Author:
Publication: TheAustralian.com.au
Date: October 9-10, 2010
URL: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/mad-for-mumbai/story-e6frg8h6-1225934717682
Tonight, as I waved my high heel in the face of a bewildered taxi driver,
I thought suddenly: I am absolutely nuts in India. It's a thought I have often.
Someone or something is always going nuts, and quite often it's me.
I was trying to get a taxi driver to take
me home, a mere 500 metres away, but it was pouring with rain and my shoes
were oh-so-high, and it was late. He, of course, was having none of it; no
amount of shoe-waving and sad-facing from a wild-haired firangi was changing
his mind, when suddenly I remembered the magic trick - pay more than you should.
"Arre, bhai sahab, 50 rupees to Altamount Road? Please?" And off
we went.
I have lived in Mumbai for almost three years.
It was my choice to come - I wanted offshore experience in my media career
and India was the only country looking to hire - and I wanted a change. I
needed something new, exciting, thrilling, terrifying. And India gave that
to me in spades. In fact, she turned it all the way up to 11. And then she
turned it up a little more.
To outsiders, living in India has a particular
kind of glamour attached to it, a special sparkle that sees people crowding
around me at parties. "You live in India? My God, really? I could never
do that. What's it like?" The closest I have come to answering that question
is that it's like being in a very intense, extremely dysfunctional relationship.
India and I fight, we scream, we argue, we don't speak for days on end, but
really, deep down, we love each other. She's a strange beast, this India.
She hugs me, so tightly sometimes that I can't breathe, then she turns and
punches me hard in the face, leaving me stunned. Then she hugs me again, and
suddenly I know everything will be all right.
She wonders why I don't just "know"
how things are done, why I argue with her about everything, why I judge, why
I rail at injustice and then do nothing about it. She wonders how old I am,
how much I earn, why I'm not married. (The poor census man looked at me, stunned,
then asked in a faltering voice, "But madam, if you're not married then…
who is the head of your household?") I wonder how she can stand by when
small children are begging on corners, how she can let people foul up the
streets so much that they are impossible to walk along, how she can allow
such corruption, such injustice, such A LOT OF HONKING.
But she has taught me things. She has taught
me to be brave, bold, independent, sometimes even fierce and terrifying. She
has taught me to walk in another man's chappals, and ask questions a different
way when at first the answer is no. She has taught me to accept the things
I cannot change. She has taught me that there are always, always, two sides
to every argument. And she was kind enough to let me come and stay.
She didn't make it easy though (but then,
why should she?). The Foreigner Regional Registration Office, banks, mobile
phone companies and rental agencies are drowning under piles of carbon paper,
photocopies of passports (I always carry a minimum of three) and the soggy
tissues of foreigners who fall to pieces in the face of maddening bureaucracy.
What costs you 50 rupees one day might be 500 rupees the next, and nobody
will tell you why. What you didn't need to bring yesterday, you suddenly need
to bring today. Your signature doesn't look like your signature. And no, we
can't help you. Come back tomorrow and see.
It's not easy being here, although I am spoiled
by a maid who cooks for me, and a delivery service from everywhere that ensures
I rarely have to wave my shoes at taxi drivers. I buy cheap flowers, trawl
for gorgeous antiques, buy incredibly cheap books; I have long, boozy brunches
in five-star hotels for the price of a nice bottle of wine at home, I have
a very nice roof over my head … on the face of it, it would seem I have
little to complain about. But then, I am stared at constantly, I have been
spat on, sexually harassed, had my (covered) breasts videotaped as I walked
through a market, had my drink spiked, been followed countless times. I have
wept more here than I have ever in my life, out of frustration, anger, loneliness,
the sheer hugeness of being here. But the longer I stay, the more I seem to
relax, let go, let it be.
But I do often wonder why I'm here, especially
when I'm tired, teary and homesick, my phone has been disconnected for the
19th time despite promises it would never happen again, when it's raining
and no taxis will take me home. But then a willing ride always comes along,
and we'll turn a corner and be suddenly in the midst of some banging, crashing
mad festival full of colour, where everyone is dancing behind a slow-moving
truck, and I won't have a clue what's going on but a mum holding a child will
dance up to my window and point and smile and laugh, and I breathe out and
think, really, my God, this is fantastic. This is India! I live in India!
She hugs me, she punches me, and she hugs me again.
Yet I know won't ever belong here, not properly.
I know this when I listen to girls discussing what colour blouses they should
wear to their weddings - she's Gujarati, he's from the south, she's wearing
a Keralan sari. I know when my friends give me house-hunting advice: "Look
at the names of the people who already live there, then you'll know what kind
of building it is." (Trouble is, I don't know my Kapoors from my Kapurs,
my Sippys from my Sindhis, my Khans from my Jains). I know this when my lovely
fruit man (who also delivers) begs me to taste a strawberry he is holding
in his grubby hands and I have to say no, I can't eat it, I'll die… I
know I will never belong because, as stupid as it sounds, being truly, properly
Indian is in your DNA. I marvel at how incredibly well educated so many of
them are, how they can all speak at least three languages and think it's no
big deal, how they fit 1000 people into a train carriage meant for 300 and
all stand together quite peacefully, how they know the songs from every Hindi
film ever made, how they welcome anyone and everyone (even wild-haired, complaining
firangis) into their homes for food, and chai, and more food.
I've seen terrible things - someone fall under
a train, children with sliced-off ears, old, old men sitting in the rain nursing
half-limbs while they beg, children covered in flies sleeping on the pavement,
beggars with no legs weaving themselves through traffic on trolleys, men in
lunghis working with their hands in tiny corridors with no fans in sky-high
temperatures. I've read heartbreaking things, of gang rapes, corruption, environmental
abuse. I've smelled smells that have stripped the inside of my nostrils, stepped
over open sewers in markets, watched a goat being bled to death.
I've done things of which I am ashamed, things
I never thought I would do. I have slapped a starving child away, I have turned
my head in annoyance when beggars have tapped repeatedly on my taxi window,
I have yelled at grown men in the face. I have been pinched and pinched back,
with force. I have slapped, I have hit, I have pushed. I have screamed in
anger. I have, at times, not recognised myself.
I've yelled at a man for kicking a dog, and
yelled at a woman who pushed into a line ahead of me when I wasn't at all
in a hurry. When a teenage beggar stood at the window of my taxi, saying "F…
you madam" over and over, I told him to go f… himself and gave him
the finger; once on the train I let a kid keep 100 rupees as change. I am
kind and I am cold-hearted, I am fair and I am mean, I am delightful and I
am downright rude. I am all of these at once and I distress myself wildly
over it, but somehow, India accepts me. She has no time for navel-gazing foreigners;
she just shoved everyone along a bit and made room for me. She has no time
to dwell on my shortcomings, she just keeps moving along.
And then, and then. I've been to temples where
I've sung along with old women who had no teeth, I've held countless smiling
ink-marked babies for photos, I've had unknown aunties in saris smile and
cup my face with their soft, wrinkled hands, I've made street vendors laugh
when I've choked on their spicy food, I've danced through the streets at Ganpati,
fervently sung the national anthem (phonetically) in cinemas, had designers
make me dresses, I've met with CEOs and heads of companies just because I
asked if I could. She hugs, she punches, she hugs again.
In short, I have been among the luckiest of
the lucky. She keeps me on my toes, Ms India, and I have been blessed that
she let me stay for a while. She wanted me to succeed here and she gave me
grand opportunities and endless second chances. She willed me forward like
a stern parent. She welcomed me. And when I leave, because I know I will one
day, I will weep, because I will miss her terribly. And because I know she
won't even notice that I am gone.
