Would you like to go to India, boys?

 The Halls and the Msimangs in New Delhi

We are living at Riverside Drive in Nairobi. I bicycle home from school on my olive green Raleigh bike, cooling in the wind, taking the curves, with a quick twist heading down the slope of the shared driveway. Turning left, I cross the gravel, brake, dismount and then lean the bike against the wall.

In the kitchen, Mom and Dad are waiting; Andy and Chris too. My parents are both excited.

"We've got something important to ask you.

Something knells inside. It is mom who asks.

Boys, would you like to go to India?"

This is the first time they have ever ask us for our permission to uproot. We are all content in Nairobi - happy, even.

India? I think of the pastel blue and pink exteriors of Gujarati-Kenyan houses. My Gujarati - Kenyan (1) friends are are all called Patel; they are neatly dressed and their heads smell of rosewater; Patel mothers make Patel boys soft. That's what I know. But then our Indian-Kenyan neighbours, are not soft at all and they have a gang and they challenge us to a stone fight.

Tom and Joe (originally from Uganda), Andy, Chris and I, line up in the trench. The neighbours' gang hide in theirs, across the drive and we throw stones at them, overarm, as hard as we can and the stones get bigger and bigger. As they fall they hurt, landing on our heads, shoulders and backs.

After a while, we've had enough. Shouting insults, we leave and walk back up the hill.

The next morning, at St Mary's school, the fifth formers block the entrance of th classroom. "We're gonna beat you up." they say." I recognise my neighbour at the back of the little pack, looking aggrieved. Perhaps we hurt them too. I think to myself. Good! Why else would he be annoyed? "It was your idea," I said.

I am seven and the smell is repulsively strong. An elderly grandmother, her purple sari spread out on either side of a stool, grates coconut with a sharp serrated blade jutting out from the wooden seat. Coming home from school I watch as she uses a pestle and mortar to mash up Serrano chili into a juicy green paste. The smell of fresh coconut and chili permeates the block.

Indian shops smell of Sandalwood, Patchouli and spices. They did then, too. There is rice, clothing, hardware or all of these things. Going into an Indian shop is like crossing the terminator. Your eyes must readjust before they can see shelves and baskets. Walking out, for a few seconds, my reality brightens and then dims again to normal.

In Mombasa there are strong, coastal curries to eat - birianis made from goat's meat and chicken, cumin and star anis flavoured rice. Mombasa has the best hot samosas - vegetable and meat. In the street people sell charcoal grilled shish kebabs where the beef has been marinated in lemon and Piri Piri. By the coast, Swahili African culture, with its Arab influences, and the culture of the subcontinent compliment each other.

I don't like the idea of India. I assume, that in India everyone will be willowy and smell of rosewater, that the houses will be painted in pastels colours and that the neighbours will throw stones.

"Why not. I say. Let's do it, mom and dad." The twins agree too, though it means leaving their host of local friends. We agree because we are gypsies and need to travel. My mother used to quote Don Marquis - Mehitabel, who always said:

"wot the hell, archy, toujours gai, toujours gai."

Perhaps I would learn to like the smell of rose water, after all.



We came straight to India from South Africa


It was a long flight and dad came to pick us up. He maneuvered towards us smiling and cool in sandals and a loose white Kurta. The twins - who were 13 at the time - had decided to be fashionable. and they had insisted on wearing the new black leather trousers they had bought in South Africa. But The Bombay heat combined with the Bombay humidity was astonishing. After half an hour my brothers were whimpering, after a couple of hours they were weeping, but there was nothing dad or I could do to help them. The leather trousers tormented them terribly and we had to wait and wait for that flight.

In New Delhi an old Ambassador taxi took us to the Lodhi hotel. It was dark so our first impressions came from the shapes we saw forming under street lights. There seemed to be so few street lights. But in the light cast by one, near a Mogul tomb, we saw poor families sleeping in the open air. The men were in dhotis, the women in simple saris and the children unshod and unclothed or dressed in rags.

Mom was there at the hotel, waiting. Finally, the twins could change into something loose.We wanted to talk about South Africa, but the tiredness of present washed away all thoughts of catching up. I went out onto the veranda of the hotel on my own and breathed in the night air expecting the smell of coconut, chili or roses. Then thinking, unkindly:

"Here I am in India and it doesn't smell of roses it smells of sewage."

There was a problem with the drains which lasted the ten days we were at the hotel.

But the Lodhi hotel was (and still is) famous for its vegetarian Thali. We went down the next evening to eat there. The decor was simple, but pretty and they served us a Thali

Vegetarian Thali

Thali is served on a chrome tray with chrome bowls and a Lhassi. (Dad always ordered his with salt), At first the rest of us ordered sweet. There are several varieties of dahl served: green and orange. Then there is a curried potato dish and a bowl of buttery pees cooked with cubes of chewy fresh paneer. There is cucumber raita, and for desert, srikand - a white sticky milk dessert flavoured with cumin. All to eat with hot chapattis. No knife and fork, of course and eat your food decourously with your right hand. We forgot to order chutneys so the Lodhi hotel saved a few rupees.

"Better a vegetarian Thali than meat." Dr Khilnani would later say. "If you eat meat your body becomes a graveyard for animals."
The next day dad came by with Padma, our long-wheel-base Landrover. And we went house hunting. First to Friendship colony. We looked at large, huge dusty houses, with big flat roofs. Minor diplomats, NGO people and a few government functionaries lived in Friendship Colony. It was a little bit of an expatriate ghetto, and it was expensive. So mom and dad looked elsewhere and they chose Lajpat Nagaar, a house right next to a major city market.

And so we moved into the house in Lajpat Nagaar with two project landrovers parked in the drive. Dad and Mom were Oxfam's Information Officers in India and they would have to travel a lot.

There were fans in every room with a slow to fast setting. I would put all the fans on fast to blow out the dust and a loud propeller gale would start up. The house came with servants. There was Monahar, who was in his late seventies; he had been a cook of a British general, and there was his wife Shanti. They lived at the back in a three story high servants quarters.

There was a small dark Harijan who came to clean the toilets and the rest of the house. Shanti, who was miniature, just did the dusting, and there was the gardener who convinced us to let him fertilise the lawn with fish-meal. and Mom and dad agreed and our lawn stank of fish for weeks, but the grass grew fast and turned dark green.

In the next few days my mother discovered that outside her window, across the driveway the neighbours were operating a clandestine factory to avoid zoning regulations and to avoid taxation. The factory cranked up at about one at night. We never found out what it made but it worked full blast in the small hours. Eventually, the solution was to close the window and install air-conditioning which blocked out the sound.

On the other side, that house was for weddings. While we relaxed on the veranda, after school and work, we could see fairy lights in the branches of the tree, above the wall that separated us. Soon, from afar we would here the jangling sound of wedding music and the deep hum of a truck in first gear. Then the float would grind slowly past in front. The bride and groom were dressed in silks and bangles and headdresses and sat on top. The float was usually covered in white cloth orange and coloured tinsel. Invariably they couple looked rather young and frightened. But the weddings would end quite promptly between 11pm and 12pm.

Across the road from the house was a high yellow wall. We would see people stop and piss against it. It stank. The next morning, outlined against the dawn sky, we saw a building covered in wooden scaffolding. Underneath, in the muddy devastation, were little children and thin women who collected and carried bricks and scoops of mortar to the base of the scaffolding. Other men and women carried the materials upwards.

It was obvious that what I thought or didn't think of India was of no consequence whatsoever.