the last corner. Their heartfelt welcome made Monica’s nervousness and my weariness disappear in Delhi’s thick air. We jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped and hugged each other like the long lost kins we were. In view of the late hour detailed exchanges were postponed till the morning and after a drink of hot creamy milk we hit the comfortable bed under the canopy of a mosquito net. Sleep was not in the cards though. Noise of continuous traffic in which blowing the horn every ten seconds is de rigueur, recorded prayers blaring on a microphone in the nearby temple, call of a muezzin, again on the microphone, in a mosque across the main road are not conducive to a restful slumber. Fortunately we got used to it in a couple of days.

A tropical travel specialist in Calgary had prescribed a number of pills to be taken daily and some others as required. The need arose after a few hours of tossing and turning. Monica was attacked by Delhi Belly – diarrhea by its Western name. When pills did not help she started the course of antibiotics. After two days she could keep the delicious food in again and we breathed sighs of relief. A little too soon, as it turned out. At the breakfast table the next morning, I coughed gently with a handkerchief on my mouth. Every one noticed it and a barrage of questions were let loose.
“Do you have phlegm?” asked Vijay.
“Did you cough in the night?” asked Nirusha.
“Were you cold in the night?” asked Kamala.
Manju, not to be left behind shot the final arrow, “Did you sit under the A.C. vent on the airplane?”
Monica, a real doctor and most concerned with the health of her only husband, tried to interject but no one let her. They did not listen to my replies either. Vijay rushed to a cabinet and returned with a musty old bottle and shoved in my mouth a tea spoon full of green syrup spilling some on my sparkling white new kurta (long shirt). He did not notice the spill and confidently assured every one “His cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Nirusha went to the kitchen and brought an Ayurvedic powder wrapped in a brown newspaper and a bowl of tomato soup with a liberal sprinkling of black pepper. “Take these” she commanded and assured all who would listen, “The cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Kamala produced a yellow tablet from her handbag and handed it to me, “I took this last week and my cough was gone in ten minutes.” Manju watched me consume all this medication and thankfully did not produce any herself. But she did offer this bit of advice, “Stay in bed and drink a lot of sweet chai with cardamom. The cold will be gone by the evening.” Her prescription seemed to me the most attractive because duration of her treatment was a shade less unrealistic than that of the others.

Monica watched in consternation as I consumed all the offerings and prepared to stretch on the sofa with a cup of prescribed chai. The doctor was the only one who thought that the much ballyhooed cough was merely a sneeze and was nothing to worry about.

I later discovered that the duration of every event in Delhi is ten minutes whether it is a two hour drive to visit the relatives at the other end of the city or an hour wait for a visitor who announced his imminent arrival on the ‘mobile’. As for my illness, every one turned out to be wrong though no one admitted it. It was indeed the cough but it took much longer than ten minutes to go away. In spite of gaining several inches around my waistline due to the consumption of syrups, pills, powders, gells, soups, teas and miscellaneous brews, the cough persisted during the whole stay in Delhi and left only when the dusty grimy air of India’s bustling capital city was a memory.

Apart from Monica’s diarrhea and my cough, the stay in Delhi was most pleasant. Nirusha loves to spoil her family, particularly her husband’s younger brother. Monica and I were not allowed to do anything that could be construed as work but were expected to consume massive amounts of delicious curries, parathas, gulab jamuns, burphies, pealed apples, guavas and pears and varieties of nuts every hour we were awake. Somehow we found time to see an excellent performance of a ballet based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, the museum of modern art with some paintings by the celebrated poet Rabindra Nath Tagore and the local fair to celebrate Deewali, the festival of light. We also managed to arrange a visit to the local government hospital and a private clinic which gave Monica a great deal of pleasure as well as the information about the delivery and range of medical services in India.

2.

Our visit was planned around the holy festival of Deepavali, or Deevali. It is timed to be a harvest festival and celebrates the victory of Ram (one of many incarnations of God) over the devil Ravan. It is a good time to visit India. Weather is pleasant, heat of the summer is a thing of the past and the cold of the winter is a few weeks away. Monsoons are over but the ground is not parched and the vegetation is still lush green. However, there are a few problems. Delhi has grown to be a city of five million inhabitants with infrastructure for one tenth that many. Therefore, the roads are clogged, water and electricity supply irregular and air heavily polluted. Not surprisingly, the diseases are so common that every fourth store on the main street was related to medicine. Illnesses of the individual and the family dominate all conversation. This may be an indication of another perversion in society. Corruption in all walks of life, the favourite topic in previous visits, is now accepted as the rule of law of the mighty and there is a general realization that complaining about it is futile, if not dangerous.

Our arrival nine days before the festival was a welcome news to my extended family. My neice Sarala and her businessman husband Amul had come over from Nagpur to see us. Rajneesh and Manju came from far off Pune. A stream of visitors from Delhi culminated in a big party thrown by Nirusha for seventy guests. Monica in her new pink Salwar Kameez was the toast of the party so much so that few noticed their male relative from Canada. In accordance with the ancient custom, we visited the older relatives to pay our respects. Invariably the hosts were most insistent to feed us the creations of their servants and were offended if we, Monica especially, showed any hesitation. On every visit the hosts legitimately complained of the shortness of our one hour stay although it took us more than four hours including the travel time. All because Vijay estimated that every one of them was a mere ten minutes away although it took longer than that to get the car out of its parking spot.

On the festive day itself, Manju made a beautiful ‘Rangoli on the floor near the front entrance. It is an artwork approximately one meter in diameter made with fine white and colourd powders. Its sole purpose is to make the entrance of the home attractive and welcoming to the visitors. Lunch that followed was a veritable feast with dozens of dishes loaded with spices, sugar and fat. A snooze in the afternoon was mandatory, even for ever busy Nirusha.

After sunset, the small store room which also served as prayer nook became the hub of activity. Earlier in the day, clay statuettes of various gods, which the family worshipped in spite of Jain edict forbidding it, had been arranged neatly in an arc on the floor. Tiny earthen lamps were filled with vegetable oil and placed in front of the idols. I was assigned the job of lighting their wicks which required lying prostrate on the floor. Then Nirusha handed Vijay a ‘thali’ (round metal plate) containing more lighted lamps and offerings of rice and coconut. All believers now accompanied Vijay in chanting a prayer in the glory of all-caring and all-loving God while the patriarch waved the thali around the idols. Every one had a turn with the thali and chanting, self-proclaimed atheists and the lonely Christian included. After the prayer Nirusha, as the lady of the house, applied the ceremonial tika, a mark with red paste and grains of rice, on all foreheads and gave cash gifts to Manju and Monica.

After the religious ceremony we sat around the dining table doing justice to the lunch leftovers. Vijay and Nirusha talked of how nice it was to have us all, particularly Monica, with them. I reminded Nirusha of her instruction to me, “Bring Monica with you, don’t come without her.” She laughed, happy that her threat had worked.

As the midnight approached words became few and yawns many. It was time to wish good night. Another Deewali had come and gone leaving fond memories, especially for Nirusha whose life revolves around her extended family.

3.

After twelve restful days with the family in Delhi, Rajneesh, Manju, Monica and I said our long goodbyes and left for Udaipur leaving a long stream of tears behind. After a smooth two hour flight we arrived at our destination in the late afternoon. A van and the driver were waiting for us. We drove for five hours to the holy city of Mount Abu which is also a summer resort. The views of mountains and the sunset were refreshing and the towns and villages we passed through showed signs of economic revival. Our hotel was located on a hill top and had a marvelous view of the city and the surrounding area. The sunrise next morning was something to treasure in the memory bank. There are numerous temples of various Hindu sects in the vicinity which attract pilgrims from all over India. Our focus was Jain temples of Dilwara about twenty minutes by car. The temples were built in twelfth and thirteenth centuries and are deservedly renowned for intricate sculpture. Monica wore a saree for the visit out of respect for the pilgrims’ sentiments. This also allowed us to claim her as a Jain believer and we were permitted entrance in the hours reserved for Jain worshippers. The vast courtyard houses three main temples, two with statues of the last and the most revered Tirthankar (messenger of God) Bhagwan Mahavir for two Jain subsects and one of Adinath, an earlier Tirthankar. Small cubicles were built along the perimeter of the courtyard which had beautifully made statues of each of the twenty four Tirthankars, many repeated several times. We left when the crowds of non-Jain visitors started pouring in and it became impossible to appreciate the art works. Next stop was a lake with crocodiles where the attraction of the afternoon was a small snake tightening itself around a mouse. Then we drove to the foot of a hill and walked a long way to the top. There were small shops on each side of the narrow cobbled path. However, the merchandise was no match for a Gori (white woman) in a Sari. Almost incessant questions to her were courteous and Monica’s Hindi improved appreciably by the end of the walk. There was a famous but small and unattractive temple on the top. However, the sunset across the Aravali mountains with the winding Banas river in the valley was magnificent and the clicking of cameras competed with the chirping of a variety of colourful birds.

Next day we drove to another set of Jain temples in Ranakpur on a circuitous way back to Udaipur. The temples are a little older and if anything more magnificent in design and art work than the more famous Dilwara temples. There is one main temple for Bhagwan Mahavir in the centre with smaller temples for all Tirthankars along three sides of the periphery of the courtyard. The marble idol of Mahavir was magnificent as were all the intricate carvings everywhere. There were two older temples in the grounds which were simpler but interesting if only because they were a few centuries older. Another feature was Dharmshala adjacent to the temple, a large number of small rooms around a vast courtyard where the pilgrims of limited means could stay for whatever they could afford.

On our way out Saree clad Monica was surrounded by a crowd of school children in immaculate uniforms. Children talked to her in Hindi all at once and she reciprocated with good humour. This event prompted a strange dream that night. Monica, surrounded by hordes of children was exhorting them on a manual loudspeaker to march to Delhi to demand the end of poverty and more important – longer holidays. She then led the crowd who were shouting slogans in Hindi “Remove poverty, give us longer holidays” out of the temple grounds. I was by her side giving moral support. However, when we got the main road neither of us knew which way to turn for Delhi and the procession ended in utter confusion.

After the temple we made a short stop at a museum commemorating the great battle between Maharana (king) Pratap of Chittor and the forces of the Moghul emperor Akbar. After a night in a hotel in Udaipur we visited the fort of Chittorgarh three hours away on a four lane divided highway. Although the traffic was rather sparse, its variety was even greater than in Delhi. There were camels and elephants walking regally to their masters’ destinations along with usual pedestrians on the tarmac, horse and bullock carts, bicycles, dogs, cows, bulls and bare foot ladies in colourful lahangas (long skirts) with a variety of loads skillfully balanced on their heads.

Chittorgarh is the fort of the longest ruling dynasty in the world – from sixth century to the present day. We hired a guide who claimed a reasonable command of English. It turned out that he could string sentences using some English and many Hindi words with verbs of whichever language suited his fancy. He showed us most of the 130 temples the fort is famous for, the museum, the thirteenth century victory tower with beautiful carvings inside and out and, believe it or not, the wash room of Padmini, chief queen of Maharana Sanga who built the victory tower.

The wash room boasted nothing grand. All it had was a hole in the ground with two thin marble blocks on which the queen squatted to do the dirty work. What caught my eye about the room was its size. It was bigger than any such facility I have had the opportunity to use in any of the countries I have traveled in. The reason, the guide told me with complete equanimity and no explanation: ten maids assisted the queen in performing this vital function.

On the return drive a problem of great historical interest occupied my thoughts. What could the possible duties of ten maids be in the Queen’s wash room? The drive was almost over by the time I worked these out. Two maids were required to take off the silk lahanga, one to untie the knot in the string holding it up and the other to pull the garment over the majestic head. Third maid washed the royal bum with all reverence due to it. Fourth dried it with soft rose petals, fifth disinfected with haldi (turmeric) lotion, sixth applied sandalwood paste deodorant, and seventh perfumed with chameli oil. The eighth maid pulled the lahanga back on over the queen’s head and ninth tied the string. Tenth? She was the supervisor who made sure that the queen was not inconvenienced in any way by any maid’s slackness in her duty.

It struck me that there was no reason why this queen would be the only one to have this privilege. Other queens of Maharana must have had the maids in their wash rooms too although their number probably declined in proportion to their mistress’s importance. As for Maharana, there is no record of the number of attendants, male or female, that accompanied him to his wash room. I suspect that the wash room entourage became customary in all royal places in India and the European monarchs followed suit with great élan to outdo their primitive counterparts in the luxury every claimant to royalty deserves.

Just in case you think that the maids had easy lives, they had other duties too. After appropriate rest to recover from this exhausting but necessary task, the queen took her place on a suitably padded marble bench and opened her beautiful mouth which was to launch a thousand horses one day and interrupt, albeit briefly, Maharana’s reign. The maids took turn in cleaning the pearly teeth with a brush made out of a neem twig and helped in washing her mouth with water from the holy Ganges. According to some reports, at least one modern prince in Europe has taken this leaf from the medieval queen’s diary. To keep the princely mouth in shape to launch enough hot words to keep the kingdom warm, a qualified dentist and his well-trained assistant are in attendance every morning and evening. It will be too low a stoop for the prince whose forefathers ruled the waves to brush his own teeth. As to the royal bum, all lips are sealed and there is no word on how the issue is handled.

4.

The plan was to catch the afternoon flight and reach Mumbai in good time to spend a couple of hours with a nephew there before driving to Pune. However, the flight was six hours late. A frequent traveler on the route told us that we were lucky; the flight is often twelve hours late due to a dire shortage of pilots. We missed seeing the nephew and arrived at the apartment at 3 AM instead of expected 11 PM. We went straight to bed and woke up around ten. Rajneesh accompanied Monica to a missionary hospital to investigate the opportunities to volunteer her medical services while I rested to complete my recovery from Udaipur Downer – a less severe form of Delhi belly I had caught on my last day in that city with a glorious past and the potential of a bright future. Two days in Pune went by quickly as we visited the social projects of Rajneesh and Manju – organizing volunteers to teach slum children, showing documentaries to raise awareness of social problems, meetings with volunteers to maximize their impact and recruitment of new ‘social activists.’ We also had an opportunity to attend a social activist wedding in which most of the formalities were discarded in favour of a simple brunch and performances of classical dance and semi-classical songs of a very high standard.

Our last stop in India was a tiger sanctuary located on Kabini River near the border of Karnataka and Kerala provinces. To get there we flew to Bangalore where another van with a driver was waiting for us. It was a six hour drive on dark and often treacherous dirt roads. We arrived just in time to ‘freshen up’ before dinner. The cabins in this forest reserve were luxuriously appointed with, among other unexpected comforts, a western toilet with a somewhat appropriate brand name Hindware. On each of our two day stay we had jeep safaris in the jungle at dawn and boat rides on the river in the afternoon. The promised elephant rides did not materialize because the elephants were ‘in heat’. In the mornings we saw hundreds of spotted deer, one leopard hiding in the bush, couple of elephants, some coyotes and many egrets and cormorants in the lakes. As for tigers we had to console ourselves with the video of the reserve with these magnificent creatures in it. In the evenings we saw more egrets and cormorants and a few crocodile snouts and one elephant. The sunset was spectacular on both evenings. The meals and service in the resort were very good, particularly in view of its remote location.

On our way back to Bangalore for our midnight flight to Singapore we had the opportunity to visit the historic city of Mysore with its magnificent nineteenth century palace, Brindavan gardens with lovely fountains and a majestic temple on the top of a hill with the superb view of the city and the surrounding countryside. A traffic jam on our way to the airport threatened to derail our travel plans but the driver’s skill in negotiating the heavy traffic saved the day. Looking back, this day was the appropriate summary of our Indian experience – beauty in its many forms if you look for it mixed with confusion that is miraculously resolved at the very last moment.

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5.

We arrived in Singapore with the sun after a four hour flight. The airport facilities were amazing and we had completed the formalities and collected our luggage within twenty minutes of leaving the plane. A half hour cab ride took us to the apartment of my niece, Vijay’s daughter Maya and her husband Pritam. We spent four days with them chilling out, as Maya instructed us to do.

Singapore is a small island of about 700 sq kms and less than five million inhabitants. About 70% of the population is of Chinese origin, the rest are Malays and Indians with a few Europeans. The difference in an Indian city of the same size, say Bangalore, and Singapore is like night and day. Overcrowding, dust, garbage, smell from open drains, beggars and potholes are nowhere to be seen in Singapore while they are omnipresent in India and worsening as the economy grows. I got the impression that Singapore was growing without any pains while the cities in India were choking due to wholly inadequate transportation systems, utilities and general services.

Singapore is a city state with a small base of industrial activity focused on electronic assembly and legal drug production. Being an island, winds refresh the air constantly. The prosperity of last few decades has led to the replacement of horse and donkey carts and rikshaws by relatively new low emission cars. There are very few trucks on the roads. Hence, the traffic flows smoothly and noiselessly. The culture of cleanliness inside and out of the home means clean public places and roads with hardly any litter.

The dense living in high rises with 100 – 400 apartments in an area occupied by ten homes in an Indian city leaves room for large open spaces. While the side walks in India are strips of dirt which pedestrians avoid adding to the congestion, the roads in Singapore are immaculate with paved sidewalks and potholes as rare as concrete on some Indian roads.

When Singapore became independent in 1959 it was not much different than any Indian city. In two generations it has been transformed to match any in the first world while the cities in India have noticeably deteriorated. There are several reasons for this anomaly. First, Singapore is a compact city state, much easier to administer than a vast country like India. Total budget of the state is focused on the city. There are no long stretches of road and rail connecting far-flung population centres and no countryside to send its millions to overcrowd the city. Second, the defense needs are met by a small army whose budget does not siphon off funds from necessary services. Third, a benign dictatorship rules with a firm but fair hand. Punishment is swift for the law breakers whether they are drug traffickers, litterbugs or in between. Fourth, the corruption in public services so common elsewhere in Asia has been rooted out and the rule of law prevails like nowhere else in the world. Last but not the least, the geographic location of the island is ideal for a trading hub for Asia.

Singapore has prospered because firm rule from the top first enforced discipline and respect for the laws and then created conditions suited to the talents of its citizens by providing physical infrastructure and economic and tax incentives to promote trade and entrepreneurship. Companies trading products of foreign countries pay taxes on income in Singapore even when the traded items do not touch its port. Low tax rates attract multinationals to set offices here to advance the trade. New shopping malls attract tourists from Indonesia and Malaysia. The city state of five million residents prospers without any polluting industry and provides unparalleled services to its citizens.

Small is indeed beautiful when the rulers and the ruled concentrate on what they do best.