November 20, 2007

• Sangam, nosebleeds, and taxis

  Sangam, the World Guiding Centre for Australasia, is in a world of it’s own.  Just over the road from appalling slums: first time I’ve had children coming up and patting me on the arm, to say hello and beg.  In Sangam, you could be anywhere in the world: and that’s the problem I have with World Centres.  Pax Lodge is just the same.  It’s Guidey.  Not that Guidey is a bad thing, but, it is Guidey to the extent that almost anything native is pushed out of existence.  Yes, it’s India, so we say Namaste to lots of people as we go past, but, it’s international, so we feel Canadian, and Venezuelan, and Irish, and Australian and British.  Still, it was wonderful to visit: even if I did end up meeting scadloads of elderly Guiders from Bucks, including the lady who was my Division Commissioner when I was a Brownie…  It’s a small world, after all.  Sangam does better than Pax Lodge: a local Guide Group meets there on Sundays.  Sign, though, that they don’t interact much: there was only one Indian Guide handbook in the place, and I’ve got it now, because I wanted to work out where the badges I bought go on the Indian Guide uniform Jo and I bought on Sunday night.

  This morning, I headed out to Sassoon Road, to the PMT office (Pune Municipal Transport).  Got to the road.  Walked its length.  Could not find it.  Stood.  Blew nose.  Began nose bleed.  Floundering, dupatta totally out of control, I fetched up in the garden of the local police station – which looked like it might have been the PMT office, and sorted out my nose, and asked a police man.  PMT Office was small hole in wall completely obliterated by a bus stop.  Still, I am booked onto the Tourist bus at the unfeasibly early hour of 8.30 tomorrow morning, which means I’ll have to leave my billet at 7.50 in the morning, and let’s not even think what time that is in English, since I’ve more or less adjusted my bodyclock.

  This afternoon, I spent being gypped by taxi drivers.  I cannot summon the wherewithal to argue with them in this heat.  Having fallen asleep in the Poona club (it was very soporific in there), I went into the Peths.  The driver insisted on waiting while I meandered round the museum and, you know, I spent so long in there, I don’t really begrudge him the second 100 rupees he persuaded out of me, but I will be FIRM tomorrow with them.  Jo is much better.  I am a pushover.  Loved the Peth area.  It was properly Indian: I tended to lean out of the rickshaw and take random photos, and I’ve got some that I’m very pleased with.  A mass of teeming streets, small, pokey, quantities of corners (I swear there’s something flying around this internet cafe, I hope it’s a butterfly), noisy and smelly.  Vibrant, and colourful, and amazing, and full of old buildings.  It is amazing that they haven’t fallen down: India follows the Italian model.  Puts up building.  Fails to maintain it until it’s almost falling down….

  Ah yes.  The smell.  Generally, sewers, or wee, or excrement, or incense.  Very little spices.  Alas.

  Got very upset by the station; the tinest baby I’ve ever seen, suckling, its Mother lying flat on her side, looking as though she’d run out of energy and could not care at all what happened to her.  I have no idea what to do about this, but it can’t go on.  I should do something, but I’m not sure what yet.  I think I begin with finding a local charity to donate to, and then, go onwards from that.  Because I don’t know enough to do anything particularly practical myself this instance.  And that was upsetting.  I couldn’t do anything practical.

  xxx

  • 6:32 am
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