India, by all accounts, is a bemusing mixed bag of contradictions. I see it in the streets, where the white haired swamis perched on bullcarts, with not parrots but cellphones perched on their ears. I see it in the high rise software complexes, standing in front of a vast shantytown, where the bosses are obsessed about leveraging efficiency but still love their pani puris during long chaat breaks. I see it on the roads, where the autos squeeze along side the latest Nano cars, but everyone stops to let the buffalo in front pause to take a dump mid-traffic. I see it in the newspapers, affixed with the latest horror incident of honour killing in the villages, yet awashed with airbrushed celebrities on Page 3. (This, I have unsurprisingly, been very fond of.)
All these, are what I see from foreign eyes, but I am getting accustomed to the chaos, and even appreciating the liveliness it brings.
At the market:
Buying tomatoes from the market is somewhat therapeutic for me. The hybrid versions, which are only available from the posh supermarkets are uncommonly huge and plump with juice. But equally, I enjoy the more humble tomatoes from the street stalls, although they are small and some are quite a discomforting hue. But the old women who sell them to me are very honest and charge me according to the rates that apply to everyone. Under the dim lights of their stalls (or most of the time, light from the unreliable streets), their craigy faces look up at me in a moment’s curiosity, but their expressions return to the same stoic one that has to face a hard life, the moment I hand them my coins and walk away.
In the auto:
It was my first weekend in Hyderabad, and we were in an auto on our way home. The auto driver took us through one of his untested shortcuts, which wound through the alley streets in Koti. I clearly remember a young girl, no older than 14, whose expression captured the wonder at having seen such strange, yellow-skinned people, packed into and auto. Oh yes, I remember her very clearly. She was pretty in the way adolescents are, innocent, yet forced to be mature by life. She was bathing a toddler in a metal basin outside her house. (I suppose that must have been her brother.) She was dressed in a mustard yellow sari, and she looked up as our auto drove past her home. Her eyes widened and she gaped at us for a nanosecond before breaking into a wide smile as we zoomed past.
Squeezing in the ladies compartment in the public bus:
I remember the bus was chugging along, and I was trying to hold on to something for balance, but of course, the bodies were too tightly packed for any space to move about. I was in a highly awkward position, with my full weight pressed upon this fleshy auntie. I could feel the softness of her body beneath the starchy sari.
I was expecting her to holler at me for being pushed up against her in that manner, but I guess in a country of more than a billion bodies, people get that it’s crowded at times.
In the bazaar:
I pleaded as sweetly as I could without being nauseating, for the shopkeeper to let me have the scarf for Rs100. He flat out refused me and said “Rs 150. No bargain!”. Of course, ever the pugnacious shopper, I tried again, but just I was prepared to give up because there were other customers around, the white haired shop keeper hitched his sarong, got up and whispered to my ear, “ok, best price just for you, Rs 120.”
Then, there was no more to be said.
Having said that, the green pashmina scarf is really pretty. :D
Reading the newspapers:
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India is like a wonderful love affair, and it seems there must be a private narrative scraped out for preservation of whatever smoky memories I will come to have of this place. Chalo.
