Sacred Cows

W. and the size 10 shoe...

A fitting parting shot...

The details from Aljazeera English:

"Thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated in Baghdad's Sadr City in support of a journalist being held in custody after throwing his shoes at George Bush, the US president. Muntazer al-Zaidi was detained for what the Iraqi government on Monday said was a "barbaric and ignominious act" during a news conference the previous day.

T-10 days........

~By Anu. Wow, the only thing keeping me going during these grim winter days in London is the thought of landing in Delhi!!!! I'm suddenly really really excited, even though I'll miss working in my garden, where I've been painting a beautiful new potting shed and planting hellebores, cyclamen, climbing roses and clematis. In fact, there's a whole row of plants standing sentinel in their pots, waiting for me decide where they'll put down roots....
    Speaking of which, before I went to America for Christmas, I thought I'd put down some pretty deep roots of my own here in England..... But suddenly, I'm not so sure.
    Of course I can survive here... of course I have alot of physical ties-- a house, all my possessions, some great friends. But it's funny how one trip back has made me re-examine what makes a place 'home'.

Charpai blues

~By Anu. Oh dear!! I wasted half a day today trying to learn to weave a charpai (charpoy)! These romanticized Indian string cots are used throughout villages, even cities as couches, tables, beds, clothes & chilli dryers... you name it. Still, I can only find literary references to them on the web.... no actual 'HOW TO' guides (except, bizarrely, for this one. Scroll halfway down the page!)
    I had this romantic idea that if I could master the art which is somewhere between rug-weaving and basket-making, I'd be able to take back the raw materials and furnish my garden in London cheaply, and chic-ly!
    So, charpai man arrived with the peg legs and bamboo lengths for the frame and two kinds of rope for the actual cot. The main weave uses a fibre made from the 'san' tree (not sure about the spelling), which apparently grows by the water's edge. When the entire charpai weave is finished, a rope called 'dhawan' is used to secure it to the other end, and to tighten the weave so it doesn't sag when you sit on it.

Competition WINNER!

~By Anu. It's COLD here in Delhi!! Colder than it was in December... and both Tarquin and I have been uber-busy with work. I've been travelling around India and Tarquin's been sniffing around some nefarious activities here in Delhi, which you'll no doubt soon hear about!
Meanwhile, congratulations to Siddhartha Arora! Siddhartha-- you're the only one who responded to Tarquin's challenge. Maybe we need to offer more glamorous prizes!! Here's Siddhartha's winning photo, capturing four people on a motorbike. If you're inspired, email us your photos. We'll definitely post them... and you might win a copy of Tarquin's latest book.

    There is much to blog about-- I have an update on our night guard Ram Lakhan, and his son.  As I write this, packs of wild dogs are baying and howling at the moon, as Ram Lakhan keeps watch outside. I also tried to learn to string a charpai today! I'll leave it there for now and update you tomorrow, when I'm feeling more human. Hopefully we'll wake up to some sunshine! London isn't the only dark, rainy place at the moment.

Charpai & chai

~By Anu.
 We're back in Delhi now. This was my Christmas present. Hmmm, it looks like a string cot that Indian grannies in villages sit on, oiling their hair.... Yes! Isn't it great??!! It's called a charpai ('char' = four, 'pai' = feet). Tarquin found this man who makes them and surprised me with it! Awwww, he's so romantic! I love it and plan to take it back to London to use in my garden, where I'll sit in the sun, oiling my hair!
    I remember, as a child, visiting my grandparents, aunts and uncles in Netaji Nagar, a drab communist-style government housing block in south Delhi... we would sleep outside under the stars in charpais on winter nights. They were obviously full-size, this one is a mini-version. My grandmother would unroll big, heavy quilts onto them, and another on top and we'd all get in, count the stars and fall asleep.

Fight fire with firefighters

Anu here. Lots of you want us to identify who's blogging, so we'll try to do that. It's been yet another news-filled week in India, so apologies for the thinness of my blogging efforts. Just to add a couple of wacky signs to Tarquin's previous post. This one has been helpfully posted in the stairwells of our office building. I had a surreal experience the other day. There are six lifts which service this 17-story office block: 3 lifts in the front; 3 in the back. None of them stop at every floor. Instead, there is a list above each lift of which floors it stops on. There is no rhyme or reason to it, except that one life only goes to floors 0-3 (it is called the executive lift). And one goes only to the 17th floor and back and is kitted out with silvery disco mirrors.
    So here i am a couple of weeks ago, on the 5th floor, trying to go meet someone on the 17th floor. A lift stops. I get on. It only goes to the 16th floor. I'm forced to step into what is a very dangerous construction site with exposed wires, men with sledge hammers and the like. I try to take the stairwell up one floor. The doors are welded shut. I go the back lifts. I wait 12 minutes. One finally opens. It is filled with barefoot little men in rags carrying several tons of dry cement in dozens of plastic sacks. I wait for them to unload......

Parking Policy Proves Slightly Counterproductive!

We're making a collection of Delhi street signs.
If you think this one's a joke.... keep reading!

Bollywood Madness

I reviewed Bollywood: A History by Mihir Bose in this week’s Sunday Times. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough space to write about the prologue, which is absolutely hilarious.

London Through Indian Eyes

Indian commentators are always complaining about what goras, or white men, like me write about India.  They get fed up with outsiders putting their society under the microscope, getting things wrong or allowing prejudices to colour their opinions.
    Case in point: an article in this week’s edition of Outlook, one of India’s well-respected weekly news magazines. Only this is a piece by an Indian visiting London (‘London Diary’ by Anil Thakraney), a case of the shoe being on the other foot if ever I saw one.

Airports are masculine, silly

For years, all I’ve been able to say in Hindi are things like ‘stop’, ‘go away’ and ‘hurry up’, plus a few choice Punjabi insults that I won’t repeat here because this is a family blog.
    I tried taking classes in London, but the course at SOAS was prohibitively expensive and the only freelance teacher I could find was a white guy from Liverpool who’d spent several years in an ashram.  He spoke the language fluently and after a couple of lessons I felt I was making progress.  But then Anu said I was starting to develop an extremely strange Scouser-Hindi accent and so I had to let him go.
    As soon as we arrived back in Delhi, I found a new teacher.  She goes by 'Madam Neelam Thadani, Native Hindi Speaker.'