It took us two
days from Srinagar to Jammu via Udhampur by bus and five from Jammu to Tambaram
near Chennai by train. There were no halts, though we changed trains. A toddler
and a dog were part of our entourage, adding to our troubles and excitement.
From Bareilly to Goa in a ‘sixties’ vintage Fiat also took five days; nights
were spent in homes of friends in towns along the way. Hotels were rare and
unaffordable, as was air-travel. Shri Husband and I lived an adventurous life;
these are two of the several long journeys we’ve undertaken across the
sub-continent in the days before television, bottled water, the internet and
mobile phones came into our lives. A ‘hold-all’ carried our mattresses, linen
and shoes, and trunks carried our clothes and valuables. Food hampers were
stuffed with non-perishable snacks. Water? We got off at platforms and drank it
from the taps, never giving a thought to infections. Made us hardy.
The problem was language. As we
crossed geographical boundaries, from the desert to the mountains to the
coasts, the features of the people (and landscapes) changed rapidly, as did the
food they ate, the clothes they wore, the crafts they made. Travel wasn’t
possible on Discovery or National Geographic channels, nor through packaged
tours.
(“I could,” I said to Shri Husband,
“actually, write a best-seller on the experiences, you know, and make a lot of
money.” His answer: “Ha.”)
Today, travel
is different and the change visible.
The mekhlas-chadors of the north-east,
the lungis of UP, dhotis of Maharashtra and the runda-mundoos of Kerala are
converted into salwar-kameezes. The Punjabi-suit (that’s what we called it in
my childhood), is known as ‘dress’ in the land of its origin today. All the
brilliant weaves that made gorgeous saris in erstwhile eras are now re-designed
to make ‘suits’, something that is no longer what only men wear. (To anyone who
moans how the elegant sari is getting extinct, I say, Indian men long ago
discarded the airy dhoti-lungi for the restrictive but practical pant-shirt.
Now it’s the women’s turn to get comfortable.)
Like Bollywood, this fusion-fashion
has united the country imperceptibly. In most urban and semi-urban areas,
clothes no longer indicate caste or region. Besides cable-television and mobile-phones,
the other things connecting this vast country are the lokotsavs.
At the
recently concluded one in Panaji, I found Goans flocking to gobble dal-kachoris
from the Gujeratis and Rajasthanis. They (the local customers, not the
Gujeratis/Rajasthanis) expertly tackled its sticky, heavy, utterly delicious
sweet variation, too. Embroidered linen,
crochet-laced children’s-wear, hand-made leather footwear, preserves, masalas, people
were no longer unfamiliar with the wares on sale. An acquaintance spotted the fine
difference between a brown cane-basket and a boiled-cane green-hued one. I saw
a couple purposefully striding towards a Ferozabad stall that had metal-studded
glass pendants on sale. “The only other place I can get similar things is in
Italy,” I overheard. One upper-middle-class woman, on my asking multiple
questions, admitted that she came from a long distance away to spend several
hours each day at the utsav to search for artsy bargains: “I buy a year’s stock
of gifts.”
Birthday
return-presents, Diwali-Christmas decorations, wedding reminders /takeaways are
no longer necessarily locally made. That’s true the world over. Fridge magnet
mementoes showing (Goan?) coconut trees, caps with pictures of churches printed
on them, checked chuddies with drawstrings… are all made in Thailand.
Now that most
states in India have ‘labour’ from ‘outside’ because ‘no-one (here) wants to
work anymore’, an undocumented change is happening. Businessmen from Andhra
starting eateries in Goa are hiring cooks from Manipal and waiters from
Karnataka to serve customers from anywhere in the world. The cuisine stretches
from Schezuan samosas to wine-flavoured rasagullas to prawn-filled puris dipped
in vodka-pani.
The resultant cross-pollination
of cultures in best reflected in language. In the pure form of Konkanni/
Marathi that I learned in my growing years, a ‘polka’ was worn under the loose
‘padar’ end of a sari to cover the chest, and a ‘parkar’ beneath the
waist/pleats. The sari has long been relegated to wedding-wear, hence these
words are out-of-use in my home. The other day, I mentioned them to my
house-help who wears the traditional attire day in and out. She stared at me
blankly, uncomprehendingly. I brought out my old clothes and pointed out to her
what I was referring to. She giggled and corrected me: “Say ‘blouse’ and
‘petticoat’. Don’t talk to me in English, I don’t understand it.” She has
adopted the words ‘blouse’ (pronounced ‘billa-ooss’) and ‘petticoat’ as her
own.
I always pay
attention to the views of regular travellers and I don’t mean airline crew.
I asked one of
the stall-keepers, who’s been criss-crossing the country doing lokotsav
business for the past many years, which his/her favourite state was/is. “Goa,”
s/he said, “And Chennai”. S/he may have said the first to please me, I
surmised, but why Chennai? S/he replied, “We don’t get drunks and louts
bothering us in these two places.” Whoever says that Goa’s a place for drinking
should meet this person. I was then informed me that the one thing common everywhere was the hera-feri that
happened during allotment of stall locations. “Paisa,” she said, “works
wonders.”
“Good to know,”
quipped Shri Husband cynically, “that in this world, where terrorists’ bullets
and the rise/fall of the dollar are unpredictable, some things remain
unchanging.”
Feedback:
sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in
No comments:
Post a Comment