It's almost been a year since I moved to Delhi, and I can smell it in the air. There's a smell to every season, and the smell of dry pavement and air-conditioned car deodorant must be the smell of midsummer in Delhi. I cleaned my apartment, my rooms, this weekend - bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and... well, that's all there is to it. I even took out the clips and cutouts and coloured paper from the keeping-box and stuck them up on the walls, just to mark territory, like. I've been a bit of a vagabond until recently, and it's comforting to have a cave.
My apartment is a cave. Enter through the back-alley, see the children of the presswallah play and fight and squeak and giggle 'hi', cross the landing at the back of the house through clotheslines and the widow's saris, step into the kitchen. This is my cave and I won't describe it. It gets no direct sunlight and it can be frosty come winter, but it's almost perfect now. There is no heat in my house. There is no cooler, either, but I don't know whether I need one yet. I tell everyone that the entrance is from the alley at the back, but many a delivery-boy or delivery-man has knocked on my landlady's door instead. The only way to get people to remember is to say not that the entrance is at the rear (which is bad enough), but to say that there is a 'backside entry' that must be used. It's on my pizzeria delivery bill.
At the end of the alley where it spills you out onto the road, there is a huge Porsche Cayenne. Next to it stands a Bentley, and opposite the Bentley sits a Jaguar. I point to them every day, almost. It's a pointless ritual because I'll never drive those cars and I'm not that fascinated anyway. It is exciting though when silver Porsches and yellow Lamborghinis roar past you every now and then, but then they're gone and I'm never sure why I worked myself up.
Delhi's a city for the rich and it's here in the capital that the differences and divisions between our several classes scare me, because there is 'no connect' (as they say here) anywhere between. The strata hold, seemingly impervious to any traffic of any kind. It's disconcerting, because you've got to serve somebody or get served. Sometimes it seems to me that people would never clean their floors because it would leave the floor-cleaner with nothing to do. Most chauffeurs uncannily have the same name: 'Driverji'. My Driverji-for-an-hour one morning insisted that the young lady in red trying to cross the street must be a whore, and I, working in the theatre, must enjoy the company of a better quality of lady (meaning, a better quality of whore) quite frequently. I don't know where to start or end a conversation. I think business to get by.
And business is great. I love it. Nothing better in this world than to get dressed funny and sweat it out in front of hundreds of people. There's no business like show business like no business I know. I love working with who I work and I love doing what I do, although I've spent the last few days writing proposal after proposal because the business of art has to be justified. I went and watched a play a few days ago called Yerma. I have much to say about it, but no no, it's not the time. The last play I watched in this city was almost a year ago. It was three young men performing The Complete Works of Shakespeare. It was a cock-up of sorts, but not their fault really, and reportedly I watched the worst show they did. Directors are missing-in-action, and there's no real criticism of the work. Most people writing reviews are neither practitioners, nor particularly of the dramatic bent. There is no appreciation of craftsmanship - and I don't mean this in a sour grapes kind of way; I mean, that no one cares to understand and hence, they cannot critique, they can only comment and what is that ultimately? 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it'. No one articulates why, as if it is unrequired or that they have no responsibility to articulate why. It's an article in a paper filling space that they would have filled with advertisements if they could but they can't, I guess, because the advertisers don't really care an awful much about these rags dressed in letters anyway. It's apathetic and dull.
So, I will care to articulate, I think. I would have said all I wanted to about Yerma right now, but I've forgotten the programme at home. I shouldn't cock-up my impressions of a cock-up - that would be confusing for posterity (because three hundred years later, someone will find this blog and read these very words, blah blah). So, review of Yerma next.
Anyway. Welcome to my watermelon patch.
My apartment is a cave. Enter through the back-alley, see the children of the presswallah play and fight and squeak and giggle 'hi', cross the landing at the back of the house through clotheslines and the widow's saris, step into the kitchen. This is my cave and I won't describe it. It gets no direct sunlight and it can be frosty come winter, but it's almost perfect now. There is no heat in my house. There is no cooler, either, but I don't know whether I need one yet. I tell everyone that the entrance is from the alley at the back, but many a delivery-boy or delivery-man has knocked on my landlady's door instead. The only way to get people to remember is to say not that the entrance is at the rear (which is bad enough), but to say that there is a 'backside entry' that must be used. It's on my pizzeria delivery bill.
At the end of the alley where it spills you out onto the road, there is a huge Porsche Cayenne. Next to it stands a Bentley, and opposite the Bentley sits a Jaguar. I point to them every day, almost. It's a pointless ritual because I'll never drive those cars and I'm not that fascinated anyway. It is exciting though when silver Porsches and yellow Lamborghinis roar past you every now and then, but then they're gone and I'm never sure why I worked myself up.
Delhi's a city for the rich and it's here in the capital that the differences and divisions between our several classes scare me, because there is 'no connect' (as they say here) anywhere between. The strata hold, seemingly impervious to any traffic of any kind. It's disconcerting, because you've got to serve somebody or get served. Sometimes it seems to me that people would never clean their floors because it would leave the floor-cleaner with nothing to do. Most chauffeurs uncannily have the same name: 'Driverji'. My Driverji-for-an-hour one morning insisted that the young lady in red trying to cross the street must be a whore, and I, working in the theatre, must enjoy the company of a better quality of lady (meaning, a better quality of whore) quite frequently. I don't know where to start or end a conversation. I think business to get by.
And business is great. I love it. Nothing better in this world than to get dressed funny and sweat it out in front of hundreds of people. There's no business like show business like no business I know. I love working with who I work and I love doing what I do, although I've spent the last few days writing proposal after proposal because the business of art has to be justified. I went and watched a play a few days ago called Yerma. I have much to say about it, but no no, it's not the time. The last play I watched in this city was almost a year ago. It was three young men performing The Complete Works of Shakespeare. It was a cock-up of sorts, but not their fault really, and reportedly I watched the worst show they did. Directors are missing-in-action, and there's no real criticism of the work. Most people writing reviews are neither practitioners, nor particularly of the dramatic bent. There is no appreciation of craftsmanship - and I don't mean this in a sour grapes kind of way; I mean, that no one cares to understand and hence, they cannot critique, they can only comment and what is that ultimately? 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it'. No one articulates why, as if it is unrequired or that they have no responsibility to articulate why. It's an article in a paper filling space that they would have filled with advertisements if they could but they can't, I guess, because the advertisers don't really care an awful much about these rags dressed in letters anyway. It's apathetic and dull.
So, I will care to articulate, I think. I would have said all I wanted to about Yerma right now, but I've forgotten the programme at home. I shouldn't cock-up my impressions of a cock-up - that would be confusing for posterity (because three hundred years later, someone will find this blog and read these very words, blah blah). So, review of Yerma next.
Anyway. Welcome to my watermelon patch.
3 comments:
james dean died in a porsche. he had good bones. i wonder what his cave was like ...
no cats?
james dean didn't have a cave, he had a spire. and actually, yes, cats. they hang about and yowl in the alley. a woman a few houses away feeds some of them. they eat and go away. they're grow really enormous here.
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