Phoebe Bradley AIS class of 1974 phoebebrad@gmail.com

March 20, 2007

Namaste Everyone!

I’ve finally had some time to sit down and write about our trip to India last month. Sorry this has taken me so long! Maf kijiye!

As soon as I found out that my husband Sheldon had been invited to speak at a conference in Delhi, I wrote to everyone I am still in touch with in India and told them we were coming! Then I started packing! Even though I knew we’d be going in the middle of the school year, there was no doubt in my mind that we’d be taking our daughters with us. I really wanted them to see India, to experience it, but I have to admit I was also nervous about taking them. This was my first trip back since 1976. How much has it changed? Where do I even begin? All the cars, TV stations, cell phones, invasion of American culture; McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway etc., the internet & tech revolution just name a few. Not only do all the scooter and rickshaw wallahs have cell phones, even some of the Sadhus have them as well! So how has it stayed the same? In a myriad of ways: its rich and expanding cultural heritage, the generosity of spirit that can only be Indian, its complex and chaotic movement through the human condition, its bureaucratic paralysis, and its ability to astonish you when you least expect it and the way it continues to do so even when you do expect it.

Deepak Sen (’74), generously invited us to stay with his family in Visant Vihar before Sheldon’s conference began. It was because of this that my family had a truly great experience of the ‘real’ Delhi, not just a tourist experience. It also helped to make us feel connected to Delhi in a way that we probably wouldn’t have if we had just been a hotel the whole time. In typical Indian fashion, the Sens made us feel like family from the get go! They have a beautiful home and a superb cook from Darjeeling! Their house is adjacent to the Tagore International School (TIS), where Deepak is the governor and his wife Madhu is the Principal. Their daughter Shivanee attends the British School. We had a lot of fun getting to know one another, telling stories about the good old days, listening to rock & roll, talking some about politics and just hanging out. They were extremely helpful to us in every way possible! After 4 nights with them, we moved over to the India International Center (IIC) for Sheldon’s conference. The IIC is right next door to Lodhi Gardens and was also designed by Stein, the architect of AIS/AES. Staying here felt like being on campus in a way.

Physically, Delhi seemed a lot more crowded, a little more worn around the edges and in some places, like it was coming apart at the seams. There is a lot of security present, particularly in Chanakyapuri, the government areas and even some public markets. You still see flocks of wild parrots flying around, tons of crows cawing incessantly, monkeys wandering through suburban neighborhoods along with the morning parade of wallahs passing by advertising their wares: "Pani Wallah" Dhood Wallah" "Chai. Still there of course, small children picking through the rubbish for something they might be able to sell and all the beggars that miraculously navigate unscathed through the streams of traffic to rap on your car window. The first thing I noticed was the traffic; you can’t help but notice it. Thirty years ago, with very few exceptions, all you saw on the streets were Ambassadors and Fiats along with tongas, scooters, & rickshaws etc. Today, you will find every make of car, van, truck, and SUV jam packed on almost every street, all jockeying for position and for the most part, ignoring the street lights with a vengeance. Now throw in the tongas, scooters, motorcycles, rickshaws and occasional cow and you get the picture. Driving in India is a trip! The horn is still the most important feature on a car, although long gone are the wonderful bulbous horns that adorned the outside of every ambassador cab and scooter years ago. Take just about any 2 lane street and you will find all of the above crammed 4- 6 abreast and all in high gear! Delhi has become a lot more polluted, but as everyone kept telling me, it’s a lot better today than it was 10 years ago. Still my eyes burned a lot and my throat felt coated with what ever is in the air. When we arrived there was a thick layer of dust/soot/grime that covering everything. Then after it rained, the sky turned a lovely pale blue and all the dust was washed away.

I took my daughters to visit AES and luckily I had arranged our visit ahead of time, because as Robin Murphy described, the security is so intense now, unless you are able to give a chronological history of staff and/or faculty, you WON’T get it. So much about our school has changed and for me personally, I wasn’t that impressed by the ‘modernization’ and expansion that has taken place over the years. The most tragic being the systematic removal of the old domes that were to me, the most essential ‘character’ of the school. Barbara Dow, the director of technology at AES, assured me that one of the domes would remain as the Joseph Allen Stein Memorial Building. Barbara had kindly arranged a tour of the school for us and I was delighted to discover that Alka Bajaj, the school secretary from way back when, was still there!! We had a nice reunion and then toured the rest of the campus and also saw Sharon Lowen (who is now the head of the Indian Studies Program) and Mrs. Bagnato. Mr. Uwe Bagnato, who taught social studies in the ‘70s, is now the High School principal! I’m sorry to say that Bandana Sen has finally retired! I did get to see her very briefly at the India Habitat Center.

We ran around from one end of Delhi to the other and tried to see as much as possible; Old Delhi, New Delhi, Quitb Minar, Lotus temple, Nehru Park, Green Park, Connaught and Hauz Khas. The girls loved Dilli Haat and Lodhi Gardens. Chloe especially loved visiting the Gandhi Smriti Museum, where we met up with Sunaina Suneja (’75), who gave us a tour of the museum and it’s textile training center. The center trains women to make Khadi [the home-spun cotton our kurtas were made of] and it has a small shop on site that sells various articles of clothing. Chloe and I got a lesson on how to spin the cotton and Chloe was actually pretty good at it. The museum itself is very evocative. It is housed in the Birla home where Gandhi was assassinated. The path of his last footsteps has been preserved in stone and walking along them is quite an emotional experience.

We had a wonderful time meeting up with Sunaina, her sister Dolly (Suneja) Narang ’71 and their lovely parents on several occasions. Sunaina is a clothing designer and has a very chic boutique in Hauz Khas Village and Dolly has a charming gallery also in Hauz Khas Village. Chloe and I spend an afternoon in Hauz Khas and toured the ruins with Dolly and later had a delicious dosa lunch nearby. BTW- I almost forgot- one big highlight of the trip for me was one night when we were staying at the IIC, Sunaina rang me up and asked me; “Aren’t you a big fan of Arundhati Roy?” When I replied yes, she said; “Well, you had better grab your coat quickly and run on over to the (IIC) restuarant, she’s having dinner near us!” I ran right over to join them for dinner, but I was way to shy to go up to Arundhati and speak to her. Luckily, thanks to Sunaina’s amazing gumption, as Arundhati was leaving the restaurant, Sunaina called her over to our table and told Arundhati I was a huge fan of hers and asked her if she wouldn’t mind giving me an autograph!! I blubbered on to Arundhati about this being my first trip back to India in 30+ years and how Sunaina and I had been classmates etc. as she kindly wrote me her autograph. Thanks again Sunaina!

After our great week in Delhi, we caught the Tag Express from Nizamuddin Railway Station and went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It had just rained when we arrived, so the Taj was uncharacteristically lacking in crowds and we were able to wander the grounds at our leisure. The city of Agra itself was a disappointment, but the Taj totally made up for that in spades. We also visited Agra Fort, Itimad-ud-Daulah (baby Taj) and Fatehpur Sikri. A funny side note, we stopped in at a Pizza Hut in Agra (after the kids had begged us for almost an hour) and halfway though our pizza, we were treated to an unexpected and highly choreographed dance routine to blaring Hindi film music by the entire wait staff!! It was fantastic, as Sunaina is fond of saying, “Only in India!”

From Agra, we caught another train for Jaipur, where we stayed at a nice heritage hotel called the Umaid Bhawan. Jaipur was a 3 ring traffic circus and jam packed with tourists from all over the globe. We tried to see as much as we could, the Amber Fort, Hanuman Temple, Jantar Mantar, Hawa Mahal and the City Palace. We also hired a taxi (an old style Ambassador) and took a day trip to Pushkar, home of the ONLY Brahma temple in the world. Pushkar was a lovely little town, but has seen way too many tourists over the years and it shows (everyone was after us for money, even the priests!). One final day of shopping and sight-seeing in Jaipur and then we headed back to Delhi for our last night with the Sen's and our last day in Delhi. Sunaina treated us to a wonderful lunch with her family at the Gymkhana Club, which instantly brought back a flood of memories for me of Calcutta’s Tollygunge Club where my family had been members. Speaking of Calcutta, I also got to speak with another classmate of ours- Aloka Dalal ‘74, who is doctor and now lives in Calcutta. We chatted on Sunaina’s phone and she even gave me some medical advice about my daughter Thea, who was sick at the time. After some last minute shopping at the state emporiums, we spent our last evening at home with the Sens. Then around midnight; we headed to the airport to departed, as we had arrived 2 weeks earlier, in the middle of the night.

Our time in India went by way too quickly. I read a comment once by an Indian writer who said “visiting India for two weeks is like going to India for lunch!” It’s true, two weeks is way too short for India, but it was all we had and I enjoyed every single moment of it. The last time I had been in India, I was a teenager who was completely self absorbed, naive, carefree, indulgent, and adventurous (*read paagal- like the time Andy & I bicycled to Agra on a dare!). I was so relieved at how easily my spoiled American kids not only adapted to India, but how much they enjoyed it. Now when I start to talk about India, they stop me right in my tracks and start telling their own stories. I am so glad I got to make this trip! I only hope it doesn’t take me another 30 years to go back again!

Shanti~ Phoebe Bradley ‘74

See more of Phoebe's India pictures.

Read a previous missive from Phoebe.

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