Pritam's Blog
A Night To Remember
I can spell her name, but I can’t pronounce it, for she was French, and French, the language, is hard to explain… They write something, and read it in an entirely different way…
So, I will leave it to her, if she ever comes back to India…
But I know she will not, for she had bad experiences here…
She had come to India to work in its villages. She was a nutritionist. And Indian villages have malnutritioned kids…
She wanted to help them, teach them to make the best use of whatever they had…
She spent three months in a village in Tamil Nadu…
After that she travelled a bit. And it was the worst experience of her life.
She was photographed everywhere she went, especially in mofussil areas, without her permission… Comments were passed at her. She was taunted, teased, humiliated… She had to pay 100 bucks for everything that actually costs 25 bucks… And one night, she was even groped in a crowded bus…
The feeling with which she had come to India died by the time she was leaving…
I met her at Bangalore International Airport, when she was on her way to Delhi, to catch a flight to Paris…
I was making a sketch, and she wanted to see it.
That’s how we started talking.
And she said that she hated India… She would never come back here.
I apologized…
Anyway, the feet-obsessed me noticed her bare feet which she had rested on the trolley. “You have beautiful feet. Anklets will suit them…”
“You think so? Then I will buy a few when I reach Delhi… “
Years later, she mailed me… I asked her if she still hated India.
She said, “India never left me…”
And sent me this pic…
The self-obsessed, romantic, and poetic part of me thinks I am the best thing that ever happened to her in India.
And the India-loving-side of me (despite all its flaws) wonders if she wears those anklets because she still hates India, and wants to keep her last memory of this country at her feet…