“Women don’t read the news,” says Mansoor, over Americanos in India’s only outlet of Costa Coffee. The walls are covered with Italian odes to the coffee bean, as beneath them the only white faces indulge in blueberry sponge cakes masquerading as muffins. “Women only like romance. They just read the fiction. They watch the movies.” He pauses, and reaches in his Diesel jeans for his chortling Nokia, “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Mansoor and I had met in McDonald’s thirty minutes earlier. Always shunning the Golden Arches of Capitalism in London, they had this morning saved me from the men haggling for my attention in Connaught Place. He was the forth Indian man to ask me for a cup of coffee in less than fifteen minutes, but this time I felt it was better to be with someone I half-trusted if only to buy some relative peace and quiet. He was busy assuring me that he had “only Western friends.” He seemed disappointed that my reaction wasn’t more enthusiastic.
“I read the news all the time. Two, three newspapers a day. And the only TV I watch is news.” He nods enthusiastically. “You have to watch what is real, you know?” I politely agree, pondering whether he would be giving the same spiel to a female Indian journalist, or indeed, to any male. We part on the promise that I might come to a Bollywood movie with him next weekend, and that I will take his mobile number. In my time in India I am making a collection of these. I wish bleached-blonde hair worked this well in Britain.
India is the only country in the world where journalism is growing – and it’s growing at a prolific rate. Waiting for a friend to finish a project in the offices of the Hindustan Times this evening, I perused just a tiny fraction of it’s rivals: the Hindu, the Times of India, The Mail Today (which, disconcertingly is the Indian arm of the Daily Mail. Seeing its unmistakeable typeface sent a small shudder down my spine). The Times of India has just overtaken The Sun (!) as having the largest circulation of any English language newspaper in the world (3.8 million), and a readership of 14 million. Indian Vogue has just celebrated its first birthday. India has it’s own People magazine, the Times Group (which owns the Times of India, among others) has just bought Hello! and Grazia, and young women guzzle the European edition much gusto. While in the West, the rabbit loses impetus, the Indian tortoise eases merrily on by. And as Indian women get their fix of fame and fashion, Mansoor gets his antidote to romance.
A few streets away, and a few coffee offers later, I meet Raj, a boy of about fifteen. He’s dressed in a checked shirt and jeans, and, head cocked nonchalantly to the side, asks me if I’m shopping.
Earlier, I’d had an unfortunate incident with an overzealous tuktuk owner and a cartel of emporium workers. The owner, persuading me that the shop I was standing outside was ‘too’spensive’, took me to a ‘good quality, fix-price emporium’ for 10 rupees. Here, I was fawned upon and plied with cups of tea by carpet sellers and women peddling £300 pashminas. I politely refused. When their smiles turned to scowls, I persuaded them that I would buy a 400 rupee (£5) scarf – the cheapest in the shop – but only so that the gods would bless them (and their first customer). After this, I vowed never again to follow the advice of someone on the street who told me it was ‘too’spensive’.
Except Raj, because he doesn’t appear to be working on commission; because he says, dubiously, that he is trying to practise his English; and because he had simply one of the brightest grins I had ever seen. He’d take me home, he said, and he’d point out some shops with ‘good price’ along the way. Walking me through the streets of New Delhi, he tells me that he is on his school holidays, but that he is learning English and that he wants to get a job. What job? “In an office.”
Raj has many ideas about what I should do in life. But mainly, he says, I have to have what he called ‘Indian Mind’. “You must get map so you have Indian Mind,” he says, prancing between lanes of deranged traffic. “You must put away guide book. This is not Indian Mind. People will give you the Five Fingered Direction,” he laughs, splaying his left hand in front of him. “You ask for direction here, they will point anywhere with any finger. Doesn’t matter. When you know this you will have Indian Mind.” (I had already experienced the ‘Five Fingered Direction’ when I asked the guard at our door where India Gate was. Though vaguely visible through some trees to my right, he smiled, nodded and pointed at the sky).
Raj had made me consider how far I was from Indian Mind, map or no map. There was so much that confuses me about this country, and so much that they misunderstand about me in return. Try explaining to the man selling me a turquoise-encrusted sitar that I am technically jobless, saddled with a student loan, and only have a fixed amount of hold luggage on my return flight. And yet I had spent a sweaty, dusty morning resenting these merchants and their long teeth.
As we near home (or so I think), Raj turns and asked me if I would buy him an English textbook. He was finishing school this year, he says, and needs to carry on learning if he wants to get a job. I feel hurt. Somehow I thought that Raj wasn’t one of these men in RayBans and Diesel denims, seeking the kudos of a white girl’s company for coffee. I thought he wasn’t a member of a tuktuk-merchant conspiracy, or a behind-the-counter scowler. I offer to pay him part of it, but he shakes his head: he doesn’t want my money. In fact, he seems just as hurt that I would want to pay him. And it was there I stop, and think, I don’t understand Indian Mind, but I’m going to see if it works. And, as he pulls me towards an old bearded bookseller, I feel strangely benevolent bequeathing Raj with a Hindi-English dictionary (and fairly clever that I’d bartered for it). I reflect on my sense of British propriety and instinctive distaste at the charity-ask. I think, why can’t we trade the things we have: me my 700 rupees (£9) for a textbook, and he, his knowledge of the Indian Mind and the Delhi Map? I feel like there was something I had learned from Raj, something counterintuitive and yet, perhaps, ever so right. This, maybe, was Indian Mind.
And with that, Raj calls me a tuktuk, since, it appeared, he actually has no idea how far we are from my home. He also explains that his name was really Ricky, writes down his cell phone number, and runs off, kicking dust into the air as he goes.
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