Monday November 21st

I sit in the Gordon Ramsey restaurant drinking moderately. I am looking forward to returning to Hyderabad.  London has been magnificent in the cold November sun that it is the very best season by the Thames. But I long for a little bit of Hyderabadi heat. Indeed the first few days as I shivered in the unaccustomed cold I wondered how the poor Indians who had first come to these shores must have felt as the cold blast of a London winter hit them. However, my Northern genes finally kicked in and I achieved that state of intense living that the cold brings as a blessing.

The question everybody asked:  How was India?

The answer I gave to everyone: Heaven and Hell

 

Heaven:  Every morning I would rise in the house we had rented  in Domalguda, an area of Hyderabad near the huge artificial lake which provides Hyderabad with a centre, and wander out down the nearby streets past the little shops to my barber. It had taken me some courage to venture into the tiny hole in the wall from which he operated . However there are few pleasures in life like been shaved first thing in the morning with a cut throat razor. The whole day is immeasurably improved. My barber, who is a genius at shaving and haircutting is a miserable sod. He speaks some English , but not as much as his claim to a degree in business would suggest. But he is a great believer in “Life isn’t what you know but who you know” and he doesn’t know the right people. His other continuous moan is that all his competitors are drunks. So frequently does he make this claim that I suspect he must be a tippler himself but at 7.30 in the morning his hand is steady. I pay him 100 rupees which is 3 times the going rate.  He is not very obviously pleased. Then it is onto my buffalo milk curd woman who brings out of her fridge the curd that she has made earlier in the morning. Like many Indian women she is strikingly beautiful  but I feel in too much of an alien land to risk flirtation. A huge helping of curd costs 10 rupees. Then to complete my breakfast I wonder over to the dhosa seller.  For the first two months I was here I avoided the street food on the grounds that I was quite fond of breathing. However, I finally conquered this hysterical fear of ingesting foreign substances. I was so fed up with eating the unbelievably indifferent curries that are served in Indian restaurants that I reached the stage that I would try anything to get something that tasted and tasted hot. The street sellers are incredible. They are acrobats of the highest order. The dhosa is tossed turned and finally prepared with skill and panache. Then the curry is put in a little plastic bag and the whole thing is wrapped in a packet of used newspaper. 12 rupees. Not only more delicious than a full English but undoubtedly more healthy. The final task of the morning is to get The Hindu, our daily newspaper. Nominally a paper of the Communist Party (M) it is only slightly to the left of the Daily Telegraph but it is a good paper which reasonable foreign coverage and op-ed pages that put the Guardian to shame.

Then Ramesh phones to say that he has arrived.  A strong bond formed in my escape from the Nature Cure Hospital has become the basis for a daily relationship. Wherever Flavia or I want to go in Hyderabad Ramesh takes us. Unlike all other Auto drivers he knows the city intimately and I feel as though I have been provided with my own personal juggernaut as he whisks me from fish market to liquor store to EFLU campus. On our way to the university Ramesh asks me if I want chai and if I have time we stop at his favourite chai shop where more acrobatics are performed as liquids are poured from glass to  glass as though in some magical ceremony. When I first got here I thought Indian tea made with warm milk and sugar was absolutely disgusting but I always enjoyed the show and now I am beginning to enjoy the tea.

 

While the magic is performed I buy my second Hindu (two and a half rupees) of the day and I start reading. Now I enter Hell. In the last 16 years 250,000 farmers have killed themselves in India. This is the greatest mass suicide in human history and gives some idea of the hell on which this heaven of cheap prices is based. One might think that nothing had changed since Mother India with its predatory money lender but in fact this is not nature but history. The predatory money lenders have gone but they have been replaced by micro-finance which knows that small farmers tied to their land are very good bets as borrowers. And the farmer has been rendered even more helpless by genetically modified crops for which they cannot even grow their own seeds. Endlessly in debt to the banks and agr0-biz, what remains the same as Mother India is that it is almost always the cost of a wedding that provokes the final catastrophe. These stories of suicide vie for place with the “encounter killings” of Maoists, horrific stories of violence against women and endless, endless accounts of tribals being displaced from their traditional homes in one disgusting scam or another. As if this was not bad enough the Indian rich do not bother to hide their contempt for all these ‘poor people”. The fat and ugly boss of Kingfisher airlines ,whose oily tones and disgusting sentiments assault one everytime one takes one of his planes is a  liquor magnate and general show off. When he was asked what he thought about the poor people he had displaced from their traditional lands to build his Formula 1 circuit. “Why bother about these people” he replied “Just look at our GDP, all our growing wealth indicators and concentrate on that.” The reporter, unsurprisingly, could not point out that all these figures are as fraudulent about social well being as Indian politicians. But in India these two mendacities have become one. Hell.

 

 

As I type those lines Flavia rings. The Indian Embassy has refused her the re-entry visa she requires, it being a requirement of tourist visas that if the holder leaves India they cannot return for three months. I’ve rung Denis who in turn has rung Keith Vaz who has in turn spoken to the official the Indian High Commission charged with relations with English MPs. But no.

 

I have not felt so disappointed for decades. Flavia has been the best companion on the Indian adventure and to finish it without her is horrible.

 

Now I’m running. The period from the 8^th was the start of the sprint but the dash is the week we promote the Consortium in Delhi and Bombay

In Hyderabad I meet with the Cultural Studies department for a formal debrief. Then it’s the penultimate class and: Million Dollar Baby. By now the class have really got Eastwood and here he uses his acting skills for the penultimate time in his allegory about abortion. Then meeting with Satya and Mhadav. Plans. On Flavia Mhadav suggests Sunil Khilnani. Sunil was one of the original founders of the Consortium and I certainly know him well enough to approach him with a desperate request.  Three days later Flavia gets her visa. We well miss the Ajante caves and Goa but we will finish our season in Hyderabad.

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