Doors of Rajasthan

 

Nature’s Dream (2)

Yesterday afternoon the sky filled with clouds. The afternoon turned darker, and the wind began to pull at palm fronds as kites banked and turned in the swirling air. The power had been off since eleven-apparently the first day of load shedding. Walking home from the pool in the afternoon, the sound of generators humming under most of the larger buildings, to a darkening apartment, there are no drops of rain. Though we hear thunder in the east and the smell of moisture is in the air.

As the weather marks the coming of the Indian summer I have been exploring the streets of Korageon Park and Kalyani Nagar,. My walks through the neighborhoods of Pune remind me how different the experience of living in this city can be. Our neighborhood is mostly tightly-packed, four-to-five floor apartment buildings built up around beautiful and in most cases neglected bungalows with dirt yards and gardens. But in Korageon Park, off the busy main streets, estate-like homes behind high walls and gates have the affluent and manicured feel of cities like La Jolla, or the new Del Mar, in the North County of San Diego. Behind the high walls of these estates lie beautiful gardens, sports courts for the kids, and a small community of servants. In Kalyani Nagar, however, huge villa-apartment complexes are filled with the educated and affluent people who can afford to pay for the experience of living in an enclosed community with clean streets and grass, and of course no garbage piles, food vendors, stray dogs, or people living on the street. These are really remarkable places-though I have an instinctive aversion to these planned communities. The newspaper is full of advertising for the lifestyle of these complexes. “It’s natural. And that’s how we planned it,” says the full-page color advertisement for the Latis lakeside villa-apartments. Latis, the ad reminds the reader, is the Celtic goddess of water, and indeed the “picturesque lake views, 24/7 security, and children’s park” are offered alongside “the feeling of living in your personal kingdom of luxury and comfort.” And then, they conclude, “It’s dreamlike. And that’s a concrete reality.” Part of the fascination of all of this for me, of course, is the language. That nature’s dream is a concrete reality is really too much.

1.1 billion people live in this country, about seventeen percent of the world’s population, and more and more of them are being pulled into the urban centers. And who would blame them? Economically, the cities offer much. But the boomtown has its costs. No matter how many dream complexes are built, the concrete reality remains. A recent editorial in The Times of India with the headline “Cities of Despair” calls attention to the progressive decline in the living conditions in the city. They acknowledge the real benefits of the sustained economic boom but focus their attention on the failure of the city planners. The rise in production and consumption, the increase in industrial waste, and the dismal health and sanitation conditions on the streets need to be addressed, they argue, not only by imaginative solutions by the planners, and an infusion of technology and innovation, but by educating citizens how to lead urban lives.

Still, life goes on-an energetic and vibrant life as anyone who spends some time here will come to see. The harshness of the city, though inescapable, softens over time, as one comes closer to the lives of the people who make Pune their home. I’m grateful to be here, for now, building an appreciation for this place and the people here.

 

INDog

This is Parker. He lives on the streets around Kamala Nehru Park and he has become our friend. His full name then, I guess, is Kamala Nehru Parker. We don’t see him every day; though some afternoons, in need of a dog fix after school, we gather up our canine magnet and lover all things animal, Ellinore, and walk down the lane toward the park.

 

Inevitably—if he is not out on other business—Parker rouses himself from the shade, tail a waggin’ and always a smilin’, to greet us. Often, if we are walking further afield, he’ll follow us through our errands, sometimes with another dog or two, only to end up back at the apartment building.

Most of the city dogs in India have pointed ears, a wedge-shaped head with a pointed nose, and a long erect tail that curves over their backs. They have a short coat that varies in color from light tan to dark reddish-brown. And most of them live difficult lives. They have mange and fleas. And some are pretty roughed up.

 

But despite these hardships they have found their niche as resourceful urban scavengers. With little regular municipal collection here, garbage collects in the streets, and the dogs forage these piles of trash at street corners, or below overflowing rubbish bins.

These street dogs are skinny, too, though in comparison, Parker does better than most. One afternoon Parker followed us back to our building. As Rebecca climbed the stairs to our apartment to fetch some food, a sari-clad woman stopped to talk with Ellinore. The woman, our daughter reported, addressed Parker in Marathi or Hindi. She told Ellinore tht Parker regularly stops by her house for a treat. And he happily agreed, it seemed, to drop by her place later. It seems Parker is not only resourceful, but can manage in more than one language. Kamala Nehru Parker is charismatic, multilingual, and has a pretty red collar.

Dogs are everywhere. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) sterilizes many of them. You can tell by the little square brand on Parker’s hind leg that he has been targeted by the PMC. We learned about the program from the veterinarian down the street when we took Parker in for a check up.

I’ve also learned that there are two common terms for the Indian street dog, the “pariah dog” and the “INDog” (short for Indian Native Dog). Indeed Kipling’s “Yellow-Dog Dingo” from the Just So Stories is classified in the subspecies Canis lupus dingo.

 

There are organizations in every city that provide care and support for the legions of dogs. But the stray city dogs are also a “nuisance”—especially when they start roaming in packs. Rabies is a terrible problem here—with more than sixty percent of the estimated 35,000 annual global rabies deaths occurring in India, according to the World Health Organization. (We took rabies medicine before we left the US.) In fact, the news reports this week that Srinagar officials have begun an anti-rabies program that will exterminate more than 100,000 dogs.

 

So while there are pet dogs and guard dogs in the cities of India, it’s mostly the strays that rule. These animals, survivors to be sure, lead a tenuous life on the crowded streets and lanes of the cities. There are cars to contend with, and the young men we’ve seen, laughing, chasing dogs on their two-wheelers. And now the mass extermination programs, like a nightmare. No, we are not planning to bring Parker home with us. But I won’t say that every one of us hasn’t thought of it.

  

 

This Side and That

 Across the Road

            The Houses jostle in rows.

                        All those who dwell in them, among the thin

Partitions, live thrust in, closed in.

            With voices set in various tones

                        They babble on and on

            About whatever comes to mind:

                        They take each other by the hand,

            Or sometimes slap

                        A friend upon the back

And drag him through the alleys for no reason,

Arm in arm, yet bickering out of season.

                        Perhaps they’ll turn  

            And ask you after your health, though not from real concern,

                        Or with some set joke, greet

            Each other on the road, if two should meet.

            Into your room they’ll come,

And start laughing at some mysterious fun.

            Picking out left-over scraps of news

From the papers, all Sunday afternoon they’ll bandy views,

                        Or wager their wars

            Over which is the prettier of two movie stars.

                        So hot grows the debate,

            Their very friendship seems at threat.

Hookah in hand, beside their doors they sit

                        And haggle with the pedlars in the street.

            Over and over cranking the same tune,

They try to pick up stage-songs from the gramophone.

                        Here a puppy starts

            All the house with its affectionate barks;

            There a squalling child upon the floor

Bangs its head, while the impatient mother scolds.

            The sound of shuffling cards; and then a din

From time to time, to thrash out who should win.

                        And one day from a taxi-cab descends

            The son-in-law, no less! Follows n o end

Of giggling among the girls-they nudge and pry,

            A flock round to put make-up on the shy young wife.

                        On terrace, gate-house, balcony,

Their comings and goings cast shadows continually.

                        There an opening, here a closing shutter:

            Upon the clothes-line, towels and dhoti flutter.

                        On every side, a hum

            All day and night, as of work being done.

                        In the courtyard, water flows

            From a tap someone forgot to close,

                        And up and down the stairs

            A constant dankness hangs upon the air.

                        The day wears on; the sound

            Of pots and pans being scrubbed rises around.

                        Ladles, tongs and spoons

            Clink in kitchen domestic tunes.

                        Mustard oil sputters inside

                        A pan of sizzling fish being fried.

The weaver woman brings for the young wife

            Saris bordered with a patriotic weave.

                        A little boy circles

            The courtyard on his toy tricycle.

                        The men rise and set, by the clock,

            Upon the horizon of the office block,

                        And their wives’ days abide

                        The ebb and flow of the tide

            Of work and rest, morning and afternoon.

                        Amidst all this, the untiring drone

Of a student cramming for examinations,

Till the neighbors quite lose patience.

Carried upon life’s flow,

            They mingle in many a fashion as they go:

The chatter of the known and the unknown

                        Raises flurries of foam,

            Swirling, tossing, flowing-

Meeting and conversing, coming, going.

On this side I, all through the still midday,

            Thrusting life’s facts far away,

Strive after life’s abstractions as my goal:

            Battling with my lonely soul,

                        All day I see to gain

            Futile explanation of the unplain.

                        Existence’ tide

Has flung me on the mind’s grey riverside:

            All round, the piercing light agleam

In the blazing midday, moisture-drained.

                        I think: just across the road

            The motley fripperies of the multitude

            In random flow encounter and collide,

Arousing many sounds and shapes all day and night.

                        They do not last for long:

            The clay bound mridangam

            Changes its beat, time and again.

            So every now and then

It impact makes the mind intent

            For the quickening touch

Of the all-pervading insignificant.

Yet from its lofty bank, the mind can’t fall

To mingle with the turgid Ganga of the All.

                       

I’ve been reading Tagore in translation, mostly the Gitanjali and The Selected Poems. This poem, titled “Epare-Opare” in Bengali, captured the sense of space I’ve been trying to imagine here, the proximity and distance of human life. The translation of this poem, written in 1939, is by Sukanta Chaudhuri, a professor of English at Jadavpur University.

 

This Side and That (continued)

It is difficult to describe the experience of urban India. Streets and shops are teeming with people, vendors crowd the sidewalks, and houses and apartment buildings are small and tightly bound into the concrete fabric of the inner city.  And while a recent census reports that seventy percent of households in Pune have televisions, there are of course many, many people who have no home, and very little to hold on to.

 

Life in the slum tenements, though we have only observed it from a distance, is harsh. It is dirty and dusty, there is no privacy, and people are living in spaces no larger than the excessive interior of a large American automobile. Over forty percent of the city’s population lives in the slums—densely packed stone and metal-walled mazes of human habitation. These households have no toilets, and the residents use firewood for cooking. The lives of the people who live in the slums are striking in contrast to the smaller and older apartment buildings of Pune (where we are living) as well as the newer high rise apartments (where more and more people are living).  

Apartment dwellers have the privilege of stepping out of the constant dirt and noise and smell of the street. There is a striking recollection in Naipaul who, in describing his visit to Calcutta in 1962, tells how he was both overpowered by his own wretchedness (the undrinkable water, the exhaust fumes, the dirt, the broken pavement, and the crowds) and unable to accept the conclusion that in a city as poor as India the aesthetic side of things didn’t matter. “In richer countries,” he writes, “where people could create reasonably pleasant home surroundings for themselves, perhaps, after all, public squalor was bearable. In India, where most people lived in such poor conditions, the combination of private squalor and an encompassing squalor was quite stupefying. It would have given people not only a low idea of their needs—air, water, space for stretching out—but it must also have given people a low idea of their possibilities, as makers or doers.” My question is whether the conditions of post-independence India have any bearing on what Shashi Tharoor has, more recently, called the “lack of civic culture” in India today? Does it explain, to any degree, the dirt and trash, open sewers, and perpetually ripped up streets and sidewalks? For despite the astonishingly intimate and indeed beautiful allegiances to family members, village and caste one experiences in India, I simply can’t make sense of how well kept the better off people’s private spaces (and bodies) happen to be at the same time there is an astonishing tolerance for virtually no reliable public services and a readily apparent lack of interest in the condition of public space. Tharoor puts it this way: “An acute consciousness of personal hygiene coexists with an astonishing disregard for public sanitation.” My queries have led to various explanations, none fully convincing. That care for shared space and the environment is a luxury, that one can only do so much, that corrupt public officials make it next to impossible to maintain basic public services.  Meanwhile, outside, the nerve-jangling chaos of the street, the air quality so bad that respiratory disease is common, water unfit to drink, and life expectancy deeply compromised. Though I am told it has been (and is, elsewhere) much worse—and that this is the “natural” condition of a developing city—the noise is constant and the air barely tolerable. Every day we walk dirty streets through open spaces littered with trash and excrement. And, for reasons I am trying to understand in writing this post, people throw trash everywhere without an apparent second thought—from gum wrappers to overstuffed bags of household waste. Hundreds of colorful plastic bags catch in street drains, against stone walls, and hang tangled in the wire of metal fence.  

Yesterday morning I walked again through Koregaon Park, home of the Osho International Mediation Commune (founded by Rajneesh), passing the lush gardens tucked behind concrete walls, with peaceful Westerners in their flowing saffron robes. I’ve come over on foot from Kalyani Nagar, across the river and through the tent communities on the side of the road. I’m feeling the same as I did a few weeks ago when Ellinore and I walked a part of this route. On that day, we passed suddenly from the tents along the river into the high rise mall culture of Kalyani Nagar. The packaged lifestyle experience of the commune—however enlightened it may be, or consider itself—and the all-too-familiar trappings of Western-style materialism—utterly familiar and alluring—were too much in the heat of that afternoon. Ellinore gagging at the smell of urine and feces, passing tents with toothless old women asking for rupees and little children in rags playing in the dirt. Here, acutely, the contrast between squalor and leisure, the struggling to survive and the all-too-familiar feelings of guilt that arise when one has more than one needs. Still, the artful fiction of peacefulness cultivated in the meditation resort, and the techno-buzz of the middle-class mall are, of course, one part in a large and difficult story in which all of us are playing a part. But acknowledging that does not make it any easier.