Local gods

When we moved in, Sandeep, the landlord, ushered me into one of the rooms and pointed to a corner and implored me not to put anything there. The room was quite dark, and, from what I could see, there was a plastic cup with sand in it, studded with small sticks. “Ah. Is it unsafe?” “No, this is our God.” I nodded solemnly, peering a little closer. Behind the cup (used to hold the incense sticks, I now realised) was an elegantly simple square ceramic tile, set into the floor. This was going to be a task: keeping Max from desecrating the household-god-tile. “Don’t worry, Sandeep. It will be respected.” I assured him in what I hoped was a tone suited to a discussion of domestic deities. It was only a matter of minutes before Max had dashed in, grabbed the cup, scattered the floor with its contents and more or less danced on the holy tile. I could only imagine the ill-fated blowback. If Max were to be struck by a falling coconut, we’d all know why. It was several days later, sitting in the toilet, that I happened to notice that the whole bathroom has the same tiling.

We came back from the beach the other evening to find a large group of locals gathering. I always think it best to approach a communal gathering cautiously, just in case it turns out to be a funeral or a lynch mob. Happily, this was a puja centring on launching a wooden Ganesh effigy into the surf. The men banged drums more or less a random, the teenagers were in charge of lighting bangers and lobbing them about whilst affecting a nonchalant air, and everyone else seemed busy mixing prasad and clapping. Max was in heaven, and the prasad of cucumber, coconut and jaggery sugar turned out to be an unexpectedly great combination. The colour of this sort of ceremony couldn’t be more at odds with the local Catholic events. We ran into a procession coming out of the church, and it was all I could do to bind and gag Max, as the austere rows of penitents looked on disapprovingly. From behind my hand, I could almost hear Max's muffled voice asking where the drums, fireworks and cucumber were at.

It’s hard to tell what Max’s theological conception is. He seems to accept that gods can be various animals, and that he will incur the hissing wrath of his parents if he grabs things from temple shrines. We suspect his perspective might be getting confused: last week he saw a statuette of the Virgin Mary and made himself popular by shrieking ‘Monkey God! Monkey God!’

Imperfection

On almost every hotel wall in India, you will find a rather artificial picture of an Austrian- or Swiss-looking building, probably a house or hotel, in a strangely sterile alpine setting. There are never any people in the shot, or animals. Everything is pristine. I’ve often asked where these anodyne mountain scenes are from, and usually I’m told it’s Switzerland, a land held in the Indian collective subconscious as an earthly Eden. Possibly the reason for this lies in the constant juxtaposition in India of the beautiful and the ugly. You’ll be watching a sunset on the beach, when you realise the timeless silhouette of a fisherman at the water’s edge is a man shitting. You’ll see a vivid rainbow arc across the sky, then be distracted by two bulls raping a cow. You’ll chance upon a picturesque riverbank, but have to pick your way through swathes of beer cans and crisp wrappers. You’ll rise in time to see the dawn light, but be assaulted by wafts of burning plastic (possibly smouldering Pampers). And so on. Hence the yearning for the unattainable Swiss chalet vista. No matter where you go in India, the perfect is always inherently imperfect. Who knows, behind the Swiss chalet, two scrawny dogs are probably tearing apart a plastic bag of rotting food, surrounded by a smattering of discarded Kingfisher cans.

Edward Said wrote that what you also never count on, when booking and travelling to a dream destination, is that you will have inevitably brought your own flawed self to the paradisiacal scene. So, whilst the coconut trees and golden sand look just like the postcard, your own neuroses creep in unbidden. Kate spent a whole night kvetching about tsunamis, I passed a good half hour on the beach being anxious about the cost of keeping a helicopter in the air, and Max is, as ever, hyper-vigilant about the whereabouts of his toy car collection. I can almost see us in the Swiss scene, scratching at some fresh insect bites, grousing about the cost of a cup of tea and wondering whether the chalet manager was being unfriendly to us.

A load of rubbish

The refuse system in our house consisted of us handing our rubbish over to the family who we rent off. They would then spirit it away somewhere, possibly burning it in some unseen place. This routine was going perfectly well until we were chasing Max round the corner, behind our adjoining wall, and came across a Emin-style depiction of our recent life, through the medium of rubbish. Horrified, I spotted several familiar Kingfisher cans, a few ear-cleaners, contact lens packets, and, most conspicuously, the tell-tale peppermint green and baby blue colours of Max’s Pampers. Considering that the plastic and metal would probably take another hundred years or so to break down, we decided that our consciences couldn’t bear the weight. As it turns out, with no municipal waste disposal scheme, the nearest ‘bin’ is about 20km away. Starting with the purchase of several pedal bins for the purpose, we have embarked on a meticulous separation plan. What becomes massively obvious when you have to wash, sift and transport your own stinking waste for half an hour, clutching it between your knees on a scooter, is that a family of three produces, literally, shitloads of rubbish. The hardest part is the nappies. I can just see them gagging a dolphin or smothering a rare turtle. They resist compaction, and veritably grow in size and weight when in contact with water. What’s in them? Some sort of weird gel crystals that have a half-life akin to plutonium. Alternatives are a little hard to decide on. Bare-ass is the obvious choice (for Max, that is), and certainly the approach favoured by 300million Indian children. Alas, the potty remains unsullied, but Max has been told there is a rich bounty on offer for every potty-based emission. Max now wears a brand of Huggies that are a denim effect fabric. They seem a comfy fit, but have a disconcerting way of making Max look like he’s sporting DaisyDukes. The other thing is that throwing away four or five of these everyday, with their stretchy seams and realistic beltbuckle, feels even more wasteful. Our other great idea is to insert a sanitary pad into a nappy. Luckily, in Indian shops nappies and maxipads are mixed up together. We’ll see how this plan goes. Otherwise the nappies will continue to be a putrid albatross round my feet.

Morning times

Max will wake us up, without fail, between 6 and 7 a.m. He clambers out of the web-like shroud of the mosquito net, totters into our room and starts banging on about vehicles. There is a heavy price to pay for ignoring his implorations. Last week he tried to get us up, and failing to do so, came back spraying a bag of milk all over the kitchen and living rooms. The tension of the morning was heightened when we gave him the remaining milk in a bottle and sat him on a cushion- next to a scorpion. It was 6.05am and Kate and I were bathed in sweat and aging by the minute.

The only other thing to get us leaping out of bed is the clown’s horn siren song that signals the arrival nearby of the bread man. ‘Bled man!’ Max with holler and I’ll bolt for the door, clutching him in one hand and ten rupees in the other. Many is the time that I’ve lurched forth into the dawn, lungi coming undone, wild of eye and breath, only to hear the comedy claxon disappearing around a corner. There is a ventriloquist’s trickiness to the noise, and Max and I have spent many minutes clambering vainly through people’s backyards, only to have to return dusty and bleeding, unable to put bread on the table.

War without end

On arrival, our approach towards the kitchen sink was greeted with a welcoming cloud of fruit flies. Or perhaps they’re not fruit flies, since they aren’t discerning and delight in absolutely anything that isn’t bone dry. So small are they that you can’t catch or swat them, since the air displaced by your hand’s movement wafts them away. When I bought one of those electrified racquets, I declared it the best money I ever spent. Kate will often come into the kitchen, drawn by the static crackle of the demise of creatures with about four chromosomes, to find me sweating and wild-eyed, thrashing about like McEnroe. I suspect that their life cycle is measured in hours rather than days, and that if I didn’t kill them, they’d be dead by morning anyway.

The mosquitoes are quite low-key when you consider that we are living next to a tidal river. What is odd though is that they are totally silent. I once heard that mosquitoes whine near your ears so that you will become stressed and the blood will throb, thus making their job easier. Not these ones.

Then there are the ants. At first there were only one or two innocent looking ants, strolling around in an unassuming manner, whistling, and asking directions. By now, constant streams of ants meander through the kitchen, putting up fliers and selling ant souvenirs. Indian Tupperware appears not to be airtight, and so now everything we own lives in the fridge. We have put a bell around Max’s ankle in case they try to carry him off.

As each new plague visits us, we look back fondly on the previous ones for being so benign. As we encounter huge jumping spiders, various scorpions and poisonous centipedes, I increasing regard the potentially malarial mossies as rather quaint.

Safeguarding

Keeping one’s first born child alive and well is of course any travelling parent’s primary concern. At every turn, though, our best efforts appear the very height of futility. We carefully wash and rinse Max’s milk bottles in mineral water, and then find that he’s snuck off to drink with gusto from the tap for minutes at a time. We painstakingly enforce helmet wearing on the scooter, and then we’ll find that a friendly Indian man has borrowed Max and is driving around with him rodeo style on a motorbike. We encourage Max to hold our hand in the road, but the next minute he’s chasing a chicken or a piglet into a broken down building site, through a checklist of tropical hazards: snakes, centipedes, rusty nails, broken glass, fetid puddles, men with puppies, mosquitoes, rabid dogs, and high-sugar beverages. What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Or make you ill.

Lifestyle

What is funny is that, having removed ourselves from our domestic existence in London, and travelled to a completely disparate environment, we have hurried into a parallel routine. The key distinction is everything is recreated in a setting that is absurdly tropical.

We still do laundry, but now we hang it between palm trees. We still go jogging and swimming, but now do it on the beach with the sun either rising or setting, dodging the cows and crabs, as fishermen haul in their catch. We still watch boxsets, but do it under a mosquito net with the sound of waves breaking in the background. We still do the dishes, but they are mostly steel plates and have to be done instantly so the insects don’t get too involved. We still take Max out to run around, but here it’s in waterpools where he forages for sea creatures and careers about chasing after a gaggle of Indian kids.

What is also odd, is how little fills a day. We are up from 6am til 10 or 10.30 at a push. It is a bit like retirement, except with constant childcare requirements. We plot and plan mealtimes all day. Everything is more manual- cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc and we are amazed at how two small events can consume our waking hours and leave us slumped in the cane chairs, breathing heavily.