writebrained, rightbrained

I love my India… ye mera India

India is a dream.  Do I need pictures or words to more properly describe this place, in my blood since I was a child of three or four, from the melange of smells to the way the sun slants in the afternoon in my grandparents’ house, to fragrant chai in the morning, afternoon and evening? 

On this trip I find that Delhi has upgraded considerably.  Gone are the beggars crowding you from the moment you step out of the airport terminal (where?), gone is the refuse in every gutter, and new is - well, nearly everything, from the roads to the shining office buildings in a riot of gleaming glass and overdone accents, to the huge enclosed malls replete with chaat shops, movie theaters and art galleries.  In one mall, I saw a couple getting the notorious fish pedicures which have reputedly been banned in the US.  It doesn’t look sanitary to me, but it is certainly cutting edge.  Cutting edge is also the best way to describe the fashionable stores, clones of what you find on Broadway in Manhattan, populated with knock-offs and originals created by the swarms of London- and Brooklyn-trained fashion designers, now newly returned and churning out these adorable dresses and Ts, no doubt by the truckfuls.

I am less enamored of the changes in Lucknow.  My nani has been so ill, but it is a pleasure to serve her and try to absorb the strength that she has demonstrated throughout her 80+ years.  I bring her fashion magazines, regale her with silly stories about trivial things, and decorate her hands and feet, hoping to press her joy at living back into her weary limbs.  We do not leave the house except to go to the local market, but I find that Lucknow improves little on further examination.  The only new buildings are the huge, totalitarian-reminiscent structures for parades and rallies; everything else seems faded and hardly improved since my last visit.  Delhi travels in one direction, while UP determinedly travels further back into the past.  I marvel at the enormous, fortified and wedding cake-like mansions occupied by ministers which my lovely cousin points out to me; she is a refreshing breath of giggling air on this trip with her adorable mix of East and West and her devoted attention to our grandmother.

Another lovely discovery this trip, or should I say rediscovery: my mother tongue.  Hindi was my first language, and without my mother here to tease me about my accent (she says she’s not laughing AT me, but I am not laughing WITH her either) I have enjoyed astonishing everyone with the little fragments I string together and remember.  This afternoon, I am promised an actual lesson with my grandfather, who laughingly tells me that he once tutored some American girls in Hindi when he was in the States completing his PhD.  Of course, he was also a professor for some time, and I am just as eager to hear his stories as to hope for any corrections to my pidgin Hinglish!