This will be my last blog; in a few hours time, we shall leave India...but not for good, because we will be back one day, I know it.

This morning over breakfast T and I have been talking about how India changed us, and what memories will linger after the moving-frenzy has calmed down. We shall miss it, but what exactly "it" is, we cannot say right now. This is a good moment however to memorize all those people that made my stay here special, so they will be on record long after my mind is gone:

Dr. Samar Mahendran, my vetenarian, who almost singlehandedly managed to build the CGS Hospital for pets in Gurgaon; an animal-hospital that beats many people-hospitals by far. he wants to become the first certified lab in India and I know he will succeed.....
Mr. Batta the Bagman, who can make any bag one could imagine of and where I bought the most perfect evening-bags ever....
Mr. Suaheleen the Meatman, who would deliver anything but pork as he is a Muslim (and the beef, we think, is actually buff...waterbuffalo)...
Rekha, our masseuse, who kept T's muscles and joints working for the past 6 years and who he will miss dearly....
Manoj and Sunita, who kept my feet and hands in shape over the past years. My nails will never look as good as they did here.....
Anjali the Golfteacher, who is half our size but hits three times further, and who happens to be a great teacher and great fun to be with.....
Zakir, the caddy, who is also a great teacher and a great sport. He wants to become a pro and then teach in Dubai, where his religion will not stop him from reaching the top.....
VJ the tennis teacher, who made me feel like I could win Wimbledon (or at least look like Sharapova)....
Mr. Yahya of Yahya and sons, who sells, cleans and repairs carpets and kelims and who returned our carpets better than new, and sold me a couple of gorgious kelims. He is a look-alike of the actor who played Yinnah in the famous Ghandi movie and a wonderful, gentle and modest man to deal with.....
Mr. Lovely the leatherman, who made some gorgious leather jackets for me and who can copy any picture he sees....
Mr. Malik the Embroidery man of the Famous Calcutta Embroidery Company, whose skillfull family members made gorgious table cloths, duvet covers and guest towels for me....
Mr. Khan of Bombay tailors, who made T's entire new wardrobe and a few very nice things for me, even though he is a man's tailor...
Mr. Ajay the electrician who can repair ANYTHING with a cord....
Mr. Balbir the carpenter who stopped working after he had a stroke (or so we think) but who made these perfect garden chairs for us....
Madhoo and the two Sunils at the embassy, who served coffee and tea and smiles....
Lakshmi, Reena and Jyothy of the embassy, who endlessly helped us with payments, official documents, complaints to the phone company, insurances and what have you...
Our friend at the Italian cafe, whose name I still do not know, but who knew exactly what we wanted and took fantastic care of us whenever we would have a quick lunch there.....
The A-team of the embassy, Fraddy, Triloc, and Nat, who repaired everything around the house again and again and again.....
Sonu the gardener who made my plants blossom again and planted Hollyhocks and sunflowers for me to enjoy....
Gurinder Singh Johal, the handsome and dedicated Sikh boss of Discover Punjab who organises the best tours in Amritsar (and nowadays also around)....
Dr. Lalit Gupta who could not have become anything else but a doctor, and who we could call on (and sometimes did) any time of day and night, which in India one sometimes has to....
Dilip and Ompal, our two faithful guards who kept our house safe and kept all unwanted people out over the last four years...
Surender, our driver, who did not speak much but reacted quickly and managed to steer us through the crazy Indian traffic without accidents for four years. I shall miss his familiar and comforting arm going up in a crowd, for he always spotted us before we spotted him....
And finally my beloved Rosemary, my housekeeper, who quietly took care of everything and who restored my faith in humanity, and whom I shall miss very much....

 I will never forget you.

Two more weeks to go, and that will be it.....we shall leave India on the 26th of May, after 5 years, 9 months, and 26 days...

I slowly start to realise that I am actually going and NOT coming back, for a while at least, and suddenly everything I do is the last time...the last time I buy vegetables from my favourite vegetable-man Mukesh (picture), the last time I gaze at all the herbs and spices and the abundance of lentils and colourful food-items of which I still have not learned the name....the last time I order handbags (a girl can never have too many handbags...I know, it's awful), the last time I buy all these little beautiful presents for the people back home, the last time someone comes to my home to take measurement in order to make something - a sari this time, because I have decided that I cannot have lived in India for almost six years without having a sari!

I will miss India's weird contrasts, it's colour, it's distinctive smell of spices, it's theatre on the road every day, the head wiggles, the big smiles, the little streets of Old Delhi, the monuments that seem to be everywhere, forgotten as they are....

I will NOT miss the noise, the honking, the absolute filth everywhere, the fact that crossing the street is a hazardous undertaking even in the quiet neighbourhood that we live in now, and the fact that things are never quite the way you agreed they would be...

But I have gotten to know myself here. India is so different, so weird at times, so exotic, that one cannot help but fall back onto one's own values and beliefs. India is one giant mirror and my period here has been a continuous learning experience, wether I liked it or not.
I have met many special people and I have made a couple of real good friends. I leave here enriched and bigger than I was....also literally (one of India's downsides...too many people that do everything for you so you end up moving too little). I have learned to take things much more relaxed than I used to do, because in India, nothing ever happens as planned. I have learned to take the signals from my body serious because here, a bug can easily turn into a deadly desease. I have even started wiggling my head myself...a very natural gesture, I might add. I have had an incredible time and I realise that I haven't seen half of what I had wanted to see and didn't do half of what I wanted to do...

And I must admit that now that my time is up, I can truly say: India IS Incredible. And I will miss it.

In The Hindu of today a headline caught my eye: "Dying fish raise fears of river pollution".
T and I could not help but laugh out loud in amazement....does this REALLY come as a surprise?
The article reports that a large number of fish in the Karola river in Jalpaiguri district have died, and are disposed of. Meaning that they are fished out of the river in order not pollute the water any further...a feasability is that the water has been polluted by pesticides, causing the oxygen level to drop. The police will investigate who or what caused the waters to turn toxic.

All this brings back memories of the trip to Varanasi that I took recently with my friend Paulien.
Obviously we went on a boat trip along the Ghats (=stairs) that border the river Ganges, one of the most holy rivers in India.

Varanasi is the holy city where many Hindu's come to die, as they believe dying in Varanasi will take them straight to the Nirwana, instead of being reborn in another life and having to cope with it all over again. Those still sound of body (not necessarily mind) go to Varanasi on a pilgrimage, so they can bathe in the holy waters and ritually purify themselves. The Ghats are used for bathing, washing clothes, praying and cremating. Only children, virgins, leprosy sufferers and cows are thrown into the river uncremated, as they are already considered pure.

When rowing along the Ghats at sunrise one can witness a spectacle that gives a true insight into the Hindu culture and devotion; thousands of people are already bathing, swimming, praying, washing and brushing their teeth in the waters of the Ganges. Monks can be seen in their river temples, bells are ringing, cows are peacefully chewing on plastic bags and one is frequently overtaken by boats full of clicking Asian tourists...what a sight! Defenitely not to be missed when in India!

But all this attention has a downside.
Garbage is thrown into the river (see picture above), along with ashes of the cremated and their coverings and ritual constructions, washing detergents, the content of sewers....and what cannot be seen in Varanasi but what I once saw in a documentary on pollution of the Ganges: pesticides and chemicals which are dumped upstream.
In other words, this is one of the most polluted rivers in the world!
We witnessed something living just below the surface, but with all this pollution I am seriously wondering what that something is.....no normal fish will survive a river like that!

But what really made us realise that we will NEVER understand the true Hindu devotion was the fact that we saw a dead calf floating by, bloated and rotting in the waters, a crow picking the last bits of flesh off the bones, and a man downstream (!) washing himself and happily gargling with water of the Ganges. Our boatsman must have seen the horror on our faces, because he started to explain that under normal circumstances this would not be a very hygienic thing to do, but in THIS case we are dealing with Holy water, so no harm will come to the man! Or to anyone bathing in the river, for that matter.
And he REALLY believed it!

So to me, dying fish are not a surprise at all. And frankly, neither should it be to the many bright minds of India... believers or not.

The problem with being in a place for a long time is that at a certain point you become "blind" to your surroundings.

I remember when I started my internship at GK Industrial Designers in Tokyo, Japan (longer ago than I care to remember...). My "big boss", Kenji Ekuan San, met with me the first day of my training and told me to go into the city and LOOK at it. Just look....suck in the impressions, nothing more. And then come back to him and report what I had seen. This was only possible in the beginning, he said, because only in the beginning my eyes would be fresh and my mind would be empty. A wise thought; but then, he is a Zen Buddhist.
So I went and I looked and I think I did not stop looking for the rest of my time there. It has been the most impressive time of my life and it has shaped me forever.

T and I have now been in India for 5 years, 2 months and 15 days....and I realise I have gone blind. I am seeing India through eyes that have seen it all before and with a mind that is prejudiced and not really open any longer. Understandable, after this time, but a pity nonetheless.
One should NEVER think one knows it all, because life will play a trick and suddenly things change and you find yourself in unfamiliar territory!

So I am pushing myself to start looking again.
And the first thing I noticed when I could look past the irritation of the constant honking around me (which I regard to be very uncivilised, impatient, and downright stupid) was this sign.... teaching road users what those coloured lights -that one can find occasionally on streetcorners- ACTUALLY MEAN!

And then I realised: 80% of the current road users do NOT have a driving license. Half of them probably can only barely read. In many cases the car or scooter they are driving is a step up from a bycicle or just plain walking, and they may very well be the first in the family who can afford a car or bike. So...can I blaim them for thinking that honking is part of normal driving? Or of the fact that if they don't honk they may very well be pushed off the road because the guy next to them never learned to look aside or use his mirrors before changing lanes? Is the fact that the Indians drive as they live -going with the flow and taking things as they come when they come- a bad thing or just a thing I cannot cope with, coming from an over-organised country and being a rather organised person myself?

I hate the traffic here, because it is chaotic, dangerous, and noisy. But looking at it the other way, it is also tolerant, seems to work somehow, and the Indians definitely manage to squeeze many more cars onto the square meter than we Dutch do. So it is not bad, it is just how Things Are in India.

For my remaing time here, I plan to keep my eyes open and my camera ready.....

We are counting nights....6 more to go, and then we will move to an area which hopefully is quieter than here.

Here we have been living in the middle of contstruction sites for the past 6 months, and the noise is driving us crazy.
As with any emerging economy, in India the economy is growing and there is money...money to be invested in the construction of new buildings and money to be made of the gigantic rents the landlords are charging.

3 lakh rupees per month (app 5000 € or 6700 $) is not an exception, and for that one can get a three bedroom apartment in an old building; obviously with old fashioned bathrooms (and, as in our case, clogged waterpipes so half the bathrooms are not functioning), sockets that crackle and kitchencupboards that won't open (or close) because the hinges are rusting....and not to forget the annual monsoon-related wet spots on the walls. In other words, crap.

But there are brand-new apartments to be had as well for that kind of money. They have new kitchens and bathrooms, build in airconditioning, and fancy lamps. But the sockets still crackle because the wiring that is being used is too thin, drains of airco's stop in mid-wall so leaking does not only occur during the monsson season and I have even heard the story of someone's pipes melting because they could not withstand the hot water coming through!

And this all because the landlords smell money and the rents are mafia-controlled, so it is said.

In our area there is an agreement that construction work can be done from monday to saturday, 8 am to 8 pm. That would at least insure quiet nights and one day a week without constant hammering, grinding and polishing of marble, pouring of concrete, throwing with metal pipes, wood, and stones, and shouting of workmen who all work without ear protection and are totally deaf. Obviously, half the work is carried out during the night because the city of Delhi has this totally rediculous rule that trucks can only enter the city after 10.30 pm!

It will not come as a surprise that no one stick to that agreement.
The workers don't care because they work 19 hours a day for 80 rupees.... 1,80 $ or 1,30 €. Uninsured, of course. The owners don't care because they live in their fancy houses, FAR away from the noise, and their tenants have had to pay a whole year's rent in advance so they can't move out...and the supervisors don't care because they have the task of finishing the work on time, and planning is not their strongest asset.

One could argue that at least these workers HAVE jobs, instead of roaming the streets as beggars. But for that amount per day they can barely survive, with food inflation declining (!!!) to 13% in february. And for that they flock from Rajasthan, are sleeping in tents alongside the roads or in the construction sites, and keep their children out of school. And for that they will ruin their health and die around the age of, what....40?

T and I try to block the noise out of our minds, but every once in a while we have reached our limit (usually after an entire day of marble grinding which has that high irritating pitch one remembers from the dentist's office), and then T goes out to shout at the supervisors, after which they usually stop. I hardly ever go...I do not make an impression because I am a woman....unless I threaten to kill people, which lately I have started doing (threaten, not kill...I would not stoop that low).

But what REALLY pisses us off is the fact that at the huge plot right across our street, they really don't give a shit, no matter what we do. For nothing and noone, not even for the chairman of the neighbourhood association, an influential Indian lawyer. Why?
Simple...because the plot, rumour has it, belongs to a minister from Uttar Pradesh. Left wing, defending the poor and powerless.....and in the meantime, employing boys that look like they are barely 16 (below that age it is considered childlabour) for probably not even 80 rupees per day. Boys that should be in school instead of breaking their backs so they won't make it past 40.
And this minister is untouchable. Not in caste, but in power...the police don't even bother coming.
I guess the will to defend poor and powerless is not interesting if it means adapting one's own standards. These are only rumours, of course.....but where there is smoke, there is fire.

So we have called it quits.
No point in continuing a battle that is already lost. If you can't beat them... move out and move on. Luckily our lease was ending and we ARE able to move out....6 more nights!

What catches my eye in the daily paper....
Apparantly the train passed under a bridge, sweeping off a couple of roofriders. One wonders why....

traffic in Old Delhi

 

Ok, I finally understand why the Indian roads are so chaotic.

The bottom picture is an ad in the Hindu Times by the Delhi Police. They give instructions to 3 & 4 wheeled passenger & goods vehicles (yes....in India there ARE 3-wheeled vehicles carrying goods...); vehicles are told to drive on the left (in 4 lane roads) and in the middle (on 6 lane roads). They are allowed to change lane 50 meters before an intersection, but ONLY for the purpose of turning.

So where does it go wrong?

1: Most drivers seem to have little or no education, judging by the way they drive. They may very well not be able to read (and subsequently will not read the paper)....and many of them may not even have a driver's licence. No point in trying to tell them what to do via an ad.

2: What about all the other road users, like riksha's, normal bycicles, horses and camels, elephants, pedestrians, dogs, cows, and the occasional monkey? Right! They'll go whereever pleases them, which is usually in front of you.

3: In India it is perfectly normal to use the "pavement" or whatever passes for it at the side of the road for driving. Does that count as "left"? And if that is "left", the what is "middle"?

4: When speaking of a 4 lane road whilst showing 2 lanes (or 6 lane road when showing 3 lanes of which one does not seem to be part of the regular road), one confuses the average Indian driver (see point one). Apparantly 4 rows of cars have to be able to fit onto those two lanes.....well, it must be said, the Indian drivers are very succesfull in their attempts to do so! 

5: Except for the posh areas in Delhi (and India, for that matter) there are no lines on the road indicating the lanes. Very often it is not even clear which side of the road is which, and traffic drives where ever it pleases...left, right, middle, and both ways. The one thing nobody seems to have trouble with is changing lanes....for turning, for stopping, for a u-turn.....

And finally.....in the 4,5 years that I have been in India I have NEVER seen a road as empty as this! It is therefore very likely that the Indian drivers will not recognize this as a road and have no clue what to do with the instructions given.

As a conclusion I would say that the money spent on this brave but rather useless attempt to educate the average driver had better be put into traffic safety lessons to educate their children....and then maybe, in one or two generations or so, these ads will not be necessary anymore...