roro-en-inde

Une très bonne lecture que ma pote singapourienne Angeleigh m'a passé récemment : Holy Cow, de  Sara Mc Donald.  Ca raconte l'histoire d'une fille qui passe deux ans en Inde a Delhi : elle quitte tout pour suivre son mari qui va être reporter là-bas.

J'ai choisi les meilleurs  morceaux, je les ai laissés en anglais parce que j'avais la flemme de traduire et puis parce que sinon ca perd tout son charme : enjoy !

Page 123

India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It’s rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid. It’s all the extremes. India defies understanding (…). India is in some ways like a fun hall of mirrors where I can see both sides of each contradiction sharply and there’s no easy escape to understanding. What’s more, India’s extremes are endlessly confronting.

Page 19

Buses stop for one thing and one thing only. Not customers – they jump on while the buses are still moving. The only thing that can stop a bus is the king of the road, the lord of the jungle and the top dog. The holy cow (…)

These animals clearly know the rules and they like to mess with our heads. The hump-backed bovines step off median strips just as cars are approaching, they stare down drivers daring them to charge (…). It’s clear they are enjoying themselves. But for animals powerful enough to stop traffic and holy enough that they’ll never become steak, cows are treated dreadfully. Scrawny and sickly, they survive by grazing on garbage that’s dumped in plastic bags. The bags collect in their stomachs and strangulate their innards, killing the cows slowly and painfully.

Page 21

Early morning is not an attractive time to travel in India. As we slowly pull out of the city we are hailed by the twenty-one-hundred-bum salute of slum dwellers squatting beside the tracks doing their morning ‘ablutions’ (…) most don’t even seem to see the train. It’s as if Indians, living in a country too crowded for privacy, have developed a remarkable ability to look without seeing.

Page 25

I spent hours on my last journey posing for snaps while holding young babies, hand-in-hand with shy daughters and with boys trying to put their arms around their easy western girlfriend. It’s again time to abandon shyness, personal space and privacy and to become spectacle as well as spectator.

Page 41

The pollution is starting to get to me – it’s slowly but surely leaching moisture from my face, blackening my skin, leaving an acidic taste in my mouth and starving my brain of oxygen.

Page 48

In India, skinny is not sexy. Fat is beautiful and bountiful and befitting a good woman of pedigree.

Page 50

The narrow shops and stalls are crammed with so many staff that we customers can’t get too close. There is no self-serve in India; jobs are strictly demarcated and structured for organized chaos. One worker gets the fruits, another cuts it, another weights it, another wraps it, another take the money and another will give the change. Most workers are obviously underemployed bored. They sweep dirt from one place to another, dust, rearrange things and sit on their haunches watching the world go by with infinite patience and passivity. When a customer comes close they leap up from stupor to frenzy in seconds.

Page 52

I have only one gripe with the workers of India. They just won’t say the word ‘no’. Taxi drivers tell me they know where something is and get hopelessly lost, waiters insist something is ‘most definitely’ available and then don’t deliver it.

Page 52

Indian women are incredibly obsessive with their looks, and whether they wear salwar suits, saris or shawls they’re always tastefully dressed with coordinated accessories and makeup.