The idea of being in India is such a tease. The week before
I leave she, the idea, repeats her customary monsoon mantra - rumbling, boiling
and building up until the crescendo as the plane screams down the runway at
full throttle - when suddenly, magically, gracefully we are airborne. We have become
featherweights. My tease and I float away - away from life as we think we
know it and into life as we can never truly know it. Me? I love these currents
that carry me at will, sensing my surrender and waiting in deep shadows
for my itchy soul to pass. I cannot speak for the tease! She is simply an idea.
I am leaving behind the usual trail of unfinished deeds,
thoughts and intentions. A book here, a new website there, a pile of mending, paintings
unstroked, shelves undusted, choruses unsung and last year’s tax buried yet again
under more paperwork. But then, I’d hate to surprise my accountant with a set
of books presented on time! I have though, with Mike’s technical wizardry, made
a video presentation for a friend whom I love and admire. She, who went off to
India alone in 1953 and long before the Liverpool lads, the magical mystery tourists
and those who sought orange. As I sorted through her great pile of albums and
envelopes, cuttings and postcards I became increasingly aware of a life lived
fully, richly and deeply; never in the safety zone of western comfort and always on
the edges of daring and adventure. Lenore Blackwood is quite a woman.
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| Victoria's Memorial, Kolkata |
Also In the pile of ‘done’ sits the small book I produce for my
journeywomen (all female on this tour), a love job that keeps my research skills
honed and my eyes on the lookout for new paths to follow. This time we are doing
Diwali dinner at the real Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – I am testing it before my big adventure tour next year. The rooms are booked and the management is on a promise to produce Bill
Nighy as a dinner guest even if they can’t manage dud phones, leaking taps and
birds in the upper rooms. Thereafter we dip lightly into a little more of Rajasthan and do
Delhi - its museums, monuments and mayhem before we head by train to Kolkata and then by road to Shantiniketan, Fulia and other rural villages of West Bengal. Beware the tiger!
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| Kantha rendition of traditional game, Chopad by SASHA members. Image M Light 2011 |
Lucknow is our finale, one of my favourite cities on the
eastern seaboard. Its faded elegance, lingering gentility and breathtaking stitches – white on white, glitter on net and precious metal on
silk that are still exquisitely worked in squalid lanes where artisans toil day in and day out. Old men with fading eyes and nimble fingers produce work worthy of any
court, king or concubine and they remember me and I am flattered. Elsewhere in dim basements cheeky,
flirtatious young men work on sparkling wraps for older women
to wear on magic nights - I could be flattered. Mostly I look forward to the
early morning walk along the banks of the Gomti where dhobi wallahs drag
white cloth from filthy water and beat it on worn laundry stones belonging to their
forefathers. It emerges from this punishment so pure and white why am I not surprised? Never - this river after all feeds Ma Ganga.
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| Whiter than white. Gomti River, Lucknow. Image C Douglas 2010 |
Back in my own home on the eve of departure the colour of
India today is pink as in the floating camellias at my front door; her
smell is the cardamom used in last night’s shrikant and still wafts
from my fingers; her taste is mango – the first of the season eaten at breakfast; her texture the
hand woven scarf I pack for cooler nights - organic cotton and silk dyed in
indigo by Chaman whose vats never run, rub or fade; her sound is the camel bell I ring as I enter my work/think/dreaming
space – just as I ring the temple bell at Koteshwar while the sun sets over
Kori Creek and Pakistan.
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| Westernmost edge of India, Koteshwar. Pakistan across Kori Creek. Image C Douglas 2003 |
Ah she is such a tease is India. I’ll follow her anywhere.
Next post from Mumbai.
