Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Ira Math­ur in the pre­sen­ta­tion of her mem­oir, Love the Dark Days, at the Jaipur Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val.

Tere­sa White

“In In­dia, we have three things.” And our dri­ver enu­mer­at­ed them with his fin­gers while look­ing at me in his rear-view mir­ror: “One: A good break. Two: A good horn. Or, Three: Good luck!” I re­peat­ed them for good mea­sure, and he ap­proved of my prompt pro­fi­cien­cy. Ira and I chor­tled (wicked­ly).

He was, in­deed, speak­ing of bumper/rear­guard ac­tion, but any sense of dou­ble en­ten­dre was far from his thoughts. He was sim­ply in­tent on the crazy, horn-punc­tu­at­ed dri­ving that is Del­hi. He may have been a bit per­plexed that we cracked up every time we hap­pened up­on an of­fi­cial horn-pro­hibit­ing road sign.

Crazy West­ern­er (me) and that beau­ti­ful la­dy un­der A Bad In­flu­ence (Ira). True enough, maybe, but that is the clos­est we have come to think­ing of all the pre-Car­ni­val bac­cha­nal go­ing on back home.

No doubt, we will be im­mersed in our own cap­i­tal’s by­ways when we join Friends For The Road on J’Ou­vert morn­ing. Un­til then, it’s all about In­dia. True to stereo­type, it did not take me long to be af­flict­ed with the prover­bial Del­hi bel­ly—on In­di­an Re­pub­lic Day, no less.

And I could not help but re­flect that this did feel like a bit of re­venge for the colo­nial ter­ror that a big chunk of my an­ces­tors in­flict­ed across the world—from the East to the West In­dies. I spent two days in my bed watch­ing out on­to a city where the dawn de­scends quick­ly as the red sun ris­es slow­ly. All that dust. Eerie and beau­ti­ful. Ira ral­lied around me.

I was so glad to be in this de­light­ful ho­tel, LaLit. And even more de­light­ed that Ira and Imshah had tak­en the uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion to up­grade when we ar­rived late on our first night to a drab, de­press­ing place along­side an air­port high­way. That first fate­ful night, a de­li­cious biryani was served, sus­pi­cious­ly at room tem­per­a­ture, just as the bar was clos­ing. I ate the chick­en. Humph. Though, I did get to learn in that bar about Old Monk rum.

Be­cause you know me. If it’s not bub­bly, it’s rum. And I was still feel­ing puk­ka then. The stuff is de­li­cious and dark with a dis­tinct vanil­la pruney flavour. I am told by a good source that it was once, in the ear­ly part of this cen­tu­ry, ranked fifth amongst In­dia’s “The Top 100 Brands at Re­tail Val­ue”.

Its in­tro­duc­tion to In­dia was in­spired by “the serene life of Bene­dic­tine monks and the drinks they brewed as they led their as­cetic life in the moun­tains where they lived in con­tent (Wikipedia).”

As my late fa­ther would say, “Jol­ly D!” Just as well that I was ini­ti­at­ed fast. I doubt that there will be much con­sump­tion of this elixir for the rest of my trip. So, alas, I can­not do my bit to ar­rest Old Monk’s now steeply de­clin­ing sales amidst ru­mours of pos­si­ble clo­sure.

On a more poignant note, when the con­ver­sa­tion with the wait­er ex­haust­ed rums, he shared with us that he was from Bi­har (Ira nev­er stops be­ing the jour­nal­ist; she al­ways draws peo­ple out, and they talk with a free plea­sure about them­selves.) Many of our Tri­ni East In­di­ans orig­i­nate from there.

He told us that the stan­dard syl­labus teach­es chil­dren about the sys­tem of in­den­ture­ship that forced labour so­lu­tions across the em­pires, no­tably in the Caribbean. And how many re­turned, some­times with their vil­lages gone, but they were told of the many that stayed. And we im­me­di­ate­ly felt those blood-stained seas and oceans fall away, and the sense of kin­ship was there.

‘We hit gold’

I am not the on­ly one who has been ill. Imshah, Ira’s hus­band, was struck with some­thing dif­fer­ent—flu and fever (ap­po­site that “FEVER” was Jan­u­ary 28 Wor­dle). All this on Ira’s birth­day too. She so­lic­i­tous­ly and ex­pert­ly moved be­tween our two ho­tel rooms, en­sur­ing we were as com­fort­able as we could be. She se­cured a Sikh neu­rol­o­gist to vis­it us, and she ar­gued her way through the taxis and phar­ma­cies.

Our Ira may now be sit­u­at­ed in the land of her birth, but she would make any West In­di­an moth­er proud. Be­cause, af­ter all of that, she proved, sans doubt, that she cer­tain­ly “wasn’t the kind of woman the bak­er won’t let near the bread!” And, of course, there was the de­light­ful time be­fore we felt ill and the fun time when we were on the mend.

The be­fore part saw the three of us do­ing the Tri­ni thing and mak­ing a bee­line for the mall. Now, in fair­ness, Ira and I do have out­fits to buy be­cause this lit­er­ary fes­ti­val is fan­cy (on Jan­u­ary 29 the dress code was “Roy­al Ra­jasthan” for a re­cep­tion at the Ram­bagh Palace Gar­dens). A bit in­tim­i­dat­ing? Yes.

Tri­nis, I have to tell all yuh, the mall was blow-mind—all the shops that you know in NYC and in Lon­don, that you eas­i­ly see in one and not in the oth­er, were there: Sepho­ra, Calvin Klein, even Ham­ley’s. We hit gold in an ex­quis­ite bou­tique of In­di­an-styled fash­ion called Chique. The ru­pee was in our favour. Our pur­chas­es and over­all de­light led to quite the pho­to­shoot with the store’s pro­pri­etors. Check us out on their In­sta­gram.

Lat­er that evening, we stepped out for a charm­ing din­ner host­ed by Ira’s pub­lish­er, Speak­ing Tiger. I got to meet Ira’s first cousin, Bob (“not un­cle” as per the fam­i­ly joke amongst the young Math­ur-Mo­hammeds), and his wife. What a priv­i­lege for me to have this as my first so­cial event in this coun­try. What more could a book lover wish for? What I may have lost in bod­i­ly elec­trolytes over a cou­ple of days, I have more than reaped in spir­i­tu­al sus­te­nance in less.

On Jan­u­ary 28, Ira took me out for a dri­ve and to do the sort of er­rands on­ly lo­cals do. Now, I have done my bit of trav­el­ling: rough­ing it with a ruck­sack, sleep­ing on African air­port floors or with the mar­ket ven­dors at train sta­tions dur­ing a state of emer­gency cur­few, await­ing the first sign of dawn. That sort of thing. So, I am re­al­ly not your typ­i­cal tourist, even if I can claim, with­out con­tention, some stush cre­den­tials.

I like to see life, peo­ple at work, and peo­ple at play. Thus it was that I was en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly in­duct­ed in­to the In­di­an bank­ing sys­tem. And for all the coun­try’s en­vied digi­ti­sa­tion and elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tems, I was trans­port­ed back to a hy­brid of the 1970s Wright­son Road Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion and to­day’s Wood­brook of­fice—with­out the quaint­ness.

Noth­ing pre­pared me for the nav­i­ga­tion­al dance with bank of­fi­cials: sam­ba, fox­trot, tan­go, three-step re­duced to rent-a-tile. And this all over again and again. I watched with amuse­ment, as­ton­ish­ment, and ad­mi­ra­tion as my bril­liant friend trans­formed in front of me. I, who pride my­self on be­ing a ne­go­tia­tor, had to hide be­hind the 1990s desk­top mon­i­tor in case my face gave any­thing away. Bak­er, bread, move over.

I sup­pose that this so­cial in­tel­li­gence is an in­grained ca­pa­bil­i­ty that we, who are priv­i­leged to have peri­patet­ic an­ces­tors, ap­ply in dif­fer­ent parts of this world. It makes our iden­ti­ties com­plex, some­times trou­bling, but al­ways en­rich­ing. I feel my own meta­mor­pho­sis when I dis­em­bark at Gatwick. I re­gain some­thing else as soon as I fly over that North­ern Range.

Per­haps the for­mer is a state of mind and the lat­ter a state of gut: a deeply loved in­spi­ra­tion ver­sus a deeply weight­ed vis­cera. What­ev­er it is, it is mine. And this bank ex­pe­ri­ence was Ira’s. I got to ob­serve. Isn’t this why we are here, in In­dia, in the first place? It so warms my heart and soul to see Ira with her peo­ple and her book, a book about us in the Caribbean too.

Lit­er­ary en­coun­ters

To that point, the most mag­i­cal was Mid­land Book Shop, a fourth-gen­er­a­tion fam­i­ly em­po­ri­um of the pub­lished word. I had missed Ira’s book sign­ing the day be­fore, but Ira re­turned to let me have a browse.

Imag­ine a pock­et-sized ver­sion of the old Char­ing Cross Road Foyles—ex­cept the em­ploy­ees knew where every­thing was. And it was every­thing. No need to know the pub­lish­er (that ridicu­lous shelv­ing sys­tem at the old Foyles) or the more log­i­cal al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der of to­day. What is the op­po­site of The Ceme­tery of For­got­ten Books? The Croft of Re­mem­bered Books? Yet, with that same sense of dis­cov­ery cre­at­ed by the gone-too-soon Car­los Ruiz Za­fon. Of that one ti­tle call­ing out to you alone in a hid­den cor­ner of an an­cient city.

I soon put my hands on Wal­lace Steg­n­er’s Cross­ing to Safe­ty: a gift for Ira and Imshah. A sto­ry of old friends who hol­i­day to­geth­er over the years, not di­min­ished by ill­ness or mor­tal­i­ty. There’s a great deal, plot- and char­ac­ter-wise, that does not ap­ply to us four, but the emo­tion does. Though Dax is not with us, he will know why that book found me at that mo­ment amongst those huge stacks of Pen­guin Mod­ern Clas­sics.

For what it’s worth, Mid­land is Arund­hati Roy’s lo­cal. A signed copy of Ira’s book was per­son­al­ly gift­ed to her by the own­er. And Roy’s third book, a mem­oir about her moth­er, is on its way. My cup run­neth over. And how did the bank sto­ry end? Ira achieved her goal and then some.

We were served some de­li­cious (just boiled) chai af­ter some hours. We learnt of the bank su­per­vi­sor’s arranged mar­riage that re­sult­ed in love from her first night (she was telling the truth). We left with warm hugs from the good la­dy. And a se­ri­ous re­quest to seek suit­able em­ploy­ment for her son in Trinidad (Ira now has his deets.) We head for Jaipur.