A Morning of Monkeys

It is not often in a lifetime that a teenager is woken by monkeys and not a nagging mother.

This is what happened to Anthony on our weekend away in Pench. This is Rudyard Kipling country and splendid it is.Nestling in the deciduous forests at the corner of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra states this is a little gem.

The game lodge where we stayed had beautiful gazebos, built higher than the bungalows and it was there that Anthony chose to sleep one night. A bed was made, a mosquito net put in place and a romantic lamp and candle were lit to show him the way.

The curtains were firmly drawn around the gazebo the next morning when I woke up. I was reading my book in the light breeze of the morning enjoying being lost in the story, the verdant green and the bird call.

Suddenly a rustle of leaves and a family of langur monkeys appear. They are black faced, gregarious and you can watch them for hours.

On this occasion they decided that jumping all over the roof tiles was great fun and then they started sitting on the gazebo sides as in the picture. Next thing you know they are jumping in to the curtains and waking up a very surprised teenager as getting in was easy but getting out was more complicated. They had races over the tiles and managed to throw a few to the ground with a resounding crash. They darted in and out of the gazebo and foraged in our shower area.

 A mum lovingly held her baby to her as they perched on the side of our bungalow roof. It was a show stopping performance and when they tired of what was on offer they moved off leaving us smiling widely at the nature of this awakening.

Living in India

Living in India you often feel the need to help. A lot of us find instant niches and there is an abundance of good causes. You can start with the very small, charity starts at home, with your staff,  to the very big, finding a cause and running with it succesfully. I have become involved with the United Nations International Association and they run a kindergarten which I visited yesterday with children from my son's school.
We went to Dav Senior Secondary school Janpura in Nizamuddin which houses the kindergarten. It is fully supported by UNIA and the children are given uniforms, encouraged to attend on a regular basis and given scholarships to go on with schooling at a later stage.These are very poor children where often their one full meal is the one they get in school.
There was an immediate and stark difference between the kindergarten which receives some external funding and the rest of the school which was an ordinary secondary school. The school classrooms were tiny, the children had no desks or chairs and for the most part they were filthy and dark and probably quite cold in the winter and baking hot in the summer.

The Kindergarten was roomed in two big rooms where the children at least had some poor carpeting to sit on and they had an abundance of learning aids, puzzles, building bricks and pens and paper.

These are the happy and delightful faces we came across and who will form the back bone of this country.

It is moments like these when you wish you were a Gates !

Walking the dog

It is at weekends when my husband and I like to take the dog for an extended walk. It is not always what she wants (small parenthesis here to explain she is an adored, spoilt, large and slothful Lab whose favourite place is a bed or a sofa preferably snoring away and if that is not possible eating anything.)

Having come from the land of Swiss wanderwegs ( walks to you and me ) this is the one thing I miss more than anything else. The chance to walk out in the open and to regroup my thoughts, to be observant of nature and to breathe the fresh air.

We were determined to re create what we could of these walks here so we found a wooded area not far from where we live which is our central park/ hyde park - no better actually, because this area is quite densely wooded. It seems to sprawl for miles and if you climb to one of the little hillocks you get views of suburbia and possibly Qutb Minar. I believe it is called Sanjay Van and this is where we go.

My husband, who is known for his ability to explore extensively one day decided to take a right fork soon after entering the park so straying from the broad footpaths you see above.This is what we found and it makes my heart bleed. It need not be a river of plastic or an open sewer but I just wonder when the realisation sinks in that these are places to be valued and preserved will it be too late for this forest ?

Book club delhi style

The most hysterical exchange happened at my bookclub this morning.

Friend picks up the phone and rings Delhi Bookshop

"Hello do you have water for Elephants ?"

Silence on the other side.

"Hello hello, yes hello have you got water for elephants?"

"Water for Elephants, no ma'am we do not have any water for elephants. Ma'am this is a bookshop."

Oh I am so sorry not actual water for elephants but the book Water for Elephants.

We were rolling with laughter.

La cuisine indienne a la Parmesan

For those of you who have followed this blog from the start you may be aware that I have a part time cook who has been christened Parmesan and who is the funniest bloke in miles. Its not just the spicy cooking that keeps us sitting up, its his chanting and singing and his stern voice commanding my attention
"MAA' AAM"
he shouts and I leap to attention. This time he was calling me to show me another delight for the eyes- so I told him to hold still and I captured it for you all. Parmesan aka Cinnamon ( courtesy of Cal ) presents his new rice dish,yes you are seeing correctly the dish is decorated with red peppers and slivers of strawberries.

Jamie Oliver eat your heart out

Terrorism and Faith

There is something surreal about being in the midst of a pyrotechnic people where nightly my sensibilities are assaulted with a barrage of firecrackers and blasts the strength of which sometimes seem eerily close by. I use the words carefully because I have been through a war, I know what it sounds like and it is not how anyone would chose to fall asleep. This strikes me even more insane in the light of the real danger that India faces from terrorism and the lengthy announcements that come out of the US and UK embassies following the Pune bomb blast at the weekend where a number of people, foreigners and locals were killed.
We are urged to be vigilant among seas of people and packets and security measures that predicate passage on the mistaken basis of the colour of your skin.
And then I ask myself a thousand times why people who want to harm can justify what they do and whether faith is reason enough. I am exploring Delhi and the passage of turks, afghans and moghul rulers and the consequences of faith and power are all too visible.

Visiting Nizamuddin which is the more liberal arm of islam with its emphasis on love and tolerance an openness to followers of other religious affilations I came across this woman who was huddled on the outside of Nizammuddin's tomb almost as if she was part of the pillar. All you could see of her was a huddled mass - and then she turned to look at us and in those eyes I saw anger, scorn and annoyance and it struck me that even here faith plays a part which I am not comfortable with. Perhaps she was angry at being disturbed and I can only apologise for that but there was more to those eyes than that. Women are excluded from the tomb, they have to be on the outside, shrouded and hidden. God only knows what her life must be like and while I do not profess for one minute that mine is preferable or better I know that so much that is wrong in the world is the adherence to faith which enables radicalism,suppression and subjugation in its name.

Smashing my way through Delhi Traffic

Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of our drivers. So we are usually stuck - not unhappily for the most part but definitely stuck unless you have two drivers and we dont. This Sunday I had a lunch invitation and I knew my driver was busy and my husband and son away and so I was damned if I was going to be defeated by the system.
I made my plate of houmous and crudites, I chose a nice bottle of chilled sauvignon blanc, placed the houmous on the floor of the car and the bottle on the seat and set off.The Guard looked bemused as I confidently drove out the gate and headed up the Mandi road. That is the easy bit. The problem is negotiating the junction onto the MG road which basically entails crossing a congested two lane mad Indian highway straight across to get into the lane towards Delhi.Typical Delhi junction, highly dangerous, totally mad and very crowded even on Sunday.
I stopped and waited for the cars to build up on either side of me. This is called safety in numbers, then I crept out with them as the cars and motorbikes hurtling towards us, horns blaring and saris flying.
I got across and breathed a deep sigh of relief, looked behind me at the Gurgaon traffic zooming up and joined the flow gingerly but confidently only to find myself applying the brakes quite sharply as a biker swerved in front of me.

Note how many different directions cars/bikes are facing !!

No collision, no damage, (You do not want to be a european creating or being implicated in an accident on the roads here as mobs quickly collect ) but as I came to my stop I heard an almighty crash coming from the back seat. My lovely chilled bottle of Sauvignon blanc had found its own momentum and had flung itself off the back seat and landed fair and square in the middle of my beautiful  north african dish carrying my houmous. Dish smashed to smithereens but bottle miraculously intact so with a refound confidence I parped my horn politely and warned everyone I was on my way.
Ahhh the feeling of being in control .....