Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  I cross a huge bridge but India is on the other side as well, everywhere there’s a mass of begging, pleading, needing, naked wretchedness.

  It’s Christmas Day and I think I shall go mad here.

  In an effort to find some peace on earth, Jonathan pulls me down dark twisting alleyways stretching away from the river. In a street that oozes black mud a man emerges from behind a curtain to hail us warmly. He points to his sign: ‘WEL-CUM ASTROLOGER TO THE STARS’.

  Jonathan, camera ever by his side, sees an opportunity for a story that the ABC will love for the cliché-ridden Christmas silly season – a prediction piece for the new millennium. Our astrologer, Mr Rakesh, grins at the request and, with a flourish and a bow, pulls aside a curtain to admit us into a tiny room cramped with clumsy, ugly furniture, and adorned with photos of himself and photos of his parents ringed with leis of saffron marigold flowers. Dressed in a stiff white shirt and flared brown hipster pants, Mr Rakesh orders chai from a street urchin, then combs his bright red hennaed hair into a rockabilly quiff and twirls his moustache in readiness for filming. Deadpan and directly down the barrel of the camera, he yells at breakneck speed without pausing for breath.

  ‘The year 2000 will be a great year for India, Sonia Gandhi will not become Prime Minister because she is not an Indian, we shall win the cricket because we’re the best sportsmen in the world and India will continue to be the most intelligent, most scientific, most spiritual and best country in the universe.’

  I remark that his predictions sound very pro-India. Mr Rakesh nods vigorously.

  ‘Yes, you noticed, this is so, but I am telling you, it is usual. We are, of course, genetically superior to all other races, so I find it difficult to be less than modest. What to do?’

  While I splutter into my tea, the astrologer rants about India’s accomplishments.

  ‘We invented the zero, the Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and Varanassi is the oldest city in the world.’

  I’m brimming with all I can’t say: I’ve heard that Damascus invented the zero and is also the oldest continuously occupied civilisation on the planet, and that the Taj, while wonderful, is actually not an official World Wonder. I bite my tongue, until he continues.

  ‘We are, of course, dear madam, also the land of peace and truth.’

  I crack and can’t resist a snarl.

  ‘Mr Rakesh, if India is the land of truth, why have I been hassled and lied to and ripped off from the moment I got here?’

  He nods sympathetically.

  ‘Sister, I am sorry, there are some bad people everywhere, isn’t it? Let me atone for my compatriots’ crudity. You will do one thing. Tell me your details and I will tell you your future in our country for no charge.’

  Jonathan laughs and submits, giving his date and time of birth. Mr Rakesh beams and somehow calculates his stars on the spot.

  ‘Sir, you are loving India, you will work very hard here, next year you will face danger and have great success. This year you will finally learn to dance.’

  I beg to be excused, telling Mr Rakesh that my mother has no idea of the exact time of my birth. The astrologer waves this aside.

  ‘Madam, don’t be worrying, I’ll do it by numbers.’

  He allocates a number to each letter of my name, scribbles a long complicated equation involving dividing and subdividing and multiplication. Mr Rakesh then leans back, scratches his head, rubs his butt and says, ‘Oh.’

  That can’t be good.

  He calculates again, sighs and leans forward with a stern expression and a tone that bids beware the Jabberwock.

  ‘Well, madam, I will tell you one thing. You must listen. You are back in India for a good shaking. Here you will dance with death and be reborn. You will be a chameleon of karma and there are many guides to show you the way. You will search India’s land of gods and find faith.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Death, Rebirth and Sputum

  We stagger back to our hut, Jonathan bent with laughter and me cursing India’s futurists all the way home. But under my anger I’m freaked. If a beggar at an airport can correctly predict my future, why can’t a jingoistic astrologer? I stand and watch the sunset over the Ganges, feeling superstitious and silly and sick of Indian soothsayers predicting futures I don’t want. I wade into the waters, willing the river to cleanse my sin so I can avoid my fate. But the water doesn’t feel holy – it feels freezing and silty and it smells like sewage. I dunk, scream with shock and look up to see a saffron-robed sadhu with long dreadlocks watching me from a cave. He waves his hand in half salute, half dismissal. I look back towards the hut. Jonathan waves from the balcony with a Christmas drink. Much more attractive.

  I have a beer and go to bed.

  Just after midnight I’m thrown from my sleep – literally – and wake up on a floor that’s trying to buck me off. Jonathan is white, wide-eyed and sitting bolt upright on the bed that’s lurching and banging against the wall like that scene from The Exorcist – he even slowly turns the possessed Linda Blair shade of green. I stand up punch drunk and staggering and screaming with rage.

  ‘That’s it, I’ve had this country! This place is unfit for human habitation, it’s mad! Why are we here? What the hell have I done? I’ve left my job, for this place! Why can’t we be normal and live where we were born? Sydney is safe. What the hell do you wear for an earthquake anyway? Jeans?’

  Jonathan suddenly de-stuns, jumps off the bed, grabs my hand and pulls me outside.

  We sit on the lawn as the earth rocks. The Indian holiday hut and lodge guests sit in a circle, order tea and chat about the weather. It’s as if they experience quakes daily and this is but a rumble. Jonathan drags me away from their party, for as I ride the aftershocks, I begin to regurgitate my repressed memories of why I never wanted to come here again. It’s a vomit of hatred and a rambling rage against the bullshit, the pushing, the shoving, the rip offs, the cruelty, the crowds, the pollution, the weather, the begging, the performance of pity, the pissing, the shitting, the snotting, the spitting and the farting.

  As I hear myself rant I begin to hate myself for hating – for being so middle class and pampered and comfortable that I should now be so shell-shocked. I am shaken to my core; the ground, that stable and strong bed beneath me has moved and it’s stirred something once rock solid within. I put my head in my hands and cry. The astrologer is right; I need a new way of living in the world if I’m to stay in this country. Perhaps this is my dance with death that he predicted.

  The quake does bring death to others. By Indian standards the damage is small – one hundred and ten people are killed and three hundred and eighty injured when an entire village slips down a Himalayan hill. It hardly even makes the news.

  After the road rubble is cleared we return to Delhi, yet the city and our flat has yet to feel like a safe sanctuary. As I lie in bed at night, the traffic vibrations bring back memories of earthquake tremors and the cold, dark, empty flat feels like a tomb. The ABC office, directly above, soaks up all the available light and its rooftop washing area drips cold mould onto our ceilings.

  Jonathan heads upstairs to get back to work. I set about getting to know the home staff, or the servants, a situation I’ve been dreading for its awkwardness and unfairness. I’ve worked as a cleaner, a waitress, a nanny and a cook, but I never, in my weirdest dreams, imagined I would one day have my own hired help.

  Rachel, the cook, has a beautiful round face with deep dimples, dark skin and a huge white smile. Her first words to me (accompanied with a giggle) are: ‘Thank God you are here, sir has been sulky for a year.’

  This first sign of Indian cheek strengthens me with its familiarity, so I decide Rachel will be the first to stop calling me ‘madam’, and I get working on it straight away (I’m Sarah within a month).

  Mary, our cleaner, never gives lip. She is rake thin, sweet and shy with me. But she is great friends with Rachel and all morning I hear their rounded Tamil talk (they’re both from Ch
ennai in south India) and peels of laughter from the kitchen. I suspect they’re comparing notes about their new madam, wondering why their spunky single sir has been missing such a weird-looking chick and probably concluding that it’s because I put out before marriage. They must find this shocking. Rachel and Mary are devout Christians. As is Abe – his tiny flat above the garage is watched over by a portrait of a pale blond Jesus and a sari-clad Virgin Mary made of three-dimensional plastic moulding. Abe’s wife is also called Mary and he has three children – Angel, Asumpta and a son called Noah.

  Our laundry man, or dhobie wallah, Moolchand, is a Hindu who loves the mischievous cowherd god Krishna and makes sure our statue on the stairs is as shiny blue as possible in this pollution. Moolchand has a face like a comic actor – his round fat cheeks are cracked from ear to ear with a paan-stained grin. He has too much zest, too many teeth and too much happiness for one man.

  Moolchand teaches me how to say a few words in Hindi: namaste and kya hal he – ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’. Every person I try it on says teekay (okay) in reply, but Moolchand is never okay. He’s always ‘veeeeery happy, veeery happy’ and he claps his hands and wiggles his head to demonstrate. He should be on television.

  Our chowkidors, or guards, are Lakan and Aamar. Lakan is tall and thin, Aamar is small and skinny. Neither speak very much English but they’re always smiley-faced, bored out of their brains and devotedly helpful. They run to open the car door (racing Abraham who often jumps to do it while the car is still moving), carry my parcels, open the house door and run up to the market for Rachel.

  Downstairs is our landlord, retired General Kumar, who has an impeccable Delhi pedigree, and once owned a large slab of the West End. This suburb was originally built as a gated estate for high-ranking military personnel. Behind massive wrought iron gates grand homes rise reminiscent of ‘Dynasty’ gone dilapidated; mock Tudor or Georgian facades are faded or filthy, and because Indians build onto their houses as their wealth and families grow there’s quite a hodge-podge of styles within each house and each block. There are a number of small potholed parks complete with faded foliage clumsily cut into animal shapes. But these open spaces are difficult to access as they are surrounded by high fences and usually locked up to keep out the cows and commoners. The General has seen his suburb rapidly ringed by roads, suburbia and slums and watched former comrades die and move away to be replaced by foreigners and the new money set. But this doesn’t seem to upset him. More British than the British, at eighty he has vim and vigour and still follows a jolly good army routine. He’s up at o-five hundred walking the neighbourhood, upright but bandy-legged, swinging a small riding crop. At o-six hundred he inspects his staff troops and then eats and reads papers until his afternoon bridge game.

  One night over a pre-dinner whisky the General entertains us with stories about being stationed in Delhi in the days of the Raj with his old friend David Niven.

  ‘Of course that was before Niven took up with that frightful acting crowd. The old boy came to visit me here many years ago and telegrammed to remind me he would bring his wife. I wrote back to him saying, that’s fine old chap but which wife?’

  He gives his Nepalese houseboy a nudge with his evening cane so he laughs and we all join in. Indian humour appears to be an acquired taste.

  The General tells me some of the history of my new hometown. Delhi is actually a series of eight cities ruled and ruined by sultans, slave dynasties, horse traders, Mogul kings and, of course, the British Raj. Each dynasty built their own city, and splendid buildings rot in ruins, except for the still-vibrant Mogul centre now known as Old Delhi, and the planned British parliamentary and diplomatic areas of New Delhi. The streets have run with blood several times, including when modern India was created in 1947. Yet the violent past is not as past as I would like. In 1983 two Sikh bodyguards shot Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, unleashing a wave of anti-Sikh violence; hundreds were bashed, shot and necklaced with burning tires. A mob armed with knives and guns even came to the gates of genteel West End and rattled for entry. The General huffed up to the gate and faced the madmen alone.

  ‘I am General Kumar, there are no Sikhs here, go away.’

  The fifty madmen turned and tormented the next settlement down the road.

  I should feel safer knowing the suburb’s saviour is so close but since the earthquake and the steady diet of sensory overload, I’m feeling increasingly vulnerable. New Delhi has a veneer of diplomatic nicety – but its mansions sit beside slums, and the roundabouts of rubbish and potholed paths lead to streets of poverty and despair. I feel as if I’m living on a thin crust atop molten madness and I can still sense the earthquake every time I sit or lie down.

  What’s more, Delhi is supposedly cursed. It’s said that whoever builds a city here is doomed to lose it. The General guffaws at my fears.

  ‘Old codswaddle and superstition, my dear, but if you want to play it safe it’s best to align yourself with the latest invaders.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Those bothersome, tasteless, showy, nouveau riche, pushy people from the state of Punjab. They own the city now.’

  Luckily, just days before New Year’s Eve, a Punjabi calls. And she is rather pushy. Jonathan looks confused as he tries to keep up with a frantic fast rave she fires down the phone line.

  ‘Hi, how are you? My name is Razoo Kapoor, I went to University in Australia and I loved it so, I rrrrrrrreeeealy miss it. I found your ABC number in the phone book, so why don’t you come over for dinner? My mummy will be in so no alcohol please.’

  Jonathan says, ‘Sure.’ (He hasn’t yet made many Indian friends and while this woman sounds very forward, we figure that just means she’s a true blue Punjabi and will definitely be worth knowing.)

  Razoo stresses again no alcohol, gives her address, stresses no alcohol again, gives a time and stresses she really can’t have alcohol in the house.

  So, clutching limp roadside roses and no alcohol, we get Abraham to drive us for hours through the streets of Delhi at dusk. Smoke from cow pat fires clings to floating filth and smog, shrouding endless ruins of settlements and suburbs of decayed splendour. Abraham pulls up outside a nondescript apartment block and we climb steep dark stairs to a comforting port in the storm – a small flat that’s lit up like a beacon. The door is opened by a bouncy beautiful babe with sparkling eyes, huge full lips and sleek jet-black thick hair.

  ‘Welcome to India, I have a special surprise for you Ozzies, verrry special. Come come come in.’

  Razoo holds a bottle of non-alcoholic pink Spumante above her head, pops it ceremoniously and pours it into special crystal glasses. With a room full of strangers looking on, we are forced to drink and smile appreciatively. It tastes like warm, thick, sickly sweet bubble bath.

  Razoo’s mother (who insists I call her Auntie) pushes us down onto a couch of soft cushions and tells us about her visit to Australia. Razoo, she says, dragged her to a bar in Melbourne that was so smoky and smelly Auntie had to leave and then fainted on Chapel Street. As her daughter squatted down beside her, a crowd gathered to stare at her sari. One man inquired, ‘Is she drunk?’

  This outrageous insult broke through Auntie’s coma. She sat up and slapped him.

  ‘I’m not drunk, I’m Indian.’

  Auntie is an international teacher of Gandhian philosophy and is adamant that good Hindus do not drink.

  ‘Drinking rots the mind, the body and the soul and stops one from accessing inner truth. Hindus want that truth, we will not drink.’

  The young crowd listens intently. A circle of girls is sitting straight-backed, all with luxuriant long hair, wearing delicate earrings and salwar kamiz suits (long tunic tops over matching pants) teamed with pretty dupatta shawls. A row of boys is standing scrubbed clean, all wearing neat jeans and earnest auras. After the lecture, Razoo’s three cousins turn to me, and the eldest announces proudly, ‘We are all studying to be dentists.’

  ‘Why?’

 
‘It’s a very honourable profession.’

  The room murmurs in agreement.

  ‘But everyone is scared of dentists,’ I declare rather undiplomatically.

  They all look at each other stunned.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they hurt.’

  ‘Oh no, we won’t hurt,’ the eldest smiles comfortingly.

  ‘Doesn’t your dentist hurt?’

  Blank looks all round.

  ‘We’ve never been.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘No, most definitely no. We eat food that’s good for health and our teeth are perfect. Isn’t it?’

  It is. I’ve never met such good, dutiful and successful children with such good teeth in my life. The only sign of rebellion here comes from one guy who slouches in his chair, making a big show of his cowboy boots and goes outside for a ciggy. Radical. The crowd appears not to have a cynical bone among them; our self-deprecating Australian sense of humour is mostly met with polite but stony stares. I mentally note to never use the word ‘dag’ in an Indian’s presence – it would not be taken as a compliment.

  All the same, I have a feeling Razoo will become an ally. She works in television, has a naughty look in her big beautiful brown eyes and a desire to go to New York. Her fiancé, Sunil, scowls when she mentions her plans, but she doesn’t seem to care. Her best friend is nicknamed Billie (Hindi for cat) after her gorgeous green eyes. Billie has light skin, a shiny bob and beautiful teeth, and is quick to tell me she’s not Punjabi. She is in fact a Delhi-bred Brahmin of the highest class, with a family so strictly Hindu that even her dog is vegetarian. Razoo rolls her eyes.