It deserves a new addition to my vocabulary. Sitting there in my mind shimmering full of sense & nonsense, lavish & unassuming that it makes Jaipur – The Pink City look as pale as milk. My impressions flow like lucid dreams glazing over with the sunshine of Mumbai, candy coloured wedding garb, street children far from marble flooring, designers ‘bare’ rebellion or glitzy Bollywood-stream, history explosion turned Verve, Gaba trousers & plaits, hallucinating block prints & Masala Dosa, Bombay Electric contrasting educational establishment and the stream goes on.

The traffic never stopped – it only changed colours. Dusky Jaipur looked exquisite from my window frame and the block prints covering the walls of Gempalace inspired my own private ‘Darjeeling Limited’ that would do Wes Anderson proud – for sure.

The buglike cabs turned black in Mumbai and besides little me in a ***** Taj – they gave me the biggest joy since funfair rides. Riding along in these little bugs I screamed with joy inhaling heaps of cosmopolitan air wearing Little Shilpa & Nachiket Barve creations, enjoying a Fairtrade Melange, Masala tea with Bollywood ‘Maholtra’ supreme & a stroll through a sweatshop factory some place else that smelt very close to home.

Mumbai – Ahmedabad…all blending into one…Full of spicy mirrors woven into textiles, ‘candy-floss’ yarn strung & coloured by roadsides for spools to go with kites for local kids’ fun, food from stitched banana leaves & hundreds of nut crackers so beautifully bronzed they made you cry. A Calico Museum stuffed with textiles from all around Planet India living inside a private paradise garden decorated with Mosaic terraces only to be graced by the bare feet of elves. And finally! I get wrapped in the wealth of Sari by Shaymal & Bhumika…oh my!

NOW I understand the need for Princesses & Gempalace jewellery! Bollywood please take my humble hand. In fact NOW my home – ‘Whitechapel High Street’ – galvanised with its mini sari palaces & miniature Gem Palaces makes sense. Underpinned with rationale IMG ‘databank’ Vikram Raizada and graceful Verve intelligence – I am left with the odd glimpse of what will be my INDIA, what will crystalise in time to bind itself around my heart – exciting enough to be future.

For these first few days India has been framed by my car window heading out for back to back meetings with academics, a government man who looks after the Loom Weavers of India, MY personal Entrepreneur of the Year – The Head of Fashion Council of India, the director of FabIndia the ‘Philip Green’ of India, countless studio visits & socials with established designer entrepreneurs working with the Crafts of India. The welcomes are warm to my pleasure accompanied with cookies & cake topped with a wealth of inspirations, insights & stories that leave me feeling humbled and excited for their exceedingly exquisite potential. So I sit digesting it all soaking in the world starring out of my car window in between all the Welcomes. Pointedly the Director of Apparel Export Promotion Council suggests: ‘Our streets are the Life. They are for marriage, trade, sleeping, living, innovation, parties …” In his scheme of things least for driving?

Funny! traffic is dominating my window pictures painted with decorated elephants, horses, zillions of hooting cars traffic-jammin’ and inbetween yellow-green gas-fuelled taxis frolick across four lines of traffic – little fun-loving bug-like creatures. Constant surround sound of hoots – every emotion expressed by hoots Bass, Dur and Moll. All this dressed up by the grace of Indian women spicing up the mix with luscious coloured saris on the backs of motorcycles – sitting sideways like ladies on horseback. Pretty flowers everywhere cutting through the pollution that sinks onto the New Delhi like a silent mist. My eyes are met with friendly curiosity & acknowledging stares.

Passing by Wedding Farms covered in light chains and fake castles – weddings are in season for the next three months. Weddings and religious festivals circulate the Indian calendar. Besides weddings that last four days with up to 21 dresses for the bride and dowrys in the shape of Rolls Royce, bling, cash and I presume anything else possible!!! there is the Festival of Ganesh – an Elephant God that is beautifully dressed and symbol for prosperity. On his celebration people flock to the sea carrying the clay elephants – decorated as colourful as the brides with paints & flowers. They take it to water in order to return it to the Earth creating good fortune throughout the next year. The elephants souls sail off in thousands into the distance & I don’t know, but they must dive to the bottom of the sea, every year. Elephant reef must be beautiful – and if not at least its biodegradable.

I pass shanty towns – poorer than I have seen them in Africa, begging children with flower chains slung around their necks, a heady mix of the streets spruced up with pigs, cows, birds, dogs, monkeys, flower stalls & fruit displays that are immaculate in colour and arrangement. All these mixed up are almost as perfect as the weave of a sari with a golden border.

There is something else – I cannot stop comparing this place to Africa – the colours, the scent, but then I listen to BOB MARLEY jammin’ it and I stop in my tracks – a vision I cannot shake… Indian Youths moving it to BOB? My current music is the symphony of traffic & the wild dogs playing outside the window when I drift off to sleep…. so its hard to imagine and maybe it doesn’t exist? I need to go to a nightclub! Settle that into my schedule.

For now I staring at the land between Delhi & Jaipur on our way to Jaipur – the pink City. In my humble opinion one cannot go wrong with a bit of pink – so I am excited about this one!

December 2008