One surreal thing about living in India is that no matter who you were back home... here, you are instantly a memsahib.
Whether your permanent home is a boring American suburb, an English council flat, a barrio in Harlem, or a trailer home... here, you are royalty. Even a New York cabbie would be enviously eyed as rich beyond dreams, such is the poverty of income and opportunity in modern India.
I've arrived, having slogged my guts out alone with a newborn in a pebble-dash two-up-two-down in east London... to a flat in one of Delhi's poshest neighborhoods... with 24-hour childcare that is affordable... a part-time cleaner who comes - bowing and scraping - everday.... a corner store that will deliver a single aspirin... and a lady who survives by charging 2 rupees -- $.04 -- for each perfectly ironed garment.
No wonder my 2-year-old son is so happy here! His Mama is never over-worked or cranky (well not as a result of housework, anyway).
Yet clearly, I'm not memsahib enough for some.
This morning, I arrived at our local shopping market, parked (properly to the astonishment of the all-male parking attendants), strapped on my newborn and carried my shopping bag, laptop bag and a car seat for baby to lie in... past impeccable French ladies comparing holidays-in-Goa, past real Indian memsahibs in mini skirts and silk saris (their men probably own half of Delhi) and past the dark-skinned laborers, cleaning, hawking, guarding...
Whether upper-crust or lower-caste, they all stared. Why would a well-off woman carry her own things? As I struggled to lug child and bags over uneven pavements, and up three flights of stairs, I too wondered why, indeed?
The answer is that you can become too much of a memsahib too quickly; too easily insulated from need; too spoilt... unless you consciously maintain a degree of self-sufficiency.
When I'm here, I can suddenly appreciate why class remains such an emotive issue for many, even in the west. When you've witnessed the super-rich living off the cheap toil of the super-poor in any country, it's an ugly sight. In today's India, it's a lurid fact of daily life.
One minute, you're in some swanky cafe sipping an organic apple drink and scoffing cheesecake, thinking, 'Wow, Delhi's changed!' ... The next, you're stepping over a homeless man with a gangrened leg, or fending off a child beggar. The other day, soon after arriving, we were at a stop light when a man in a wheelchair came to the car, begging. He stood up to get my husband's attention and then fell with a sickening thud against the car door. Pulling himself back into his wheelchair, his eyes flashed genuine anger. He punched the door - a very provocative thing for a beggar in India to do - and moved on.
Both my husband and I, after more than a decade of living in India, had the same silent reactions: 'How rehearsed was that 'falling from the wheelchair trick?' Our cynicism was reflexive because, sadly, there are layer upon layer of scams perpetrated here everyday.
Then, a moment later, we both had the same thought: 'My goodness, have we become so cynical, we can't recognize genuine need?'
We both thought about the man in the wheelchair for days... and about our reaction to him. The sad truth is that no matter if we'd got it right or wrong, whether we'd rolled down the window and given him money or not, he and too many others are being utterly failed by government and society. A thirty second encounter at a traffic light is unlikely to change anything.
The same is true for the hundreds of millions of working poor denied proper housing, schools, hospitals and job opportunities.
Still, the encounter reminded me of how cut off I am from other people's everyday suffering. Coccooned in my comfortable, stable existence, the poor of India are not much more than an exotic backdrop to an adventurous life abroad.
It's why, a few days later, I found myself chafing. Surrounded by name-dropping ex-pat ladies, discussing their nanny woes, sipping lattes, I felt bored and weary. Sure, I've got some of the same concerns and certainly the same privileges as they do... but I'll be damned if I'm going to waste my time in world's most fascinating country comparing flat sizes and swapping tips about where to buy the nicest Italian leather bags.
If staying more compassionate means negotiating my own way through crazy Indian traffic and lugging my own babies and shopping around, it's the bloody least I can do. Tonight, even though my husband is away and I'm home alone with two little ones, there will be no nanny... no one's cooked our dinner... there's some laundry to do (though I confess that the beds were made; the floors swept and mopped by the cleaning lady, and my son is being looked after during the day by our full-time nanny). In the years to come, as we enjoy the best India has to offer, I pledge to do my utmost as a journalist to highlight its most vulnerable, dispossessed citizens.
Besides, what would my friends back home - the ones who manage to work, cook, clean, shop and raise kids without help - say if I did become a total memsahib?
I hope: 'Sod-off, you prat!'
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