I head out the front gate, purse over shoulder, and turn left. Ahead there are kids playing games in the street, barefoot kicking up dust with their ball. I turn right, ahead is the neighbourhood temple. I can hear the bells clang in the evening, carried by the warm breeze, the ringing echoing down the streets as worshippers clang them to alert the gods of their devotion. It is a large compound, with trees and several buildings. And, I suspect, from the laundry hanging on the roof that several families live there (and some cows too, from what I have heard in passing). I walk along the high walls of the temple compound until it forms a right angle with a wall cutting across my path. It looks like a dead end, but it’s not. There is a narrow gap, only wide enough for one person to walk down this alley. High walls on either side, and the way is strewn with rubble and trash.
I follow this until it turns a sharp right and I find myself in the alleys that run like threads between the buildings. These too are very narrow; you are rubbing shoulders with whoever passes by. And this dim twisting labyrinth remains cool throughout the day, as the sun travels across the sky, failing to stretch its burning Indian rays between the piled concreted, steel and bricks above. These alleys do have flies however; great buzzing clouds of them, resting on piles of rotting garbage and waste until some unsuspecting pedestrian disturbs the feast, and the cloud rises to a buzzing mass around the face. I have learned to walk with my mouth closed.
Doors leading to homes and courtyards stand wide open, and the line between private and public is blurred in this cool world, away from traffic and sunlight. Old men resting on mats, watching some old Bollywood movie on TV. Women washing clothes, naked children running between rooms and doors. Conversations echoing through rooms, the flashing colours of sari’s and the jingle of anklets as hips sway. I remember my feelings when first walking through these lanes. How uncomfortable I was, how self-aware, how I kept my eyes down and walked quickly. I think the intimacy of those alleys was a bit overwhelming, all those lives spilling out of doorways and window frames. I felt like a trespasser in someone’s home, walking in uninvited. As Bollywood tunes echoed off walls and women laughed and sang, I felt like an outsider.
But much has changed these past six months. These twisted alleys are now familiar, the smells of garbage and cooking, the dhobi-wallah heating coals for his iron, the noises streaming over balconies and down walls from floors above – I know them. I know my way, where to turn, where to duck and step over. And in a small, special way, I feel proud.
I emerge from this world into the sunlight and heat once again. I look up and a man smiles and waves, he works at Sandeep’s tea stall, where I had some chai this morning. He knows me. I smile, and tilt my head to the side as a response back to him and carry on. The lanes widen, and I dodge a scooter negotiating its way back into the labyrinth. I am now on Masighar, a street lined with shops, my destination.
“Hello!” I hear a yell and look up, there lounging on the seat of his rickshaw is our friend the rickshaw-wallah. Well, he has become our friend since Kyle saved him from receiving a beating several weeks back (that is another story). Now, whenever he sees us, we are greeted with a blinding smile and a wave. I smile and wave back, he too, knows me. And he also knows that Kyle is my husband, not my brother, after enquiring last week while taking me to a friend’s house where my brother was. “Nahin! Meera pati hai!” I cleared it up.
I head into a shop, pick up some dudh (milk), dahi (plain Indian curd) and chinni (sugar). Well, more like I tell the shop keeper what I want, who in turn tells the boy, who fetches said items, returns them to the shopkeeper, who gives them to me. But, they are out of bread. That is fine; I head down the street to Baxi General Store. They always have mountains of bread. I look down at the bag of groceries in my hand. How can I go in there and face the dukandars (shopkeepers) of Baxi, who also know me, when it is clear I have already bought the rest of my groceries somewhere else? Well, I do have a legitimate reason, I prefer Nestle dahi over Brittania, and Baxi only carries Brittania dahi. I practice my line in my head, in case they ask me about my loyalties to Baxi General Store. “Kyonki mujko Nestle dahi passant, ne Brittania” (Because I like Nestle dahi, not Brittania). I enter the shop, and sadly, no one seems to notice or care about my patronage to the other general store, nor my particular dahi preferences. Ah well, bread in hand, I head home.
I feel like bananas, and as I walk down the street I keep my eye out for a pul-wallah. A fruit seller who pushes a wooden cart piled high with kailae (bananas), amm (mangoes), suntarae (oranges), seib (apples) or whatever else it might happen to be that day. I practice more Hindi in my head, in an ongoing conversation with myself…
“Pul-wallah, ap kahan hain? Mujko kailae chiyea!” (Fruit guy, where are you? I want bananas!)
“Ap meera sarak par hain?” (Are you on my street?)
“Pul-wallah, ap kahan thae, ap ye dukhan mein hain?” (Fruit guy, where were you? Are you in that store?) That one rhymed. A little grammatically inconsistent perhaps, but I am proud nonetheless. I round the corner, now home again after my Hindi wanderings and wonderings. I wonder if this is the kind of thing I will remember going home, the every-day, the errands, the mundane. I wonder if I should write it down…
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