Author: Stephanie Booth

Retour à  la normale [en]

Où je retrouve avec une vitesse effrayante ma routine suisse.

C’est effrayant de voir à  quel vitesse je me réinstalle dans ma vie suisse. Je n’ai été absente qu’un mois, il est vrai, et la vie que je retrouve ressemble dent pour dent à  celle d’avant mes vacances. Presque pas désorientée, l’Inde est déjà  très loin, et ça m’embête. J’ai juste gardé encore le petit mouvement de tête indien signifiant l’acquiècement, et je sais que je le perdrai bientôt.

C’est tout à  fait autre chose qu’un retour après un an d’absence, et mine de rien, c’est mon troisième retour. Je commence presque à  avoir l’habitude. Je me réinstalle en Suisse aussi aisément que je me réinstalle en Inde lorsque j’y vais — à  la seule différence que je sais toujours quand je rentrerai en Suisse, et que j’ignore quand je retournerai en Inde.

Oui, la Suisse est grise et froide. Mais ce soir, il y a du soleil sur la campagne que traverse le train qui me ramène à  Lausanne après ma première journée de travail. Elle est belle, la Suisse, quand elle veut. Mais je serais quand même bien restée là -bas un peu plus longtemps…

Back Home [en]

Back home in Switzerland. Got the cat back, but not the cellphone.

Switzerland is grey and dark and cold. No colours, no sun.

I’ve got my cat back (with a bit of extra weight, just like his mistress who now feels a little tight in her trousers), my brave little car started at the turn of the key, only one of my plants has died (it was already on the way down before I left), but my cellphone has been blocked.

I feel a bit dazed. The change has been brutal. I feel disconnected, as if my presence here wasn’t completely real — or worse, as if India was just some kind of weird dream, a sensation I sometimes have when I am over there. Something else I need to sort out at some point, I guess.

I’m not too sure what I’m going to do now. There are lot of things to unpack, an extra CD/DVD-rack to buy (!), a few things to type up, and lots of photos and videos to upload and organize. The flat still needs work, too.

I think I’ll take a Lush bath.

Quitter l'Inde [en]

L’Inde et la Suisse restent en moi comme deux îlots séparés…

Voilà . A nouveau, je quitte l’Inde. Ces quatre semaines se retrouvent brutalement compressées en un instant qui m’échappe à  présent. Ça a filé trop vite, comme on dit.

C’est comme si cette parenthèse restait une bulle séparée du reste de ma vie — peut-être parce que je ne peux véritablement la partager avec personne (mis à  part Aleika) lorsque je suis en Suisse, et que la Suisse, je ne peux non plus réellement l’expliquer à  qui que ce soit quand je suis en Inde.

Comment recoller les morceaux? Comment garder en moi à  la fois ici et là -bas? Ça rendrait probablement les départs moins difficiles…

Bye-Bye India… Already [en]

Leaving India.

I’m back in Bombay, my stomach is healed, and I have a little more than twenty-four hours left in India. My cellphone number in India is now dead (“You need at least 20Rs credit for roaming, Madam, so you need to recharge. Minimum recharge is 345Rs.”) and although I’d really love to hang around a bit longer, I’m missing my cat too much — so I decided to confirm my flight after all and go home.

You’ll see the rest of the photos, videos, and the backlog once I’m back in Switzerland.

It was lovely being here. I’ll be back. As soon as I can.

Thekkady [en]

In Thekkady, a hill-station in Kerala. Been sick, brief description of the place.

Thekkady is a nice hill-station. For the moment, the most I’ve seen of it is my hotel bedroom, thanks to the gastro-entritis that kept me in bed all day and in the bathroom all night. As far as I can see, Thekkady is mainly composed of a street lined with identical shops (with identical men in front of the shops trying to tempt you in by asking you what your name is and where you come from). When the street gets tired of shops, they turn into pretty expensive resorts, all next to each other (Cardamom Country, Spice Village, Taj Garden retreat and our more modest Ambady).

We got here yesterday after an afternoon on the road. We hired a private car, but gave up trying to communicate with the driver after he stopped the car and nearly turned back, obviously in a misguided attempt to try to satisfy an imaginary request of ours, when Anita was simply asking a curious question about the route we were taking.

Cellphones don’t work here, enquiries about paying with VISA are greeted with crispated smiles and a barely audible “no… cash please!”, and broadband internet access seems like science-fiction. You’ll therefore have to wait until I’m back in Mumbai (or at best, Cochin) to see any of the photos and videos Anita and I have been furiously shooting (within the limits of the storage space available on the memory card, of course).

I have quite a lot of backlog to type up, going back to my three weeks in Pune. Watch older entries, you might find new reading!

Savitri III [en]

At every moment we make an unalterable decision. When I wrote to you in the beginning, I made one.

At every moment we make an unalterable decision. When I wrote to you in the beginning, I made one. I made another when I invited you to Tirupet. After you had been and gone, when I gave you that string of answers to your questions, then again I made a decision. I have not altered it. The psychological basis of my behaviour did not come in the way of this. Only I did not get the response I wanted. Had I got it, I would have come anywhere with you, done anythng for you. Every girl, the instant she is born, comes prepared to leave her mother and her father.

You might perhaps say that you too expected a response and that you did not get it. How can I give an answer to this? To tell you the truth, one ought to be able to arrive at these decisions without resorting to the language of appeal and response.

Now, after writing all this, I feel embarrassed. If reading this causes you any sorrow then forget me for all time.

Savitri II [en]

You want love, and I don’t want it? What is it that I have given you these six years

You want love, and I don’t want it? What is it that I have given you these six years? Only I did not get entangled in the nomenclature of what I wanted, of what I still want–that’s all. You ought to have carried me off, dragged me away–yes, I am writing what’s true, what’s absolutely true. Nothing is ever gained by analysing things. We only become strangers to our own selves.

P. S. Rege, Savitri

Savitri I [en]

When we were children, my friend’s brother was once to have come from a far-off place. I saw her weep because he didn’t come. I even teased her.

When we were children, my friend’s brother was once to have come from a far-off place. I saw her weep because he didn’t come. I even teased her. Then I too sat and wept with her. Today I didn’t weep. Why? Because I am beginning to learn that one shouldn’t look too far ahead nor try to reshape what has already taken place. What has happened must be left as it is–far away. By holding on to it, the shades tend to grow faint. That’s all.

P. S. Rege, Savitri

Deliverance [en]

You are a writer, I told myself; yet you readily give a wide berth to raw reality when you encounter it…

You are a writer, I told myself; yet you readily give a wide berth to raw reality when you encounter it, as if living was a thing apart from the truth of existence of that truth was a thing apart from writing–as if living and truth and writing bore no relation to one another: as if each hung like a cold corpse from its own separate gallows.

Nirmal Verma, Deliverance

First Two Days in Kerala [en]

An account of our package days in Kerala. Nice!

It took a bit of firmness, but it was finally less difficult than I had feared to obtain the various entertainments promised in our package.

We started yesterday evening with a trip around the local canals in a canoe. Peaceful, and nice, glimpses of lives in little houses or huts near the water, and the splashing of the oar in the dark as we headed home, interrupted only by the twilight din of the birds hopping and chirping excitedly in the coconut trees.

The food was nice, although the ‘vegetable curry’ we ordered alongside the fish was ‘somewhat bland’, and we clearly hadn’t ordered enough. For my part, I was thinking ‘family style portions’, but each dish here was clearly meant to feed one person only.

We got up at dawn this morning (6:20 a.m., the birds were at it again with their racket) for a slightly longer tour through the backwaters in a motor boat. Luckily we just chugged along slowly, so the noise didn’t prevent us from enjoying the peacefulness of the morning scenes offered to us: fishing, bathing, and washing up the dirty dishes.

We came back for a hearty breakfast of appams, and discovered that the vegetable curry wasn’t too bad with a little added salt and pepper.

By nine o’clock the car (mini-van, actually) was ready to take us to a neighbouring village for a short trek. There isn’t much to say about it apart from the fact that it was pleasant and allowed the atmosphere to sink in. Anita shot quite a lot of videos with the digicam.

Lunch was a success. We had ordered a lot of food and it was really nice — especailly the prawn masala (prawns naked, if you please). We ordered accordingly for this evening.

Half of the afternoon was devoted to laying around and bathing for me, and hotel-hunting and transport-organizing for Anita. Again, I cannot say it enough: thanks, many thanks.

Around three we set off for a brief visit of the highly coloured temple, a stroll on the beach (the soft sand and warm water made me want to bathe, can you imagine!) and a walk in the town. Our driver, Matthew, turned out to be a very nice chap who told us all about the finest umbrella manufacturer in all India (here in Alleppey only), as well as a local church we peeked into.

I’ve rarely packed as many things in an Indian day as I have today!