*
But I have not quite finished with Udaipur. My last day in Delwara was on Friday (9/2). The only business I had there was the long-awaited careers fair which, in the event, was only moderately successful. I had intended it to be open to all-comers and Haider and I had spent some time trawling Delwara’s considerable underbelly inviting people, all of whom promised to come. They didn’t. The audience consisted entirely of pupils from the boys’ school and certainly not all of these came. Of our guest speakers all but one showed up, the truant ironically the representative from the police force! From Devigarh came Megha (female, diminutive and terribly upper-crust) and Ajit (male, sizeable and rather non-descript). They both gave short talks about working in the hotel industry. Haider gave a speech about social work and Samir, an alumnus of the Dalit Shakti Kendra, gave a few extremely brief and nervous words to the effect that the food and accommodation at the DSK are very good.
Nobody asked a single question and my plan for a free-for-all mingle with individual questions was vetoed by Haider and the teacher. Not explicitly vetoed, but simply not made to happen. My own talk about CVs was reasonably successful. Haider had to translate some of my attempted Hindi into a more intelligible dialect, but I think most of what I said was relatively well understood, and I hope the session was of some benefit to some of the attendees. In fact that neatly expresses what I feel about the whole enterprise. If one or two of the kids went away feeling a little enriched or inspired or just better informed, then I think it was worthwhile. Unfortunately I don’t believe I’ll ever find out whether this was the case.
My farewell to Delwara and the Nagrik Vikas Manch was not as brief and unemotional as I had expected it would be, but I got away reasonably quickly, back to Vikas Samiti. I can’t miss Delwara yet – the difficult parts are still strong enough in my mind to make my leaving a relief and in any case, I haven’t had much of a chance to dwell on it. I think my overall memories of Delwara, when suitably distant in time and space, will be fond. I will remember the pleasantness of the place itself, the friendships and alliances I formed, the amount I learnt about NGO work and the work that I did myself, and will feel that hopefully something of what I did there has enabled the Nagrik Vikas Manch to move a step closer, however infinitesimally small, towards its vision.
Saturday (10/2) was my grand farewell to old Udaipur and the emotional last view of the Lake Palace that I have already described. It turned out to be the last time I would see Bablu, who was not able to make my farewell party, and Dinesh who did not want to come. He is very honest, Dinesh, and he told me clearly that he did not enjoy parties:
“I could say yes, just to make you happy, but it’s better like this, telling the truth.”
Furthermore, in all the conversations we had, whether about tourism, Udaipur, NGO work or religion, his intelligence shone through. On this last visit we discussed the work of Vikas Samiti, and he asked me some probing questions, showing how keenly he wanted to get to bottom of things and how he was unafraid to be critical. He has been a breath of fresh air amongst the oily characters of tourist-ville.
Dinesh
Bablu, too, with his air of innocent curiosity, has always stood out from the crowd. As we sat on his roof terrace for the last time, his uncle joined us and asked me whether I could find work for Bablu in England. These requests are made so often that it is hard to take them seriously, but Bablu’s uncle’s pleading had a special quality.
“What chance has Bablu got here? I have the rest of my family to look after, there’s not much I can give him. I’m not saying to find something straightaway, but keep your eyes open, OK? Maybe you can find something for him to do. You know, most people come here for a few days and then forget us, but you’ve been here five months. You’ve become a friend.”
The boy himself sat serenely through this as if it weren’t really anything to do with him. I wonder how on earth I would go about finding him a job in England. Even if I did, what real evidence of his aptitude or skills could I give that would mark him out from the dozens of applicants that didn’t live halfway across the world? I think he should be able to find work in Udaipur - he is reasonably bright and has abundant charm and good looks - but I worry he might lose the wide-eyed quality that marks him out so refreshingly here. That would be a small tragedy.
I spent much of yesterday packing and preparing food for the evening’s party, but I also had my final singing lesson. This lasted three delightful hours and included coffee and snacks. We even made a tape recording of the first song I learnt, “Ye mosam hasta hasta”. Dr Khandelwal, whose composition this was, accompanied us on the harmonium, turning it into an exhilarating experience as he embellished the vocal line, truly enhancing the meaning of the words (“The weather is smiling/ The road lies open/ Get up, friend! Let’s go for a ride/ Time waits for no man…”)
As I said to Madhu afterwards, it really felt like making music, rather than running through a lesson, perhaps for the first time in my Hindustani vocal career. The Khandelwals were at their friendliest best, and I very much hope to see them again one day.
The grand farewell party was not an unqualified success. Granted, everybody who promised to come turned up except for Zelda, who was ill. The other volunteers - Reuben, Brenda and a pair of newly-arrived English girls - had been away on a trip to Mount Abu (famed for its Jain temples) and only arrived back much later with animated stories about a nightmare bus journey. This was a shame as they would have provided a valuable social glue to counteract the strange awkwardness that arose from the combination of people from such diverse social strata. From the beginning I tried to maintain a steady flow of jovial conversation and Dilip excelled himself in that department, reaching his peak during a discourse on the meaning of the word “rife”. Madhu and her friend Prachika were rather cold, Abbas and particularly Prakash, shy, and Shiv a dead weight (he didn’t utter a syllable until Madhu, Prachika and Dilip had left). Later, only Shiv and Prakash remained, and a painfully shy new volunteer called Shubangi ventured in to try a bowl of fruit salad and thanked me with heartrending earnestness for a “lovely party”. Hari showed up with a friend for a bit, but left pretty quickly, and admittedly the atmosphere had a touch of the funereal about it by this stage. I wonder whether in these social situations Indians (especially if from such varied backgrounds) are more awkward than Europeans, despite the uninhibitedness you encounter out on the streets. I should probably view the whole occasion as an experiment that didn’t quite come off.
I was happily able to see Shiv and Prakash for a final time this morning and say my goodbyes properly. My historic final chai was with Abbas, and we talked more about the Bohra sect. At 1.30, after a morning of tying up lose ends, I finally boarded the bus at Fatehpura circle, waved off by Shiv, Prakash, Abbas and Reuben, and crawled south into Gujarat, arriving in Ahmedabad a couple of hours ago where I got rickshaw driven by a Tamil who was so struck by my (very scanty) knowledge of his language that he took me on a detour to admire his family before depositing me at my hotel…
*
Wouldn’t it be nice to draw a neat line under my Vikas Samiti experience with some well-argued conclusions? I feel further from being able to do this than ever, despite a long bout of self-inspection on the bus. Some of the queasy feelings of shame at under-achievement came back to me, although my inner rationalist kept this mostly in check by obsessively listing my successes: completing the microplan; establishing clearer processes for training Delwaran youths; running a careers event and - perhaps, perhaps - helping the sons and daughters of Maal in their quest for a road. But I know that it is the other things that will stay with me - the ideas, the friendships, the gradual deepening of my love for this country. And now, above all, I’m excited about a month of uncomplicated travel and, beyond that, a new dream to chase back in England.
To my earlier assessment of Vikas Samiti (see Friday 17th November) I have surprisingly little to add. I was probably unfair in places, but am not simply going to retract any negative comments by default now I have left. I think the organisation is trying to do wonderful things, and there are many talented, hard-working people involved in the effort. With more efficient processes in place, and perhaps a more brutal approach to its weaker links, who knows what it might achieve.
Next Post - Thursday 15th February 2007: Ahmedabad (will be posted Wednesday 15th February 2012)
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