GINNY AND JUDY GO TO INDIA

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November 6th 199906

Am I totally insane or inspired? Days after quitting my job as Creative Director of Kenya's biggest advertising agency without another lined up and nothing to go by other than a vague dream of becoming a screenwriter and filmmaker, I'm on a flight headed to India with my friend Ginny. Ginny is radiant and five months pregnant with her first child, and has been planning this trip to scout for furniture for her soon to be started business, a furniture shop in New York for a while. We met when she first came out to Kenya be with her boyfriend Bijal, my brother Jimmy's best friend five years ago. They got married on a beautiful late afternoon in the summer in America last year. I went and Jimmy was best man. And now, we are going to have maybe our last big Girl Adventure together in India. I need to get away, so that I don't regret my dramatic decision to quit advertising at the height of my career, and Ginny has thankfully postponed her trip a few weeks to wait for me to wind up work.. I've spent the last seven years of my life working like a slave and freedom couldn't smell sweeter than this.

04.11.99 We fly KQ and it's a strange trip - my headphones don't work and there is a movie I've been dying to see. I plug into the outlet across the aisle and end up having my head almost torn off a few times as passengers headed for the loo stumble into the wire attached to the headphones attached to my ears. Ginny looses it with the airhostess who looks more like a jet-lagged librarian than a jet setting sky waitress. A Kenyan businessman called Spinney sits behind me and keeps shouting, "Judy, Judy have a Tusker!' and "Judy, listen to my headphones!" He soon looses all semblance of normality and I spend more energy than I wanted to trying to ignore him - particularly once he tells me not to come back from India with a half-caste... aaargh! Typical Kenyan man asking questions as if I were his wife. And he is rude. Boy, is he rude. "Where did you get this mzungu?" he shouts in Swahili gesturing with his chin at Ginny. And then, "Why are you not married?"

05.11.99 We arrive at Mumbai airport at 4.30 a.m. The captain announces that the huge delay in opening the doors was caused by the fact that the airport doesn't have stairs up and ready. We emerge and it was as though a grey fungus is hanging in the air. India's huge darkness engulfs us. The air is humid despite the early hour. Most passengers look nonchalant, like they have done this a thousand times before. We board a bus - the third one, the first two being full and so violently sought after we gave them a miss. Mumbai airport is surprisingly organized and totally air-conditioned. There is a heavy military presence and even the airport officials look ready to shoot. An Indian mother traveling to Mumbai with her teenage daughters seems to fall in love with Ginny and spends a lot of time anxiously eyeing her. This is the first of a whole succession of people to fall in love with Ginny on this trip. Me, as usual I continue to just attract weirdoes. My self appointed husband Businessman Spinney had long since divorced me after we declined him to sit in the tiny wedge of space available next to me in the bus. After tackling and escaping with the last airport trolley seconds before a woman in a red sari got it, I get back to the baggage area and find Ginny giggling. A skinny white guy with a strong German accent has walked up to her and said, "good ma-w-ning sis-tah!" Before asking if they could split a taxi to town. Ginny and I spend a long time laughing and echoing his good maw-ning sis-tuh!" at every opportunity after that. It was indeed a very very strange but good morning.

*** Ginny relatives meet us; Jimmy Uncle (who is Bijal's Uncle) has two sisters here in India. Both were born in Kenya but moved here to marry. We are going to spend our first days in India with one of them Auntie Anila and her husband Ambalal and their son-in law Ashish married to their daughter Shivali. It is almost 5.30 a.m. by the time we emerge from the airport. Ashish recognizes us straight away and no he doesn't get a gold star for that, when a black girl and white blonde one are traveling together through India together they aren't too hard to spot. The first thing that strikes me about Mumbai other than its vastness, its hugeness, was the size of the cars. Tiny little things. Many of them TATAs. Then it's all the tuk-tuks, hundreds and hundreds, no thousands, buzzing insanely about like demented bees. Then there are the millions of scooters, and bicycles. And all this held together by scores of tiny toy-town taxis, black with yellow roofs. Even at that hour, people are walking, jogging, along roads and bridges. We finally got to our destination, a 3rd floor flat in Lokhandwalla Andheri. We feel lucky to have survived the crisscross cruise here which Ashish compares with relief to the madness of driving in the daytime. As though we have just had a peaceful ride. If this was a quiet ride, what's daytime in Mumbia like? We arrive and park and the boot is opened. "Vatchman!" he shouts as we reach for our bags. He turns to us and says, "leave it!' before a louder "VATCHMAN!" Sure enough a stunted little man scuttles out of a room beside the stairs in the underground parking. The door is slightly ajar and now harshly lit half dressed form of a second watchmen is visible. It looks like they live in a cave. Its not so much where they have emerged from it's the way they emerge, bowing and scrapping: beaten even before daylight. There is something so odd about it and it takes a while for me to realize it's my unfamiliarity with subservient, caste-obsessed India. We leave the bags downstairs and they magically appear upstairs.

*** It's hard to make conversation with the owners of the house you are supposed to spend days in eating and sleeping and showering and lounging about in. They don't even know us, but have opened homes and hearts to us - so I don't try to. I'm just grateful for their generosity. I am grateful Bijal's family were able to make this available to us. It's a simple flat that Shivali share with her husband and parents and Ginny and I get a room with lots of bells at the door. I'm curious why until I want a cigarette in the middle of the night two days later. I can't have it because I am terrified the whole house will hear the bells and figure out what I am upto. Very clever. I really ought to quit. Its strange, everything is strange and different. The househelp sleeps in the kitchen, on a mattress by the sink. The washing is picked up every day by faceless washerwomen who take it away to a place we don't know and it comes back all clean and pressed after maybe being bashed and scrubbed on stones in a location we don't know. Everyone looks strange and I look just as strange to them.

6.11.99 I'm woken by Ginny saying "are you ready to get up?" Um, no way hosay. I've only been asleep for four hours. But Ginny, who has so much energy and go in her is bouncing. Half and hour later, I feel guilty to be sleeping when everyone is up, so at about 11.30 I roll out of bed silently cursing all humanity. I feel like a corpse and not even the fact that I am in Mumbai fills me with life. I groggily make my way to the shower only to discover its not a shower and only then remember that I didn't pack a towel. My brother Jimmy's words when he picked me up and lifted my super light luggage come flooding back to me. "Jeez! Your bag is so light! This is what I'd pack for a weekend! Is there anything in it?" I remember replying smugly. "I packed very carefully this time". Yeah right. No towel. No facecloth. No soap, No toner. Its like I was planning to bathe in the River Ganges or something. The adventures continue in the non-shower where I am faced with a bucket, a small plastic seat, and a jug. If I was marginally stupider, I would start looking for sand and a beach ball. But I don't - I'm smarter than that. Splash splash. I'm fairly clean and almost awake.

We spend the majority of the day with Shivali and Aunty Anila. Shivali is young and has been married to Ashish for just two years. She giggles a lot. Her standard answer to questions is "I don't know, wait I ask my husband". She has a pretty smile, which we see a lot as Ginny and I seem to amuse her. Aunty Anila is dedicated to feeding us, which is worrying because most vegetarian meals scare me shitless, despite the fact that vegetables never roamed the streets eating plastic bags before landing on my plate. We try to phone Ashish after a moment spent pinning Shivali down on her husband's number. Our conversation goes something like this: GINNY: "What's Ashish's number?" SHIVALI: (giggle) GINNY: Um. Shivali? What's his number? SHIVALI: (Giggle) Well fram 10 to 12 its blah blah blah... from 12 to 2 its blah blah. From 2 to 3 its... and fram..... GINNY: "Okay, okay, can you just call him please?"

***

Very, very kindly, the whole family goes out of their ways for us for the next few days, starting with Ashish taking the remainder of the day off to show us around. The men seem to live a well regimented life, which involves going to the office after lunch cooked by the wives. The back to lunch cooked by the wives. Afternoon work is rewarded by dinner cooked by the wives. The lives of Aunty Anila and Shivali are ruled and determined by this breakfast lunch dinner timetable. In between they shop for lunch dinner and breakfast , small amount of fresh ingredients every time. In between spare times are spent watching Indian soaps. Today, lunch is green beans, papadams, lentil sauce and rice. Its just enough to take the edge off my hunger, but I am grateful to Tara Shah and ex colleague for having invited me to her house in Nairobi and serving up exactly that. How else would I know that meals end with rice and gravy? I still have much to learn - I had no idea for instance that Indian sweets aren't necessarily eaten for desert after meals, but instead at any old time, to balance off the spices in meals. So I nibble at a spicy green bean thingy and then eat a milky sweet then have some lentil sauce and potato and have another sweet... After lunch, we jump into Ashishes little car and so cruising. He is smoking. Its strange because his wife doesn't know he smokes and he seems to be doing this in a worldy exaggerated way when he is with us, like he is imitating the Malborough man or something. One stop is a travel agent who quotes some very high plane fares. It has becomes apparent that we cannot travel all around India by train and need to work in some flights. But India is about to begin its biggest holiday period with Divali, the Festival of lights and New Year. So booking trains and planes is soon to become a nightmare. But at this point we are still blissfully unaware.

*** We drive into the city. I'm never sure if we have arrived, we seem forever on the edge of it. There us an urgency to Mumbai that arrests. It's a charismatic, noisy, energetic place fuelled by energy, ambition, poverty, desperation and dreams. Everybody is doing something. Building, begging, juggling, fishing, cycling, and of course selling. Hundreds of thousands of traders operate from roadside stalls, from pavements, from slivers of shops, from mobile food kiosks, whipping up exotic spicy smells everywhere. With 30 family's arriving into Mumbai daily from the countryside, the poverty and desperation of its millions of residents is apparent but not as repulsive as most reports would have you believe. A flirtatious eunuch accosts us at traffic lights and Ashish asks us to roll up our windows. I detect fear in his voice. He tells us that if the eunuch should get a hand through the window she-he-it will pull our hair and then do anything she-he-it can do to embarrass us. I stare back at her-him and she-he blows me the most charming and extravagant kisses, her-his pink sari flapping in the sun as we drive on.

***

Ashish keeps asking where we would like to go - as though we would know. I mumble a few places I have heard of / read up on and off we go. Fashion Street is a stretch of outdoor clothing stalls selling a mixture of casual clothing,(jeans, sneakers, shorts, sweat-shirts, summer dresses). There is quantity but not quality. Ashish and Shivali wander off to the circus to find show times for us. We are excited at the prospect and hope we will find the time. Ginny and I stroll along enjoying the walk. We attract a lot of attention. Black and white people are clearly a novelty. Ginny notes that most passersby stare either at her or me. Each is fascinated in either the black or the white. One man ambles slowly by and brushes a hand against her. Then minutes later, he is behind us. Then in front. Then behind. Always peering at us through slyly slanted eyes. He manages to maintain the pace of a pedestrian passing time on the way to a meeting he is slightly early for. Once he realizes we are onto him, he disappears. We pass a pavement shrine or temple housing a picture of a deity, candles and flowers adorning. Passersby stop at it to say quick prayers. A thin small boy slops water on it, washing it clean. There are many many of those everywhere, keeping Mumbai's religious face highly visible.

***

After Fashion Street, we drive over to the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Hotel, two of the cities best-known landmarks. The Gateway to India is one of those monumentally gigantic structures that serve more than anything it remind you how totally screwed up the British were. This colonial marker was conceived following the visit of King George V in 1911, but officially opened in 1924. According to the Lonely Planet, "it was redundant just 24 years later when the British regiment ceremoniously departed India through its archway... The Gateway is now like a disused backdoor, but it has become a popular emblem of the city and a favorite meeting spot for locals in the evening." When we arrived there, it was going onto 6.00 p.m. and we caught one of the many boats that take local tourists for a half hour foray round Mumbai's coastline. Before getting on, a little girl attaches herself to me with a charming, exaggeratedly English accent. "Madame, how do you do? Where are you from Madame?" Aged around six or seven she was charming in her little sari and kohl lined eyes, so I laughed and said hello. BIG mistake. HUGE. I should have bared my fangs, snarled like I wanted to have her for supper, but too late. Taking a picture of Ginny by the water at the point at which the British marched out 75 years back, the little kohl-queen popped into the frame beside Ginny as the shutter clicked. From that point on, she hung onto me, tugging and prodding, whinny and persistent screeching "Madame, Madame, give me rupee! Give me give me!" I couldn't shake her till we got on a boat. I didn't pay her fare so that was the last of her - thank god.

Ever seen a postcard with a perfect orange sun behind a cityscape? Ever wondered if it was real, or painted in by a not-so-original Photo-shop artist trying to dramatize a grey sky? Well, that what the sky was like this day from the boat and I have a picture to prove it. It was the most perfectly burnt orange sun that I have ever seen. Huge, round, hot in a grey grey sky. Like a huge tangerine spacecraft. And in moments, it was gone and darkness descended. By then we were back on shore and headed to the Taj.

The Taj Mahal Hotel doesn't look like I thought it would. It's the sort of huge Victorian building you see in a lot of cities but with a rectangular high rise added on. On entering it, a cold torpedo of air hits you and blasting the icy-cold sweat on your forehead dry. We had cappuccino, salmon and chocolate brownies there. Then onto the beach, passing the magnificent Aubrey Hotel, which is cutting edge modern. Glimpses from the beach through the huge, windows confirm that this is everything it's rumored to be - super luxurious. This is where the mega-rich - including Michael Jackson we are told - stay and play safely barricaded away from the hyper-reality of Mumbai. A dramatic curve of streetlights illuminates Marine Drive and Chowpatty Beach and if you follow them, this is where they lead you. To Chowpatty Beach. This is no place for a dip. The Ocean is murky, black, deep and filled with goodness-knows what. The beach is bursting with life even at 9.00pm. Family's picnic on the beach, lover's court, shyly walking together but not touching. A man with crippled legs walks on his hands. Boneless contortionist's loop- and twist themselves in front of bored onlookers. Masseurs, balloon sellers, gamblers, food vendors and men leading chained monkeys give the beach a carnival feel. A pair of boys banging rhythmically in huge drums ads a hypnotic vibe to it all, and a circle of brightly lit foodstalls add to the fairground mayhem.

We had parked across the street and it felt quite suicidal to have to walk across the highways a second time, running to avoid being mashed over by the zigzagging tuk-tuks. The evening ended with a vegetarian meal at New York, a fast food place much smaller and far more modest than its neon name had indicated. I realize that I will have to loose my fear of vegetarian food ... fast.

Saturday 7. 11.99 Waking up in the morning is easier - but not much. Finding our way to Jaipur and Jodhpur is proving a hell of a lot harder than it sounded before. Ashish keeps talking about a mysterious friend who has a travel agency who we have never meet let alone spoken to but he makes it out like its will all be easily sussed. But it's not. But we can't complain too hard - he is once again kind enough to drive around most of the afternoon in search of tickets and bookings. Jet Air is efficient and polite, but can't fly us back from Jodhpur when we need to. Air India can, but don't have tickets - we find this out after watching the agent at the airport tap lazily at his computer for ½ an hour. The train would be perfect but they are fully booked. We do manage to book and buy tickets to Goa though. Oh and stop at McDonalds for fillet of fish. YUM!

***

The remainder of the afternoon we spend walking down the length of Oshiwara looking at furniture, old and new. Meeting owners and makers alike for Ginny's business venture, her future store in New York. She finds a few pieces she loves but finds many shops are disappointing. The whole road reminds me of Kibera or Kariobangi in Kenya, but with one major difference - its SAFE. People stare at us a lot and try to sell us things at hugely inflated prices. But it's really safe. Not once do I feel someone is after my camera or money. Ginny is in her element. Even at five months pregnant, you can't tell. She is slender as a reed. I mean I look more pregnant than she does. She is filled with energy and picks out gems from amidst piles of average pieces. She has a real eye and a talent for homing in on things that I have totally overlooked. She'll pick out something out from under my nose leaving me wondering how I didn't see it.

We get to the road and hang left as Ashish told us, and suddenly the road is lined with auto repair shops and half dressed men who stare at us with glazed eyes. I feel a bit like what a gazelle or zebra might feel when it looks up from a drinking hole its been totally absorbed in only to discover a pride of lions in search of lunch staring at it. Later Auntie Anila tells us its because its such a Muslim area. A taxi driver plays deaf with us, refusing to turn his meter on and declaring over and over again, 60 rupees, no meter! Give 60! So we jump out and grab a tuk-tuk, which I am totally cool about, but Ginny a bit nervous to put it mildly. But its fun zipping in this three-wheeled scooted-cum-betttle. The tuk-tuk drivers has his sandals off, right foot on accelerator, left one tucked behind the right. A poise more suited to a living room at the end of the day, not a mad night highway. He drops us at Cross Roads and we walk "home" via an internet office and a telephone STD office. It's Diwali tomorrow and so the entire road is draped in necklaces of light a canopy that shines down on the whole street. The whole world and their mothers are out shopping for colored lanterns, garlands of flowers. I take a picture of three little girls and they thank me giggling. One is darker than me and the older women prod me and say, "black like you! She is black like you!" She and a friend follow us down the road and I buy a garland. Once we are back we find our host family has been worried. Its 9.30pm, my how time flies when the whole world is so illuminates and alive!

But the night is not yet over. Ginny opts to rest whilst Ashish, Shivali and I go to buy fireworks. Most apartment blocks including this one are adorned with lights and lanterns strung out by their residents. The streets are frenetic and fireworks go shooting off every which way - often even up! I look out the window and see a badly aimed firework go crashing into someone's balcony like a cruise missile. Kids throw bomber-crackers hard on the ground and they explode with loud booms. Others dance in dry fountains of blue-white sparkles.

The market we go to buy fireworks in is crazy. Its alleys and alleys of light and color light, like Gods birthday cake. Lanterns and cows rule, colored powder in bowls, fruit and music music music. Everywhere. Shivali buys colored powder, presumably to finish up the colored floor powder paining outside our front door. It's a real work of art and it seems a shame that it will be swept away once Diwali is over, But why should I mind? They don't.

I look down at the car park from the sitting room window and see more little boys dancing in the spark-fields with their parents looking on, To the left, Ashish and Shivali who have enough fireworks as to be declared terrorists. THREE BAGS FULL! They light a vast amount and barely dent their stock. Tomorrow is the real firework day, this is a run-up. From the sitting room, up on the third floor I look down to the tiny cramped car parking area where everyone is lighting fireworks. I can see Ginny who has gone down to watch backing away further and further away with each explosion. This is a gutsy girl but she's got her hands up on her ears and doesn't look like she is having the best of times. On a rate of 1 to 10, her body language places her fun level rating at around 1.2 and the sounds drifting up to where I am safely watching the festive warfare from are - at best - deafening. When she comes up and says her ears are ringing, I do not for one moment doubt it. Tomorrow I may well look for a hilltop overlooking Mumbai and watch it all go up in flames from there.

If Diwali night in Mumbai sounds like Beirut from the apartment, you can imagine what it was like trying to walk through the market earlier, But this is what it sounds like from the 3rd floor apartment in Lokandwalla: To my right: wheeeeeeeeeee! (whistle) To my left: BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Right: Phattttttt! (whith echoes in distance) Left: CRACJatakatakatakaCRRRRRAKATAKATAK! Right: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! CUCKOO! (there is a cuckoo clock in the apartment living room)

Amplify this all across the city. On rooftops, in car parks, markets, on the beach, along highways everyone, every single human being in the city is hearing these sounds.

08.11.99 The day begins by fighting off food at the apartment. I think everyone is secretly puzzled by how someone as large as me can eat so little. They obviously haven't tweaked onto my fear of vegetarian living, because everyday, a terrifying array of things are thrust at me to eat. This morning, I am happily eating toast and Aunty Anila says forcefully - authoritatively - "come". Which I do, only to discover a bowl of spicy potatoes rice thrust under my nose along with fried bajias, and ... its only 11.00 a.m. SO I eat a few grains and a single bajia and 1 ½ more pieces of toast. Then out come the bananas. "EAT!" shouts Aunty Anila.. Oh boy. Can I please be excused? No, I guess not.

*** We hired a car and driver from a place across the road in Lokandwalla Complex . It's a cute boxy number and very cheap. It's driven by a big Moslem man who turns out to have the patience of a saint. There are about 4 places on our list.

1. Chor Bazaar (I've read up on it and it's first on my list. Best known in Mumbai as Thieves Bazaar and Auntie Anila tells us cautiously that it's filled with thieves who steal things "from over houses and sell dem dere at Chor Market". I listen gravely to this insider information and am totally crushed to see the same information echoed cheerfully in my Lonely Planet guide to India. Dam, why are travel books so right always?) 2. Zhaveri Bazaar - for silver jewelry 3. The Circus on Fashion Street 4. Craft Fair (opposite Mantralay next to Administrative Building)

But we don't get that far down the list. Walking into Chor Bazaar, is like walking into a movie set about two girls touring India, a dusty, dirty mans world in the heart of Mumbai...

Ginny and I step out of the cab and I don't know what her initial thoughts were but mine are "Uh-oh. Where did all the saris people go?" and , "Is that a goat or a camel?" and "are we the most beautiful women in the world, or have all these men just been released from prison?"

The more we walk, the more beige everything becomes, more covered in fine white films of dust. The houses get ricketier, and the washing flapping out the windows of multi-story wooden shacks more threadbare. Everywhere on the ground, splodges of red, like blood, from the beetle nut juice. The same red on the lips and gums and teeth sneering and smiling at us. No woman., Absolutely no women in sight. Just blonde Ginny and Judy with her Kali-braids. At some point we stop to take photos and the whole street stops too, mental cameras clicking. Then we stumbled into it, shop after shop after shop of gorgeous furniture and the most perfect shop of all. MANSOORI CURIO SHOP. Crammed with hundreds of miniature statues and paintings of every Indian God imaginable. Ganesh in bronze, in stone, in marble, Shiva , young Buddah. A young boy, Ayaz, who can't be older than 17 tells us everything we need to know and more about different Gods. He seems particularly keen to sell us a few erotic Indian paintings. I can't get my head around these things: One Goddess, (obviously a sex maniac) is depicted getting it on with a maize cob, a horse, and a man with a snake like ding-dong and more. Why does he think we need to buy these? We don't discover the reason but the curio shop is tiny but totally stuffed with things we do want. We buy paintings, statues, and two carvings. It soon becomes abundantly clear that in Chor Market, Mutton Street is the place to be. The furniture and antiques are delightful and the contrasting dust and squalor make every find all the more precious.

Our next stop is Javali for silver. We find anything but that. Divali fever mounts as we walk through a tumultuous, celebratory crowd. So much color, so many scents and sounds scattered through the air. Vendors squat in the dust and sell star shaped fruits. Juice stalls crush sugarcane juice and sell it fresh by the glass. Window after window glitters with ornate gold. It's very nice but we are here for silver. A One Armed Man materializes alongside and it takes a minute to realize that each time we are debating about where to find something, there he is:

JUDY: I really wonder where all the silver is. GINNY: Yeah. There's an awful lot of gold. ONE ARM MAN: Yar, the Old Silver is up around the corner around the street dere on de right.

And then he disappears until our next dilemma. Before we realize it, we are well on our way to unwittingly appointing a guide, so Ginny does what felt like the right thing and told him to LEAVE US ALONE!

Maybe that's why we got so lost later. Maybe he put a One Arm Guide Rebuked Spell on us. We didn't find silver, but we found a charming store with cheap-mirrored bags. By this time - about 7.30 p.m. - it's dark and Divali is in full swing. Shops and Dukas stretched for miles around and at each one the owners were doing a Puja for their staff and sometimes family. Shops lit by lights and lanterns hosted rows and rows of squatting and sitting employees for blessings and prayers said for a prosperous business year. And the fireworks! I thought we had seen then all but we had seen nothing! Children dancing in dust clouds if silvery-exploding stars under their feet on streets after street was an unforgettable sight.

And suddenly, amidst the explosions and dancing and blessings and thronging crowds, we were lost. Totally lost. And no one could help us. Every turn seemed to take us deeper into the mayhem of Zaverhi Bazaar. We are pointed this way and that by pedestrians but finally bump into a tall imposing policeman standing by a brightly lit cluster is vendors selling food, fireworks and more carts. We describe where we left our driver the best we could bad got three different sets of directions. Then the policeman tells us in a voice that said OBEY OR BE ARRESTED: "YOU listen to ME!" he shouts and gives us directions. We turn to go and two crazy trumpet players jumped out and begin to play some madly mystic tune as though we were snakes and they were charmers. There are drums banging, firecrackers cracking and to be honest it felt like we had stumbled into a film and we are the lost heroines of it. Happily though, we emerge at Mahatma Gandhi Market and find our patient Moslem cab driver waiting.

We cruise around Colaba Looking for somewhere to eat and settle for Jazz on the Bay where we have pizza and watch fireworks go off on the beach (which we have a perfect view of ) and horse drawn carriages and tuk-tuks compete for passengers. We have ice cream at the parlor across the road, then its home sweet home where we find fireworks in full swing and realize that everything before was merely practice. Ashish and his friend are the master firework lighters, and Shivali and family look on, clapping and laughing. Ginny and I cling to each other, somehow terrified and fascinated. Its quite a dangerous affair with kids lighting up rockets and a good many of them almost flying into the apartment we are staying in. This years, Ashish and his wife and friend mistakenly send a flying one into the neighboring complex and it crashes through a window. I am horrified, and they are delighted. Apparently, last year, the neighboring complex had mistakenly sent one their way. We troop into the house at 11.30 pm where everyone is in high spirits and highly amused by the episode except Ginny and I who are finding everyone insane. We drink guava juice, and eat sweets and everyone relives The Hilarious Story of the Rogue Rocket over and over and over again.

10.11.99 Excuse me if this story sounds a little shaky. Considering that this night train to Delhi was nothing like we expected. Ashish in his infinite wisdom assured us, the second-class carriage was going to be EXACTLY like first class, but in reality, second-class air con is more like a mixed-gender prison dormitory. In a 10 x 10 cubicle, there are six if us, in bunker beds that really ought to be in a war torn country. Ginny and I have been singing Ave Maria to keep calm , so the two Born Again Nigerian men think we are their sisters in Christ.

The train is like an indoor picnic. A carriage or two away is third class and it really festive. Its like Indian Christmas. People eating food, in groups, chattering and cross legged as though they are at home. And us? We are just wondering what happened how we got here to Second Class hell. We were told by our hosts that second class carriages are fantastic, but looking at it, third class is looking more fun, like a big party and second is just looking like a semi-posh trap. The window in the carriage, which we thought we would watch India through, is plastic and has been scrubbed with steel wire so you cant actually see outside through it. Even when you cup your hands and peer. You see nothing.

We try and change to First Class. We approach conductors and tell them how Ginny (so radiantly healthy and flat stomached) is ill and having a difficult pregnancy. She tries hard, really hard to look ill and pregnant. It doesn't work. And so we retreat back to our carriage. We are in interesting company. Two ultra saved Nigerians. Who sing and sing and praise and worship non-stop How do you tell men like this to quit with the God Thing? `Then there is a bespectacled swotty looking young Indian man. And an Old Man with a French accent. And finally, a huge, huge man with a big long beard in black who looks like a Mujahaddin rebel. A man brought him to the carriage , sat with his and solemnly told Ginny, "he is your companion now. For 17 hours". The mujahaddin takes it to heart and from that moment on cant take his eyes off her. He spends the whole journey casting Ginny long, dark moody expectant looks. Beckoning her to pray with him, then to eat with him. She hating him, he loving her.

And us. A Kenyan girl in braids. And Ginny. A blonde Italian American.

A fan whirrs, just a foot from my head. I am in the top right hand bunker, there are six in all, three on each side. The fan is stirring all the stale air at the top around which might be a good thing considering we are all at the door and outside the door are the Indian Style and Western style toilets. My top bunk really ought to be the sweet little Old Man's. The Old Man smiles a lot and we feel protective about him. The loud Nigerian men spend a good two hours impolitely telling the Old Man that its time to climb up to his bunk, but the Old Man just chuckles and falls asleep in the lower bunk which belongs to one of the Nigerians. Twice he wakes up chuckling in his sleep and points at us as though we had just shared a sweet dream. The Mujahadin rebel in the top bunk opposite me and so close I could touch him. I am disturbed by him. Particularly because he has this big throaty cough and keeps coughing up stuff and spitting it into the air conditioning vent that no longer works.

The Mujahaddin wears a black silk suit and has an enormous foot, which I could reach out and tickle is I tried, but I wont because he looks like he would whip out a Kalashnikov and kill me. So in my journal I draw it. He has knelt to pray facing the window twice this evening. It is amazing that someone so big and tall can be so agile. The second time he prayed, he beckoned Ginny with his hands to join him. This is truly a religious train carriage. I walk out to the corridor to use the toilet and what I find send me fleeing back. And when I came back, the two Nigerians are in fellowship, praying and singing loudly, and Ginny sitting in the bunker above them very unhappy, looking like she is about to start crying. But that mood does not last long. Its too entertaining, life in the bunker.

The Mujahaddin rebel has bought two dolls. Their large labels read : SILKY. And silky they are. They have bright orange hair and he has hung them by his bed in a funny way so they look as though they are kissing. He lays beside them gazing mournfully at Ginny with huge, sad eyes as though he is sorry to be alive without her beside him. This is totally weird. I sleep with my money strapped to me, my rucksack under my head and one eye scanning everywhere. In the middle of the night, Ginny in the bunk below me pokes my bunk from under and says, "I hope you are getting on well with your little sisters". Horror of horrors I discover that my little sisters are a huge family of cockroaches having a lot of fun inches from my head.

*** In the morning, the Old Man is talking cheerfully about this and that. We suspect has just shat his pants because there is a terrible shit smell coming from his bunker. I am suffering most I feel because the smell rises to the top and I am in the top bunker. The old man has an odd French accent. He is from Mauritius is turns out, and he is on his way to the ashram, And when blankets are being collected from our compartment, one is missing, It is in his bag, and he smiles and coughs, as he cheerfully surrenders it and says "I am going to an Ashram. Can I keep it?"

At 11.00 a.m., the train shudders to a halt and someone says we are in Delhi. "Looks a little smaller than I imagined" says Ginny. 15 minutes later we discover why: we emerged one stop early and the surly porter who has all our baggage on his head doesn't seem to accept less to deposit us and put luggage back to where he found us. The Nigerians didn't say goodbye when we disembark. How rude. We slept together.

The word Hell does not adequately describe New Delhi station. It's worse. It's packed far more tightly with sinners than hell could ever be. Everyone is either trying to con us, be rude to us or steal form us. Four unscrupulous taxi touts try to tell us the tourist ticket office is across the road in a building across the highway with the words, TOURIST BOOKING loudly inscribed. But even as Ginny points to it I distinctly remember that the man in Mumbai booking office telling us that its on the first floor of the train building, The touts say, "yah, yah that also is the train station yaar, also in the first floor". We get away and a woman at an information desk tells us that the ITDC office is on another building across the town. We are about to set off and I just happen to ask where the train we buy tickets will leave for. "Oh!" she says. "You want to BUY? Upstairs 1st floor!" aaaaaaargh! No one says what they mean. We are obviously given the wrong info in Bombay mixing ITDC Office with 1st Floor.

We head upstairs and a shifty looking official with a badge flashed it at us and says the office is closed. Because it's an Indian holiday. We suspect he is lying and we are right. The booking office is open and packed with backpackers and smells of Body Odor like you would not believe, We learn after a while queuing that we cant buy any of the tickets we need, we want to go to Jaipur, not to Jodhpur, not to Bombay. Ginny says, "That's it. I am calling Leena's travel Agent now."

And thank God she does, Thank God because the agent orders us not to talk to anyone and to sit tight. He sends someone to pick us up. We speed across the grand highways of Delhi in an air-conditioned car. We pass a man at a bus stop with a bear on a chain. It's a lovely civilized center with grand Parisian highways lined with trees, so different from the train madness we have left behind.

The office is small and efficient. Ginny and I ponder for the millionth time about the information we received in Mumbai. One hour later we are on a plane headed to Jaipur, the Pink City. Its pink. It really is.

After that we will go to Jodhpur, the Blue City. We will ride elephants up into ancient palaces, climb hills in Goa take a motorbike ride in the moonlight in Goa with new friends. We will travel across a countryside lit by Divali lamps, we will have dinner with an ancient bunch of hippies in an elegant restaurant and listen to what India and Goa were like in the sixties when they landed on its shores in slow boats from Europe. We will discover India and ourselves and return home wondering if we dreamed it all. Ginny's firstborn child who accompanies us through this journey will emerge into the world, a free and happy smiling laughing child, maybe blessed by the crackling of Divali firecrackers that made her jump in her mothers womb long before she was born. She will be joined a few years later by a beautiful curly haired sister with grave eyes that measure and see and weigh up all. Yasmina, the New York Interior shop will indeed open and prosper, but not with its original mandate. And Ginny and my friendship will remain dear even across the oceans, even though we do not see or speak to each other for seven long years after our trip.

At the point at which the plane flies out to Jodhpur, we do not realize is that he journey has just begun. We are in our early thirties, and actually little do we know at this point that our lives have just begun and that the beautiful ones - Yasmin, Kayla, Kyros, Basia - are not yet born.