India Part II - Ruminations

Sitting here in Bangalore’s Taj West End Hotel in south India, my father is once more very often in my thoughts. He, of course, knew India inside out and saw her in all her different guises. I am mainly seeing the India of the well to do and the rich, with only glimpses of the less well off and the really poor. I see the colours of the rain-forest gardens with its vocal bird life and only from the comfort of a taxi do I see the crumbling dusty houses and pavements where people sleep, squat and eat.

If only all of India could be like the small protected paradise that my hotel is. It would be a true parades then – and Eden on earth. I never imagined I would come here. Even when father promised to take me here. It seemed so far away. Yet it is nearer (in flight hours) than San Francisco. It seemed so exotic, yet isn’t Japan as exotic and I have been there.

Is this the kind of India that my father fell in love with? Even before he ever came here? The India from books. Are these the people that he liked so much? I do know that here they speak one of the languages that he spoke fluently. How I wish I had gone to India while he was still alive, so I could speak to him about her. Yet this trip and the invitation to come here I only accepted, initially, because it came at the time of this years anniversary of his death and I thought it would be a fitting tribute to come and visit the place that stole his heart and mind. Sadly my mother, who was supposed to accompany me, didn’t get her visa on time and never made it on this trip. The woman, who shared her husband with India, who knew Jawaharlal Nehru and other VIPs was in the end denied this visit by some pencil-pushing clerk in the Indian consulate.

Do I have the arrogance to list what I love about India and what I don’t after only a few days here and living in a protective glass bowl? Yes I do. I love the people who are generally so friendly and generous, the sound of the birds, the vivid colours and the dignity yet easy going nature of the people. I dislike that there seem to be hardly any cats, that all the animals are very thin, the real poverty, that the women are afraid to go out alone after dark, the toilets.

But I hope to visit her again and this time with my mother.