Laughs tears and cricket. India 2024
Four years of Covid related and self imposed break from international travel had accumulated enough reasons, personal or familiar, that it was inevitable that we would return to my roots sooner rather than later in 2024. A few months earlier we had visited my elder sister in Florida and decided that she needed a change and would only travel to India if we were to accompany her, so when my brother (Pammi) invited us all over, we made our way at a time when the pollution in Delhi was likely to be less and the heat of the summer still not at its highest, in March. As it was after the first week or so when we required a cover at night, the warmth took over and virtually the whole stay was in summer clothes with short sleeves and pants. The pollution on the other hand, was relatively low but still unhealthy compared with our home in Europe, and it was necessary to use antihistamine sprays to be comfortable during our stay.
In the time elapsed since we were last here, the prices had risen significantly as inflation is high, but the state of the infrastructure was still worse than one would expect from an economy which is trying to get to the top four in the world. There is much evidence of progress and the war against poverty, however when one gets away from the glitzy malls and the expensive urban apartment complexes, there is still work to be done. Many of the shanty towns around Delhi have now gone and salaries have risen so that it appears that at least in the capital the people can afford to live. The authorities have taken steps to clear the streets of shanties and people sleeping rough and some effort to remove piles of rubble which used to be the norm some years ago.
It had been years since my brother, sister and I had been together, so we made every effort to be together and recall old family stories, sometimes laughing hysterically at the expense of comic incidents even if we had heard them many times before. Punjabi can be a very funny language and often does not translate well, so telling these stories in their original wording was a treat not to be missed. The festival of Holi took place soon after our arrival and we joined the festivities in the area organised by the residents association. This included music dancing and lots of food in a park nearby and the usual smearing of colour on everyone at the gathering. We had bought pure white t-shirts specially for the event and these were already coloured by the time we got to the party because just walking the few meters to the park needed to dodge water bombs made from balloons launched from every balcony in the neighbourhood.
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One of my cousins from Sydney came over and invited us to stay at a luxury villa in Goa for a few days so we accepted and we flew together to Goa. A new much improved airport welcomed us south, but the heat was unbearable. Luckily the villa had a swimming pool so at least it was possible to chill in the evenings. The administrator of the villa had come over to welcome us and when he learnt that Marisol was Spanish, he revealed that he was friends with a chef from Spain, and as it turns out we know the chef and his restaurant which is very close to where we live in Spain! It is a small world.
The owner of the villa had provided us with a car and had given us plenty of pointers to bars and restaurants for us to try in Goa and this turned out to be a bonus. One of the restaurants we dined at was called the 7 Short and 1 Long run by two ladies. When we enquired about the name, it was a reference to the emergency code for ships and was chosen because of the association of the owners with shipping. The food was excellent Goan cuisine, consisting of meat in dark sauces and fresh fish and prawns. We sat on an outdoor terrace within a beautiful tropical garden while a live musician sang all our old favourites from the sixties and seventies.
TThe other notable find was the Mhambrey bar. It stands out from the ordinary, in the middle of nowhere at the end of a road which terminates at the Mapusa river with no bridge. The address on Google is Unnamed Road, Khorujuven, Haldona, Goa. We were told that this bar provided the best cashew Lavnechi Feni (for the eradication of incurable sadness) home distilled drink and its sister the Goan Urrak, also made from cashew nuts. We arrived to find the bar closed although we had been assured that it would be open by the time we got there.
We waited.
The drinks were ok, they had a hot and smokey taste, but the whole process and the ceremony was unforgettable. As the dark descended around us, we enjoyed the warm glow of these cashew nut cocktails in very unusual circumstances. Being off the tourist trail, the drinks were ridiculously cheap too, and we left a large tip to compensate.
Before taking the flight back to Delhi we had enough time to drop in on the Old Goa area and visit the two iconic churches, which are now part of World Heritage. It was a very hot and sunny day. Even though the churches were just across the road from each other, it was still tempting to get into a car to drive the fifty yards because it was so hot. The churches and their interiors had seen better days but they had some of that old world charm.
Back in Delhi we fell into a routine of morning visit to a shopping mall, market or monument of interest, followed by a good meal and an hour of escape from the heat and then the evening cricket game of the IPL, the most hyped and rich competition of the cricketing calendar. In the shopping category there were as many as ten huge malls within a fifteen minutes drive from Pammi’s home in Gurgaon. We discovered how cheap Uber was to get around locally. In the food category we pigged out on local food at both the Haldiram chain and also at swanky restaurants around town, and not least the brilliant daily cooking of the cook that our hosts had engaged. The monuments included the Sikh temple Bangla Sahib and the close by Ugrasen Bauli, the latter being a water feature from the Mughal days neatly hidden in the heart of Delhi and still unknown to tourists and taxi drivers. The `bauli` in the old times was a water storage much like an open air public swimming pool with wonderful walls with stairs leading up and down on all sides.
In between there were a few sad and solemn moments. Family ties dictated that the members which had departed this life in the years when we had not been able to travel needed to be remembered and grieved. A very important part of belonging to a wider family network. A few prayers, lots of hugs and a few tears were shed. Please consider praying for my family and help the sadness dissipate and for people to emerge into a new and happier frame of mind.
Soon it was time to pack our bags and make the long flights home. But not before a last minute attack of the Delhi Belly which took its toll (let's not get into any details), but in a short time returned my weight to pre India level.
As luck would have it, our Delhi Frankfurt flight was operated by Air India. Lately this airline has been splashing out on a lot of new planes and under the new owners (Tata) they have been on a marketing campaign to attract customers long suffering from bad management and maintenance problems. However if we are to go by our flight experience they have not as yet improved sufficiently. Our seats had everything wrong with them. The seat belts were slipping when in use, the back rests were stiff to the point where we thought that they were stuck, the foot rests were broken and to top it all the in flight entertainment system had crashed and refused to work during the whole flight. This meant that we had a lot of time to talk amongst ourselves. Fortunately the lady in the next seat also had the same problem and we got talking. She was of German origin travelling alone and was dressed in the typical Sikh clothes for women of orthodox religious background, including a turban.
She said ‘Sat sri akal’ to me as soon as she sat down. ‘I have been married to a Sirdar (Sikh man) for 40 years’, she volunteered when I enquired politely. We introduced ourselves with ‘oh, Marisol here has been married to a Sirdar for 50 years’! We talked for a while about the usual curiosity questions and then when after lunch it was time to take a nap, she pulled out a Sikh prayer book in Punjabi and started reading. Later she explained that she had studied the language and could read write and speak it.
Finally we took a flight from Frankfurt to Bilbao where we were picked up for the short drive home.
1 comment:
Thank you. I enjoy reading about your adventures, and learning more about India.
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