Taken down a peg or two by a little barefooted girl

TAKEN DOWN A PEG OR TWO BY A LITTLE BAREFOOT GIRL

13/02/2014

Staying in the Taj Palace hotels reminds me very much of the parable of Siddharta, who had lived out his childhood cloistered in his parent's palace, until he escaped through the gates one eventful day and saw how the rest of the world lived:  hard, fast, hungry and crowded. 

To my amazement, Reno took to the streets with the gusto he applies to every aspect of his life.  I thought he'd be whimpering at the thought of going into grubby streets, polluted by noise and  congestion, craving air conditioning. But in spite of his abdominal fervour of the night before, by lunch time he'd been conned by a fake holy man offering something white and crumbly to eat at the Gateway to India.  He'd had a "good lucky blessing" tied to his wrist, a tikka applied to his forehead,  been compressed by the crowds and impressed by the geniality of Indians.  He's reading Shantaram on his Kobo (aka Kindle) and loves that stuff happens in the book just where he happens to be.  The weather is divine - a mellow 25degrees with clear skies.

India has changed enormously in the 25 years I've been coming here.  The scenes that drew my photographic eye are now interpreted just as piles of rubble or dirty footpaths;  gone are the dhotis and saris from the city:  the faded peeling buildings are graffitied and padlocked; the dogs are still scrawny.  But the energy and humility and vibrance of the people still enthralls.  Nobody gets road rage here, in spite of humanity moving like molecules through the arteries of life.

I always like travelling with a motive: besides honeymoon and stock acquisition, we intend to photograph ourselves in our wedding clothes, and the red silk dress I made to photograph in every city we visit. The wedding dress was so spectacular, I'm going to wear it to shreds over the next few months.

So we dressed to the nines, and beyond, on our first day.  We're staying in the oldest part of the Taj, where the terrorist bomb happened; but it's been magnificently restored and the light that filters through the slatted roof and across the lattice on to the squared

Reno trying pure Indian essences for the first time.

black and white floors is very photogenic. My dress was spectacular amidst that decor; and what else could we do besides walk though the hotel, pose on the stairs, lounge against a baby grand, and pretend we were shooting for Harper's Bazaar.  I was in full makeup, and many of the hotel guests took photos of us and with us. Oddly, so elaborate and astonishing is the grandness of the decor, and so sublime the environment, that there were an equal number of people who didn't bat an eyelid that I was floating around in 50 metres of silk chiffon and net.

It has also been a long time dream of mine to have a wedding blessing in a Hindu temple. Reno, of course, in his amazing way, to add more shock to his astonished system, agreed immediately and we tore off at 40km an hour in a jalopy into the melee of horns, trucks, tuks tuks, cars, bicycles, bikes and pedestrians to the Badunath Hindu temple, a quiet place of columns carved with dieties amidst several ancient Banyan trees.  

We bought a basket of water lilies, roses, marigold petals and crystanthemums for 40rp, removed our shoes, and walked barefoot over ancient worn marble.  I covered my head and we stood sheepishly amongst the devout waiting for a sign from someone about what to do.  A gentle faced, white clad priest came up to us, and when Reno pointed his shiny new wedding ring, the priest nodded, fetched a brass pail of water and showed us how to pour it, with the flowers, over the shrine in the temple.  I held Reno's hand as we did this, and saw he was so moved he was shaking.  We sat on a step, as the priest had asked us to, until he returned to wrap a red and yellow cord around our wrists while intoning a Hindu prayer that was so powerful it made me cry. Thought of course I had no idea what it meant.

In my hand made silk dress, outside our room in the Taj.

On the way out, we passed a marble cow, at the entrance to another shrine. Many people were whispering in its ear.  Reno also did, while I watched, and when it was my turn I said this:  "Look, I feel really silly whispering into your ear.  You're just a piece of marble after all, and you're covered with flowers and the stories of a hundred thousand lives.  But I suppose a quick wish-prayer won't hurt."  Then I started to talk to this cow, really talk to him, like he was a priest confessor.  I said that I'd been thinking something I shouldn't, and that I was sorry because it had a sort of lousy outcome, so I promised that if I never thought that again, would he fix the lousy outcome?  The cow was poker faced, but I feel he may have listened because I felt him giving a wise sigh, and we'll see about the outcome.  Then I wondered what other people were saying to him, because I saw quite a few incredulous looks from the regulars who felt that they had the cow's ear, due to frequent whispering points, so did I have a right to fast tracking my guilt?

Wedding blessing at Badunath Temple

But I must admit, I was moved again to a profound sense of something New.  We were both quite silent in the cavorting cab on the way back to the Taj.

Amongst throngs of shrieking, excited fans, we went to the local bollywood cinema a short walk from the Taj.  While jostling our way to the ticket office, a little girl whined and tugged at my skirt, wanting money. I shooed her away and pushed through the crowds to see Hashee Pashee or it's subtitle Cookin Frazy ... to buy our 100rp stall tickets.  A police security guard had cordoned off the entrance, so we waited in a solid mass of people until we'd all passed through a magnetic security gate.  

Crushed just at knee height was the same little girl who'd managed to get some money to buy a movie ticket.  I looked into her dark little dust stained face, to her grubby, ragged clothes, her tiny little bare feet avoiding the stomp of sneakers, heels and boots. She had the most magnificent face I've ever seen:  a grubby little angel thrilled at the prospect of seeing a movie.  An enormous Indian man with an enormous wobbling stomach that covered the little girl's head almost squashed her. I said HEY, watchit, you're gonna squash this kid.  The kid tucked herself under my arm and sat next to us for the four hours of the movie. She shared our popcorn and ice cream.  She cringed and whimpered when the usher asked her to move so that a gang of teenage boys could sit in her row, she cowered into my side;  I said, no, she's with us.  We watched while she was mesmerised and transported into another world of laughter and great clothes, of food and shelter, of showers and parents.

Every time we laughed at something incomprehensibly Hindi, she looked at us and laughed too.  I thought about her parents, her mother.  How she managed to get around at night, alone, barefoot. Where she slept.  Who protected her. Reno held up a few fingers to ask her age: she held up six, her dark eyes dancing with excitement.  At six I could barely open my lunchbox unaided.  This little girl manoeuvred her way around a city of 18 million people, and dreamed one day of having all that was happening on the screen.  We left because we were tired, put a 100rp ($2.00) in her hand so she could buy another movie ticket – or plate of dahl – and I worried about her all the way home to our palatial room in a Victorian palace where staff handed us warm towels and chilled water.  And where earlier that  morning, after admiring a piece of jewellery in a window at the Taj, the jeweller allowed me to try on two necklaces of Tanzanite and diamonds, that collectively were worth $1.8million.  What a strange feeling to be wearing a house around my neck.

India always does this to me.  I remember on one of my early trips I was eating a plate of runny dahl and watery vegetables.  A dusty, vacantly-tired eyed girl came begging at my table. I’d been told by my tour guide not to give her money, and although I wanted to give her whatever I could, I didn’t. Instead, I’d lost my appetite and threw the remainder of my food away into a chute.  On my way out, I found the young girl, using her hands to sift the food that was washing through the drainpipe from the washing sink, lifting a few disintegrating grains of rice and shredded spinach to her mouth through trembling hands.  Twenty years later, I can still feel that lurch of sick-guilty in my heart, and see her eyes.  That was one photograph I couldn’t take, but it’s boiled on my retina.  When I got het up enough about these inequities in Nepal, I became involved in school building and trying to get glue sniffing kids off the streets.  Had I but world enough and time … instead, we gave this little child a few hours of delight in her undelightful world.  More money would have got her into trouble - this much I have learned on my journeys.

When I was in Mumbai in 2008, I spent days walking.  But the streets now are more clogged and more crumbled and I couldn’t find any of the landmarks that were familiar. So Reno and I took a cab to Crawford Markets, block and blocks of everything from electronics to gold jewellery. Reno had his first experience of buying pure Indian essences while I eyed the strawberries and baskets of fruit with equal, though unfulfilled, desire.  Only occasionally did we see a dhoti, but canisters of water were carried on trailers and gas is still carted around the city on makeshift tractors.

Reno’s reading Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, an Australian who’d become involved in a desperate heroin world from which he managed to escape, and wrote about his adventures and recovery in Mumbai.  The club, Leopold, around which the story is geographically centered, is just behind the Taj, and Reno went to check it out.  When he returned, a waiter at the Taj told us that Roberts visited the Taj frequently and sat where we did.  Reno felt as if he was in the presence of royalty, almost frothing at the mouth with excitement.

India touched me only slightly this time, because I chose to remain cloistered. Reno, however, has his Indian oils, Shakti and Krishna lividly vivid tee shirts,  abdominal traumas, learned the ways of an Indian pharmacy, and thoroughly enjoyed being driven around in a tin can by a driver with eight words of English. He’s received a wedding blessing in a temple, seen a Bollywood movie, and watched with joy as the gateway to India changed colour every ten seconds. He bought a Nehru linen suit and some hand made shirts.  At the airport he ran out of rupees to tip the porters, negotiated Indian emigration, and entered a conversation with every person he charmed. I’m so proud of him.

And so on to Venice.  Where Reno wooed me, just over 2 years ago.  I can't believe my luck.