Notes from a dusty city

When I first arrived here I was mildly disgusted by the thin film of yellow-brown dust that covered the screen and keyboard of the laptop I had inherited from my predecessor. But several months in and I have realized the futility of cleaning the thing on a daily basis. When I open it up in the office each morning the dust is there again, fine and clogging. Where does it come from? Over the course of each day in the office and evenings spent emailing, checking the news or watching DVDs, the dust must pile up, be swept into the air by fans and the occasional cool breeze and settle gently over everything. The whole city in fact is dusty. The earth, where it is visible despite the tarmac and concrete, is packed down and dry. The wind sweeps the fine top layer into corners, piles it up at the sides of the road and deposits it on the floor of our flat when the windows are open. The roadside is often like sand; soft and gritty underfoot.

On Tulsi Row the tarmac eventually gives way completely to the dusty earth, which blows into the parking space underneath the flats to obscure the circular patterned floor tiles with a gritty covering. Nearer Jodhpur Gam Road the tarmac remains and in the morning sweepers brush the dust and grit off to the right and left of the road, their brooms leaving fine lines in the sandy spaces where cars usually park in an orderly row. There is a futility in this labour also, the women in once brightly-coloured saris scraping the fine earth and sending up clouds of yellow-brown dust that settle roughly in the same as before. And these efforts pale in comparison to nature’s. When it rains, as it did recently to the surprise of everyone in the city because the Monsoon is not due until the end of June at least, all the accumulated dust is washed away. The roads and pavements are visible as intended and, washed clean, look sharper at the edges but more dilapidated, as potholes, cracks and the effects of slow erosion are revealed as if magic.

Lunch at the Pratham office

Lunch is usually at 1:30 or 2:00 depending on how people feel and on whether one of the office staff, either Bhavnaben or Dakshaben (ben meaning sister in Gujarati and a commonly used addition to first names to show respect), come down to the first floor and say ‘lunch’ and gesture towards the stairs. It is also usually a communal affair; as we make our way up to the third floor we stop at the second and see if everyone there is coming up too. On the top floor there is a medium sized room and a covered terrace, both with enough space for ten or so people to sit in a rough circle on the tiled floor. And this is what we do, sometimes with reed mats covering the floor. Many people bring food from home, either cooked by themselves or by their family’s cook. The office will also order in 30 rupee tiffin, a runner being sent out to collect the metal cylinder with its four compartments filled with rice, dal, folded roti and one or two spicy subji.

The lovely thing about this process is that all the food is placed in the middle of the circle of cross-legged people and everyone just helps themselves. On the whole you eat what you’ve brought, but are also more than welcome to take from others and dig into their container with a spoon. Everyone eats from the wide, flat metal plates with high sides that are common in India while some people will share one plate with their neighbour. I love this sharing and communal attitude. Since we’ve been able to cook at home I have purposefully made extra to share at lunch time, taking apart my small, neat steel tiffin and pushing each section in amongst the others in front of me when I sit down to eat. Amusingly there have been exclamations at mine and Dani’s ability to make rotis.

Eating in this way gives me an opportunity to try lots of different food and styles of cooking. On most days I am given something fragrant and delicious to eat and can then press the ‘owner’ for details on how to go about reproducing it. It also gives me the opportunity to eat without cutlery. A staple is dal and rice, the thin sauce being poured onto the rice and mashed into a sticky mixture that can be easily scooped up using the three or four fingers of the right hand, the thumb being used to lever the food into the mouth. When mixing dal and rice it is important that no white grains be left. Curd (yoghurt) is also often added to the mix and soft roti can be dexterously ripped into small sections with just the right hand and pressed down into the dal and rice, folded and popped into the mouth. Licking your fingers and wiping the sauce from your plate is no social taboo and is done with gusto, at least in my case. I regularly come away from lunch, hobbling slightly from sitting cross-legged for thirty minutes, feeling very full and completely satisfied.

Events of unknown significance

One of the fascinating things about living in India is the variety of festivities, events and rituals that are played out in public for all to see. Some can be observed on a daily basis and their meaning is often at least relatively transparent. Take for example the women who, early in the morning and singly, methodically walk in a circle around one of the trees that line our road. On several occasions I have walked past as a woman has been engaged in this quiet ritual, or puja, an earthenware pot (presumably filled with water or ghee) clasped in front of her with both hands. There is clearly some offering or supplication being made, perhaps to the tree as a symbol or representation of God.

But the meaning of other events can be opaque. Several months ago, I was in an auto heading towards my colleague’s house at the Western end of Anandnagar road when we slowed down at an intersection and I spotted a procession going in the direction we were to take. On the opposite side of the road to me were seven or eight vehicles in a convoy decked out to look like chariots, of the kind heroes of the Hindu epics are popularly shown to ride. I couldn’t see every chariot in detail, but as we turned onto Anandnagar and alongside the convoy, I stuck my head out of the auto to get a better look. In the nearest vehicle three women sat in a row on a high-backed seat, surrounded by an elaborate structure painted to look silver. In another of the chariots, perched on top of the body of a car, a white statue was sat alone on a similar seat, a white robed and middle-aged attendant kneeling in front. In yet another two women sat either side of a large framed portrait of a shaven-headed man dressed in Gandhian white robes and carrying a black staff. As we drove past I could see that at the very front of the procession there were two elephants, seating boxes strapped into place on their round backs. Several passengers sat in these boxes, holding onto the sides and peering about them. Each elephant had had its face painted in bright red and blue patches, out of which their small eyes twinkled.

Was this a religious event? A celebration of an auspicious occasion? Perhaps a show of respect to some departed Guruji, his portrait carried reverently in the front chariot. The outsized carriages were similar to those sometimes used at weddings, where the groom’s pre-wedding bharat procession involves him sitting on a horse, in a chariot or just riding in a car. But this lacked the loud exuberance of a wedding procession. I described the scene to my colleague when I finally arrived at his house, but he was unable to enlighten me and the event remains a mystery.

The road to Anand

One afternoon recently two colleagues and I set off for Anand, a town some 70 miles South East from Ahmedabad. My colleagues were due to speak at the Institute for Rural Development Anand, India’s top rural management and development institution. A driver had been hired and we set off in a small car, one of the ubiquitous Tata or Maruti Suzuki hatchbacks, and out through Ahmedabad’s teeming suburbs. After thirty minutes of close traffic and the bustle of brightly painted goods carriages pulling onto and off the road, their requests for ‘Horn Please OK’ picked out in a multitude of colours on rear paneling, we were onto the national highway. A toll-road, this part of the BJP government’s ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ was impressive. The road was very straight, perfectly tarmaced and with clear markings. There were even shrubs separating the opposing lanes. And every mile or so blue signs hoved into view and declared ‘National Highway A-1: A Dream Ticket’, or ‘National Highway A-1: A Real Joyride’, as well as the less optimistic ‘Speed Thrills but Kills’. The two lane road was mostly empty and the closest we came to other drivers was at the industrial looking toll booths. The best thing about the road was the embankment it had been built upon, which allowed for commanding views of the surrounding countryside.

This land was largely flat and divided into acre sized fields by lines of shrubs and trees. The fields were separated into different crops, four or five visible within 5-10 acres. One of my colleagues pointed out fields of tobacco to me and plots with castor. Every so often there was the glint of sunlight on water from a rice paddy. In between the fields there were sometimes snaking, dusty paths, but there were few people to be seen. Only occasionally a thatched hut or concrete house could be made out, standing in a beaten mud clearing or overhung with trees, and nearby would be men and women, the women in saris and men in shirts and dark trousers. There were often small, squat temples near each house, the domed roofs and square bases either cement gray or a stark white. One house had two of the distinctively shaped structures immediately opposite the front door, the backs of the mandirs to the road. Other temples were isolated, set between fields and away from any houses, perhaps as guardians of the harvest or perhaps for several families to share.

We arrived in Anand and headed for the well-maintained grounds of IRMA as dusk was falling. The campus was like a retreat; the buildings surrounded by trees and the silence of the town’s outskirts. Although nowhere as visually pleasing as Le Corbusier’s fort-like Indian Institute for Management building in Ahmedabad, IRMA has its own charm. The presentations were uneventful and we ate in the student’s canteen afterwards. On the way back to Ahmedabad, I noticed a sign lit up by the car’s headlights in the dark that read ‘Your family is waiting at home. Drive with care’.