Archive | November, 2009

I’m currently reading … “Indian Takeaway: A Very British Story”

29 Nov

… by broadcaster and journalist Hardeep Singh Kohli. He was born in the UK to Sikh parents from the Punjab and, as a boy always knew where home was: Glasgow. But everyone else always assumed he was Indian, unable to see past the brown skin and the turban. This book is his story of a journey round India as part of his quest to help him discover where he’s really from in the context of the immigrant experience.

As you’d expect of a man with a newspaper column entitled “Hardeep is your love?”, the book contains some crackers of punny chapter titles: Sikh and Ye Shall Find, Of Mysore Men and (of course) When the Goan Gets Tough, the Tough Get Goan.

And here’s his description of the gender differences involved in negotiating airport security:

 

“Although India has had a woman Prime Minister [and of course currently has a female President, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil] and beloved manifestations of the female form come in many of their polytheistic deities, one soon realises the sweet quaintness of Indian pre-feminist culture as one negotiates security. Women are siphoned off into a separate queue, off to a dedicated channel where they pass through the beeping security doorway into a small curtained doorway where the outline of their bodies is discreetly described by the handheld detecting machine …”

 I’m off to Bangalore for two days shortly so this will be my reality;  it’s particularly marked at Bangalore airport, where men outnumber women about 20:1,  so I look forward to sailing through the “Ladies’ Queue” without issue or encumbrance.

Two women + two children + one scooter

28 Nov

= transport, Goan style.

I took this photo from the inside of a branch of  “Cafe Coffee Day”, a national chain which is India’s answer to Starbucks and where their equivalent of a “grande” latte is about 50p.

(Don’t go there with the skinny, decaff, no whip stuff, though; even a latte takes about half an hour to prepare,  without further complicating the process).

Anyway, back to the photo; if you look closely,  you can see that the first woman (with her hands up, tying her hair back) has a baby attached to her in a sling and the woman on the left is holding a toddler. A few moments later, they fired up the scooter,  wedged the toddler onto the seat between them and roared off. No helmets, of course – they don’t seem to be in use by anyone here.

Images of women: at Anjuna market

27 Nov

Earlier this week I went to Anjuna market,  the great retail institution which has taken place in Goa since the very earliest days of the tourist industry here.  It’s located  on a sprawling site which spills down to Anjuna beach and both sellers and buyers travel from far and wide in order to beg, plead, haggle and spend money.  The range of goods available is huge and colourful – mostly textiles (clothing, cushion covers, bedspreads), souvenirs, a myriad of different teas, jewellery in every imaginable style and material.

Sadly,  the market site is also rife with beggars,  very often women holding babies (who never ever seem to cry and in fact are completely dormant and static at all times; a fellow traveller told me that he’d heard that the babies are drugged to make them sleep – what a horrible thought if true).

Here are some of the women at work on their stalls -

And here is one particular seller: proud, fierce and a demon haggler in terms of bargaining with me for a price for having her photograph taken! I think we agreed on about 20p in the end.

El Shaddai,  the charity I support in Goa,  also have a stand at the market,  in order to fund raise and let more people know about their work. I called in to say hello to the team and dropped off my used paperbacks (15!) so that they can sell them on their second hand books stall.

I’ve also now been to Rainbow House and visited Renuka,  the little girl who I sponsor.  More on that to follow – quite a long post, I think,  as it was an amazing and thought provoking experience.

In the news – baby girls

24 Nov

I’m very grateful to TLS, who is keeping my in-box full with relevant news stories, particularly about India. From the BBC website, he shared this sad story about the perceived “curse” of giving birth to a baby girl; the reference to hospitals not offering gender identification at scans reminded me that this also happens in UK hospitals which are located in areas (such as my own bit of London) which have a high Asian population. When I visited the gynae department a few years ago, the walls were plastered with posters in Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu stating in no uncertain terms that no gender scans were available, under any circumstances.

And a few days ago on the beach,  a woman, trailing three little girls and holding a baby in her arms,  approached me,  held the baby out and asked if I wanted to buy her. I laughed (nervously) and declined,  but she sat down and said,  in very good English, that she was serious and that,  for 5000 rupees (about £65) I could have the baby and her birth certificate; she would use this money to make sure that her next baby “was a boy” as she’d already had four girls and her family was cross with her.

I think this is the saddest conversation (of many) that I’ve had since I’ve been here.

A lovely bunch of coconuts

23 Nov

I spent the equivalent of 30p on a coconut and some peanut brittle yesterday,  simply so that I could have an excuse to chat to this lady,  one of the six female fruit sellers I’ve spotted on my local beach. They walk up and down all day, carrying heavy baskets of fruit (pineapple, coconuts, papaya, passion fruit, limes, bananas and mangoes) on their head and offering them to the sunbathers.

(When I say “chat”, I mean a combination of pidgin English, hand gestures and drawing in the sand with a stick).

Once someone indicates that  they want to buy something,  the women heave the basket down onto the sand, rummage around and then extract the chosen item. 

They then produce a cloth and a fearsome looking knife, and peel and slice the fruit into neat segments.  These are in turn popped into a small plastic bag and some mineral water is added, to both remove sand (“Sand is bad!”) and to keep the fruit moist.

Over the weekend,  I noticed that a lot of the Indian visitors (Goa is a popular weekend destination for people based in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore,  as it’s only an hour’s flight) also have a small twist of garam masala powder on the side, or even some salt.

I had a bad stomach upset on Friday,  so I’m being a bit cautious at the moment in terms of what I eat and drink. One look at the “prep zone” for the fruit sent my digestive tract and my imagination into overdrive,  so I settled for a coconut, learning in the process that the water it contains is apparently a good remedy for curing food allergies.

The fruit seller in question is the Grande Dame of the beach,  known to everyone.  People call her “Mama” and she seems to inspire a great deal of affection;  I’ve seen quite a few visitors buy her drinks,  offer her a seat, buy fruit from her and then immediately give it away again to one of the children (I did this with my coconut), or help her heave her 30 kg basket back up onto her head.

She told me that she’s been selling fruit on the beach for the last 30 years, and that she travels to Goa (not sure from where – she’s very dark skinned,  so possibly one of the more southern states) each year for the 6 month season. She lives with the other women and they go each morning to the wholesale fruit market in Panjim in order to buy the day’s produce before taking to the beach at around 10am – from where she then walks up and down, back and forth, until it gets dark at around 6pm.

It seems like a brutally hot and hard way to make a living,  but perhaps it’s made more bearable by the fact that the fruit women are so popular with the visitors – people like to chat to them,  to buy from them,  to help them – compared to the women (and men) who sell all the other items (drums, necklaces, manicures etc) who are brushed away with irritation and rudeness (then again,  they also poke you with a sharp finger if they speak to you and don’t get a response,  so I have a bit more sympathy with the sharp retort after I was prodded yesterday).

I’m giving the beach a miss today and will have another go at visiting Rainbow House;  my trip last week was thwarted by the fact that the road to the home was blocked by a fallen tree – yet another casualty of the cyclone.  When I called for an update,  I was advised to try again today – so that’s the plan.

And as we know that I love a pun, I’ll end by saying that fruit puns are a lemon tree, my dear Watson.

On the way home from school

21 Nov

This is Savita, aged 6,  whom I met on Thursday afternoon when I was walking down a small side road with my camera. She saw me taking photos of a piglet I happened upon (as one does …) and dragged me into her yard to see the mother pig and the rest of the (flock? Herd? What IS the collective noun for piglets?).

And then she asked me to take her photo – so here she is.

She’s very proud of her school uniform, isn’t she?

Now with photos

21 Nov

My earlier posts have been updated with a couple of photos, thanks to stumbling upon a wireless connection …

Here are some of the children on the beach, and one of the dark skies with which we were cursed last week. 

However,  the weather is much improved;  here’s a photo of the sunset on my nearest beach.  I took this at 6pm last night:

Also for sale on the beach … and a brief update

17 Nov

To add to my earlier list, I have also observed the following for sale on the local beach:

  • Cigarettes (about a fifth of the price they are in the UK);
  • Chess sets;
  • Carved wooden elephants;
  • Copies of the Kama Sutra (“it transcends language, madam” – apparently …);
  • Pastries and croissants;
  • Newspapers.

We are still experiencing terrible rain storms here (see photo – look at that sky!),  with rumours circulating of a further cyclone. Several people in my hotel have gone home early and the local traders are very depressed at this appalling start to the tourist season. There’s also a local authority “issue” (and apparently talk of civic bribery and corruption …) which has meant that most of the beach shacks are not yet open, so all areas of the local economy are suffering; it’s something of a perfect storm of bad news for the locals.

 I’m visiting Rainbow House later today and having tea with the little girl I sponsor, Renuka.  She is 8 years old and lives at the home as her mother (who works as a maid) could not afford to support her after her alcoholic father left them last year. I’m also hoping to learn if the cyclone damage to the school has been repaired so that we can re-commence lessons; it’s all been so chaotic out here on a number of fronts and the news is mixed.

Watch this space …

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well on the beach

14 Nov

To date,  I have observed the following goods and services for sale on my local beach:

  • Jewellery
  • Fruit (bananas, mango, pineapple, etc)
  • Nuts (cashews, almonds)
  • Maps of India
  • Ripped off DVDs (specifically, “Slumdog Millionaire”)
  • Drums (a particular source of irritation)
  • Sarongs
  • Towels
  • Massage instruments (a sort of metal contraption,  which looks more like a gardening tool to me)
  • Sunglasses
  • Sponges (bath not cake)
  • Joss sticks
  • Massages (of your feet,  performed by men, or of the whole body, by women)
  • Manicures
  • Pedicures

And maybe more …

The beach sellers seem to have acquired some rudimentary Russian, too, for use,  when haggling with the Russian tourists.  As I mentioned previously,  the Russians are very happy to hand over money to both those who are begging and those who are selling;  I sat next to a party of 4 the other day and,  between them,  they bought about 80% of the items offered from the above list over the course of four hours.

One of the beach shack owners told me that the Russians don’t currently require visas to holiday in India,  possibly one of the reasons why they travel in such great numbers – but that this situation is due to change in 2010. The locals are quite worried about this and you can see why,  given that there are fewer western European tourists each year and the ones who are here are more careful with their rupees than the free spending Russians.

“Is the credit crunch in your country madam – British peoples are poor now.”

Apparently.

Early days in Goa

13 Nov

Namaste from Goa, where it is now my fourth day in residence. Unfortunately, and most unexpectedly, I have yet to see any sun, as we are currently in the grip of a cyclone, which blew in on Monday (the day of my arrival) and is still hanging about, providing strong winds, dark skies and torrential rain. All in 30 degree centigrade heat. Coastal Goa doesn’t really seem to be set up for weather like this in the main tourist season, so the resort is full of disgruntled, pale skinned visitors, roaming the streets, avoiding the puddles and roadside primordial ooze of sand, dust and cow dung, and complaining loudly at any available opportunity about how lousy the weather is and that they might as well have stayed at home.

However, whilst seeking sanctuary in this internet cafe (60 rupees, about 80p, for an hour) I have checked the BBC weather site and apparently all should be restored to “normal” by Friday. Let’s hope so.

Yesterday I had lunch at a beach shack with the rather cute name of “The Cheeky Chapatti” – chosen primarily because it had covered tables and a sort-of-roof thing going on. Whilst eating my “fishcurryrice”, I was visited by several children, all of school age, who all performed in front of me and the other tourists and then asked for money. Their performances consisted of acrobatics (cartwheels, handstands, etc), dancing and playing a small drum. It was usually a small girl doing the dancing, accompanied by a boy who then asked for the money – together with much pleading, gazing up with soulful eyes and saying things like: “Please give. I hungry”.

(There seem to be more children here than I remember from previous trips – I’m not sure why. Could be this stretch of beach, perhaps, a different time of year or perhaps something tied up with the local economy?)

The children’s charities out here strongly advise that tourists NOT give money to children, or to adults accompanied by school age children and so far I’ve only seen the Russians actually hand over a few rupees (are they more generous? Or possibly less aware?).

The whole situation makes me feel very sad and uncomfortable; the children obviously need the money and see tourists as a seasonal source of revenue (understandable, in a country where millions live on less than a few pounds per day) – but yet surely if they grow up with the mindset that they can earn a “living” out on the beach, they’re not ever going to go to school, get an education and break the cycle of poverty?

Many of the children work the beach with their parents, so it’s easy to see the continuing pattern. I also did a rough ratio check yesterday; the girls on the beach outnumber the boys by 3:1, whereas, when I walked past the local primary school the other day, coincidentally at “going home time”, the boys (in uniforms, with satchels) outnumber the girls in the same proportion.

I’ve also learned, on a more frivolous note, to not wear the necklace I bought here earlier this year at the big Anjuna market. In England, it’s just a slightly funky string of mixed semi-precious stones; here, it identifies me as the kind of easy “mark” who buys this kind of thing – and accordingly gets mobbed by every. single. seller in Goa with similar necklaces for sale.

“Please madam, lovely necklace, how much you pay?”

“300 rupees” [about four pounds]

“I show you other necklaces/bracelets/ankle chain [delete as appropriate], very good price …”

Etc.

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