ANURUPA

Anurupa is a wonderful woman, extremely active. She is a puppeteer by choice, following her ways of being active rather than the successful path many of her classmates have chosen. She works in many directions, building shows, organizing workshops, empowering through performing arts disadvantaged children, training young puppeteers… Her father had bought a land outside Delhi, when the outskirst of the city were still surrounded by forest. On the land is a small organic farm, growing vegetables and allowing few farmers to produce and sell locally. There Anurupa’s company has moved recently, and a house stands, used as workshop, storing space and residence for local and foreign artists. The rehearsing is made outdoors but they plan to shortly build a straw rehearsing space. It is a live dream for Cécile and Perrine. However, the peaceful green outskirt as become a busy, densely populated and poor suburb in the fastly growing metropole.

We discuss with Anurupa about India, the hints we have seen and she opens us a new vision of India. We get a glimpse that allows us to understand what was behind many images we saw.  

SOCIAL INEQUALITIES AND APPEARANCES

It is time to get back to Delhi. Cécile has a plane, and Perrine should meet an Indian puppeteer there. First we go to the almost inexistent train station of Bundi, where happiness radiates from the people working there. Only side note to this warm atmosphere is the coming of an American lady, in her late 50’s, who arrives completely stressed out, thinking she could have missed the train (and must have been hell for her taxi driver the whole race through). She asks about 5 times to different people if the train for Delhi leaves from here, showing her ticket to be sure there would be no language misinterpretation… A bit more and she would manage to disquiet us. We exhange a few words that show us she comes from a wealthy background and will not see the India we know, but that “beautiful and authentic” India meant for tourists who take the ready made tours. We calm her down, saying we take the same train. Silence.

Maybe we shouldn’t have told her not to worry, for Indian trains are never simple. If they aren’t late, they’re cancelled. Ours was cancelled. As a train comes in (45 minutes before our scheduled departure) our American starts asking around if that’s the train. She runs everywhere and some wealthy and English speaking Indian tells her our train has cancelled its stop in Bundi and will depart from Kota. He gives us two options : we can jump in this train, jump off in one small station and jump in our scheduled train at its 2 minutes stop there; or take a taxi to Kota. For us there is no question, we take the train option, our American follows doubtful because “she has to be in Delhi”. In contrast with her, we notice how calm we have grown since we arrived. If there is a problem, well there is a problem, and we will deal somehow with it. India has helped us with a new philosophy: the “let’s see” philosophy. However, to be really fair, without her over worrying, we don’t know if we would have reached Delhi as we planned. Of course the train we are in is the slowliest train of India and our American is going up every ten minutes to ask for more information. Our calm is highly challenged and we notice how contagious her stress is. In the end, our local train reaches the station before our Delhi train comes in, by more than 45 minutes. We spend them with a bunch of Indian businessmen who happily showcase their knowledge about Europe!! It is a pleasant, funny and instructive conversation. We hear for instance that “Indians go to bed 2 and wake up 3”, that Delhi is 3 times the population of Finland in a similar superficy. They learn that French toilets can be as bad as Indian ones. The Delhi train arrives, we jump in and so does the American with her 40 kg luggages.

We don’t expect as we jump in the train what we will be the witnesses of. Our wagon is the SL10 (Sleeper class, the middle class and the equivalent of the 2^nd class in Europe). We get in the SL 7 and think we just have to walk up three wagons before we reach our beds. But as we get through the 9^th wagon, there is a locked door. Those doors usually lock the different classes so that they can never see each other, a way to hide the social difference as we do in planes between the business and the economic with curtains. The rich cannot see the poorest and vice versa. There is no way this door can be opened. We ask an Indian and he tells us we have to jump off at the next stop and jump back in again into the next wagons. Many more Indians are in the same case as us, and since the stop is very short, everyone pushes his way through. When we climb back up (the train starting to move already), we step in another world. The wagon is full of spacious little rooms, perfectly heated up, very cozy and comfortable, where a few people only are seated. We are welcome by a sikh, who almost bows in front of us and shows the way to follow, extremely politely. Even though our bags and our clothes scream “we don’t fit here!”, because we have our two little white faces we are treated the most respect, like ambassadors. The other Indians don’t have this chance. The sikh really thinks we have bought the upper class ticket. We pass through another wagon, less spacious but still extremely wealthy compared with the Sleeper class. Where there are 8 beds fit in the SL, only 4 are here, much wider and soft, in which one can sit straight. The windows close properly and the heating system is on. We meet again our American here. Again, thanks to our white faces, we are seated on one of these beds, while the Indians are parked next to the doors and toilets. We offer one of them a seat (since we don’t fill the whole bed with our two pair of asses). But clearly one of the Indian who has paid for the upper class refuses he seats anywhere close to him. It is surrealistic to see so brightly the social (wealth?) hierarchy. The train embodies the social inequalities. These two worlds cannot mix, not to talk about the lower classes (that are on the edge of being endurable from Perrine’s memories). It is so clear and assumed that it is revolting. How can this only be ? And so much based on the appearance! Anarupa tells us later this simple explanation “people think the British are gone, but they are not, they were replaced by Indians themselves”. When we jump off and on again to  get to our wagon, the air drafts strike us. It is cold, the windows don’t close so well as to keep the cold air to come in. People sleep under their tiny blanket, snoring as loud as they usually do. We are back to the India we know. We start thinking of all these Westerners who come and travel through India only in the upper class, following well-traced routes away from the poverty, seeing only the architectural and natural wonders of India and hardly ever the misery and dirtiness. Our American embodies this people who come to India but will never see it. It is like coming to Paris and only walk through fashion designers boutiques where French employees wear a beret and hold a baguette. You see the stereotype that you want to see, the one that fits the books. India is not a fairytale land, with traditional clothing and maharajas descendants. It is poor, dirty, difficult and that’s where the beauty also comes through, in how people still share their happiness of being, in how great a mastered gesture can be, in the eyes of the pilgrims who reached its destination, in the candle that flows down, in the peaceful grazing cow... India is incredible, but not by the book of wonder. It is a wonder in itself, and you have to walk down the streets to see it, not driven by a chauffeur.       

Our journey through the social inequalities has only started in the train. It starts with trips in the metro, a metro that is much more high tech than the Parisian or Finnish ones. All is spot clean, we go through body checking every time we step in, the rules are extremely strict (no spitting, no drinking, no smoking, no photos, no eating, no men in the women’s wagon…). It is like being in the Sim’s city, in the middle of the Indian capital. On the second day, we meet Anurupa (an Indian puppeteer and an incredible woman), in a district of Delhi called Khan Market. This area is a pure copy of the Occidental model, taken even higher up in the level of bling-bling. Mac Donalds stands next to Hilfinger, there are countless expensive shops where books are exactly the price of the European market if not above. All around are brand new cars parked by parking men. We end up going for a drink in the fanciest bar we’ve ever been, full of successful Indian men and Occidentals. It sweats money and pretention from floor to ceiling, designed especially for their customers. Crazy. Really we feel we are back in Europe and cannot figure out that this can stand next to the poverty of the chowks.   

We discuss further with Anurupa on this. She belongs from birth to the upper class, yet she actively works to empower the lower classes and the women and lead puppetry projects with disadvantaged children. She tells us that many of her friends who went to university, earn now a lot of money and represent what the rest of the Indians wish to be, are heavily depressive. Many got married in the last years so to fill the void they have, and end up now getting divorced. Many also take loans to live above their pays, to showcase their success and respond to the image people expect. They live in the reality like the actors in the Bollywood movies. Sadly we know that most of the beggers we have met in the streets wish to reach the same social class, that the goal of most people is individual success. How to make them understand that the advantages of some means the disadvantaged of the others ? As Anurupa formulates it Indians have taken the bad sides of the Western model (social inequalities) and maintained the bad sides of the traditional societies (cast system). They are loosing the solidarity that used to exist inside each class. The individual success is the goal, and they don’t see this comes along with depressive pills.

SHOPPING FOR NON-SPECIALISTS

Before leaving, one thing is left to do : shopping. Bundi is the ideal place for it, following our rule of never going in shops were people are calling us before we step in. In Bundi, we hardly ever hear a shopkeeper inviting us to “just look”. We can even look at the stalls freely, without being almost forced to buy. We have this plan to bring back from India some presents for friends and family, of course, but also to get some items we would sell later in Finland in order to start our company going. Our dream: to buy a van this year and travel back from Finland to France while touring our show. But the van costs money and to get this money somehow, we first need to buy some stuffs… Neither Cécile nor Perrine has any idea about commerce. And we end up completely blocked choosing anything. We are both non-shopping freaks, and can’t help each other. We look, doubt, don’t buy. We do finally purchase one pack of herbs and get completely cheated on the price. Shopping is not meant for us. We almost give up when, suddenly appears a few scarves that are perfect. We discuss the price enough to be happy with it and the merchant also. Challenge completed, hello little van!! After this, shopping has gone increasingly better.  India is empowering us. We are more peaceful and rested, take life philosophically and are able to buy something in less than 2 days! Little daily wins.

MEAT! (the following content might not be suitable for vegeterians)

But, because nothing can be perfect, there is this little detail that has been growing little by little and is taking a good share of our thoughts. We need meat desperately (and present all of our excuses to the vegetarians who will read these lines). We didn’t realize as we planned our trip that we only stopped in religious places, and according to the Hindu rules, meat products are banned from holy surroundings. We started to feel already in 0rchha that meat would help us ground ourselves down. To be fair, we start to unground seriously, partly because of our diet and partly because of India and Indians themselves. We are not high yet, but not quite down-to-earth either. We thought leaving Orchha that Bundi would be okay (the guidebooks don’t mention any holiness there). But no, we get our first hint of it being a hard-to-get-meat area as we don’t see any egg sellers in the streets. Egg sellers are the key sign to know you are in a vegetarian or non-vegeterian place. But we don’t loose all hopes as we see on the advertisements for tourist restaurant the mention “non-veg”. However, the idea of going up to one of these fancy roof-top restaurants is not an ideal picture for us. So we postpone day after day the crucial moment of climbing up the stairs to get our plate of grounding. On the last evening, we decide ourselves and go up to one. But as we see the settings (fake and pretentious), read the menu (full of “macaroni and cheese”, “pizzas”, “chinese noodles”…) and see the prices (the  price of a night in the hotel), we cannot stand it and go out once, twice, three times. We are about to loose hope, but one idea stayed: at Lunch, we had passed by two non-veg street restaurant. We are taken between our need of meat and the fright of it being not so safe on the hygienic side… But then, thinking that so far, we only have been eating in these street restaurants where many Indians go everyday and that nothing stomach wise has happened to us (besides eating to much), we give it a go… but don’t dare to take the meat ! We eat two eggs, still very happily.

GROWNED UP WOMEN IN THE LOVELY BUNDI

We had noticed in Orchha that our abilities to say no or to refuse offers we feel are not right have gone increasingly. But we were thinking then that it is mainly because Orchha is a smaller city and because people started to know us.

As the journey goes on, we see that it is our attitude that has transformed. We trust our own intuition and experiences and the immediate consequence of this inner confidence is showing itself in any occasion. Even if we are lost and need to look up at the map or to ask our way, we are not being tricked any longer. The vegetable and fruit sellers tend to give us immediately the right price (with a few ruppies extra, but it is only fair) and not the crazy 3 times the value of anything. And in case we find a tourist trap, we have no trouble saying it out loud and go away, before we feel obliged to anything. It happens many times in Bundi that we leave a restaurant after seeing the menu. This would have never been possible 2 weeks earlier. We would have sat down and eaten with a bad feeling, certain that digesting would consequently be more difficult (eating with regret in a place is the most easy way to stomach blocks). The more we trust ourselves, the more people respect us. The rickshaws are not harassing any more and those who own a shop hardly ask more than once.

And because we have learned how to say no, we are also able to say yes, to stop for a moment and to really meet individuals without having to fear being trapped. If ever we trust the wrong person, it is just fine since we can always refuse when it goes wrong. So we can enjoy peaceful and happy moments, being there, simply being.

Bundi is a lovely city, to be recommended to anyone who travels out of the main tourist tracks. Probably our favourite city. People are extremely genuine here. Children constantly ask questions, just  because they want to know the answer and are happy to use the few English sentences they have learned. We hear about 30 times a day “Hello, what is your name ?” and are happy to respond “Cécile”, “Perrine”, “And you?”. The adults teach their children at a very young age to say the magic “Hello” and to shake hands. But this has no extra meanings than to greet adults coming from far far away.

The streets of Bundi are wonderful to wander in. The walls are painted in a soft blue, spreading a sense of welcoming rest. In the main streets we find numerous craftmen ateliers, all organized according to their art. The fabric merchants in one place, the mattress makers in another, the smiths, the jewellers, the mechanics, the pharmacists, the knives sharpeners, the shoemakers, the dry fruits sellers, the millers, each in a different district. They all fit in their very tiny space, the width of a garage door for most of them, and display tools that are meant for human hands. Machines are absent. Life seems to be so simple and enjoyable here. People take the time to live and excel in their craftsmanship. Children laugh and run around. Women watch over them while getting some water or bringing in the animals. Men work without hassle or seat somewhere, sipping a tchai. Bundi has something of Orchha but in a city scale. A pleasure.

But what strikes us most is the overall happiness that surrounds the place. And this happiness is simply shared with us through smiles, greetings, exchanges. They radiate happiness and give it away as if it was the most natural thing to do. Maybe Europeans should all take a trip to Bundi. Being part of humanity can be fantastic.

DEMONSTRATIVE DEMONSTRATIONS

Our adventures in Gwalior don’t stop here. Tired from the tension and the roundtrips we had in the afternoon, we go back very early in the train station. As usual, we spend some time in the ladies waiting room, our feminine breathe in India, even though this time the lady in charge is really unfriendly, first because she doesn’t believe Perrine is a girl, then because we  have a low class ticket and this waiting room is meant for upper class ladies. Our white skins have made the trick for a while, but not so long… So we get out of there and wait on the platform. We seat on our bags and little by little we are surrounded by a bunch of young guys – probably students – who surprisingly have no bags or very small. We wonder why they are here, but well, there is no rule for having bags if travelling. But things get more bizarre as time goes. More and more of these men go on the tracks then off the tracks, their crowd grows bigger and bigger. As the train is expected and we hear the sound of the whistle, they all jump on the track and shout, while running all around. Realizing it is not the right train, they laugh and come back on the platform, exactly as they were few minutes before. We wonder more and more, what the hell is  this. Finally the train comes and the same choreography is performed. The rush is unbelievable. All these guys jump in the train and jam it full packed. We don’t know what is going on, if we could even get in and nobody is able or willing to give us a clue about the whole thing. After 15 minutes of this carnival, watching from back, we address some of these young people and they tell that if we have a ticket we should get in or sleep in the station. We get in, fighting for the entrance, not very proud and asking ourselves if it is a good idea at all. But we realize then that the train is actually almost empty, and very dirty. Two men with shooting gun are holding the guys out. Not a safe environment, and we are restlessly going to our seats to sleep. People are extremely calm around us, not bothered anyhow by the whole story. The train leaves under the shouts of the boys left out. Many security men go round the wagons, arms on the shoulder… We think however that things are over and we manage to start sleeping until we reach the next station. As the train stops, the shouts start and we hear violent banging against the doors, the  windows, the walls. Waouw. And this goes on again and again all night, whether we are in station or just in the middle of nowhere. It is a very difficult situation to handle when we have no idea about anything and the language prevents us to get any info. We sleep lightly that night and reaching Kota is a relief. When we ask later in Bundi if anything was told in the newspaper about demonstration or strikes, people cannot answer. Nothing was told about it. We search on internet but nothing there either. It is in Delhi that we finally find out that these types of events are regular and that probably those boys were paid to act this way by a political party. The elections are coming up  here and the right wing is pushing. Money is a way to get things done. This is a part of democracy, built on fear.

GWALIOR, MIXED INFORMATIONS

We arrive in the early afternoon in Gwalior, willing to find the bazaar, where the fabric merchant heaven is supposed to be located. The first encounter we have the city is a board behind the information desk saying “The easiest way to communicate is Hindi, the official language of the country”. We are a bit surprise, knowing that English is also officially recognized. But well. Few minutes later another board tells “India is a big country from Kashmir to Kerala”. Weirder. This hasn’t gone better, as we meet in a park a man who tells us indirectly that foreigners are not always liked here and that some people don’t like them. This comes quite accurate in the bazaar. A man grabs Cécile quite violently willing to touch her skin. Another man has to intervene to get him away. It leaves us with a strange feeling about the city, but we cannot say much since our transit is only a few hours long.

We learn also a new rule here: to never trust blindly the information given by the “Guide du routard”, the French equivalent of the Lonely Planet. There is rumour going on, from trustful sources, that the guidebooks are not checked every year anymore by those who write them. They call some locals instead of verifying the information on the ground. And these locals, pissed off by this attitude, give regularly wrong datas. Many times we have noticed that distances were inaccurate, so are prices… This time, we know that the bazaar is located next to a mosque, told by the book to be called “Jama Masjid”. This mosque does exist in India, but in New Delhi. So we end up going round and round, driven by rickshaws who take us to one mosque, but not the right one. The syndrome Zurich (from our first post) is going on. After 3 hours of useless walks and drives, we manage to reach our destination. It is worth all the trouble. The market is so beautiful, lively, human. Many small stalls full of vegetables, spices, fabrics, fruits... Incredible India.