Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

And so, apparently, is Monday morning...and Tuesday afternoon...

Rod's been in London for a week, and returns home this morning. Raju will go to pick him up, so I checked the flight information for Indira Gandhi International Airport to find out if the flight was going to land at 11, as expected. Top of the Google search (IGI Arrivals) was the official website, with a number of quick links to the pages requested most frequently. The page I wanted was first on the list: Fight Information. See, I told you they were an unruly bunch...

Flying High

When you're on a flight, and the airhostess smiles and says "Is there anything I can get you, Sir?" do you think:
a) Chicken or beef, or on an Indian flight, veg or non-veg?
b) Gin and tonic or scotch on the rocks?
c) Do I really want the pack of peanuts? or
d) She fancies me.

Most people, I think, would pick a), b) or c). Possibly all of them. Most people on the flight, I think, would assume the airhostess smiled and made eye contact with them because it was her job, not because she actually fancied the overweight, three sheets to the wind bloke sitting in 25C. According to the paper this week, enough people think d) to force the Indian Civil Aviation Organisation to consider amending the rules regarding passenger behaviour on planes. It seems they've just realised passengers have been able to get away with unsocial behaviour (smoking, being drunk and disorderly, outraging the modesty of an airhostess) because if the offences take place in foreign airspace, they cannot be tried under Indian laws. And yes, there is a law regarding outraging the modesty of an airhostess...

If you want something done properly...

...then don't ask the maid to do it! Or as an alternative title: How often does a dish have to be washed before it is actually clean?

Monday to Saturday Santosh comes "to clean the house". I use inverted commas, because she doesn't see dirt, or dust, or cobwebs. It would really be more accurate to say she sweeps and wet wipes the floors, washes the dishes and makes the beds. But she doesn't make Keir's bed. Never has. When he slept on the top bunk I understood it, because she's short, and it's not easy. But when he moved to the bottom bunk it would have been an easy job. Maybe she just doesn't see his bed either...

On Monday morning Santosh washed up all the dishes. Before making dinner each night, I put them away. I noticed a small white bowl wasn't clean, so I put it back with the dirty dishes. On Tuesday, Santosh washed the dishes. When I went to put the dishes away that evening, I noticed the dish was still not clean. I know it was the same dish, because I recognised what it had contained. It still had purple conditioner in it from the hair treatment I'd done on Sunday. It was definitely the same bowl. Nothing else I'd cooked was pearly purple, nor smelled of lavender... To ensure the dish really got clean this time, I filled it with water to make sure it was easy to get off, and left it to soak by the sink. Wednesday Santosh did the dishes. Was that dish clean when I went to put it away? What do you think? So I washed the bloody thing myself. It's clean now...

Why don't we get a maid who can see dirt? Well, she's cheerful, relatively punctual and doesn't steal. All of which we rate higher than cleaning ability...

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you

Spotted in the newspaper:

How does the Indian Government classify documents as "confidential", "secret" and "top secret"?

"Top Secret", obviously! If the Central Information Commission told you it wouldn't be much of a secret, now would it?

How's this for an Unique Selling Point?

Spotted on a billboard in Amritsar:
Havells Electrical Cable - cables that don't catch fire
That may be Havells USP. Personally, I would have hoped that was a given for all cables!

Everything's pretty impressive in Amritsar

The Wagah Border is not the only reason to visit Amritsar.

The Golden Temple is the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, and a truly magical place. Inside the square complex of mainly marble buildings is a large man-made lake filled with crystal clear water. And in the middle of this sacred pool sits a marble and gold temple, the dome gilded with 750 kg of pure gold. It’s hard not to be impressed.

Sikhism is an inclusive religion, and people of all faiths are encouraged to enter the temple to meditate or listen to the prayers for peace. It has doors on all four sides, as if to say travellers from all directions are welcome. Of course, so many people now come to the Golden Temple (more people visit it than the Taj Mahal), that there is only one way in these days. Unless of course you are a foreign tourist, whose guide has had a word with the guard at the out gate, and lets you in through the out queue. You could feel a tad guilty, but there’s no way I could have convinced Keir and Thalia (nor Rod, really) to queue for at least an hour to use the regular entrance, and we really wanted to see inside. And let’s face it, after 19 months in India, we’ve paid extra for being foreign on enough occasions to take benefits when they’re offered.

The most orderly queue we've seen in India. Maybe that's why it seemed the longest too!

Sikhs come to bathe in the holy water, which makes its sparkling cleanness even more surprising. Large fish swim in it, content in the knowledge that while inside a temple complex, Sikhs follow a vegetarian diet. And on the subject of diet, like Sikh temples around the world, there is a large dining hall on the grounds. Anyone can come and receive a meal - dhal, a vegetable dish which changes throughout the day, chapattis and a rice pudding. The food is vegetarian, so everyone can eat as equals, without dietary restrictions imposed by their own religion, and everyone sits on the floor in rows, underlining that equality. The food is free, although donations are appreciated. Once again, no one is too poor to eat, nor so wealthy that they receive better food. There can’t be anything wrong with what’s offered - 40,000 meals a day are served.

Just a few of the dishes used in the temple. That's a lot of washing up!

The religion encourages Sikhs to work hard, share their wealth and do good deeds in the community. All the food in the temple is served and prepared by volunteers. But just as you don’t have to be a Sikh to eat here, you don’t have to be a Sikh to help either.

The kitchens are extensive, and they need so many chapattis they’ve had to install a chapatti machine to turn out 2,000 chapattis an hour to supplement those made by the ladies (and gents).

That's a mighty big teapot!

Monty Python is alive and well… and living at the Wagah border

Last weekend we took the train to Amritsar, 6 hours north of Delhi, and the closest city to the only road border crossing between India and her neighbour, Pakistan. The relationship between the two countries isn’t great. You wouldn’t find them chatting over the garden fence, nor would they pop around to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar. Raju, our driver, is adamant 95% of Pakistanis are terrorists, and that dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan would be a good thing. Raju is not alone in these sentiments. So you might think that all things considered, a trip out to see the border would be cold and unfriendly, and not something a tourist, or any random Indian would choose to do. But you’d be so wrong…

Between 10am and 4pm the border operates as normally as any border between two not so friendly countries. Trucks of vegetables pass through to Pakistan from the farmlands of the Punjab, and trucks of dried fruit come into India. But at 4 o’clock the border guards stop processing vehicles and passports, and begin the real job of the day. Crowds of Indians, who have no intention of crossing into Pakistan, fill large grandstands on either side of the Grand Trunk Road. Loudspeakers play the Hindi Top 40, and lots of ladies dance in the road in front of the brick guardhouse. They don’t dance around their handbags, because handbags are not allowed - you can only take to the border what you can wear. A camera around your neck was just jewellery, but the camera bag was not allowed. Their arms in the air, they jingle their bracelets, and sing along to the music.

We came armed with our passports, which gets us into the “Foreigners Enclosure” in front of the main grandstands. There’s quite a few people in the Foreigners Enclosure who would have needed a passport to prove they weren’t Indian. We weren’t in that category, but we took them just in case. After all, this is an army border crossing, and lots of people have guns. Hopefully only the ones who work there. On the other side of the gate, in Pakistan, crowds are filling up their segregated grandstands, the women kept apart from the men. There’s no dancing in the road, but there’s lots of flag waving going on, and a decent attempt to drown out the Hindi Top 40 with patriotic chanting.

At ten to five someone turns down the music. A man with a microphone and a voice loud enough not to need one yells “Hindustan”, a catchier name than the Republic of India. The crowd replies, “Zindabad”, which means long live. Somehow they all knew the right words - unlike us, they must have been here before. On the other side of the border their guy with the microphone calls out “Pakistan”, the crowd yells back “Zindabad”. A line of border guards stands proudly in their uniforms. They are drawn from all over India for their six month stints, chosen it seemed because they were all really tall. The average height for an Indian man is 5ft 5 inches, and these guys were all over 6 ft. Unfortunately they seemed to be wearing trousers designed for the average Indian. The other selection criteria: funny facial hair and an ability to stamp your feet and march in a manner which would make Monty Python proud. They can only work at the border for six months, because all the high kicking and foot stamping takes a toll on their bodies. One guy was a little shorter than the others, but he could yell a note for a very, very long time. And he had a well waxed handlebar moustache…

The guards take turns showing us how they can march up to the border, and this whips the crowd into an uproarious frenzy. When they get close to the gates we can see the Pakistani guards on the other side, because they’re matching the Indians every move. This is a “whatever you can do, I can do better” situation. And in this case, “my uniform’s scarier than your uniform”. The Pakistanis are in a menacing black garb, with a hint of Ninja to them. They look much more fierce than Indians, who are in Army khaki with those too short trousers. The trousers are a mistake, really. As a consolation, the Indians get some fancy headgear, with plumage on top. I got the impression that they were aiming to hit that plumage with their toes while they marched.

The Pakistani crowd is just as vocal as the one on this side of the border. The whole spectacle is a little bit football match, a little bit theatrical performance. It’s bizarre…but fun.

After the marching there’s the “Lowering of the Flags” ceremony. The flags at the border gates (because there’s an Indian gate and a Pakistani gate, with a little bit of land with a white line down the middle between them), and those on the arches at the end of the grandstands are slowly lowered synchronously, so neither country appears to have the upper hand at any stage. Once off the flagpoles, the flags are folded and marched back into the guardhouse, the gates are closed and locked, and the border between India and Pakistan is closed until the morning.