DIARY
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE ack to India, after seven months away, to find our flat looking like something out of Great Expectations: half an inch of dust on every surface, mythic cobwebs in the corners and a family of sparrows nesting in the blinds. In place of Miss Havisham, we found Mrs Bedi, our iron-fisted Sikh land- lady. Although it was barely past dawn, Mrs 13. edi was up and about, drinking her morn- log glass of rice-water and getting ready to go off to the Gurdwara to say her prayers. Mr William,' she said, as we heaved our suitcases up the stairs, 'the rupee is in a parlous state. I must raise your rent imme- diately."But, Mrs Bedi,' I protested, 'it's 5.30 a.m. Couldn't we discuss all this after some sleep?"Ah, Mr William. Sleep is sil- ver, but money,' she said, pausing to emphasise each word, 'money is gold.'
Mrs Bedi is a remarkable lady. A Sikh from Lahore, she was expelled from her home during Partition and in the upheavals she lost everything. She arrived in Delhi on a bullock cart. Forty-four years later, she is very rich indeed, owns innumerable houses all over Delhi, and has swapped her bullock for a fleet of new Maruti cars (the much coveted replacement to the great Hindus- tan Ambassador). She also controls a vari- ety of business interests, including the Finesse Finishing School, India's first eti- quette college, which teaches village girls how to use knives and forks, apply lipstick, and make polite conversation about the weather. She achieved this transition by a combination of hard work and good, old- fashioned thrift. In the heat of summer, she never puts on the air-conditioning. In win- ter, she only alloWs herself the electric fire for an hour a day. She recycles the newspa- pers we throw out and works late into the night knitting sweaters for export. This is all very admirable, but the hitch is that she expects us to emulate the strictness she IMPoses upon herself. Yesterday I went down to her flat to find out why our water had been cut off. 'There is no water this TM°rning, Mrs Bedi."No, Mr William. And ' am telling you why."Why, Mrs Bedi?'
ou are having guests, Mr William. And always they are going to the lavatory.' Why should that affect the water supply?' I have cut off the water as protest,' she said. 'Last night I counted seven flushes. Is there any wir°rIder that there is water shortage in our ,,T(Ila when you people are making seven 'lushes in one night?'
if Mrs Bedi is sometimes a mixed bless- ing, that is certainly not true of Ladoo (the !lame means 'sweety'), her bearer. One of tue great joys of our life in India is being
woken on the dot of 7.30 every morning by Ladoo bearing the Chota Hazari breakfast' or bed tea) and the Times of India. As Olivia slowly comes to, sipping the hot, sweet Indian tea, I sit propped up on the pillows and survey the day's news. There is a lot of death in the Indian papers. The subcontinent is an unusually accident-prone place and a typical day's paper tends to reflect this: 400 killed in a train crash in Tamil Nadu, 70 injured in a landslide in Darjeeling, 150 garrotted by separatist guerrillas in Assam, the little matter of 28,000 homeless in caste riots in Bihar. Despite this, the chatty, jaunty, non- chalant way the news is presented and the form of Indian English (or Hindish) used somehow manages to raise the tone from one of despair. There may have been a train crash, but at least the chief minister has air-dashed to the scene. Ten convented (convent educated) girls may have been raped in the Punjab but thousands of stu- dents have protested against eve-teasing (a much nicer phrase than that bland Ameri- can import, sexual harassment). And so what, if the protesters have been lathi charged (beaten up) by police jawans? In the Indian papers, miscreants are always charge-sheeted in the end.
1VLy favourite item in the Times of India is, however, the daily condoling. Indi- an politicians, so it seems, are passionately fond of condoling, and barely a morning passes without a picture of, say, the chief minister of Haryana condoling Mrs Parvati Chaudrey over the death of Mr Devi Chau- drey, the director general of All-India Wid- gets. Condoling has always been a staple of Indian newspaper coverage, but recently I've noticed a change. Condoling has bro- ken out of the editorial columns and has
spread like a fungus into advertising space. There is no doubt about it. Condoling has become a growth industry. If a businessman has died but is not considered important enough to be condoled by the chief minis- ter, it is now becoming fashionable for his business colleagues, or even his family, to take an illustrated advertisement and con- dole him themselves. The language of these advertisements tends to be even more inspired than that in the news columns. Here is an example from yesterday's paper. I'm not sure whether it should leave one amused, shocked, grief-stricken or just puz- zled.
SAD DEMISE With profound grief we have to condole the untimely passing of our beloved General Manager MISTER DEEPAK GUPTA thirty four years who left us for heavenly abode in tragic circumstances (beaten to death with bedpost). Condole presented by bereft of Gupta Agencies (Private) Limited.
Iam currently writing a history of Delhi, and in my research came across a guide to Delhi society in the 1740s entitled the Mumqqa'-i-Delhi. In this book there is a reference to a strangely familiar character, a gentleman called `Taki'. Taki, the Muraqqa tells us, is the centre of Delhi society or, as the author puts it, `Taki's house is the abode of delicate beauties, some as fair as dawn while others are as dark as volatile passion ... their tall curva- ceous bodies weave webs in the hearts of beholders.' The book goes on to detail some people you might expect to meet in Taki's company: 'The others who abound in Taki's residence are catamites and effemi- nate' who are proud to be known as his dis- ciples ... his coterie includes all kinds of people as well as pimps.' Taki, the book concludes, is 'the most famous eunuch in Hindustan'.
We e get The Spectator a little late in India and in the interval it loses none of its capacity to surprise. Take the issue of 16 November, for instance. Who would have thought that Charles Moore would describe
journalists of A.N. Wilson's, Oliver Letwin's • and his own generation as `young'? I was still at school when Alan Watkins coined the term Young Fogey, and arrived at Cambridge to find the names of Moore, Coleridge et al talked of in hushed terms as distinguished old boys alongside the likes of Tennyson and Byron. It is one thing to accept that Auberon Waugh is 'old' but quite another to take on board Charles Moore and A.N. Wilson as the voice of youth. In my book, journalists whose average age are 35 is middle-aged.
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