Epic

I always loved the word epic, especially since I read the patrick kavanagh poem of the same title, and in this case my theft of his title seems appropriate, as I have just finished my epic train journey right across the heart of India, a thirty two hour non-stop journey from Kolkata to Mumbai(Bombay)....

Events:

I travelled second class, three tier, a three bunks on top of each other, bring your own blankets, sleep on your luggage, hugging your valuables type of experience... what a fantastic experience, though... my companions on this journey were mainly twelve year old convent maharashtrian school girls .... who stayed with me from Kolkata, pretty much all the way to Mumbai(getting off just a few hours earlier than me). I had forgotton what it was like to be that age, how important having a notebook, and getting people to write in it, collecting mementos, coins, buying gifts for other people, sharing enthusiastic. I spent my hours with these girls doing all these things, comparing and even swopping jewlery, writing in their notebooks, getting them to write in mine, showing them and giving them my euro coins, showing them where i come from and where i live on the fifty euro note, learning to count from one to ten in hindi, comparing make-up. Hanging round with them I understood why adults find growing up mourn the loss of the younger child as the teenager takes her place. Watching these girls I could not help but think that in a couple of years the desire to be the most beautiful, popular, etc would take over and that this pure good spirited would be lost forever, but even I am not so naive or so cynical as to believe that 12 year olds are really pure and good spirited all the time, or that older people cannot possess gentleness, enthusiasm and caring....perhaps it just takes a little more work to find it...

Arrived in Mumbai at 6 am, went to my hotel, slept till noon, wandered for a few hours.... Mumbai, like Kolkata, is an overwhelming city, and my urge is now to get out, to leave and go to some more peaceful place, something i plan to do in a day or two.....unless i find something really arresting and special here I fear that I am all citied out at the moment, and that quieter places beckon....I'll keep you all posted...

Thoughts:

Women, Feminism etc:

Can't get away from this theme, the fact that I am a woman alone, without a husband in my home country is really marking my experience here... what it means to be a woman here is something that I have become intensely aware of here....

I have spoken to western women who traveled alone here before i came.... all assured me that what i was doing was fine, really quite safe, that occasional hassle was to be expected but that firmness, and if necessary making a scene was all that was necessary. On the other hand, Indians I have talked to and encountered, especially men seem be really quite concerned for my safety....more than one has commented that what I am doing is brave, has been eager to help, escort protect me. Were I in Europe , the fact that I was travelling alone would hardly merit comment and offers of help are rare. I get the feeling that being a woman alone here is considered problematic, and has become as a consequence problematic in a very real way... feminist theory keeps rushing back at me, as i said before it has never seemed so real and relevant.

more experiences on the train that led me to reflect on 'being a woman' - the 12 year old girls first questions, when they came to talk to me individually were always about whether i was married or not....when i say that i am 28 and unmarried it always comes as a surprised and i have found myself quite pointedly explaining that in my culture a woman does not need to marry, that the act of marrying is less important than it is in india. On a related note, the girls are already impressively female, their 12 year old makeup bags almost rival my own, they have better perfumes and are far more concerned with jewlery.... perhaps I was also like that at 12, perhaps this is just something universal to twelve year old girls but i distinctly got the sense that the knowledge about beauty and the concern for marraige were part of the same socialisation process that would turn these girls into brides, making sure that they avoid becoming a 'problematic' woman alone....

Just one more thing related to this theme that struck me on the train - sitting on my upper bunk with one of the 12 year olds we were approached by loud, boistrous and agressive women, who held out their hand to me and banged on my bed rail....they attempted to address me in hindi, i spoke back in english which they didn't understand, my 12 year old companion told them in hindi to go awa y and refused to translate their requests for money into english(claiming she did not speak it); eventually they looked incredulous and turned away.... when they had gone, my companion explained that these were 'sixers'. I asked what they were and was told that 'they are not men or women', that they steal from your house when you are gone due to a marriage or some other event, that their mouths are filled will diamonds when they die, and that a sixer is born, the result of a curse, when a woman pregnant with a girl leaves the house during a full or half moon. Couldn't figure out what they were, wasn't sure whether they were prostitutes or common or garden theives or both or neither but it again threw into sharp relief for me the ways in which woman are problematic....

poverty:

poverty is overwhelming here, outside the world of the kolkata bourgeoisie it acompanies me across every street with an open hand....no thoughts really, no way of making sense of it really...