Saying goodbye

One afternoon during my last week at AWWD, Tabassum came into our office with Sumita (our lovely office assistant). Sumita proceeded to lay out three empty water bottles in front of Tabassum. I looked on in bafflement, slowly turning to understanding, as Tabassum tucked her dupatta closely around her face, closed her eyes and lifted up her hands, murmuring Arabic under her breath. The three bottles of water were placed so she could feel that she was praying in the correct direction, towards Mecca. In spite of the telephones ringing, conversations, and people walking in and out, Tabassum was entirely focused on her prayers. For a couple of minutes a corner of our office was filled with peace and devotion.

It is these moments that I will most miss – the unexpected and unadulterated, if transitory, window through to another’s world and life. AWWD’s community workers have been open and genuine with me, inviting me into their homes and lives, with no expectation of anything in return except friendship. I know that they have given a lot more than I have given back: if ever I am disgruntled or complaining of life back home, I will think back to a beautiful blind woman living in atrocious conditions, unable to see but able to bring joy and a smile to those she meets, who has experienced the darkness of life that I can scarcely imagine, but who is herself a light to those around her.

Although at times I did find Kolkata as a city fairly difficult, frequently needing the (comparitive) peace of my room to recover, there can be no getting away from the fact that I will miss it. Kolkata is a passionate city: with so much humanity squeezed together in such a relatively small area, it vibrates with life. In spite of the huge divide between rich and poor, and the exclusion of many from the riches the city has to offer, it is relatively safe (with the substantial exception of the driving). I could walk through the slums with little fear of robbery. And it is a city with significant religious and ethnic diversity, of which Kolkatans are justly proud. With a 40% Muslim minority, Christians, Jews as well as Hindus, in the last few decades Kolkata has not seen the religious violence that has affected other parts of India. Lakshmi, a Hindu, could lead Tabassum, a Muslim, freely through the streets.

So, I will miss the children from my street running up to shake my hand every time I walk past; driving through the city in a taxi - the varied scents of the city wafting through the open windows: smoke, drains, fried food, flowers, and incense; popping over to my local fruit stall and picking up a few mangoes for 50 Rs…. No, I am not going to look back at my time here through rose-tinted spectacles: the brutal reality of life in Kolkata for many of the disabled women I met effectively prevents me from doing this. And so I will have no easy answer for all those who ask me, on my return ‘how was India?’

Before I left for Kolkata I visited some Christian friends who mentioned the following verse. This has had special meaning for me throughout my time in Kolkata, so it seems appropriate to end this chapter of my life with this verse, but at the same time looking to the future:

‘I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them, and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them’.

Isaiah 42: 16

Advice for the unwary British traveller in India

'When are you planning to leave Kolkata?’ Judith, fellow VSO volunteer, asked me tentatively during my last week at work. My first thought – what did she mean, planning to leave?! I was definitely leaving, flights booked, tickets printed out, parental pick up at Heathrow confirmed, on the 7^th of September. She continued, ‘I’ve just got a nice little message from the American consulate saying there is an India-wide strike starting at 6 am on the 7^th September until 6 am on the 8^th. They are suggesting American citizens don’t travel at all in West Bengal that day. The airport may be closed.’

So, initial decision – whether to laugh or cry. Deciding on laughing (albeit slightly hysterically) my mind wandered over all my travel plans that had gone awry over the previous month. Was I simply unlucky, or was this all part of the Indian experience? Here follows a brief summary of travelling stresses:

1. Floods in Ladakh damaging 80% of the main city’s infrastructure and the runway, two days before we were supposed to fly there.

2. Power cut at 4 pm on Friday afternoon, lasting the whole evening, just as I was trying to book bus tickets and hotel for a hurriedly re-planned holiday on-line (before flying to Delhi early Saturday morning).

3. When we did manage to get bus tickets from Delhi to Dharamsala (in the foothills of the Himalayas) my friend, who I was travelling with, and I were surprised to find that the bus didn’t leave from central New Delhi. This would have been (relatively) easy to find. No. Rather our bus tickets were from, I quote, a 'petrol pump' on a random road the other side of the city. There is no way we could have found it by ourselves, but luckily we had a very nice taxi driver who not only found the correct petrol pump, but also waited around with us during torrential rain, asked around to see whether we were in the correct place, found that we weren’t, and drove us a further 15 minutes up the road to a narrow and bumpy side street, at the bottom of which were a few coaches. He then asked around to find out which was our coach, and so we finally managed to collapse into our seats, fairly sure that we were heading to Dharamsala and not Manali, Simla or any other place in India (nothing would have surprised me by that point).

4. The overnight bus journey to Dharamsala was actually OK and I even slept a bit. This was not the case on the return journey. Unfortunately I pretty quickly started feeling sick due to the steep and winding mountain roads. Then unfortunately, I somehow managed to start hyperventilating (or something) and ended up being completely unable to move my hands or arms, which was really scary. I panicked and demanded that the whole coach stop, it’s funny that when you are feeling so ill you want to die all self-consciousness flies out of the window.

5. So, when we arrived in Delhi the next morning neither my friend nor I were at our best. We had train tickets from New Delhi to Jaipur for that afternoon. However, key lesson I had learned: don’t take anything or granted, and triple check everything. On triple checking the tickets, then, I found that the train didn’t actually leave from New Delhi station, which is what the ticket implied, but actually Old Delhi station, which was a lot further away. I also received a text stating that the time of the train had changed, but not saying to what time. It was then we realised we hadn’t left enough time to get to Old Delhi station given torrential rain, consequent lack of taxis and major traffic jams. So we gave up, and decided to enjoy the delights that Delhi had to offer instead.

6. I managed to fly back from Delhi to Kolkata without any problems.

I realise the above may have given the impression that I didn’t enjoy my holiday, which actually wasn’t the case. When we did manage to get to Dharamsala, it was very beautiful and peaceful (particularly compared to Kolkata).

Unfortunately it was the monsoon season, so it was fairly cloudy and rainy, but we managed to do some cooking lessons, plenty of shopping, and a hike up to 3000m (which, given my complete lack of exercise for the previous six months, I felt was quite impressive). We stayed in McLeod Ganj, which is also known as Upper Dharamsala, and where the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan community live. It was interesting, if shocking, talking to Tibetans and hearing their stories. Many had escaped Tibet over high mountain passes, some suffering from snow blindness or frostbite, and now cut off and unable to return to their families. There were many Buddhist monks, and we visited a few monasteries where monks were busy debating the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy: when they feel they make a sound point they stamp their feet and clap their hands.

McLeod Ganj is very much on the tourist trail, and was a very different experience both to living in Kolkata and to visiting the mountains in Pakistan. It was clearly set up to receive a high number of tourists – there were many coffee shops, and it was even possible to get mozzarella cheese (incredible – it’s almost impossible to get even in the huge metropolis of Kolkata!). The hotels, even the budget ones, were nice, with hot showers and comfortable beds. While I enjoyed the experience, it isn’t one I would really like to repeat. Many tourists like to talk about experiencing the ‘real’ India. While I don’t think this is a tenable concept, given a country of 1.2 billion people and 72 languages, the hotels and restaurants of the tourist centres set up to cater for the needs of rich westerners are about as far away from the experiences of 90% of Indians as is possible to get. It seemed to me many tourists expect western standards of comfort and luxury with a little bit of exotic culture thrown in. I even felt I was treated differently as compared to living in Kolkata: particularly in Delhi whenever I stepped out into the street I felt like I had a big notice pinned to my back: ‘tourist is ‘ere: please scam or rip me off’. There were redeeming features of Delhi though – the Jama Masjid was beautiful, as was the Red Fort.

So, my advice for an unwary British traveller in India: travel with an Indian who knows about the intricacies of the Indian transport system and can deal with scams!

And as for my trip home, well I was able to alter my plane ticket from Kolkata to Delhi to fly out a day early, so I spent a day in Delhi before flying home. While Kolkata was absolutely bought to a standstill by the strike (80 flights out of the airport were cancelled), Delhi was hardly affected. So it ended happily (for me) after all.