Tag: india

Indian Things I Love [en]

I’m regularly told that I give a bad image of India (the horror stories and all that). Here is some of the nice stuff that I never write about. Things I like about India.

I’m regularly told that I give a bad image of India (the horror stories and all that). Here is some of the nice stuff that I never write about. Things I like about India:

  • the rivers
  • poha
  • riding on the back of Madhav or Shinde’s bikes
  • the shopping stalls near Laxmi Rd
  • walking in the university campus
  • going to the movies
  • mad shopping binges
  • kathi rolls and kheer kadam from Radhika’s
  • chay
  • the smell of incense and fresh coriander
  • people who smile at me or compliment my dress
  • rickshaw drivers who go by the meter
  • chatting with people on the train
  • coloured clothes and cloth
  • travelling by train
  • shopping
  • changes of plans and surprises when they go the way I want them to
  • painted signs and boards
  • rangoli
  • sari bags
  • krack cream
  • the dampness of the air on arrival in Bombay airport
  • kulfi and gulab jamun
  • butter naan and butter chicken
  • the warmth
  • having all the time in the world to take my bath and eat my breakfast
  • glass bangles and silver anklets
  • reading for days on end
  • children in school uniforms
  • eating on the kitchen floor
  • the cup of tea offered by the internet café manager because I’m waiting for the end of the power outage
  • Hindi and Indian English
  • negociating seating arrangements and luggage storage with fellow train-passengers
  • sticking 46 large stamps on the 6.5kg book parcel I’m sending home
  • the Kal Ho Na Ho ringtone on Anita’s cellphone
  • sweet-smelling flowers in the night
  • Hindi music in the car
  • chay with milk straight out of the goat’s udder at Taramai’s

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.

A Tourist in India [en]

Some thoughts about being a tourist in India, and how I hate being a tourist.

– ‘Your country?’ Asks the man on the bus.
– ‘Switzerland.’
– ‘Svizerrland!? Ooh. Why you are not staying there?’
– ‘I am staying there. I came on holiday to visit some friends. I used to live in Pune.’
– ‘Ooh, so you are just tourist, then!’
– ‘Well, er…’

That was a week or two back, on the overcrowded bus which was finally taking me down to E-Square to see Ek Haseena Thi. I’ve always hated being associated with ‘tourists’, in India or elsewhere.

Tourists come to see, not to share. They watch the world outside from cozy A/C boxes. They are impolite, they don’t know how to dress or behave, they can’t eat the food or find their way around without a map. They see what they are meant to see, stay in places specially designed for them, and buy things in shops that nobody else would buy. They have money, lots of it.

In some ways, I have to admit that I am indeed a tourist. I take lots of photographs. I buy loads of stuff in shops to bring back to Switzerland for my enjoyment and that of others. I don’t really keep an eye on what I spend, I eat in nice places, I go to the cinema as often as I like.

But on the other hand, I much prefer trying to share the life of ‘normal’ people or just walk around the town I’m staying in, rather than sleep in expensive places and do the things that only the tourists do.

I like people. I do my best not to turn them into objects. I like everyday life. I like soaking in the atmosphere of a place or time.

I’m very suspicious of other foreigners I come upon in India. I kind of assume that they are not like me, more the ‘hippy-dippy’ type, as Aleika and I used to call them. Some sort of anti-tourist snobism, in a way.

Of course, I’m wrong. Lots of foreigners in India are certainly nice people. I almost walked off for ever after saying hello to Aleika, mistakenly assuming she would be ‘at the ashram’. Quite a few of my friends from Switzerland or elsewhere have been to India, so they would therefore certainly have been ‘foreigners nice to know’ had I met them in India.

Ironically, I find myself looking at other foreigners with as much curiosity and maybe more questions as many Indians who see me walk by. Why are they here? What brought them to India? What are they looking for? How long are they staying? Do they ‘fit in’ or not in their home culture? What is their life like here?

The result is that I’ve had very little contact with other foreigners in India, and I’m aware that I’m probably passing by people who would be interesting to know. I keep myself ‘aside’, comfortably settled on a jute bag full of preconceptions and marked ‘Fab India, Pune’.

Photos and Videos [en]

Videos and photos online.

Some photos and videos are already dumped online. You’ll find the photos in the Dumped Photos section, and the videos in the Films section.

Don’t expect too much, though, there is a lot of rubbish!

Safe in India [en]

I have arrived safely in India. More news later.

Just a note to tell everybody that I have safely arrived in India. I’ll be taking a coach to Pune this afternoon. Expect more news in a few days, including my cellphone number!

Preparing for Departure [en]

Leaving in a week to spend a month in India.

In a week from now I’ll be on my plane to India. A bit apprehensive, as I was last time.

As always with unpredictable India, I have no idea how much I’ll be posting from there, and how often I’ll get to check my e-mail. It might be pretty often. It might be every couple of days. It might be once a week.

I’ll be staying over there for four weeks (Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, in particular), and finally meeting Anita, who courageously volunteered to come and pick me up at the airport.

Dehydration [en]

Last night, I came home from a pretty intensive judo training hardly feeling thirsty at all. (As I am pretty out of shape, it doesn’t take much to make training “intensive”.) I remember that pre-India, I used to rush for the tap at the end of my judo classes — when I was on to thirsty to wait for the end of the class.

My experiences with dehydration in India taught me a couple of things. I think the revelation came to me when recovering from my sickness after the vedic sacrifice.

First of all, I learnt to recognise the signs of mild dehydration (aside from fainting in airports, of course). As far as I’m concerned, a sure sign that I am starting to be dehydrated is when I feel thirsty, drink until I am not thirsty anymore, and feel thirsty again ten minutes later.

The corollary of this remarkable observation is that you build up your “water capital” over the space of days, not hours. This means that if you know that you are going to dehydrate yourself a bit (for example by sweating on judo mats) it is no use to make sure you drink “enough” a couple of hours before you start. You need to drink “enough” during the previous couple of days. I’m not teaching anything to those of you will run marathons.

I am aware there is nothing revolutionary at all in noticing this. It is pretty simple and straightforward. I am actually amazed that it has not always been obvious to me. I wonder at the fact that I didn’t understand why judo classes sometimes made me thirsty, and sometimes not. Now I know.

Aleika’s Recipe for Masoor Daal [en]

Here is the delicious recipe Aleika showed me last time I was in Birmingham to visit her. It is an indian lentil recipe.

You’ll need:

  • masoor daal (the red lentils you find at any indian supermarket near you)
  • nigellas, also called kalonji (kind of small black onion seeds)
  • onions
  • tomato
  • butter (yum!) or oil
  • a green chili if you want
  • fresh coriander leaves

First, cook the daal. You can wash and/or soak it first if you like. Basically, you cook it like rice: about a cup of daal, roughly twice that amount of water, stick in a saucepan and boil until it turns pasty (take care, it foams a lot if you didn’t wash it really well). Let’s say it takes 20 minutes or so.

Chop the onions very finely while the daal is cooking (“more onions than you would think expect”, says Aleika) — I put a couple of onions in for a teacup of daal.

When the daal is nearly done (or plain done), heat the butter or oil, drop in a teaspoon of kalonji (or half, depending on your taste — they aren’t strong) and the green chili (or not). Add the onions and fry them gently until they melt. Then add the tomato and make it melt too.

Once the tomato and onion look as pasty as the daal (well, nearly!), simply dump the daal on top of them. Re-heat if necessary, stir well, add chopped coriander leaves (or not, but it’s nicer with them), and it’s ready!

Daal is usually eaten with rice. Pour the daal on top of the rice and mix, or eat separately if you prefer.

Bon appétit!

News and Indian Photos [en]

Back from Birmingham to see Aleika, Akirno, and the animals, I’m thinking hard about film scanners, photographs, prints and digital cameras.

My reading this evening brought me to these beautiful photographs of Gujurat and Rajasthan. My Indian photographs really pale in comparison.

Indian woman (Rajasthani?) looking over the sea on Alibag beach.