My Week: Indian parents, 'Sikhing' some peace and quiet, Gandering after Gandhi, and the perks of looking for a flat in Delhi

Hauz Khas complex - the ruins of a 13th century village, just 30 seconds walk from where I'm living 

After over a year away, I’m back in India – the weather is sublime (despite my phone telling me each morning it’s smoke outside) and with the coming of Diwali, Delhi is showing off its finest gladrags, with festive lights adorning neighbourhoods across this vast, beguiling city. I’ve found somewhere to live, and now getting down to the important things in life, namely meeting old friends and reacquainting myself with the myriad cuisines on offer, from simple yet delicious street-fare to the more refined, rich meaty curries of northern India and exquisite vegetarian thalis from the south – fuelled by regular cups of sweet chai! Anyway, here goes a series of random, disconnected vignettes from my first week. Enjoy!

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It’s almost seen as axiomatic that in India there is no such thing as privacy, and that young adults lack control over their lives, with the close scrutiny of the family and Indian society at large quick to thwart any ‘deviant’ behaviour, whether it be in love, recreation or work. A recent feature on BBC News described the efforts of Stay Uncle, a pioneering start-up in Mumbai, to provide some relief for beleaguered unmarried couples by helping them book 10-hour stays at hotels which promise discreet, non-judgemental service. Yet Stay Uncle has struggled to overcome conservative social norms; only three hotels have chosen to participate so far, with others fearing police raids or simply refusing to endorse the concept. For those couples caught committing such ‘indecency’ (which, incidentally, is not illegal under Indian law), they potentially face public humiliation, familial ostracism and the possibility of being forcibly married, under the auspices of ‘moral policing’.

Cartoon in The Times of India

Undoubtedly such beliefs lend themselves to easy exaggeration about Indian society; the parks of Delhi are well known as lovers-hangouts, offering a tacitly accepted sanctuary for those seeking some solitude.The bars a stone’s-throw from where I am living are packed at weekends with well-heeled young adults, suggesting that urban India, at least, has relaxed the straitjacket.

Equally, in many stereotypes lies a kernel of truth.  Reading the venerable Times of India the other day, I spotted a notice taken out by a Mr and Mrs Bisht – nestled amidst the latest news on the interminable India-Pakistan conflict and editorials bemoaning the lamentable state of Delhi’s air quality – informing the general public that they were disowning their son and daughter-in-law, Mr Sharad Bisht and Mrs Anupama Bisht, for ‘their ill behaviour with us.’ Anyone foolhardy to deal with these miscreants ‘will be responsible for every pros and cons at his own cost’. You have been warned.

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Paying my respects to the Mahatma

The last time I was in India, any evidence of the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi residing within the fabric of contemporary India seemed in scant supply (a film released last week called ‘Gandhigiri’, promising to ‘enlighten the audience on forgotten Gandhian values’, has been universally panned by critics – judging by the trailer, I can’t blame them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpnqlNuRWWg). Those friends at Delhi University who I had asked about Gandhi were uniformly scathing, casting him as a misogynist and no longer relevant to today’s India. The closest I had come to the Mahatma had been in the back of a rickshaw careering along the chaotic Mahatma Gandhi ring-road in Delhi, and when handling rupee notes, which bear his portrait. For a man indelibly perceived by many around the world as the anti-materialistic, austere dhoti-clad Mahatma, whose finest moments arguably came when marching on foot against the British Empire and Hindu-Muslim violence, these tributes to Gandhi seemed bafflingly inappropriate.

Getting too excited about Gandhi

With this in mind, and having taken a year-long course on Gandhi and the Indian nationalist movement in my final year at Edinburgh, I decided a visit to Birla House – where Gandhi spent the final 144 days of his life before his assassination – was in order. Lodged in what is now the leafy diplomatic enclave of Delhi, the two-storey house was undoubtedly a comfortable place of residence for an increasingly frail Gandhi, worn down by his valiant efforts to stem the communal violence raging across the sub-continent following Partition in 1947. 

Unsurprisingly, the treatment of Gandhi’s life was hagiographic; one portrait of Gandhi inside the house juxtaposed him alongside Christ hanging on the cross. To walk around the spot where Gandhi was shot the removal of shoes, as with entering a mosque, temple or gurudwara, was mandatory, the ground sanctified by the spilling of the Great Soul’s blood. Troops of schoolchildren walking past the shrine, urged on by their teachers, dutifully cried out Gandhi’s final, divine words: ‘He Ram!’ (Oh God!) In the museum, almost no mention was made of one of the most controversial episodes in his life: his decision to ‘fast unto death’ in 1933 in protest at attempts by the British to give the downtrodden Dalit, or Untouchable, community the right to elect its own political representatives. The (successful) fast was condemned by Dr Ambedkar, the leading Dalit activist of the era and the framer of India’s post-independence constitution, as a ‘foul and filthy act’, and it irrevocably soured Gandhi’s legacy amongst many Dalits.

Despite this, it was undoubtedly still a poignant experience to retrace the final steps of a titan of twentieth-century history, and view his plain room and motley collection of personal effects, including a pair of his iconic round glasses. Outside on the well-manicured lawn, a faithful acolyte weaved on a charka, the spinning wheel which Gandhi hoped all Indians would learn to use. As I left Birla House, having decided not to honour Gandhi’s memory by buying something from the souvenir shop, a street-hawker came towards me, armed with Gandhi figurines.

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The Gurudwara Bangla Sahib

After several days of flat-hunting, I spent a welcome evening at the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, the largest Sikh temple in Delhi, with a friend from when I was on exchange at Delhi University. I am neither religious nor spiritual, but I admire the egalitarian and charitable streak in Sikhism. Sitting on the spotless marble floor of the langar, or communal mess, rubbing shoulders (almost literally) with hundreds of people, me and Harbajan took a simple, yet delicious meal of rice, dal, sabzi (vegetables) and chapattis, finishing off with kheer, the local equivalent of rice pudding. Anyone, regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion or wealth, can eat without charge at the langar, which is open for up to ten hours a day, every day of the year, serving lunch and dinner and manned solely by volunteers. Afterwards, we walked around the sacred pool adjacent to the gurudwara, as monks would in a cloister, and I soon felt calm and far removed from the hustle of the city, as devotional music from the inner sanctum drifted through the cool evening air.

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Not all experiences in India are memorable or capable of being romanticised. I’m sure flat-hunting in Delhi is no more or less banal a process than anywhere else in the world. The absurd and surreal is never too far away though, and I found it in the tiny office of a property dealer in South Delhi, who regally dispensed advice from the comfort of a well-worn sofa.  For any client also seeking some cosmic wisdom and reassurance, a notice outside her tiny office proclaimed her skills as an astrologer and ability to ‘see through you’ – a somewhat unfortunate choice of phrase, given she had a lazy eye.