Learning Hindi against all odds

The good intentions are still there and my vocabulary is inching slowly forward but this amongst some staggering statistics from this country which are worth noting.

English speakers in India outnumber those in Europe. More Indians speak English than any other language with the exception of Hindi and most Indians are bilingual if not trilingual.That is quite an impressive statistic.
Last night on the train back from Jaipur I listened to a lovely young man speaking to his group in fluent German while over the weekend we found groups of Koreans and Dutch all being briefed about the beauties of Jaipur, the Pink City in the language of their choice. More about that in the next few days.

Multilingual, multitalented and multifaceted.A winning combination.

How was your day in the office dear ?

Husband arrives home looking a little weary so in a wifely smiley way you inquire:

How was your day at the office today dear ?

It is not often you get the reply:

"Exhausting- had to brief a Bollywood star about her role as our good will ambassador and then have a press conference with her.It all went swimmingly well but it was quite tiring."

Preity Zinta and her Mohali IPL team is now a goodwill ambassador for UNAIDS.
The team will have a person living with AIDS conducting the toss on March 13th against the Delhi IPL team.
By taking this on Preity wants to show that others should not discriminate against people living with AIDS. She is hoping to increase awareness and show how people can live full lives wih the disease, where their human rights are respected and enforced.

Puts a whole new context to the expression all in a good day's work.

Queen Lizzie's Birthday Bash

Last night we attended Queen Elizabeth's Birthday reception. Happy Birthday to her - You have to give it to her she is quite an institution. I should know I have one just like her living in my household. In Private eye they would put their pictures up side by side.

Poor love she must get so confused with her birthday. It is a moving feast depending on the weather, the customs and the size of the gardens of the High Commissions.

Splendid party it was too.The High Commission's gardens are large and beautiful as is the residence.This was a big party and it catered for everyone's tastes.The great and the good were all gathered there in their finery as were several sports teams and a full British band which played the two national anthems. Never been to one before where the sponsors are smack in your face. So Teachers had their stall as did Bournville and even Costa Coffee. Good lord corporate sponsorship for Queenie what next. Perhaps it was to impress Prince Andrew who was working the crowd who knows. Yawn Yawn.

One thing was clear. Dicky and Arabella are the commensurate diplomats, they put on fabulous parties all the time, god how exhausting, and the hors d'ouevres last night were to die for.

Not quite her subject but ever so reverently humble and a little fatter

MM

March 8th is about all women throughout the world

Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. She chose to go on the 8th of March in 2003 and I could not think of a better day for her to leave this life as it is International Women's Day and she is the one person who gave me my grounding to face life as a woman on this planet.
She worked hard and it wasn't always easy yet she found time to be innovative and artistic, down to earth and fun and was the best cook bringing in recipes from northern Greece where she hailed from, to the island of Cyprus where she settled when she married my father. Last year all three daughters visited her home town of Kozani and held a memorial service with the remaining members of her family to honour her life and her achievements.
So this day is inextricably linked with emotion but always hope. Being in India for the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day is particularly poignant as inspite of what is said and promised I do feel that a woman's lot here is a hard one to bear.

There is hope and it comes from accepting women babies as an equal blessing to male babies- a lot more needs to be done here. It comes from the spread of education - a woman is able to earn her living and become an active citizen in the country in addition to her role as a mother and a homemaker.It is significant that in the Kindergarten that UNIA run and support out of the 100 children who attend barely a handful are girls.

It comes from all the various initiatives of the government, where women are prominent but now will be even more so as they pass the Women's Reservation Bill into law which will reserve 33% of seats in parliament to women.

There is promise and there is hope but there is also still a lot of prejudice and sexism - rape numbers are still frighteningly high, women who are single cannot travel safely at night, cannot find accomodation easily and have no place in society after divorce.

Often these days are significant to those who know them but how much does the life of a woman bearing bricks to feed her family change because of it ? Sadly little but we shall see the changes and report on them as India powers ahead.

And I am not the only one writing about Tigers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/india-vanishing-tiger-rajasthan

See Guardian Sunday edition with this interesting and disturbing article.

1411 and hopefully more to come

I cant over emphasize the sheer beauty and emotion of seeing a tiger in the wild. For those of you who have not done it I urge you to go- you will also understand the huge importance of the campaign SAVE OUR TIGERS which is going on at the moment in India. Just think, your grandchildren may never experience this because 1411 is not a big number and people still poach them. How can they ? Why do they ?
I know the hows and the whys but it still shocks me. What is lovely though is to see so many Indian tourists really keen on seeing them and the foreigners who pay thousands to catch a glimpse of them.

We have been so lucky - on this trip to Pench we saw 4 cubs sunning themselves in an open glade and the mother nearby. They slept and rolled over, yawned and stretched, played with each other and with twigs and shook the flies off them. We watched mesmerised and respectful of their grandeur.

The next day on elephants we sighted them again.The elephants carried the ladders we used to climb up !

 They had indulged us by moving out of the lantana undergrowth to an open expanse and this is what we saw. There is an overwhelming but irrational desire to rush and play with them. 

The deciduous forest

This is the time when the trees turn and the leaves fall - there is a Hindi expression "patachara" for this season which means the time for falling leaves.  The seasons here are defined more as dry and wet. So the wet season is followed by the dry season and this is when the leaves fall, to be quickly followed by new shoots, flowers and fruit.

The forest we were in, in Madhya Pradesh was a deciduous forest and "autumn" for want of a better word was in its glory.We travelled through teams of teak trees where the green chlorophyll and fleshiness of the leaf falls away or dies leaving this incredible intact decoupage of the leaf's outline. As the light falls to the forest floor you thought you were looking through silver silk spun webs. My camera does not do justice to the fineness of it all.Nor to the aerial roots of the banyan or the creamy sleek barks of the luminous ghost trees in the last picture.