Life in Delhi

To bring you up to speed, Delhi has somehow beguiled me (which given my first impression of the place is something of a miracle). I have made plans to stay here until April, when the city resumes its cruel attempt to slow roast its citizens to death and I will beat a hasty retreat to cooler climes. So I have begun the process of making a life for myself here. Thanks to the enormous generosity of Emily and her Mexican and Spanish flatmates, I have had a short-term roof over my head. I have taken up temporary residence in their apartment, situated in South Delhi's leafy green suburbs. I have been drinking coffee on their balcony in the gentle December sunshine, browsing their newspapers, sampling Mexican tortillas and rediscovering that culinary saviour of my student days, pasta and pesto. Just to prevent me from becoming completely spoiled rotten, I have taken on a highly important and extremely taxing job within the flat itself - that of Chief Door Opener. Now this may sound like a cop-out given that in the UK, my doorbell ringing was about as rare an occurrence as sunshine in the British summer, but here in India it could well be classified as a full-time job.

First there is the maid who arrives about 9.30…yes, I know! I found it a hard concept to adjust to at first too; it goes entirely against the grain. But here it is custom and practice and people who don't have a maid are virtually run out of town. If you can afford it, you should have one; the Western rationalisation for this being that you are making a vital contribution to the local economy; the Indian one being, why the hell would you do your own work if you can pay someone else to do it for you. I don't know which is the more accurate, or honest. All I do know is that ex-pat suburban Delhi is awash with horror stories of the way that many serving staff are treated here, including their subjection to physically brutality. Hearsay would have it that this usually occurs at the hands of Indian employers. Having said that there are proportionally a lot more Indian employees and I can't help but wonder from where this behaviour and attitude towards servants is derived….the good old Britishers perhaps?

Anyway, after the maid, comes the garbage man. I find it the most astonishing of ironies that in a country that could, without a hint of exaggeration, be described as the world's biggest rubbish dump, the middle-classes have their rubbish collected from the front door of their homes every single day, oh except Sundays. Incredible.

After that come a string of vendors. I have to admit that they don't actually ring the bell - they just holler up from the streets from where they are standing with their cart of vegetables, fruit or water. Others are propping up their bikes whose panniers are piled high with newspapers. I haven't managed to decipher what it is they actually call out, but then it took me ten years to figure out the rather mangled, "any old iron" that the rag and bone man in Sheffield used to shout (BTW does anyone know, do rag and bone men still exist?).However what they lack in articulation, they make up for in volume and persistence; from morning till night the street echoes with their cries - it has become my alarm clock, the sound that chases away sleep and ushers me into the new day. Sometimes, I take the opportunity to nip down to buy some fresh cauliflower, which I have discovered tastes remarkably good with pesto!

At some point there will usually be a delivery for one of my flat-mates. In India you can phone up your local store and they will deliver your shopping to the door - whatever you like, including alcohol. Can you imagine in England ringing your corner shop and asking them to pop down the road with your kit-kat and pint of milk, or ordering a few beers from your local Threshers. Think you might get a few expletives down the phone but probably not a lot else. Last night I took delivery of a whole shopping basket's worth of stuff, but this morning it was just Marina's toasted cheese sandwich and cold coffee.

Other than that the neighbours here (upstairs, opposite and below) seem to receive a constant stream of visitors, many of whom mistakenly ring our doorbell. …Or perhaps it is not as accidental as it seems? Perhaps they are hoping to catch a glimpse of the strange foreigners sitting on their balcony, scandalously scantily clad (shock, horror, in pyjamas!) and eating bizarre concoctions of foreign food.

Yesterday was a particularly arduous day as one of the girls living here had a miscommunication with the driver she usually uses (again, I know!) and he appeared at the door three times in the space of ninety minutes wanting to talk to her. He was clearly very eager to try and clear up the matter, which was evidently of a financial nature. I have to confess that after my third attempt to explain that I didn't know anything about it and that the person in question wouldn't be home till much later, I was a little short with him. Of course I instantly regretted it, poor chap was just trying to straighten out the situation, and this clueless non-Hindi speaking woman really wasn't helping matters.

So anyway, as you can see I am gainfully employed and relishing my new role - I don't know how on earth they coped before I took up this position! However, I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket and so to further enhance my CV I have also taken up Hindi lessons, yoga classes, am flat hunting in earnest (well. kind of), am working three afternoons a week at Chaya (the boy's home), and am undergoing a crash course in surviving Delhi's transport system - the current module being 'How to board and disembark from buses whilst they are moving'.

I have had two Hindi lessons so far. My teacher is called Tanuj. He is twenty-three and has a quiet, serious nature entirely befitting his role. He is always meticulously dressed in a shirt, woolen tank top and pleated trousers - clothes that seem somewhat too conservative or old for someone of his tender age. It seems he either takes intense pride in his appearance, or an officious and over zealous mother still dresses him. I can't work out whether his quietness is the result of timidity or just reserve; he has a kind of composure and self-possession that may indicate the latter. He evokes in me a rather peculiar mixture of maternalistic protectiveness and reverence.

Anyway, Tanuj has insisted that I start by learning the devanagari script. He is infinitely patient as I splutter, stutter and take some pretty painful tumbles over the incomprehensible jumble of strange shapes on the page. I can literally feel the cogs in my brain churning, clanking, and often grind to an embarrassing full stop, as I struggle to decipher the meaning of the beautiful, but oh-so-elusive characters swimming in front of my eyes. For my next lesson Tanuj has asked me to write down phrases that I want to learn to help me with day-to-day life here. So far they mostly centre around my interactions with rickshaw drivers; for example, "Do you actually have a clue where this place I want to go is, or are you just nodding your head like that to get my custom?" and "You must be flipping joking!" as a suitable riposte to the exorbitant fare they are proposing. Also I think "Is it really necessary to drive as though you are Michael Schumacher on speed?" could be very useful. Although I think I already know that the answer to that one; an affirmative, "Jihar Maam". And they are right - keeping up with all the other maniacs is the only way to survive. Last but not least I really must learn to say a plain old simple "Stop!!!".

Then there is Chaya. If you want to know more about them and the kids I have recently started teaching English to, you can go to their website (www.chaya4kids.org). As I explained in a previous blog, it is a kind of home for boys whose families can no longer look after them, but unlike the large 100+ hostel that many of them have come from, at Chaya there is an emphasis on creating a family-like atmosphere and providing the children with a diverse and stimulating education. It was set up by a French social worker/psychologist called Pascal. He employs three Indian members of staff including a qualified social worker (Shariq), and then there are a number of volunteers, both Indian and international who offer the children lessons in dance, yoga, photography, music, French and English.

I have to say that, although I love spending time with kids (and as you all know, am hopelessly besotted with my niece), I have never had a burning desire to use my social work skills in this context. I am also really wary of sentimentalising this kind of work and still am not sure that I am entirely comfortable with the whole 'white westerner coming over to look after and educate the native children' thing. Particularly on the days that Pascal and I go to collect them from school and there is this little crocodile of Indian kids rounded off at either end by two white Europeans - it attracts a lot of attention that I don't always feel good about. But sometimes you have to stop analyzing and intellectualizing and go with your instinct and mine is that I really want to be a part of this at the moment! The kids are beautiful and fun and just full of energy and curiosity and life! They would not be getting this opportunity if Chaya wasn't there, and I don't think I am brave (or masochistic) enough to get embroiled in some other organization riddled with politics, bureaucracy and corruption.

My regular days at Chaya are Thursdays and Fridays. I teach English both days, my TEFL training of ten years ago slowly being dredged up from the back drawers of my brain. I also just help out supervising lunch, helping with the blog and newsletter and just interacting with the kids. A lot of it is just stuff that kids the world over would be doing - playing boisterous games (the current craze is for paper aeroplanes), being persuaded (read 'bribed') to eat vegetables, being nagged to wash their hands and tidy their clothes up. But there are the odd reminders of how different their lives have been. I was teaching animals to one of the kids "this is a bear" I said, he replied in Hindi, and one of the older kids translated; "I know teacher, I used to hunt them". He has come from one of the tribal areas of India.

Pascal doesn't know the date of birth of most of the kids - keeping records like that was just not considered important. However, they all now have days that are as their birthdays. Two boys recently turned thirteen, as a present they went to a shop to choose an item of clothing; it was the first occasion in their lives that they had done so - until now all their clothes had been given to them second-hand.

The oldest boy is seventeen. He isn't going to school at the moment because Chaya could not find him a place. He looks after the younger ones, and he also does a lot of the cooking. As he is sloshing second helpings of rice, lentils and veg onto the thali plates of the other children, Pascal goes over and checks that he is keeping some back; he will only eat after the others have finished and if there is none left, he simply wouldn't have any lunch that day. As I said, I don't want to sentimentalise these kids, but when you hear stories like this; when you watch the older kids helping younger ones tie shoelaces, make airplanes, wash their hands; when you see the way they all positively glow when they find themselves the centre of Pascal or Shariq's attention - it really is hard not to feel moved.

So I am enjoying my time with the Chaya boys. It is also nice to have some structure and routine to my week….although not too much, thank you. I am still absolutely relishing the lack of a two hour commute and five day week at work!

Last but not least I have also dutifully fulfilled my role as the western traveller in search of meaning and spiritual enlightenment in India and enrolled on a yoga course [actually, in my case I think I was just looking for a good old fashioned adventure, but if there's some enlightenment into the bargain I'm not complaining!]. My flat-mates Emily and Gabriela have introduced me to a local centre which is definitely about the yoga, but not in a 'you must give yourselves to this wholesale, renounce all worldly goods and live a life of sobriety, purity and complete self-sacrifice'. Nor is it that very self-conscious type yoga that is the preserve of celebrities and yummy mummys, where what brand your yoga gear is and the sort of muesli you buy is more important than whether your downward facing dog or lotus position are actually any good. So anyway, I will be attending the beginners course, which is four classes a week for three weeks starting the 22 December. I'm looking forward to it; particularly as the only exercise I am getting right now is well er…hmm have to think about this for a little bit….does answering the door count?!