Indian Diary

text and images by Cynthia Harvey Baker

PART 2 - India

Friday, October 19
I arrive in Dehli, late at night. Yesterday I fell on the rickety pavements of Kuala Lumpur so I have my foot bound in a capacious bandage and have a newly bought Malacca cane.

My prepaid taxi is an old cream Ambassador and has bright blue velvet seats. A clone of the Morris Oxford, it is the ubiquitous taxi of India. The driver tells me we are on the Grand Trunk Road, and I see my first sacred cows highlighted in the dust.

My room at the YWCA is great. A single room with a balcony and a separate bathroom and toilet. There are lights above the bed and on the desk and there is a comfortable chair and a small table as well as a huge wardrobe and dressing-table. Luxury. I shower and eat the nuts and yoghurt flinched from the plane. I switch off the (noisy) air-conditioner, try the (equally noisy) fan and switch that off too. I open the door to the balcony and listen to the put-puts from the autorickshaws, car horns, the dogs barking and people talking in the lane below. I smile. I am, at last, in India.

Saturday, October 20
I am woken early by the noise. Besides the street noises, there is music. Loud Indian music from a tinny, distorted speaker. I look over the balcony and see the men, who work in an outdoor garage in the lane and who sleep on charpoys under the trees, taking their very early morning showers under a communal tap.

I have my breakfast and sleep until the afternoon when I go out with my Malacca cane, foot still in a bandage.

I am 'kidnapped' by an autorickshaw wallah and ask to be taken to an Indian restaurant for an early supper. The restaurant is full. The fans are on full blast. The noise is terrific. The meal is delicious. Thali is a 'plate' in Hindi. Usually a metal plate with tiny bowls. Each bowl is filled. There is rice, pappadam, pickle, chutney, dhal and curry. It is spicy and good.

When I leave, my autorickshaw wallah is waiting. "Just a quick visit to a shop - no need to buy!" Of course I buy, as the Cottage Industries Emporium is wonderful. I come out with a white Punjabi suit and a pink pashmina shawl and have chosen the fabric and ordered a black Punjabi suit which will be ready tomorrow.

Sunday, October 21
A lot to write about today. And I think I am falling in love - with India and its people!

Delhi: Dastkar Craft Expo in Lodi Gardens. Cloth from Kashmir.

I have breakfast and then go back to bed for a while to read the New Statesman. In it is an article which says there is a Dastkar Craft Expo in Lodi Gardens and today is the last day. That I want to see.

Dastkar is an organisation throughout India helping women by selling their craft at a fair price and cutting out the middleman. Most of the work is from North and West India and it is very fine - knitting, weaving, embroidery, pashmina, hand-woven saris and a few quilts (clones of American quilting). No Rabari work. It takes a long time, but finally I decide on an embroidered shawl in heavy cream cotton with red embroidery, three cushion covers with embroidered scenes of Indian village life, a black pashmina scarf for my son and six appliqué and cowrie shell-embelished glasses cases as presents for friends back home.

In buying the pashmina scarf I meet Dr Anita Sagar. She was one of the first Indian women to go to Newnam College at Cambridge University and had lectured there. She is now retired and Secretary of the Society for Rural Development. She gives me the name of a woman who is working in Bhuj (in Kutch, where the earthquake happened in 2001) with the Rabari. What incredible luck.

In the late afternoon, my autorickshaw wallah takes me back to the Cottage Industries Emporium to fetch my black Punjabi suit and I buy another pashmina shawl - this one in lime green.

Tuesday, October 22
Dehli is too large to see the sights on your own in limited time. I had booked a tour of New Dehli in the morning and Old Dehli in the afternoon, with a stop for lunch.

Mr Kapur was waiting downstairs with an air-conditioned Toyota, a Sikh driver and two other women, Camille and Marion.

Delhi: Adam Kahn's tomb in the morning mist.

First stop is the Lakshmi Narayan Temple. Influenced by Ghandi, it is a temple to the three main Indian faiths - Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism and dedicated to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and good fortune. Then India Gate, to watch the Indian Army practice for India's Republic Day. On past the President's House and Parliament, heavily guarded.

Then, in the heat of the day (and thank goodness for the air-conditioning) to Humayun's Tomb. However, Camille has 'Dehli Belly', Marion can't walk far because of childhood polio and I have my injured ankle, so we decide instead to see Adham Khan's tomb which is nearby. Adham, his wife, his mother and two children are buried in five white marble tombs in a building of beautiful proportions. Fine old wooden doors are propped up in the entrance.

Then, as on all guided tours (the part the guide likes most) a visit to a favoured emporium. The Natraj Handicrafts Emporium offers, besides a toilet and a glass of cold water, a theatre of Kashmiri carpets.

I find an old cushion cover totally embroidered in pink and beige. What I like about it is that the embroiderer had run out of the shade of pink she had been using and, in one corner, had used another shade of pink embroidery thread.

As Marion and Camille are staying at the five-star Hyatt, that's where we go for lunch. Marion and Camille had been friends back in England. After travelling together on a guided tour, they are friends no longer as I learn when one, and then the other, go off to the toilet! The club sandwich which I order for lunch is so huge, I eat half and ask for the remainder to be put in a 'doggy bag' to take home for supper. This amazes and amuses the staff!

Then through the incredible chaos of Dehli to the walled Old City - down Chandi Chowk towards the Masjid Jamek, the Great Friday Mosque, which dominates the end of the Chowk. It is Durga Puja and the Old City is full. I am mesmerised at the colour, at the noise, the activity, the people and an elephant padding along behind the Toyota.

Neither Marion or Camille (who has not left the car all day, except to go to the Emporium) want to risk the crowds or the steps of the Great Friday Mosque and, as the Red Fort is closed Mondays, and Camille still wants to shop, they ask me if I mind shortening the afternoon. As I am already a bit peeved with Marion and Camille, and it is very hot, I agree.

On the way back to Connaught Place, we stop at Raj Ghat. Marion and Camille stay in the car and drive round and round with the driver as there is no parking. I give my shoes to a man at the entrance and walk slowly to the place where Ghandi was cremated.

Wonderfully on my own, I look with emotion at the black marble slab and the eternal flame where Ghandi's head had lain. Yellow and orange marigolds and blue plumbago lie in heaps on the marble and it is good to be there. Great man of peace. How would he have reacted to September 11?

I had been given a red rose at Lakshmi's Temple earlier in the morning and had worn it tucked in my hair all day. I place it on Ghandi's tomb.

Tuesday, October 23
Decided on a quiet day so about mid-morning I get an autorickshaw to the Shankar International Doll Museum.

Like most collections, this one started with one doll given by the Hungarian Ambassador to India in the 1950s as first prize for a competition run by the Shankar Children's Book Trust. K. Shankar Pillai fell in love with the doll and asked if he could keep it. As a journalist travelling around the world with the Indian Prime Minister of the time, he started collecting dolls with a passion. Soon he had a collection of about 500 dolls and, after an exhibition in Dehli, the museum opened.

There are now 6,500 dolls from eighty-five countries. I notice the beautiful textile work on the Indian dolls, so knock on a few doors and eventually meet Shanta Srinivasan, who is the Doll Museum's curator. She takes me to the doll's design centre and workshop and I meet some of the women who make the dolls in papier mache and clay and those who authentically dress them. They are all having their lunch at the time and I am asked to join them.

I realise then the value of knocking on doors!

Thursday, October 25
A visit to the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum and this is superb. It is here I hope to start my quest to see the Mohenjo-daro cloth from 2,500 BC.

Indians have no tradition of setting up museums - objects were left to decay and merge with the earth from which they were created. But, soon after Independence, projects and schemes for preservation and development of handicrafts were put in place. The core collection of the Handicrafts Museum was put together in the 1950s and 60s.

The museum buildings resemble an Indian village and you wander through open passages covered with tiled roofs and lined with old carved wooden doors, windows, utensils and storage jars. There are huge terracotta horses and shrines dedicated to basil plants. There are temple chariots in inner courtyards and every now and again you can peep into the windows of the museum galleries. The walls are covered by paintings done by visiting tribal and rural artists.

Delhi: National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum. Rajasthani woman with her work.

I head for the textile gallery. It is splendid and beautifully lit - and I am the only person in it. You are allowed to take photographs (with permission) and I photograph some amazing quilts and tribal costumes. Saturated by colour and beauty, I have a drink at the kiosk to revive and then go back to have another look.

I wander around the craftspeople's open-air shops to the sound of a group of musicians playing in the centre. Each month a new group of craftspeople are invited, who work and have their work for sale. I sit with an old Rajasthani women in her magnificent traditional dress and admire her superb embroidery. I buy a piece of embroidered braid to remember her by.

I knock on doors. It is Durga Puja, the largest Bengali festival in honour of the goddess Durga and not many staff are around, but I do find the public relations person and ask her about the Mohenjo-daro cloth. Was it still in the Bangalore Museum? She doesn't know.