He draws a steady crowd of mostly male custom from the lower strata of society - barbers, tailors, peons and those at the bottom of the bureaucratic food chain. They come and pay three rupees for a chai, and such is the old man’s efficiency that if they were so minded they could complete the whole process in as few minutes. For the most part they like to linger over their tea, for it is a social ritual as much as a stimulating beverage. What could be more different to the elegant rooftop cafes overlooking Lake Pichola, where bland, tepid tea in a china cup will take twenty minutes to arrive and set you back nearly twenty times the amount?
Further down the road, past a colourful vegetable market, is a computer-cum-xerox-cum-phone shop run by my friend Kailash. Kailash is a large, larger-than-life character in the best traditions of V. S. Naipaul or William Dalrymple. He only works in the evenings as he is a student at Vidya Bhavan, the nearby educational institution from which Vikas Samiti emerged. He sets great store by my regular visits and after a fleeting two minute drop-in recently he reprimanded me with “This was very short, Mr Jon. Next week you will come and stay for almost one hour.” His customary salutation, “Mr Jon” has an enthusiastic stress on the Jon. I enjoy dropping in for chats, as he speaks good English and has something tragicomic about him. He often bemoans the absence of his girlfriend, although I can’t remember now where she has gone, and equally often talks about beautiful girls in the broader sense. He is strongly conscious of the passing of his youth and he told me recently that “Time’s cruel hands are destroying my happiness”. It was with some surprise that I discovered yesterday that he is twenty-one, ten years younger than I would have guessed. Suitably, he is a lover of English literature, Thomas Hardy above all, and we have talked about The Mayor of Casterbridge and Far from the Madding Crowd in some depth. Ultimately, however, he dreams and plans to set up an NGO to fight HIV in villages.
Why is that so many people want to set up their own NGOs rather than joining existing ones? Surely joining a group that is already doing good work, and which you might ultimately be able to channel in the direction you want, will in most cases allow you to make a greater contribution to the world than striking out on your own and risking a total flop? Other than this ideological reservation, I cannot help but like Kailash, and have no doubt that my regular visits will continue.
Priya in the kitchen (with Melissa)
I have seen a lot of Priya this weekend, mostly through chance encounters in the kitchen or on the roof terrace. I am slightly at a loss when it comes to her - I like her, and we have developed a jokey, somewhat superficial friendship, but neither of us are quite comfortable in each other’s company. In a recent conversation she made it quite clear what she thought about me. I had been attempting to cook some dal, and she came into the kitchen at just the right time for a prime viewing of raw culinary ineptitude.
“Oh Jon, you are like a child!” she exclaimed, half-disapproving, half-delighted. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” I replied, a little taken aback. “How old are you?”
“Jon! You should never ask a girl her age!”
“Arre, Priya! Aap ki umar kya hai?”
“Oh my god! Your Hindi is so quaint! Actually mujhe teis [23] saal hai”
“Achcha... So, Priya, my dear. How old did you think I was? Sach bolo!”
“Truthfully? I thought you were maybe younger. Your behaviour is very young actually.”
“What?” I cried in mock indignation. “You think I’m stupid?”
“Not quite stupid. You are looking like a twenty-two year old, but in your actions you are like a twelve year-old boy.”
“My actions...?”
“By your body language I am seeing this.”
I touched her feet in a parody of deference and as she left the room laughing and screaming I returned to my dal. The conversation made me a little uneasy, particularly after Shiv’s comments along the same lines. All this has been a stark contrast to my experience in South India as an eighteen-year-old when I was almost invariably assumed to be twenty-four!
Moreover, I felt peeved at what I took to be the implied comparison with the other males in the guesthouse, Yogesh and Karan, neither of whom I would hold up as a model of maturity. Yogesh, in particular, is often childishly self-centred in his social interactions, an annoying trait that masks the engaging, intelligent side of him that I have liked so much on the few occasions I have witnessed it. As with Priya, I feel he and I have trouble taking each other seriously, which is a shame as it has prevented us from becoming the good friends I had hoped we might. I am still unclear as to the nature of his relationship with Priya, as they are still frequently to be found engaged in an intense, private conversation, punctuated with occasional affectionate laughter. Perhaps I am jealous of the bond they have formed - they certainly manage to make one feel a little de trop when they are together in the same room. But I am inclined to suspect that the discomfort I feel around them is more to do with the feeling of cultural exclusion, the feeling that my entire upbringing is a handicap to my being able to form such a close bond with anybody from India. And the realisation that that, above all, is why I am here.
All this aside, Yogesh’s distinguishing feature is his voice – he sings! He sings, in fact, almost all the time. At the drop of a hat, or even without that, he will burst into a Hindi film song – while cooking, walking upstairs, getting changed, lying in bed – and this is now such a common sound that I have to remind myself, always with a modicum of surprise, that his singing voice is rather pleasing. What really characterises this habit in an endearing and sometimes infuriating way is that his singing is almost always a performance. He wanders round the room, waving his hands and rolling his expressive Tamil-film-star eyes and takes on his generally unwilling audience without a shade of self-consciousness. I am intrigued to know how big his repertoire is. Being a small-time Bollyphobe myself, I am not attuned to the milieu enough to know whether he repeats songs. Somehow, I suspect he rarely does.
Yogesh the singer
Next Post - Tuesday 7th November 2006: Maal (will be posted Monday 7th November 2011)
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