Dec 2006

Events:

An urban person I may be but sometimes even I reach my cracking point. Yesterday was the day that I reached it - I retired to my uninspiring hotel room at 8pm last night, unable to cope with any more of the insane traffic, and intense hassle that staying in the tourist quarter of this city brings....and so i decided to get a good sleep and then to arrange my passage out of this city and onward to goa as soon as humanly possible....did that this morning, i'm off on a train tomorrow at 6.55 in the morning, should be in goa by evening, and am looking forward to a few days chill time, a space to gather my thoughts away from the chaos of this place...very glad i made that decision...now that i have my train ticket and reservation i feel greatly at ease, and have spent the day since wandering the streets, through bazzars and markets, getting lost, finding my way again, playing truth or dare with 16 year old girls on chowpatty beach and feeling 100% more at ease with myself than i did before.... i think perhaps mumbai is a city best explored with someone else, someone with whom you can face the chaos and enjoy the cosmopolitan character with... it is absolutely not a place to hook up with other travellers, though, in my experience...I have seen other solo travellers here, we peek at each other over our lonely planets but we all wander alone, don't reach across the table to talk.... it seems the force of this city serves to keep the already separate even more separate....perhaps not the place for me right now....lets see what the next few days bring...

Thoughts:

Colonialism: Having said all that, i do think that mumbai would be a fantastic place to explore some time with someone else to buffer me.... it is the most bizarre mix of colonialism and 'oriental' street market culture i have ever experienced and i keep drifting from place that remind me of edinburgh(and there really are a surprising number of places in india that remind me of edinburgh) to places that remind me of the arabian nights(wrong part of the world i know, but that is what it reminds me of). Looking at the colonial buildings i cannot help but wonder about those people who designed and built them, to wonder why they did as they did, how they imagined their ideal bombay....so i've been walking around, pondering the colonial imagination....it has also made me think that i should pick up some post colonial indian writing to remind me of how indians responded....any suggestions anyone....

Feminism: Was wandering round a bookstore earlier looking for some inspiration....noticed the section that was marked 'womens studies'....knowing the strong indian feminist tradition i went hopefully to have a look..... was really appauled to find that the shelf was filled with cookery, health and child-rearing books...more incredulity re: my unmarried status followed with the 16 year old girls on the beach..... my journeys may be young but i cannot still help but be surprised by it all....

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...

Events:

Finally, a chance to draw breath, and record as much of what has happened here as I can remember before I leave here(I'm out of here at 20.15 tonight on a 30 hour, 9 euro train to bombay) and it all becomes a little to dreamlike....so here goes....

Saturday... friday night was spent having some indian food, and later at a gig for amit's brother avinash and his band.....3 more people joined our party in the early hours of saturday morning, davids mum clare, his brother matt and juliet connected to the extended family in ways to complicated to explain now....
there was little chance for anyone to really get any kind of decent rest, before some other dehli based friends of sanhita picked us up and whisked us away on a sari shopping extravaganza.... purchasing the actual sari itself was really quite straightforward.... one stands in front of a counter, while fabric is thrown in front of you, and eventually you either get sick of it all, of happen to actually like one. Luckily the latter happened to me and it was all done and dusted pretty promptly. Having purchased our saris so late, however, we did not have time to get tops custom made, so had to buy one from a street stall....common practise here it would seem..... in practise what this meant was that about 7 of us girls were left standing at a street corner in amidst the din and energy of kolkata, trying on blouses over our tops, and getting interested looks from the locals... we swept on to another shop, where i bought bangles to go with my sari, the girls bought salwar suits and boys were busy getting sherwanis, appropriate for men to wear to a wedding.....back in our hotel later we pracised our range of scottish/irish/east european songs and tunes in anticipation of the cultural evening to be held on the monday

Sunday:

Mehindi.....spent day round sanhita's hanging out and getting to know the other girls in the brides party..... some time in the afternoon, the mehindi(henna) women came and decorated our hand, with beautiful paterns that were a surprisingly intense brown for a couple of days, but which have now faded and are going slightly orangy.....we had to manage not to touch anything for 2 hours, and could not wash our hands till the next day.... it was worth it, though, and garners good favor from all here

Monday:

The first official day of the wedding, cultural performance evening.... after more shoe shopping to complete my wedding outfits, and some frantic last minute practising of our act we prepared ourselves to brave the stage at the cultural performance evening..... members of the groom and brides family are both expected to give some sort of performance..... on the grooms side we were treated to a range of traditional dancing and singing.... on the brides side there was a recital of a famous bengali poem, and well, us........ with our rendition of the scottish traditional air 'Mhairi's wedding'(changed for the occasion to San San's wedding), some traditional scottish dancing from me and five others(more or less indistinguishable from irish dancing so not that much of a leap) and some tin whistle and fiddle playing..... we went down a storm but went home to get an early night in preparation for what awaited us the next day....

Tuesday

The wedding itself....

will come back to this later... but in brief it included... 3 of us girls(elly, emily and myself) round sanhita's from 9 am onwards... ritual... conch blowing....turmeric paste being delivered from one house to another by important family members....sari wearing for beginners....amit arriving to the wedding on a horse.... ritual fire.... marriage....and sanhita looking like a spirit goddess...

Wednesday

Went to the indian coffee house, a place i think might be something of a spiritual home should i spend longer in kolkata...

the reception....with a suprising lack of dancing ... this marked the return of the sanhita we all know and love from the spirit plane she appeared to inhabit the previous day to the earthly realm....

Thursday

Recovery and preparation for my onward journey

Thoughts:

too many thoughts to get into here, but will record them later... thinking bout various themes including multilingualism in india, how shopping here resembles more the shopping in europe before the department store, the kolkata bourgeoise, feminism, tradition and the wedding ceremony and many more things.... will post some more thought when i get a chance...

lots of love

Roisin

Events:

Day before yesterday was my last day before more guests arrived.....spent the afternoon hanging out on the balcony of sanhitas dadu(grandad)'s place, while san took some much needed sleep. Then we hit the shops.... first jewelery stores, then clothing stores where I acquired salwar kameez suits and indian cotton tops suitable for travelling. All in all it was quite an overwhelming experience.... I do not have any sense for what looks good or bad, what is expensive of inexpensive in a salwar kameez, how one should acessorise, what is fashionable or not.... plus it is not a case of simply rooting through shelves at your leisure and walking into roomy changing rooms.... security guards guard the doors, and about 5 assistants search for colours and styles that they think would suit you....for me this is perhaps a little too much attention.... for san this seems to be normality.... yesterday, due to a political controversy in Bengal there was a 12 hour 'strike', with no taxis or other transport running, and no shops open...dave and the others had just arrived, so i used the time of the strike to catch up with them...

Thoughts:

I've realised just how much I appreciate my adopted home city berlin, its freedom and tolerance with regard to gender, sexuality etc. Adjusting to a situation where men do not look me in the eyes, do not take me seriously when a man is present, being required to remain 'modest' all the time, not feeling comfortable doing things that dave does with ease.... never before have i been so thankful for what my feminist foremothers achieved in making the life i live possible....