Swapping Brush Turkeys for Crows
I’m on the high seas again, cut loose from everything that I took for granted in Australia. We moved to India at the end of December for Michael’s work and I’m finding the waters here follow quite a different course to my home town of Sydney. The supermarkets don’t sell my favourite items, I’m at a loss to understand the local lingo, and the sky is thick with human pollution. My only reminders of my past life are stuffed away in my two suitcases, along with Sally and Michael by my side.
Looking out of my hotel window onto a mish-mash of shanty homes and medium high rise buildings, I have to remind myself every day that I made the right decision to move here. We’re still not sure if we’ll be based in Mumbai or New Delhi so our hotel, located in central Mumbai, is our temporary home. Already it has a family feel. The sofa is splattered with the leftovers of Sally’s dinners and the books that I promised myself to read for the past twelve months have followed me here, continuing to collect dust on the bedside table. I find that bedside tables always look the same from a certain angle, layered in identical books, crushed newspapers and stained mugs.
If I roll back one month, I was living out a scene set in Sydney’s suburbia. The picture was timeless. There were my two Burmese cats sunning themselves on the balcony, Sally was reading on the wooden floor decked out in rugs and toys, and outside the air was filled with the squabble of Brush Turkeys at war with the local moggies. Pungent and rowdy, the smells and sounds could have been replicated just about anywhere up and down the NSW coast line. My forefathers would have tasted the same Eucalypt tangs and heard the racket of the roosting turkeys a century earlier. It was a daily drama that almost escaped me, as if my ears had dimmed out to the orchestra of the Australian wildlife that played outside my bedroom window from dawn to dusk.
In the new setting of Mumbai, the heavens are blanketed by the smog of car fumes and factory waste. The space is grey and opaque, as thick as a mist rolling off the Blue Mountains. Predatory crows circle the skies in packs. My Burmese cats have been replaced by Fatty 1 and Fatty 2, who are two local stray cats fed by the westerners inhabiting our hotel. They are nurtured every morning with ample dishes of boiled eggs and grilled meats pilfered off the breakfast tables by the guests. Fatty 1 and Fatty 1 slightly remind me of Sir Winston Churchill. They enjoy the establishment of the hotel, their eminence in the local cat order, while their exaggerated girths, hanging over their waistlines like puffed up balloons, mark their good fortune. If I offered one a cigar, I’m sure he would be puff on it slowly, blowing rings on guests walking past him.
Around the corner, a little further down the lane, there are eight elderly ladies, scruffy and boney, sitting cross-legged on the road begging for money. I’ve been told not to give them money as it only encourages their trade. Covered in tatty saris, it’s hard to believe they have the means to work any more. They are overlooked while we indulge the cats.
India is by all accounts entering a new age. On the streets and in the shopping malls there are symbols and insignias of its hungry new wealth and prosperity. You can find just about any international designer here. Nestling behind forbidden walls lie swish boutiques offering a tempting range of designer clothes at a third of the equivalent price in Australia. But only a fraction of the city’s population is permitted through the formidable gates securing these shops. Entry is based, I imagine, on where you sit in the caste system.
Once I step outside of the commercial fortresses, I am hit by the clamour of the city’s streets. The noise is relentless. Cars toot to signal their intentions and factories drum to the beat of their busy machines. There are so many cars on the roads that two lanes make four lanes, or six, depending on the time of the day. Suzukis and Mercedes Benz jostle for driving space between bullock carts and auto rickshaws. And, for all this mayhem, there is order. I haven’t come across too many accidents yet.
There are threads of India’s medieval past interwoven between the tokens of its modernism. India has over 540 tribal groups who continue to speak their own languages and uphold their traditional practices. Sally and I went for a drive to a hill station yesterday and saw men, half my age, wearing a simple loin cloth as they herded goats along the road. Young girls were washing plates in their make-shift homes, dressed in vibrant saris, their hands painted in henna. They have inexplicably retained their curious and enchanting customs in spite of the pull from the commercial world.
Yet, not all of the traditions of this country are so laudable. I was warned about the predatory nature of the local men before arriving here. Personally, I have only come across softly spoken men, but I’m only seeing half the picture. Middle age and the isolation of living in an expatriate bubble seem to be protecting me from the worst of India. A rape case is allegedly reported every 20 minutes here. It’s a horrifying statistic that has been brought to the world’s attention by the appalling attack on the female student last month by six men on a bus in New Delhi.
Out of this crime has come some good. The rape case on the bus was so galling that there has been an uprising, of sorts, in the streets of New Delhi. India is having its own ‘Arab Spring’ driven by a call for better recognition and rights for women, and a shift in culture within the male dominated judicial and political apparatus that upholds these vicissitude values. As with the Arab Spring, social media is driving the momentum for change.
It’s hard to associate India with its ignominy towards women. There is a lot of laughter on the streets of Mumbai. The locals tell me that there is a less crime here than in New Delhi. The competition simmering between Mumbai and New Delhi reminds me of the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Maybe Mumbai has its own brand of equality. Or the locals here see New Delhi as another state, with its set of beliefs and atrocities. They certainly didn’t join their sisters and brothers in the capital city by rallying on the streets against the abysmal levels of rape across the country.
By entering a nation of over a billion people, I have awoken my senses to the extraordinary chasms between human beings. The cultures and countryside around me are poles apart to Sydney, fecund and extraordinary at times, crushing and devastating at other moments. I might not like everything that I see but I am adjusting to this new terrain. On our walk around the hotel grounds this morning, Sally and I talked in broken English to the ladies tending to the gardens. Dressed in tatty green uniforms, they had decorated their hair in sprays of red and yellow flowers. They laughed gently at me when I acknowledged their handiwork and then carried on gardening. In the heat of the tropical day they can still create beauty in the garden’s beds or in their hair. I must learn their craft during my time here.
Looking out of my hotel window onto a mish-mash of shanty homes and medium high rise buildings, I have to remind myself every day that I made the right decision to move here. We’re still not sure if we’ll be based in Mumbai or New Delhi so our hotel, located in central Mumbai, is our temporary home. Already it has a family feel. The sofa is splattered with the leftovers of Sally’s dinners and the books that I promised myself to read for the past twelve months have followed me here, continuing to collect dust on the bedside table. I find that bedside tables always look the same from a certain angle, layered in identical books, crushed newspapers and stained mugs.
If I roll back one month, I was living out a scene set in Sydney’s suburbia. The picture was timeless. There were my two Burmese cats sunning themselves on the balcony, Sally was reading on the wooden floor decked out in rugs and toys, and outside the air was filled with the squabble of Brush Turkeys at war with the local moggies. Pungent and rowdy, the smells and sounds could have been replicated just about anywhere up and down the NSW coast line. My forefathers would have tasted the same Eucalypt tangs and heard the racket of the roosting turkeys a century earlier. It was a daily drama that almost escaped me, as if my ears had dimmed out to the orchestra of the Australian wildlife that played outside my bedroom window from dawn to dusk.
In the new setting of Mumbai, the heavens are blanketed by the smog of car fumes and factory waste. The space is grey and opaque, as thick as a mist rolling off the Blue Mountains. Predatory crows circle the skies in packs. My Burmese cats have been replaced by Fatty 1 and Fatty 2, who are two local stray cats fed by the westerners inhabiting our hotel. They are nurtured every morning with ample dishes of boiled eggs and grilled meats pilfered off the breakfast tables by the guests. Fatty 1 and Fatty 1 slightly remind me of Sir Winston Churchill. They enjoy the establishment of the hotel, their eminence in the local cat order, while their exaggerated girths, hanging over their waistlines like puffed up balloons, mark their good fortune. If I offered one a cigar, I’m sure he would be puff on it slowly, blowing rings on guests walking past him.
Around the corner, a little further down the lane, there are eight elderly ladies, scruffy and boney, sitting cross-legged on the road begging for money. I’ve been told not to give them money as it only encourages their trade. Covered in tatty saris, it’s hard to believe they have the means to work any more. They are overlooked while we indulge the cats.
India is by all accounts entering a new age. On the streets and in the shopping malls there are symbols and insignias of its hungry new wealth and prosperity. You can find just about any international designer here. Nestling behind forbidden walls lie swish boutiques offering a tempting range of designer clothes at a third of the equivalent price in Australia. But only a fraction of the city’s population is permitted through the formidable gates securing these shops. Entry is based, I imagine, on where you sit in the caste system.
Once I step outside of the commercial fortresses, I am hit by the clamour of the city’s streets. The noise is relentless. Cars toot to signal their intentions and factories drum to the beat of their busy machines. There are so many cars on the roads that two lanes make four lanes, or six, depending on the time of the day. Suzukis and Mercedes Benz jostle for driving space between bullock carts and auto rickshaws. And, for all this mayhem, there is order. I haven’t come across too many accidents yet.
There are threads of India’s medieval past interwoven between the tokens of its modernism. India has over 540 tribal groups who continue to speak their own languages and uphold their traditional practices. Sally and I went for a drive to a hill station yesterday and saw men, half my age, wearing a simple loin cloth as they herded goats along the road. Young girls were washing plates in their make-shift homes, dressed in vibrant saris, their hands painted in henna. They have inexplicably retained their curious and enchanting customs in spite of the pull from the commercial world.
Yet, not all of the traditions of this country are so laudable. I was warned about the predatory nature of the local men before arriving here. Personally, I have only come across softly spoken men, but I’m only seeing half the picture. Middle age and the isolation of living in an expatriate bubble seem to be protecting me from the worst of India. A rape case is allegedly reported every 20 minutes here. It’s a horrifying statistic that has been brought to the world’s attention by the appalling attack on the female student last month by six men on a bus in New Delhi.
Out of this crime has come some good. The rape case on the bus was so galling that there has been an uprising, of sorts, in the streets of New Delhi. India is having its own ‘Arab Spring’ driven by a call for better recognition and rights for women, and a shift in culture within the male dominated judicial and political apparatus that upholds these vicissitude values. As with the Arab Spring, social media is driving the momentum for change.
It’s hard to associate India with its ignominy towards women. There is a lot of laughter on the streets of Mumbai. The locals tell me that there is a less crime here than in New Delhi. The competition simmering between Mumbai and New Delhi reminds me of the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Maybe Mumbai has its own brand of equality. Or the locals here see New Delhi as another state, with its set of beliefs and atrocities. They certainly didn’t join their sisters and brothers in the capital city by rallying on the streets against the abysmal levels of rape across the country.
By entering a nation of over a billion people, I have awoken my senses to the extraordinary chasms between human beings. The cultures and countryside around me are poles apart to Sydney, fecund and extraordinary at times, crushing and devastating at other moments. I might not like everything that I see but I am adjusting to this new terrain. On our walk around the hotel grounds this morning, Sally and I talked in broken English to the ladies tending to the gardens. Dressed in tatty green uniforms, they had decorated their hair in sprays of red and yellow flowers. They laughed gently at me when I acknowledged their handiwork and then carried on gardening. In the heat of the tropical day they can still create beauty in the garden’s beds or in their hair. I must learn their craft during my time here.
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