Rebecca and the Dargah

Last term we had a New Girl in the hostel. It's easy in a hostel of 300 to spot a newbie. She was tall, lanky and not pretty, but nice looking. Oh, and did I mention she was white?

Rebecca and I got talking because when I said Hi and she noticed I was reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. She turned out to be a well read, fairly well travelled Tasmanian with a British father and passport, interesting to talk to. She was rather reserved, though. She was older than most of us and I think a little reticent to begin with; our strange accents and the small things which to us are so commonplace must have been scary to her - she couldn't leave the hostel for a week because the din of the traffic was too much for her

I had been telling her that I attend every music/theatre/anything performance I possibly can, and she seemed interested, so I said I would tell her the next time I found something worth attending. As it happens, I was making plans with P and G to go to Nizammudin (just outside the Dargah) to eat some sinfully delicious desi food, so Rebecca was asked if she would like to join us, and she said ok. Those two got tied up somewhere else, and in the end it was just Rebecca and me.

Now I love exploring, so even though it was around seven in the evening and I had never been to Hazrat Nizamuddin ka Dargah, I didn't have any qualms about going there alone, as it were, with her. But when we got there I think the multitudes of men in the narrow lane got to her a little. And well, she is white. People are bound to stare, to comment. Hell, in India (at least in Delhi, Lucknow) people would yell lecherous comments at a woman even if she were covered from head to toe in a burqa!

When we finally made it through the gali, at the end of which was, presumably, the dargah, but I was beginning to wonder how a largish building (I expected) could possibly be there (conveniently forgetting, of course, places like Kashi Vishwanath ka Mandir, the most famous temple in Varanasi, which is reached by winding up a torturous and filthy little alley). We crossed lots of tiny shops selling garlands and things, offerings that people buy there; we also crossed a very hippie looking fellow who seemed to have smoked his day's quota of pot (or something stronger, perhaps) just a minute ago, and could not help falling over himself.

There was a small enclosure to our left, just before the dargah, something like the aangan, or courtyard, of a house. There we were supposed to take off our shoes.

Later I kicked myself for not remembering; of course you had to take off your shoes, it's only a matter of common sense in India to know that 99 percent you will have to go in barefoot. I guess I was so used to it that it did not strike me as out of the blue to be asked to take my shoes off.

Anyway, Rebecca had not done her homework on India, apparently. It was winter, she was wearing jeans, boots, and under them hose, the kind with the continuous sock at the end. I was just thinking when I saw her expression, that her nylon leggings were going to have major ladders if she walked around in them. But then I realised that wasn't what was bothering her.

I was really taken aback by what she said: her doctor back in Australia had told her never walk barefoot in India, or else she would catch hookworm or ringworm or some worm. Now, with the blind faith of the tourist, she was absolutely positive she would get ringworm there. I had a tough time convincing her; in fact I don't think I managed to all.

The thing is, I wanted to go in, I wasn't about to ruin a new experience for the sake of white man's fear. I know how this sounds, I know I sound rabid, but I'm just being honest, I was genuinely amazed at how adamantly she refused to take her shoes off. Finally she said I should go in, and she would wait outside. Like hell I would let that happen. I wasn't about to desert her and walk off; it's ok, I live in Delhi, I can always come back later.

I just assumed that an educated, well read and travelled person (as I have said) who came to India out of choice for an exchange program, would be open minded. I suppose it isn't that simple. I wanted to try one last time; all along I had been trying to calm her down, telling her not to worry, that there were lots of people, but it was safe, she had a local with her, it's not so dirty, I wouldn't advise going into a loo without chappals, but this place would be fine, just see; ad infinitum. Because I didn't want her to feel scared, I wanted this to be an illuminating experience, not a harrowing one. Now all I said was, Look, you decide. Do you want to take the plunge or not?

She came in finally, in her leggings and all. Once we were inside, it was my turn to feel weird.

All along I thought, I'll be able to mingle, I can mingle anywhere. But inside, I felt like a stranger. I had not done my homework either. I realised I should have read up a little on the place before coming. There was a man reading out something in Urdu (it could have been Arabic or even Persian, for all I know). I don't know, maybe it was from the Quran Sharif, I had no idea. I only knew the Bollywood story: you go there, make a wish (ask for a mannat), tie the red thread on the grill.

In Hazrat Nizamuddin ka Dargah, I was just as much a foreigner as she was, and I knew just as little as she did about the place or the customs. The dargah in itself is supposed to be a secular shrine now (oxymoronic, isn't it?), a Come One Come All. But the entire atmosphere is Muslim, like most of Old Delhi and Old Lucknow tend to be, both architecture-wise and in demographics. I felt like a fish out of water, but not really because I am not a Muslim, but because I entered a non-believer. I didn't believe even in the thread-tying. It was just some banal desire for quaintness that prompted that. I am an outsider even in a Hindu temple, for the same reason. It has nothing to do with religion.

It's faith I'm talking about.

It's easy to label the white man, saying he's the Imperialist who thinks India is all snake charmers; who comes to India loaded with preconceived notions. But what was harder was to realise that

1. we are ourselves the most clueless of all: even the customs we do know about, or follow, we follow cretinously.
2. we probably have the most prejudices in our own heads, which is why they make an appearance whenever something is new or different. 3. we Indians are racist too (oh no, I'm not even getting started on Indians in Nigeria, where I lived before: a later post perhaps).

I still don't know what stand I should take; what is right, or if there even is a "right". Do I need to know anything about my own culture? What then is "my" culture? To learn how to speak Tamil well? To wear a bindi? To know how to cook rasam? To know that on Visu (the New Year) I was supposed to make a visukanni?

What is all this? Even if I know all this, Hazrat Nizamuddin ka Dargah would still be a mystery to me. Do I learn the Quranic verses my Muslim friends learnt at home when they were children? The bare minimum is that I speak Hindi. And it feels inexplicably good when people tell me I speak it like a Lucknavi. It's the only kind of Hindi I know!

I don't know how to belong. There are just so many things you want to belong to, how do you keep your identity from getting fractured? On second thought, why should it even be bad for identities to be fractured? Surely that means people can mix more easily, if they are less rigid, more fluid?

I went to Aliganj the other day, a colony in Lucknow. Ten years in this town and I felt like a tourist still. My world is a world cordoned off by "uppermiddleclassHinduTamilBrahminwomanoncelivedinAfrica" sensibilities. All these are parts of my identity. But that leaves out so much!

Is it always going to be No One vs Everyone? What if I neither want to be devoid of all identity, (the purest, most honest identity of all being the lack of it) nor a hideous pastiche of every culture, and become a living endlessly hyperlinked, cross-referenced Wikipedia page?

Where does that leave me?