Vicarious holidays in India

The advantage of living in the UAE is the ease with which one can zip back and forth to India. Or rather, my friends can, but I can’t. A weekend jaunt to India for a quickie holiday on a beach for me would mean offending half my family who live there. Visits to the country usually involve prolonged meals at the homes of relatives, where the aunties pinch my cheeks or slap my shoulder and proclaim: “Why so skinny?” or “Why so dark?”

After the feasting comes the inevitable shopping, even if it only means accompanying my uncle on an early morning walk to the vegetable market as his bag carrier. Of course, he has taught me to revel in the delight of fresh produce and seasonal fruits but year after year, the same homes and the same markets in the same city start to lose their appeal, and I yearn even more to do what my friends can: traipse around India – the seventh largest country in the world – among its 1.2 billion people, with all of the beaches, mountains, temples and cuisines it has to offer.

To upset the Indian version of an Indian holiday is, however, unthinkable.

But my friends, whether British, Canadians or Americans, bear no such burden. They are free to come and go as they please. And it is through their holidays that I vicariously live out my long weekends.

Through them, I have taken a three-day boat ride in the backwaters of Kerala, partied in Mumbai, stayed at a French-colonial bungalow in Pondicherry, visited an ancient temple and celebrated a South Indian wedding in Chennai, lounged on a beach in Goa, visited a book fair in Jaipur, meditated at a yoga retreat in Rishikesh and travelled by road to see the Taj Mahal.

Of course, all this sounds like one of those incredibly slick advertisements called Incredible India that the Indian government has masterminded to attract even more tourists to India, but it is true. In fact, in some regards, their experiences are richer than an average Indian on a excursion around their own country. They see things in way that I will never be able to. A friend befriended a rickshaw driver, who then became her de facto guide around the city of Jaipur, refusing to take any extra money for his added duties. Another lot made friends with children from a village who asked them for pens. They emptied their journalist purses and produced notebooks and other stationery, much to the delight of the children and their parents.

Somewhere in there among all of these stories, I am sure, is my dream holiday too.