IRA MATH­UR

Al­most every­thing I knew had been lost; I com­plained to my Trinida­di­an hus­band on ar­rival to every city in In­dia and re­peat­ed it like a re­frain across Del­hi, Chandi­garh, Shim­la, Jaipur, and Bom­bay.

Trinida­di­ans of­ten have an an­cient, al­most vil­lage idea of In­dia of peo­ple pray­ing and wear­ing colour­ful clothes and bright jew­els. Noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth. De­spite my reg­u­lar vis­its, I didn’t recog­nise those miles of gleam­ing air­port floors with pricey glob­al up­mar­ket brands Pra­da and Chanel; the fly­ways, bi-ways, cause­ways built over the ocean and un­der­ground; the five and six-lane high­ways, the spot­less streets, the lack of peo­ple liv­ing on the streets as I’d seen in Lon­don’s West End. Women whizz by on bikes, fan­cy cars, scoot­ers, and mo­tor­cy­cles as if they were fly­ing, check­ing their phones, so their food drop ar­rives be­fore they do. An av­er­age three-star ho­tel is like a five-star ho­tel in the West, and a five-star ho­tel is like liv­ing in a palace. I have to ask how the gym equip­ment works. There are no old peo­ple in sight. Some 900 mil­lion peo­ple of its 1.4 bil­lion pop­u­la­tion are un­der 35, the ma­jor­i­ty un­der 25.

In­dia didn’t need the world. Lon­don feels like a vil­lage com­pared to this.

A mid­dle-aged woman and her moth­er whip out their lap­tops in the bank, and smart­phones han­dle Every­thing from births to cre­ma­tions. In­di­an youth, es­pe­cial­ly if they are part of the 400 mil­lion-strong mid­dle class (the largest in the world ), could tell you more about mut­ed, un­der­stat­ed dress­ing, cock­tails, bars, cuisines and trav­el, brands, and glob­al liv­ing. The mu­sic has leapt be­yond Bol­ly­wood tropes to Every­thing, the ra­bid beats of re­bel­lion, the soul of Su­fi, rock, and soul. It’s ex­per­i­men­tal and ex­cit­ing, mov­ing like a rapid riv­er be­tween In­di­an and for­eign lan­guages and rhythms.

In Del­hi, the love­ly young ho­tel staffer in a sa­ree who greet­ed us with a bless­ing of rose petals and a rose-in­fused drink rem­i­nis­cent of its Mughal past re­vealed pri­vate­ly she was ner­vous as this was the first time she had tied her own sari. Be­neath it, she had worn sen­si­ble boots that al­lowed her to fly around look­ing af­ter the ho­tel guests. A sa­ree re­quires look­ing af­ter six yards of pleats, drag­ging ma­te­r­i­al, and the dan­ger of trip­ping over heels. No more.

Tech­nol­o­gy, sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion. The young dri­ve amaz­ing In­dia’s eco­nom­ic growth (40 per cent in the past five years).

And the young are dri­ven. The cul­ture of ex­cel­lence in ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reers with an eye to ma­te­r­i­al suc­cess is em­bed­ded in the young to the point of bru­tal­i­ty. What will peo­ple say is the re­frain of all par­ents while com­par­ing their off­spring to oth­ers. Young women have moved out from their homes and cities to pur­sue jobs, cou­ples are liv­ing to­geth­er, and nu­clear forms are the norm rather than the ex­cep­tion.

It’s true my heart sank on the dri­ve from Chandi­garh to Shim­la, where en­tire slabs of moun­tains were be­ing cut away, the snow-cov­ered pine trees I re­mem­bered, even the nar­row wind­ing roads up snowy streets had been re­placed by the con­struc­tion of high­ways, that were more Van­cou­ver than the Hi­malayas. The caps of snow on the Him­i­layas ap­peared to have dis­ap­peared.

But as we ap­proached Sim­la, In­dia’s win­ter cap­i­tal, the land­scape is recog­nis­able, the roads nar­row, the old colo­nial build­ings still in­tact on the edge of steep slopes. My fa­ther’s army for­mer head­quar­ters, of­fi­cers mess the same, my old school, the rosy chill stung faces of school girls and boys, the skat­ing rink, mon­keys clam­ber­ing on the stone walls and moun­tain­sides, my old school, Je­sus and Mary Con­vent still nes­tled amongst fir trees. The for­mer vicere­gal lodge (now Rash­tra­p­ati Ni­was) was built like Scot­tish cas­tle viceroys of In­dia (the last be­ing Lord Mount­bat­ten), a per­ma­nent re­minder of In­dia’s vi­o­lent colo­nial his­to­ry.

Here, pre-in­de­pen­dence talks were held by the first PM of In­dia, Jawāhar­lāl Nehru, and here In­di­ra Gand­hi, his daugh­ter, signed an agree­ment of Bi­lat­er­al Re­la­tions be­tween In­dia and Pak­istan af­ter the the1971 In­dia-Pak­istan War and the cre­ation of Bangladesh. The lodge was over­run by school­child­ren and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents ea­ger­ly ab­sorb­ing the past. In­dia does that.

 I was hov­er­ing be­tween the past and present, mem­o­ry and the present. I didn’t ex­pect to feel the jolt of the past of what was lost as sharply as I did when look­ing out of my ho­tel win­dow; I saw my for­mer home, the Ce­cil Ho­tel, built by the British and rent­ed by the army for its of­fi­cers. The bal­cony was the same, over­look­ing the moun­tains where, at age six, I saw my first snow­fall, and my par­ents pre­sent­ed me with a blue coat.

 And in the court­yard be­neath, now owned by a ho­tel, was where sol­diers prac­tised play­ing the bag­pipes, and now Su­fi singers were whirling near a fire.

My old In­dia re­turned with every in­ter­ac­tion with ho­tel staff, se­cu­ri­ty guards, army men, dri­vers, shop­keep­ers, and women in Hi­machal cos­tumes from small al­ley­ways. A nod of the head, a salute, a na­maste, a salaam. Some­one said In­di­ans don’t bow our heads in false hu­mil­i­ty but to re­ceive bless­ings. Sto­ries abound on ways of re­duc­ing pride and ego to al­low spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al growth.

 Every­thing is giv­en with open palms, palms of prayer. Peo­ple still con­nect in­tu­itive­ly not­ing if you are cold or a shad­ow of an old sor­row cross­es your face. That open heart, a porous peo­ple who look you in the eye, smile, make a fa­mil­ial ges­ture, call you broth­er, sis­ter, moth­er, see you and want to see you, un­like the West where eyes are avert­ed at strangers. In Chandi­garh, a young se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial no­ticed be­fore we did that we would miss our flight and rushed us through like VIPs, tak­ing us to one bar­ri­er af­ter an­oth­er, car­ry­ing my bags, and run­ning with me un­til we bare­ly caught the air­craft. We won’t see him again.

Pover­ty is not ap­par­ent. In the last five years, some 135 mil­lion peo­ple (ten per cent of In­dia’s pop­u­la­tion) have been pulled out of pover­ty, and Mo­di’s goal is to bring this to less than one per cent.

There is am­ple ev­i­dence that In­dia is re­duc­ing its car­bon foot­print. Plas­tics have dis­ap­peared, and elec­tric cars are on the hori­zon.

It’s not all ros­es. What may feel like ser­vice is ex­cel­lence cre­at­ed by des­per­a­tion. Every ser­vice provider em­ployed by big com­pa­nies, from dri­vers and hair­dressers, asks you to fill out a feed­back form and pro­duce a bar code on which their salary de­pends.

 The fever­ish move­ment for prof­it has the ben­e­fit of cre­at­ing ex­cel­lence with the feed­back form, which you can ac­cess through a bar­code, but it al­so sig­nals the ab­solute con­trol of em­ploy­ees.

A 2022 re­port by Ox­fam shows that In­dia’s top one per cent owns more than 40.5 per cent of its to­tal wealth with over 160 bil­lion­aires, in­clud­ing the world’s wealth­i­est men, Mukesh Am­bani and Gau­tam Adani. At one time, that spot be­longed to the Nizam of Hy­der­abad. It be­longs to Mo­di’s In­dia, where in­creas­ing­ly cor­po­ra­tions have aligned them­selves with the Hin­du na­tion­al gov­ern­ment.

 When one taxi dri­ver in Ra­jasthan told me In­dia’s politi­cians are cater­ing on­ly to the wealthy, he lived this.

In­dia’s poor are still at about 21 per cent. That’s over 200 mil­lion peo­ple.

With the rise in na­tion­al­ism and the dis­en­fran­chise­ment of Mus­lims, Sikhs, and Dal­its, amongst oth­ers, there is the dan­ger of cor­po­rate In­dia align­ing it­self with the im­age of PM Mo­di him­self plas­tered on every bill­board in every city and air­port across In­dia.

In­dia’s rich his­to­ry is be­ing rewrit­ten, with Mughal sites razed down, or left in ru­ins.

In­dia’s sto­ry re­mains as com­plex as its sprawl­ing na­tion. The Jaipur Lit Fest gave me a burst of im­ages of hun­dreds of sto­ries, speak­ers, books, writ­ers, con­ver­sa­tions, and mu­sic that took you fif­teen min­utes from the dur­bar and court of 17th-cen­tu­ry Mughal em­per­ors, the bab­ble of many lan­guages and many emo­tions that this is what In­dia is, a na­tion of 1.4 bil­lion peo­ple not un­like our is­lands of 1.2 mil­lion, each with their own sto­ry.

At the Jaipur Lit Fest, the book­shops were crammed with In­di­an ti­tles with sto­ries of peo­ple, the dis­placed, dis­pos­sessed, hurt, dam­aged, the di­as­po­ra and mi­grants. The mu­sic is dy­nam­ic, a fu­sion of world mu­sic to an­cient Su­fi and Ur­du ghaz­als.

On the gen­tlest land­ing to Heathrow, I learned a woman, Gee­tan­jali Khadria, is our pi­lot.

At bag­gage col­lec­tion, a young In­di­an man asks me for di­rec­tions in Hin­di at Heathrow, and I glad­ly oblige and feel the warmth be­neath the trans­ac­tions of ser­vice in In­dia, of the gen­tle land­ing and think of the apho­rism at­trib­uted to the writer Franz Kaf­ka, “Every­thing you love will prob­a­bly be lost, but in the end, love will come back in an­oth­er way.”

Ira Math­ur is a Trinidad Guardian writer and the win­ner of the 2023 Non-Fic­tion Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture