India Chronicles
by Fabia Claridge
I want to be in a place where I walk out into the street and meet a mendicant sage or a travelling troubadour not a person in beige walking a poodle. I want to be in a place where someone has the time to welcome a visitor with a garland of marigolds not a can of beer. What have we done? Sanitised. But then … oh how seductively easy is the sanitised life. Just say ‘No’ to what we have done, to the mess of human history, to the underlying grit. Denial, remoteness, shiny, white surfaces so clean, so empty, leaving a giant space for reflection. Or not.
After forty years I have returned to India, my India, my heart place, where I had left half of my being and so many friends, like a ghost creeping back to see what happens in the future. Peering into the smog, the smoke, the rising mists from the river I found a place modernised but in essence the same. When you are a stranger here the connectedness between people hits you in the guts. It is something so natural that local people seem to wear it like a skin. Here I am enveloped by eye contact, no privacy, joy and pain. Here it seems people can’t help but hang out of the tight pants of convention as a cross current, a safety valve to tradition and the caste system that still weigh as heavily as a stone slab on the shoulders. Wear a loose shalwar kemise, or a sari and relax. Make sure to know your place but above all let it out with your song and your dance. Vermillion, orange, yellow, emerald green, sapphire blue, deepest purple and brilliant white swirl past in a celebration of the chakras. Add to this the blare of horns, dog fights, music, mobiles and prayers on speaker. I feel the pressure that they all live under, of shouldering the burden of life as it is, of scratching a livelihood no matter what. Oh, the peace of the dawn azan from a nearby mosque as I sit in the silence on the roof top, watching the red ball of the sun rise over the dusty desert. How I miss you so! How will I live without you?
There is a strange smell in our hotel that seems excruciatingly sweet like heavy incense. Some say and I agree that it reminds us of the smell that pervades the inner sanctum of a Hindu temple but does it mask an odorous drain or the urine of 1.4 billion people? The mix is somehow lurking wherever I go, jasmine, sandalwood and excrement, a metaphor for the duality of existence. But let’s not forget the ubiquitous car exhaust that overlays it. Yes, what have we done.
The young woman at Fab India knows her stuff, where to find the shawls and the niceities of plus sizes for fat foreigners. She needs the job she says. Her baby daughter is eight months old, at home with her mother-in-law while she travels four hours a day to a twelve-hour-job.
Daylia associates with our gypsy friends. Daylia’s son has died. It happened three months ago when he was swimming at the river. He was only ten. He was born when Daylia was thirteen. She had been married at the age of six. There were complications in the pregnancy, Daylia ran away and her mother in law let her because they didn’t have the money for fancy medical treatment. The birth had been difficult but somehow both child-mother and child survived, a miracle. But now he was dead. After the marriage ended Daylia had to make ends meet. She went into business of the sort that pretty women with no education go into and she was now purported to be quite wealthy. Daylia lays on the pitiful drama of it for me. But I’ve been around too, darling. No need to camp it up for me, dear. I see you, girl. I know how tough it has been for you. I have the deepest respect for you and honour your resilience but I am so sorry I can’t fix your agony with money.
It is I who has changed, become old. I have seen too much, felt too much even though it is not I who carry the great stone slabs for six flights of stairs. It is not I who has lost a living child, thank God! It is not I who has to sleep at night with hunger gnawing at my belly. It is not I who has had to contort my spirit into a gargoyle for my survival. My sinuses swell, protective and exude copious amounts of phlegm. My eyes close up, becoming slits. Ears block, everything is muffled. Food full of chillies sears my throat making that swell also. I wrap up in more and more scarves. Sunglasses darken the scene of what I know lies beneath the waters of the Ganges. I eat more of the piping hot crispy-but-soft naan and reach for the aromatic chai, a comfort. On the last night after we leave the safety of our group, we dine on the best pizza I have ever eaten, the ingredients grown in farms outside Delhi, sweet tomatoes, basil and fetta. But alas the phlegm is building and by midnight has formed a giant ball in my guts. I cannot prevent the heaving that arises in my throat and I vomit. I vomit out a giant slimy ball of phlegm that is India.
The next morning it has rained, clearing the smog. The air is fresh and cool. There is even a tiny patch of blue sky. I am filled with gratitude as images come puffing with the clouds of the monumental achievements and resilience of this ancient culture and the humans who have created it, the glowing yellow stone fort of Jaisalmer, buzzing like a beehive, the vast engulfing emptiness of the desert, the heaving humanity of Varanasi, hellbent on salvation, the charm of our wonderful companions, their talent and charisma. Someone is playing a flute. I’m ready for another love affair with India.
© Fabia Claridge 2023.
Fabia Claridge is an author and activist. Her novels, To Hold the Mountain (2004), and Patchouli Memsahib (2023) draw on her years of living, loving and working across South Asia.
Fabia took part in our Story Hunters India tour organised by Blue Swan Events with Writers Journey.
Jan Cornall is a writer who leads international writers journeys, retreats and workshops. See pics here. You can read Jan’s most recent travel memoir online at onthejourney.substack.com
Insta: @_writersjourney
