Monday 8th December 2008

"Which religion you from?" asks a man trying to sell us some bangles. He rattles them and smiles. He looks a bit like the lollypop catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and it's starting to scare me a bit. I look at Elsa. We've been in this situation before: there's no point in telling someone in India you are an atheist; it's just not an answer. So we're Christian. And we hope people don't really ask any more questions after that.

The conversation continues in the newsroom.

"Tomorrow is Eid," says one of the online editors. We stare at her in confusion. It was Eid in October, we say. With a justifiable look of disdain for our ignorance, she explains that no, that was Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Tomorrow is Eid ul-Adha, the Muslim festival of slaughter and sacrifice. We've heard nothing about it.

Usually at this time of year, the streets of the Muslim area of Jama Masjiid are full of goats and cows, painted in vibrant colours, dressed in gold and silk, being fed almonds and sweetmeats, dressed and ready for a glorious public death. They would be sold, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of rupees. In remembrance of Abraham's willingness to slay his son before God, they would be taken to mosques or private homes to be slaughtered and cooked. Then the meat would be shared with the poor.

This year, however, fear hangs in the Delhi air along with the dust and mist. Many think that enough bloodletting has already happened. And for those willing to stretch the analogy to fit their agenda, an unfortunate parallel can be made. For many see, in both instances, the butcher's knife in Islamic hands.

As a result, at this year's Eid ul-Adha, Muslims are tiptoeing where they should be dancing. Clerics have pleaded with Muslims to mute their feasting and celebration in respect for the Mumbai dead. And with the memory of fresh blood in India's head, there is a fear that as Eid descends, blood will be shed on the streets as well as the slaughterhouses. Bollywood stars have declared that they will not mark Eid with celebration, and ordinary people and Muslim groups have made their own pledges. But goats will still be sold, and merriment will still take place. Since, for many Muslims, this fear of reprisal is nothing new.

Since Partition - the largest single migration of a people in history - Hindus have traditionally found their home in India, and Muslims in Pakistan. Most sectarian conflicts have been characterised by a Hindu-Muslim element. Muslims in India have long felt the need to fight for civil rights that they feel are denied them. Now, as India accuses Pakistan of harbouring Muslim terrorists, fears are as sharp as they ever were.

During the day, in the hustle and bustle of Connaught Place, you might be forgiven for thinking that Muslims don't really exist in this city. But in the early mornings, the call to prayer rings out across old Delhi. In the evenings, crowds jostle in Jama Masjiid, weaving in and out of market stalls selling copies of the Koran and wearing the Muslim veil or kufie. They cook chicken and mutton in huge clay pots, and the occasional non-Muslim will sneak in for a kebab, knowing that when it's time for meat, no one does as well as a Muslim.

In fact, there are more Muslims in India today than there are in Pakistan. Yet they represent one of the most disaffected minorities in India. Even the Dalits - the 'untouchables,' the lowest caste in India, who still in some parts of the country will not even be glanced at by another Indian - have more jobs and higher wages on average than Indian Muslims. Amongst Dalit men, there is a 47% unemployment rate, thanks in part to laws set in place which reserve a certain quota of jobs for people of their caste. Yet 52% of Muslim men are unemployed in India, with no laws to protect them. Over half of Muslim men over the age of 46 cannot read. Though Muslims represent 11% of India's population, they make up 40% of its incarcerated criminals.

Many of India's Muslims, themselves angry and alienated, find themselves in a situation where they cannot freely celebrate their own festival. To the least optimistic, they represent a tinderbox waiting for the first spark.

So perhaps, given the hush around this year's Eid ul-Adha, it is not surprising that we had no idea what day it was today. When dates are dictated by the moon and the Muslim calendar, it leaves us heathen completely baffled. But this year is particularly auspicious. Tonight in Jama Masjiid, as people adorn their goats for their last night on the town, the silent alarm bells are ringing.

Friday 17th October 2008

Today is Karva Chauth. For the last few days, the markets have smelled of henna paste as men and women sit in the gutter with little paper cones, painting women’s hands for the festival. The fine, burnt orange patterns of henna snake around fingers and knuckles into the intricate shapes of flowers and birds, turning a fierce brown on the palms of the hands where they are absorbed into the fleshy skin. “Yours doesn’t come off though,” laughed one of the women in the office, pointing to the slightly blueish tattoo of a swan on my hand, which was needled into my skin last year somewhere in the East Village.

This particular coworker wears red and silver bangles all the way up her forearms, stretching from wrist to elbow. It’s a tradition amongst some wives to wear them until the first anniversary of their wedding (in the shower too, I can confirm on further investigation). Karva Chauth is a marriage-related day. It derives from the story of Karva, whose husband (fairly carelessly it must be said) was swallowed by a crocodile whilst having a bath. Karva lassoed the offending reptile with some string, before taking him to Yama, the Lord of Death to ask him to send the crocodile to hell. Seeing the ‘power of a devoted wife,’ he did so, and freed the husband, who presumably found a new bathing spot from then onwards.

So today women fast from dawn til dusk to pray for the long lives of their husbands. Not even a glass of water passes their lips, which is quite a tough call in the Delhi heat. It might be considered a chauvinist practice, but for the fact that in return women get showered with jewellery and clothes, and fed by their husbands after dusk. And what woman in the West hasn’t starved themselves for a man who’ll buy them presents and dinner?

It’s a grumble my friend Neil, who is Indian-American, has with these festivals. “They always end in the girls getting presents,” he says. (Neil has sisters).

But while pious women stay at home avoiding the fridge, the tall, amazonian kind are still strutting down the catwalks at Delhi Fashion week. There to finish a couple of documentaries for the web, we meander in and out of silver trees and chairs draped in satin and other pointless installations, and duck in between besuited and unbesmirched buyers tipsily waving bulbous glasses of chardonnay in the air in circular motions.

Indian catwalk models are among the worst paid in the world. They are often not paid at all, and go through 12-day long fittings without seeing a single rupee. They often fail to get jobs on runways in New York, Milan or Paris, because neither their families nor their sensibilities will stomach the idea of appearing half-naked in public. In some of the catwalk shows today, the girls look nervous and attempt to pull down their skirts as they strut. Vinu is a fierce looking, six foot tall amazonian that had appeared at every show. She has cheekbones like razors and huge, scarleted lips that puckered with every vowel. “I’m here for I, me, myself,” she says, turning her better profile towards our camera. Presumably Vinu is not fasting for her husband today.

Ten minutes later she appears on the runway. Her long, brown, athletic legs make her look as if she could clear the whole thing in two strides. The wall of cameras flash away as she struts her way through the glittery path, wearing little more than a bra underneath her sari. But what a sari! Dripping with sequins and beads, wrapped around her taught, wiry frame, she looks like she was painted by Klimt. India hasn’t yet given into denim and viscose, despite it’s practicality in a country that is so poor and dirty. I finally understand why.

There are few white faces in the crowd, but among them is a heavily pregnant British journalist who is covering the event for Womens Wear Daily. She sits in the corner licking a chocolate ice cream cone. Normally, she writes for The Economist, she says. Later, we bump into a gaggle of blonde Swedish women, one of whom is a buyer for Ikea. They too stare around at the trendy deluge of Delhiites that mill around. It’s still seems a little incongruous standing at an international fashion week, full of people in diamonds and stilettos, in a country that has one of the highest number of citizens living below the poverty line.

It’s easy, in fact, as the Friday night champagne parties begin, to forget you are in India at all. It’s one of many such oubliesques around Delhi, mainly in the bars of five star restaurants (or otherwise in the city’s branch of TGI Fridays). It isn’t until we attempt to make our way back to the offices to edit the tape that, stuck in a gridlock, we remember it’s festival day. Moreover, it’s dinnertime and hundreds of couples all around us, sharing the seats of motorbikes, are off to their celebrations.

So today was women’s day. In kitchens over Delhi, mothers, aunts, wives and daughters sat in kitchens, making conversations and pujas and distracting themselves from the growlings of their stomachs. At Fashion Week, where fasting is an everyday matter for most, young girls bathed in attention. And tonight was a time for them all to let go: some to their dinners and some to their champagne. Both, I imagine, were toasting to longevity.

Thursday 9th October 2008

We’re sitting in a tuk tuk at a road block. I say sitting, but there are actually five of us piled in here. Someone’s neck is cricked, their ear to the roof, and there’s an unidentified leg in the air. I have my elbow in someone’s crotch and I’m sure someone’s hand is somewhere it shouldn’t be. At the crossroads ahead, barriers have been pulled across the road by policemen with rifles slung over their shoulders. Malena jumps out and approaches one such officer who is chatting on his mobile phone and swinging his firearm around his hip. She asks him whether his gun is loaded, and he responds by pulling out the magazine and showing her the bullets. She emits a small gulp.

This brings us no closer to fnding out what is behind the barriers, and now the pop of fireworks begins, and frenzied people are dismount their motorbikes and open their car doors in order to get a glimpse of sparkle in the sky behind the flyover. The only light to be seen is the intermittent flashes from the tops of Delhi Police cars. It’s universal human behaviour at this point for the stranded to ask each other questions and titter. There always seems to be the man who says he knows what’s going on; thus a taxi driver says a VIP is on his way, and that we won’t be moving for another thirty minutes. All of Delhi, it seems, is in chaos.

This is where all of Delhi has been all day, we think to ourselves. We had waited for thirty minutes for our car to take us to work this morning before we realised that it was never going to come. When we finally arrived at the offices, it was deserted. We were almost in some post-apocalyptic movie. Just before lunchtime the young guy on our team, who was the only person working on our floor that day, said we’d have a hard time trying to find food. Malena, ever resourceful, ordered Domino’s Pizza.

It’s not uncommon during this holiday season for someone to skip work without informing anyone – the universal explanation is that he or she “is probably at some Hindu festival.” Some festival, because there as many gods as there are Catholic saints and far more interesting: beautiful women, swans, demons, elephants; gods with no legs, gods with ten legs, gods with a thousand eyes, or with none at all. Gods with so many avatars, thus appearing in so many different forms, that it is competely impossible to decide which is which. And they have feast days that are almost as impossible to calibrate as the Queen’s birthdays. Puja (prayers) are offered on these days, hence the absenteeism. Today, however, everyone has skipped work. We had no idea why, because the people who make excuses for the people who skipped work has also skipped work.

We spent much of the day in the echoing silence of the office, before giving up and deciding to go home. Hailing at tuk tuk was almost impossible. The drivers has disappeared. And mysteriously, trucks would pass us on the road, carrying huge plaster statues of some god’s avatar. Occasionally, we’d hear the roll of drums, but as soon as we turned around to locate it, it was gone. It was as if all of Delhi was staging some elaborate practical joke.

But no. Eventually a Delhi-ite friend revealed the reason no one has bothered to tell us until today. Today is Dussehra, a major Hindu festival celebrated across South Asia. The rule of thumb in Hinduism seems to be each to his own (perhaps it’s really a post-modern religion?) and so in the North of India, they choose to celebrate Dussehra as the day the demon Ravan was vanquished by King Ram. Ravan was exiled through trickery (what trickery it was doesn’t matter). Whilst there, he was tempted by Ravan’s sister who tried to make him marry her (Ram already had a lovely lady-wife Sita, who, gallingly for her, was living with him on the ashram at the time). Spurned, Ravan’s sister returned home to tell her brother the story, and he went to fight Ram. Of course, good triumphed and Ravan lost. And so, huge Wicker Man-esque effigies of Ravan are burnt across the city, with fireworks and feasting and celebration that makes Guy Fawkes night look like some kids with a bunch of sparklers.

And here we are, having found some of the missing population of Delhi, albeit at a road block. We are still tantalised by the sound of fireworks and the smell of ash. Someone says they can see Manmohan Singh, and another Sonia Gandhi, but no one seems to be passing by at all. And then, inexplicably, the road block is pushed aside, and hundreds of drivers and passengers run and clamber back into their seats and rickshaws and motorbikes and trucks and the sound of car horns begins again, and somewhere someone is shouting as vehicles try to nudge each other in desperation to get going again.


As we hit Old Delhi, we are overtaken by the sidesaddle women on the backs of motorbikes, this time in crimson and emerald and russet-colours, flashing golden jewellery, their lips painted scarlet and their eyes smudged with kohl. They stop at the traffic lights and compliment each other on their outfits. Children scream and run along the roadside. The pop of fireworks can still be heard. Then, around the corner looms the mighty terracotta glow of the Red Fort, and we’ve found the place where all of Delhi have been. Thousands of them, teeming.


In the air is the smell of spice and ash, gunpowder and hot fat. The flourescent strips of fairground rides can be seen in the distance, as people whizz around ferris wheels at a rate to make a fighter pilot queasy. White tents are lit up with strings of fairy lights, and all around is dancing and dizzyness and people: so many people that you wonder how the crowd moves. Men climb onto trucks and railings, billboards and tree branches to try and catch a glimpse of the flaming Ravan. Below them, children clutch enormous bunches of heart-shaped balloons with both hands, trying to sell what they can. A street vendor pops corn over a huge fiery dish. The tungsten glows of ice cream vendors dot the pavement at intervals. And all around in chaos as people fight and claw their way through the crowd, tripping over children or jumping over leaking sewage pipes, embers raining down on their heads.


This is where Delhi is tonight, and it’s a whole lot more interesting than being at work. If this is what praying is, give me Dussehra any Sunday morning.

Tuesday 7th October 2008

I am the Anglo-Saxon terrorist.

The security guard looked at my gate pass suspiciously. I am white (starlingly so, I realise among these Indian faces), blonde, and for some reason I come dressed in a salwar kameez. He is dressed in a crisp blue shirt with a gold logo on the lapel, and wears his hat straight on his head. He a slightly sadistic smirk lurks beneath his thick moustache. He jangles his keys on his belt – they’re on a huge metal ring, like those on a cartoon jailer. He sits me down kneecap-to-kneecap with his junior officer, who eyballs me intensely. Occasionally one will shoot me a sentence in Hindi, and it is all I can do to shrug and look confused. Perhaps they think this is one of my tactics. I wave to my Indian-skinned colleague Neilesh who is sitting on the other side of the room, though he’s sensible enough not to open his mouth and reveal his American identity. I’m not allowed to move. They’re clearly not convinced that I really know him. It’s quite possible that the Hindu fundamentalists have sent me as a mole to infiltrate the newspaper. It’s quite possible that I am the Anglo-Saxon terrorist.

Twenty minutes earlier, I had asked the same security guard to let me into the office I’d been designated the day before. He looked at me, and then looked at the door and gabbled something in Hindi. When I shook my head and shrugged he picked up the phone and called security downstairs. He asked the morning risers who were in the newsroom who I was. None of them had any idea. So here I am, pinned to the chair by the gaze of the junior security guard. I’m wishing my boss into the office as soon as possible. A young man comes round with the chai – he served me several times yesterday. He nods to me, but his ackowledgement doesn’t fly with the newsroom gestapo.

India has become a security-paranoid country. Metal detectors line the entrance to buildings and stations: ramshackle planks of wood nailed together with wires protruding from the corners. Officers take your names and sign you in and out from desks that are so makeshift they barely stand on four legs. Security hasn’t been part of India’s culture. But it is now.

India’s too busy fighting its own terrorists to bother about the world’s. Muslim mujahedeen have terrified marketplaces. Hindu nationalists attack Christian refugee camps. The Naxalists, an underground Marxist movement that has been growing over the past decade, has been fighting a guerilla war for years along the central belt of the country. Stories of rapes, bombings, riots and slaughters shout from every day’s front page, creating a white noise that is slowly reaching fever pitch. There’s an electricity of fear in the air that Delhiites tell me never existed before. A filler story which ran in the Times of India today said psychologists have found an increasing number of anxiety disorders they link to terrorism. It’s not the veracity of the story that matters here, of course, but the fact it made it to the paper in the first place perhaps says something. The atmosphere is something akin to the fear the IRA inflicted on England’s cities a decade ago: attacks are not strategic, but instead are visited on anyone who gets in the way.

I’m not an Anglo-Saxon terrorist. Instead, I’m the intern at the newspaper who no one’s quite sure about. And the fact that I am quarantined and guarded here at this desk space could perhaps only be considered a drill for when the real thing comes. My boss walks in the door, shouts in Hindi and points to the jangling keys hanging from the security guard’s belt. The guard smirks beneath his logo-ed hat as he unlocks the door - he’s had his fun with the intern.

“Ignore him,” says my boss, handing the confiscated gate pass back to me. I look at my ID photograph: I’m wearing a flower behind one ear and grinning like a cat. My boss just leans over and whispers, “he’s an asshole.”