Dilli me Christmas

When you’re a long way from home, Christmas is a time when you feel the distance, you feel the separation and you particularly feel the difference in culture. Not that Christmas isn’t celebrated in India – the shopping malls celebrate it with great decorations, huge trees and Santa’s grottos. You can buy most Christmassy things here, at a price. We had a tree and decorations, and a limited selection of cards was available. The most ridiculous thing we saw was a box of ordinary shop mince pies on sale at 1200 Rupees - £17!
Our Christmas was a real mix of home and India. On Christmas Eve, we were at a very traditional carol service – 7 lessons and carols, followed by a delicious biryani, kebabs, daal and naan. Our sons, Michael and Simon were with us and we spent Christmas Day itself with friends in the British High Commission compound – turkey, ham and all the trimmings. The turkey was delicious – although it did arrive with the neck still attached and everything still attached inside. There weren’t many volunteers to put their hands in and fish it all out.
One of the highlights of Christmas was going over to the girls’ home and putting on a Christmas party for them. We helped them decorate their Christmas ‘tree’ (actually a couple of bare branches), played games, gave them a traditional tea of samosas and cake, and we had bought presents for all of them – mostly jumpers, jackets and socks as the home is very cold at this time of year. It was so great to see the joy in their faces and how excited they were to get gifts. It really brought home once again how blessed we are, and particularly our children to be brought up in a loving caring environment.
Delhi has been very cold for the last few weeks. I know that for people in the UK who have been struggling with snow and sub-zero temperatures, this will sound like a bit of a whinge, but in the UK, no matter how cold it is, you come home and your house is nice and warm, because it is well insulated and the central heating has been on. Here, there is no heating, we have marble floors and huge gaps around our doors and windows that let the warmth out and cold in. Fortunately, it is heating up a bit now and I am sitting outside in our courtyard as I write this at 9 in the morning.
Our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter have been with us for the last couple of weeks and on Wednesday we took them to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal (our second visit in 2 weeks). It’s about a four hour drive away so it’s a long day trip. Little Siena created quite a stir – many Indians seemed more interested in taking photos of her than the Taj. We lost count of how many times we heard ‘sooo cute’ or ‘soooo sweet’ as we walked around. It was the first time out of our three visits there that the Agra air was clear and you could see the Taj clearly from the fort from where Shah Jahan would gaze down the river to the tomb of his beloved wife Mumtaz. No matter how many times you visit, the Taj is still an incredibly beautiful building and the first sight as you come through the gateway takes your breath away.