We were among the first people in line for our flight from Milan Linate airport to Frankfurt (Lufthansa, connecting on to Delhi). As we checked in, a young Italian couple arrived at the counter beside us. I had previously noticed the woman, wearing a clingy, spaghetti-strapped top, and thought in passing, “I hope she’s not going to India dressed like that.”
She was. They were… or not. No foreigner can enter India without a visa, and it’s part of the check-in agent’s job to ensure that all passengers have the papers they need for their final destination. The agent looked through their passports, then asked if they had visas. “What visas?” they asked. A long discussion ensued. The travel agent who sold them the tickets had not mentioned the need for a visa. None of their friends who had previously travelled to India had mentioned it. The airline agent had to be wrong!
They were finally more or less convinced that they needed a visa, but still suffered under the illusion that they would be able to get one and still make that 10:30 am flight. The airline agent thought they had to go to Rome for a visa. At that point I intervened and explained that they could get visas at the Indian consulate in Milan, and, if they applied this morning, they could pick up the visas in the evening. I confirmed that they did need visas, and showed them ours.
Ross and I felt sorry for them. What a crushing disappointment, to be all ready to depart on your big trip, and find out you can’t go. As we walked towards security, Ross said, “I wonder if they know they need shots?”
The flights were uneventful – about the best anyone can hope for in this day and age. Why is it that flights from Italy always park at the furthest possible gate in any other European airport? Without fail, when I fly from Italy to anywhere, I end up walking miles just to reach the terminal, or even having to take a bus from tarmac to terminal. Gah! Ross summed it up: “I guess they think Italians like buses.”
The departure wing where we had to wait for the flight to Delhi is one of the most boring airport areas I’ve ever been in. Other parts of Frankfurt airport seem reasonably well-equipped. This one had only a couple of sausage stands (when many of the people on flights to India are probably vegetarian!) and beer bars and some uninteresting shops, and there was a shortage of seats for all the people waiting – I have yet to take a flight to India that isn’t absolutely full.
In India, as you know, we are all related to each other. Kids routinely call complete strangers “Uncle” and “Aunty”, maid-servants call the woman of the house Bhabhi (brother’s wife), and the elderly are instantly your parents or grandparents (Maa-ji, Bapu-ji, etc). And so I have taken particular interest in what appellations complete strangers have used for me over the years.
As a young girl and teenager, I was a Beti (daughter), although I recall at least one occasion on which I was actually called “Daughter” in English by an elderly salesman. As a young “westernized” woman in my 20s, I would be called shishter (sister). If, however, I was dressed in Indian clothes (rather than jeans and t-shirt), I’d be called didi (older sister) if the person was much younger, or behen (sister) if the person was older. In my 30s, I noticed a gradual shift from shishter and didi to bhabi-ji (brother’s wife, with the extra respect of ji thrown in). Now, in my 40s, I am still mostly bhabhi-ji, unless I am accompanied by my children, in which case I graduate to “Aunty-ji”. With men, the shift is more or less parallel, from beta (son) to bhaiyya (brother) to “uncle”. I now await with consternation the day I finally become Maa-ji (mother), or even worse Dadi-ma (grand-mother). That’s when I’ll know I’ve well and truly aged!!
Yes, there are various words that can be and are used… these are just the ones most common in Mumbai, where the local lingo is a mish-mash of Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and English. In various parts of India you may find Mausi (mother’s sister), Chachi (father’s brother’s wife), etc., but these are generally for older women. For a younger woman, Didi and Bhabhi are more appropriate. Bhabhi also acknowledges your status as a married woman, and therefore, presumably due the “respect” that comes automatically with marriage. Second, it also denotes a direct relationship to a close relative (i.e., the person is saying he is your husband’s brother), so you can trust them. These are just theories from the top of my head, and I seriously doubt such thoughts go through anyone’s head when they call me bhabhi, but that is probably part of the reason for its wide usage. Another possibility could have been wife’s sister, but the word in question (saali) is also used as a swear-word, so that won’t do! Also, words for relations tend to differ in different parts of the country. Bhabhi is one of the few which is more or less the same everywhere and also in languages other than Hindi.
I feel that the reason you are called Aunty rather than any Hindi equivalent – firstly, I think kids probably think it is cool to use English words (especially to a foreigner). Second, kids may not know (at least when they’re very young) that each word denotes a specific relationship, for example, they may know that both “chacha” and “mama” are uncles, but may not know that a chacha is always your father’s brother, whereas a mama is always your mother’s brother. Or, perhaps, even if they DO know, they must wonder as to whom they should relate you to – their mother or their father. So, the neutral Aunty is better!
Zafar adds some more thoughts and experiences on Indian terms of address:
[But why bhabhi, brother’s wife, instead of (I don’t remember the words) husband’s sister etc. etc.?]
Slightly more distant/less familiar? Though I think it’s probably a Bombay thing…in Delhi men shamelessly call women behenji (sisterji) with no thought for propriety.
[And, in India and/or with Indian friends, even I am Deirdre-aunty to my friends’ kids. Which begs another question: why not the Hindi equivalent of aunty?]
The generic thing:
I agree with Yuti that ‘Aunty’ is the generic fall-back. I’s also never used with your actual (biologically related) aunts, who are almost ALWAYS the Hindi (or whatever) word. In my own experience I also used Maasi etc. with very close friends of my parents, while Aunty was for everybody and anybody. (Er… unless they were Uncle, of course.)
The gender aspect:
Those couples who were friends of my parents and who had graduated, so to speak, beyond Uncle/Aunty to the Indian words when addressed, were called:
The men: Chacha (Father’s brother) and
The women: Maasi (Mother’s sister).
While the superficially correct thing to do (since they were married to each other) would have been to call them ‘Chacha and Chachi (father’s brother’s wife)’, the whole point of the exercise was to place these unrelated adults in a family context – at which point it became more ‘proper’ (and completely unconscious) to classify the women as your mother’s sisters and the men as your father’s brothers.
The ethnicity/language aspect:
Oddly enough, language/ethnicity also comes into this. (Which might explain why the instinctive ‘Deirdre Aunty’ in your case.) Sticking to mother’s friends, for the sake of consistency/simplicity, these included:
Devahuti Maasi (Punjabi Hindu)
Suchandra Mashi (Bengali Hindu, hence Maasi transforms to Mashi)
Zehra Khala (Gujarati Muslim, hence the use of the Urdu version, Khala, for Maasi.)
I suppose that what I see out my office window are technically Alps, but I can’t get used to calling them “mountains”. In Mussoorie, we lived at 7000 feet (2133 meters) and called that a “hillside.” Here in Lecco I live at 400 meters, and it’s supposed to be a mountain. The Alp on whose slopes we live, il Resegone, reaches a mere 1874 meters (6148 feet).
In reality, this nomenclature problem originates with the British, who founded Mussoorie and other towns in India and called them “hill stations.”
“To use the word ‘hill’ to refer to stations balanced precariously on the edges of ridges some six to eight thousand feet in elevation seems, on the face of it, a rather odd choice of terminology. It has been argued that the Himalayan stations seemed as though they were situated on little more than hills because they were set against the backdrop of the high country. But the universal adoption of the term ‘hill station’… also suggests an etymological effort to minimize the disturbing implications of the sublime… To speak of hill stations rather than mountain stations rhetorically scaled back the overwhelming force of the landscape.”
Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains
I also have trouble adjusting to the Alps visually. They’re much steeper than the Himalayas I grew up on, so they look (to me) taller and further away than they actually are. From my window (and in the photo above) I see the Medale, a sheer-sided mass of rock, and, to my Himalaya-formed perceptual habits, it should be very big and very far away. But it’s not far at all – Rossella’s school is practically at its foot, and from where I’m sitting I can see the windows of the houses on its lower slopes.
My trip to India was short – too short. I arrived in Delhi at 12:30 am on Thursday, October 28th, crashed at a hotel for a few hours with my classmate Fiona, then at 6:55 am we hopped on the train to Dehra Dun (where we met lots of other Woodstockers). From Dehra Dun we took a taxi to Mussoorie, arriving at our final destination around 3 pm. After that it was non-stop, very intense reunion until Monday morning, when the bulk of our class left again in buses. Anne (escaped from Afghanistan) and I had a leisurely day around the school and took the train back down Monday evening, arriving in Delhi at 11 pm, where we joined Marilyn in a room at the Park Hotel, just off Connaught Place (very central).
As planned, we spent Tuesday and Wednesday shopping. I have a new house to decorate, remember, and India is the perfect place to buy wonderful fabrics at ridiculously low prices. I also had a specific assignment fromRossella, who wanted to decorate her room in bright pinks.
My classmates, knowing what I’d be up to in Delhi, had given me a gift certificate for Fabindia: 2000 rupees, = $45. This may not sound like much, but it went a long way: I got a new cotton bedspread for our master bedroom, in shades of pale blue and green to go with the peacock batik hanging over our bed; placemats-and napkins, oven mitts, apron, etc., all in yellow to go with our new yellow kitchen; a tablecloth for a gift; some cushion covers; and I don’t remember what else.
I had arranged with Uday Tour to have a car with driver for both days in Delhi, at US $35 per day. Yes, it’s possible, and probably cheaper, to grab taxis as you go, but it would have added considerably to the hassle factor. With your own car, you can leave your shopping in the trunk (or boot – Indians use the British term) as you go from place to place, rather than carrying it around. And you don’t have to haggle with taxi drivers at every stop. Even with your own A/C (air-conditioned) car, just getting around Delhi is tiring. With the new metro and constant road-building, traffic has improved, but is still bad enough, and distances are large, or at least seem that way. It’s stressful riding, partly because most drivers seem to lean on the horn all the time. I caught one of ours beeping when there was no comprehensible reason to do so – he was making a turn from a clear lane into a clear lane, and I couldn’t see anybody in his way. I think it was just force of habit. The blare fades into the subconscious after a while, but I still found it tiring.
When we had finished about two hours of looking at all the four or five Fabindia stores in Greater Kailash I N Block (this is a Delhi street address), with a rest stop for some very decent coffee and a glance into the other stores in the block, we piled our purchases in the boot and headed for our next destination: Dilli Haat (photo at top of page), a sort of idealized fake village/market with booths selling crafts and food from all over India, and occasional live performances.
The quality here is not so great, and you have to bargain to get justifiable prices. I ended up buying only a couple of things whose quality I did approve of, but I won’t give details here since they are Christmas presents for some readers of this newsletter! We did have a nice lunch of dosas – I was greedy and ate two, for about 50 cents each.
After that we were tired and went back to our hotel. Marilyn and I walked across the street to Jantr Mantr. This was more difficult than it sounds: we had to cross a big road in fast-moving traffic. Delhi is not well supplied with crosswalks or pedestrian crossing signals, so you often have no choice but to take your life in your hands and dash across, like everyone else does. Remember that they drive on the left; in a tired moment I made this elementary mistake, and almost got hit by a bus. Delhi doesn’t have those helpful “Look Left” and “Look Right” instructions painted on the sidewalk like they do in London.
I had not been to Jantr Mantr in about 25 years, and was sad to find it degraded, much of the marble eaten away by pollution and defaced by graffiti. It’s a protected park, but cheap for Indians to enter – Rs. (rupees) 5, or 10 cents, as opposed to the Rs. 100 that foreigners pay. Because it’s cheap and central and has lots of secluded niches, it’s a sort of lovers’ lane for young Delhi-ites. Which would be fine if they didn’t feel the need to declare their love by defacing the monuments.
From there we walked to Jan Path, the kingdom of kitsch – very tiny shops selling all sorts of wonderful cheap junk. The sidewalks and plazas are crowded with human traffic, much of it trying to sell you something. That, plus the near-total darkness after sunset around 5:30 pm., made strolling around in Delhi more intense than I recalled or was prepared for. We made a quick trip to the handmade paper store on Jan Path (more presents), found Marilyn the burfi (a milky Indian sweet) she had been craving, and went back to the hotel.
We had let the car go for the day, and none of us felt like hassling with much of anything, so we elected to eat at the Park Hotel’s own Fire restaurant, offering “Indian specialties with a twist.” And so they were. I had a non-veg tandoori sampler, Anne had mutton (actually, goat) biryani, Marilyn had tandoori chicken with coriander. Everything was elegantly served and very tasty. The multi-layered glass partition separating the Fire restaurant from the Agni bar next door is etched with flame shapes, so the constantly-changing lighting from below creates a pleasing effect of multicolored flames leaping.
Marilyn left at 11 pm for her 2 am flight (most intercontinental flights out of India depart after midnight). Anne and I slept the sleep of the justly shopped-out.
The next morning we met our classmate Yuti in the hotel lobby at 10 am for the next bout of shopping. My classmates had also given me a beautiful silver bracelet, which I wanted to get adjusted as it was just big enough to slide off my hand. We walked to a nearby jewelry store in Jan Path, but they were not interested in the work. We then walked a couple of blocks on Connaught Place, but everything was still closed. Anne and Yuti remembered that the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, at the other end of Jan Path, would be open, so we walked there, accosted by touts all the way. Yuti says that Mumbai does not have these annoying guys trying to sell you things everywhere; next trip, I’ll do my shopping in Mumbai.
Cottage Industries, a government-run emporium, was drab and uninteresting 25 years ago, but has improved over time (and in the face of competition). It’s a huge, confusing building of about six stories plus mezzanine levels, offering handicrafts from all over India divided among categories (cushion covers, clothing, curtains, etc.). In each section, you select your purchases and receive a bill. This is convenient, because you don’t have to carry stuff all over the store, but also dangerous, because you don’t know how much you’re spending as you collect your sheaf of bills here and there. In the end you pay for everything at once at a central counter, and pick up all your bagged purchases at another counter.
I went crazy in there. For about $300 total, I got cushion covers galore, a hand-embroidered silk panel that I’m using to cover the open closet in my studio (the most expensive thing I bought that day, it cost Rs. 3850 – $85), cloth to make a curtain for the other open closet (in the den), bangles, bindis, various stuff for Christmas presents, and I forget what all else.
Hauz Khas
When that orgy of shopping was done, we called our car from the hotel nearby, loaded in everything, and took off for Hauz Khas, a shopping area built next to a beautiful Mughal ruin. Here we had an excellent lunch, includingbhindi (okra), which never tastes as good outside of India, and eggplant. We shopped around the area (scores of small shops, including some interesting Indian clothing designers), and I managed to find some more pink stuff for Ross, including a bright magenta rattan roll-up mat with a gold border.
To my great delight, we also found someone to fix my bracelet. He worked outside a jewelry store, but had gone for lunch when we were first directed to him, leaving several bulky items of gold jewelry on his unattended stand. Yuti said, “That can’t possibly be real gold, otherwise he wouldn’t have left it like that.” Turned out it was; when Yuti asked him about it, he explained that someone in the store was watching the whole time, so there was no danger of a thief walking off with the gold.
He shortened my bracelet, and also set the stone in my engagement ring. I had lost the original sapphire a few years ago, bought an emerald ($100) to replace it on my previous trip to India in 2002, but had not got around to finding someone in Milan to set the stone – the one place I had asked refused, saying the stone was too big for the setting.
This guy was happy to do both jobs, though he did have to stretch the prongs on the ring to fit the emerald, which is taller than the sapphire was. For extra security, he superglued it on the back. [later – Unfortunately, it didn’t hold – the stone fell out and got lost within a month.] Both jobs together took about half an hour, and cost the princely sum of Rs. 100 ($2). He might have charged more if I hadn’t been accompanied by Yuti – maybe a grand total of Rs. 200. Both processes were interesting to watch:
shot Nov 3, 2004, 2:29 mins
We were still lacking one critical item: organdy material for curtains for Ross’ room. This sheer, colorful material is widely available in Italy, imported from India at obscenely high prices. Surely I could find it cheaper in India? We asked advice of one of the shop owners in Hauz Khas, and were directed to Jagdish Store, in Lajpat Nagar – fortunately, more or less on our way back to the hotel. It took some time to find the store, find the cloth I wanted, and actually pay for it and receive it, and we were all already tired, but Anne and Yuti were magnificently patient about it, and I got some gorgeous magenta organdy material criss-crossed in gold, which will look very nice on Ross’ windows. Can’t remember right now what I paid for it, but it was a lot cheaper than it would have been in Italy.
And that did us in on the shopping. We went back to our hotel and collapsed for a while, brooding over election results, until it was time to join Yuti and her husband for dinner at a nearby pub restaurant. I packed my suitcases, and was dismayed to find that I still had room left in them – I could have bought more! I was tempted to go back for cushions to fill all the cushion covers I’d bought – in Italy, naked cushions will cost far more than the magnificent covers did in India. But I was just too tired, so my suitcases remained flabby, and I am short on Christmas presents. Damn. Next time I need to remember that I need at least three days for shopping.
Traditional dancers from I’m not sure what region of India, filmed at Dilli Haat. I have no idea why the guy in the background decided to get in on the act; the dancers seemed pretty puzzled about it, too.
shot Nov 3, 2004, 0:28 mins, 1.3 MB
The next night, we had drinks and dinner (and more drinks) at DV8, a pub restaurant in Connaught Place. The DJ very obligingly played all the really old music we requested (scribbled on napkins with fountain pen), and the bartender performed flaming tricks for the camera.
