Knock-knock-knocking on Glasgow’s door(s)

Or, perhaps more accurately, buzzing Glasgow’s buzzers. Yes, dear readers, for the last few weeks around ninety percent of my working days have been spent standing in front of these things:

I’ve seen so many of them that I’ve become a kind of intercom-system connoisseur. Before I even press the buttons I know exactly what type of sound they’re going to make, whether it’s the traditional, reverberating bzzz, or the vaguely melodic (yet really quite irritating) bleeping sound: doo-da-loo, doo-da-loo, or the high-pitched, droning eeeeeeeee. And then, of course, there are the buzzers that don’t make any sound at all (at which point I panic: what if it’s broken?!).

There are the fancy new buzzers, mainly for the fancy new flats, with their shiny silvery surfaces and digital displays. And there are the even fancier ones with security cameras and buttons you don’t even need to press; just a light touch of a fingertip sets it bleeping away. There are buzzers with names and flat numbers on them, or name stickers that have long since peeled off or disintegrated. And of course there are the non-fancy buzzers – the kind that require a squirt of antibacterial hand gel after touching.

I’ve become so used to locating, pressing and speaking through door buzzers that I can no longer walk past a block of flats without glancing over for a quick inspection. And even if I’m on my day off, and in Edinburgh, I still have to stifle the inexplicable urge to press the buzzer buttons of every apartment block and tenement I happen to pass.

If you’ve just tuned in to this blog and are wondering what the hell I’m going on about, please allow me to offer an explanation. I’m working on a survey project in Glasgow’s East End, which involves going door-to-door, trying to set up interviews with the residents to get their opinions on the urban regeneration that’s going on because of the upcoming Commonwealth Games. And it seems, unfortunately, that to get one of these interviews, you first have to knock on a lot of doors. Or buzz a lot of buzzers.

But, I think it’s worth it. Because behind those buzzers are stairwells (or ‘closes’ in Scotland). And off those stairwells are people’s front doors. And behind those front doors live all kinds of weird and wonderful examples of humanity.

There was the student who offered to make me a peanut butter sandwich. And the racist grandmother. And the man with no teeth who’d just got engaged at forty-five. There was the young mother, the young working couple, the eighty-year-old couple, the bachelor nurse. The bar manager with the overly familiar ginger cat. The woman who said I looked tired and made me some coffee. The old lady who gave me a pair of hand-knitted gloves.

So yeah. Maybe I do spend most of my time standing in front of intercoms, listening to them buzz and bleep and waiting for somebody to answer. And maybe it is a little monotonous sometimes. But this is certainly one of the weirdest, and most fascinating, jobs I’ve had – with the best opportunities for meeting interesting people – so I’m not complaining.

How do you like your froyo in the morning? I like mine with granola.

Frozen yoghurt is basically ice cream for healthy people, isn’t it? Ice cream without the ‘guilt’. Not that I’m the kind of person who feels guilty about eating ice cream. Please don’t start imagining me as one of those women who sit in their pyjamas watching Love Actually, shovelling Haagen Dazs down their throats and snivelling about being dumped, or whatever.

(I mean, I’ve shovelled down entire tubs of Haagen Dazs in one sitting before, and I may have been wearing pyjamas at the time, but it certainly wasn’t because I’d been dumped, and I absolutely, definitely wasn’t watching anything with Hugh Grant in it – he makes me feel sick, and I can’t eat ice cream when I feel sick.)

Anyway. What I’m trying to get round to saying is that there’s a snazzy new frozen yoghurt joint in town, and I went there the other day and it was good.

My wonderful friend Miriam – Canadian writer, Glasgow enthusiast and recent corporate convert (who blogs here, by the way) – was on a flying visit to Scotland and we realised, with much excitement, that for the first time in three years we’d actually be in the same country at the same time, and able to meet up. But it would have to be at the inhuman hour of nine in the morning because that was the only time we were both free. As I’m sure you can imagine, it’s hard work being an international social butterfly.

So we thought it would be nice to have breakfast in Edinburgh before getting the bus to Glasgow together, where I’d go to work and Miriam would rake through boxes of vintage underpants in Mr Ben.

Frisky, on Lothian Road, is Edinburgh’s (and Scotland’s) first ever frozen yoghurt cafe. Or ‘froyo’ as the kids (apparently) call it these days. I stepped out of the early morning rain and into the shop, which is bright and white with multicoloured plastic chairs and strange pink pictures on the walls. Miriam was already there, sipping a mysterious green liquid.

“It’s spinach” she said, defiantly. “With mint, almond and froyo. And it actually tastes nice.”

I was impressed by the exotic health smoothie. And even more impressed at how natural and unpretentious she sounded when she said ‘froyo’.

I went up to the counter and had a look at what else was on offer. There were four types of froyo to choose from, and lots and lots of toppings, including healthy-looking, breakfast-y things like granola and fruit, and then some ‘guilt’-inducing chocolate chip-type things, brownie pieces and (hurrah!) popping candy. There was also fresh coffee, thank goodness.

Not wanting to be outdone by Miriam I ordered some green tea flavoured froyo with fresh blueberries and strawberries, and it was very tasty indeed. I’m not sure how different it tasted to ice cream, but I did enjoy the feeling of smugness it gave me. Maybe I should be a health freak more often.

The staff were lovely – one lady had the snazziest glasses I’d ever seen, and a friendly man told me  that the green tea froyo is made of real, actual Japanese matcha tea powder, which is the same stuff that’s used in those fancy Japanese tea ceremonies. “I need to remember that for my blog post,” I told the man. So I wrote it on a post-it.

What a nice way to spend the morning. And I’ll definitely be going back to Frisky again – froyo is totally the new Haagen Dazs. Especially because you don’t need to wear pyjamas, watch Hugh Grant and feel guilty to enjoy it.

Just another day in Glasgow

“The problem wi’ Glasgow is all them bloody foreigners!” the old woman said between drags of cigarette and swigs of instant coffee. “They come over fi’ Poland an’ that an’ take all the bloody jobs! An’ –” she coughed “– that’s why everyone’s unemployed!” She slammed her coffee mug down, flicked the cigarette and adjusted her nightie. Seeing my expression, her face softened a bit. “Don’t worry, he’ll be out in a minute. He’s gettin’ dressed up an’ doin’ his hair. Thinks he’s goin’ on a date or somethin’.”

Finally, after what seemed like hours, my interviewee appeared in the doorway of the kitchen – hair gelled to perfection – and said we could go into the living room to complete the survey. I mumbled a goodbye to the grandmother, who grunted and lit up another cigarette.

It was just another day in my weird job, really.

Following Delhi’s slightly embarrassing attempt to host the Commonwealth Games back in 2010 (I’m pretty sure that big stadium by Connaught Place still isn’t finished), it’s now Glasgow’s turn to shoulder the burden. I remember watching the CWG closing ceremony in a sports bar in Mumbai (I’d purposely run away from the capital for the duration of the games), and being very amused by the abundance of tartan, kilts and bagpipes (not to mention a makeshift Loch Ness monster) being flung around the stadium in an attempt to ‘celebrate’ the passing of the [whatever the CWG equivalent of the Olympic torch is] onto another (un)fortunate city. Lucky Glasgow!

So in preparation for this ‘fabulous’ event, about half the city is being demolished and rebuilt, with lots of fancy new buldings, fancy new roads and, perhaps most usefully – a fancy new velodrome. (I’m sure there isn’t a Scot alive who wouldn’t want to roll out of bed, hop on his bike and cycle round and round some smooth, vertical walls at a trillion miles and hour!) Anyway, the point is, the good people at Glasgow University, and a few other organisations, want to find out how (or if) all this urban renewal stuff is actually going to benefit the health and wellbeing of the people who live in the city’s East End – where the Games are going to be.

Now, in the same way that Azadpur isn’t quite up to Vasant Vihar standards, the East End isn’t the swankiest part of Glasgow, and so there’s loads of regeneration going on there anyway. But the arrival of the Commonwealth Games will just give the whole process a little kick up the proverbial rear end.

As yet, there hasn’t been much research into how all this will affect the residents. And so that’s where I come in! Well, me and quite a lot of other people. We’re working all summer on a survey about the impact of urban regeneration and the Commonwealth Games on the people who live in the east of Glasgow, which means we go out onto the streets, meet the locals, sit in their kitchens and, through an interview/questionnaire-type-thing, collect information (or ‘data’ to use the fancy term) about their lives, their homes, their feelings… and it’s proving to be really interesting.

It’s fascinating to catch glimpses of all the different lives being lived in this city, in my country. To be invited into friendly homes to drink tea and laugh and listen to people I’d never otherwise meet. To give them a chance to voice their opinions and to feel like, maybe, from writing down these opinions I could help change the city for the better (although, perhaps not including rants about “bloody foreigners”…).

In the past couple of weeks I’ve met young people and old people; people just engaged at forty-five and people married for sixty years; sporty people, lazy people; workers, mothers, unemployed, retired, Scottish, foreign, happy, sad… And I think, by the time this job is over, I’ll have learned a lot from all of them.

To end on a slightly ridiculous note, here’s an article about one of the more inventive ways the city of Glasgow is preparing itself for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.  I can only imagine the results if the same thing had been in done in Delhi…

Lochs, Irn Bru and The Best of the Proclaimers: the great Highland road trip of 2012

Last week my brother and I went to Loch Ness, Scotland’s most famous, mysterious and overrated body of water.

[Note: Before we begin, why not watch this thrilling cartoon? It’s the first episode of The Family Ness, a 1990s kids’ show from Scotland about the Loch and the monster(s) and, appropriately, also features another brother-sister duo, Angus and Elspeth.]

 

There were several reasons why I wanted to go this place; partly to celebrate the end of my almost-two-month period of (albeit blissful) unemployment, and also because I’d never visited Loch Ness before. In fact, apart from a couple of short trips to Aberdeen and Inverness, I’d never even been to the Scottish Highlands before, and considering that this country is about twelve hundred times smaller than India, and you can drive from one end to the other in less than a day, that’s actually kind of embarrassing.

So, at the ages of practically-twenty-three and practically-twenty-five respectively, my brother and I decided it really was high time we saw a bit more of our country.

We plotted a route on Google Maps that went north to Perth, swung north-west up to Fort William and then followed the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Ness to Inverness, Scotland’s northernmost city. Then we packed a few road trip essentials – a flask of tea, haggis-flavoured crisps and The Best of the Proclaimers – and hit the road.

Believe it or not, the ‘heatwave’ was still going on, and we watched the car’s thermometer soaring up to twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-SIX degrees. The sky was blue, the Proclaimers’ voices were blasting out of the speakers, and everything was summery and fabulous.

First tea stop, Pitlochry, which is a bit like a Scottish-themed Disneyland for the elderly. The main street is basically a line of overpriced cafes and shops selling kilts, golf-related knick-knacks and postcards of bagpipers and highland cows. Everyone in the town is a tourist, and there are no tourists under the age of about ninety. We moved swiftly on, and cracked open the haggis-flavoured crisps at the slightly more peaceful Loch Laggan.

YUM.

Our next plan was to drive to Fort William on the west coast, and catch a glimpse of Ben Nevis, which, at 4,406 feet, is the tallest mountain in the UK.

(Yeah, I know, that’s not particularly tall. I’m sure I would have found the Scottish Highlands far more towering and spectacular if I hadn’t just been to the Himalayas in March, but never mind.)

As someone who much prefers looking at mountains to actually walking up them, I was overjoyed to learn that there’s a cable car that allows you to get right to the top of one of Ben Nevis’ sky-touching neighbours without any effort whatsoever. And, since this is Scotland, there’s also a cafe at the top. Which means you can sit in the sun, knock back a cup of tea and bask in the glory of reaching one of the highest altitudes in Britain without breaking a sweat. Now that’s my kind of mountaineering.

What better place for a cuppa?!

Between Fort William and Loch Ness is another loch, with perhaps the most unimaginative name I’ve ever come across: Loch Lochie. We obviously had to see this, so we pulled over, bought a can of Irn Bru from a conveniently-located burger van, and dipped our toes into the chilly, but nice and blue, water.

Loch Lochie: nice loch, shame about the name

I think maybe this is an appropriate time to give you a short lesson on Scottish vocabulary and pronunciation. ‘Loch’ is our word for ‘lake’ (if you hadn’t already worked that out), and the ending ‘ch’ sound is something that most non-Scots seem to struggle with. Fortunately, there is a strange bearded man on Youtube who can demonstrate this, and, with a bit of practice, I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. (Even you, Brandi Dawn Henderson.)

By the time we finally reached the western end of Loch Ness the blue sky had turned dark grey and the temperature had dropped by about twenty degrees. You could barely see through the mist. We had a look round the ruins of Urquhart Castle and went on a boat trip that blasted out songs like this at ear-splitting volume, which, weirdly, turned out to be a hit with the Chinese tourists onboard. I looked very hard for the Loch Ness Monster (and family), but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d packed up and gone somewhere warmer and dryer.

I made this one black and white so it looked more atmospheric and less rainy

We had another cup of tea at Drumnadrochit, possibly the most bleak and depressing town in Scotland, and then drove to Inverness where we checked into our cheap hostel and headed straight to the pub for some haggis, neeps and tatties. And cider.

It just proves my point that here in Scotland you really can get all four seasons in one day. And the next morning it was grey, damp and freezing and rained continuously as we drove back to Edinburgh. I suppose we were after an ‘authentic’ Scottish experience, and in the end that’s exactly what we got, so I can’t complain.

Besides, remember how I said I’m not unemployed anymore? My new job is in Glasgow, the biggest city in Scotland, and I’m doing fieldwork for a survey about urban renewal there. So for every day I go to work I learn something new about my country and culture. And I don’t even have to listen to the Proclaimers or eat haggis-flavoured crisps.

The End.

PS: There are more photos here, and I have a photo essay on Loch Ness in this month’s Outside In magazine here!

Chai O’clock in Edinburgh

Although it’s not difficult to find Indian food in here in Edinburgh, getting something that’s both authentic and affordable is a completely different story. Last month I went out for a tasty meal at a local Indian restaurant but was horrified at the prices: £2.15 for ONE tandoori roti? A fiver for a side portion of dal? It was absolute madness. But to be fair, the restaurant was one of the city’s posher ones; the kind with that velvety wallpaper and fancy lampshades, and waiters in waistcoats.

There are cheaper places, though, like 10 to 10 in Delhi, with its embroidered floor cushions, Rajasthani wall hangings and pictures of Aishwarya Rai (before she got too fat, obviously). It’s a nice, cozy place, and the food, chai and lassis are great, but with menus stapled into empty Bollywood DVD cases and ‘Teach Yourself Hindi’ books on the shelves, it’s just a bit too wannabe-desi for its own good. Plus it’s always filled with the kind of people who start every sentence with, ‘When I was backpacking in India…’ Groan.

A tad OTT, maybe

Even the Mosque Kitchen, which used to be one of my absolute favourite places in Edinburgh, has gone downhill in taste and uphill in price. They have an indoor space now, with an espresso machine, and it’s just not the same as when you used to sit outside in the freezing cold at long, folding tables, trying to stop the hungry pigeons flapping off with your naan.

But just when I was starting to lose hope of ever finding a decent place to soothe my India woes, I discovered Bollywood: The Coffee Box, in the vaguely trendy suburb of Bruntsfield. Jai Hind!

Best box in town

It’s probably the closest you’ll get to Indian street eating without forking out for a plane ticket and visa, and right now, in the middle of the Scottish heatwave, there’s nothing better than enjoying your samosas in the sunshine. Nutan (who’s the friendliest woman ever, and is from Delhi!) has turned one of Edinburgh’s defunct blue Police boxes into a tiny kitchen, where she prepares fresh veg and non-veg dishes, snacks like pakoda, and all kinds of coffee. She makes chai too, of course, and we chat in a mixture of Hindi and English as she adds millions of spices to a pot of milk and stirs a pan of sizzling tomatoes with the other hand. The Coffee Box has been going for six months, she says, and has become really popular, even being featured on the local BBC news.

I stay and drink my spicy chai with Nutan, and we talk about Delhi summers, Indian families and learning Hindi. And it reminds me of the culture of street food in India. Over there people don’t grab their takeaway cups and paper-wrapped snacks and eat them as they tear down the street, the way they do here. Food and chai, even water, should be respected, given time, savoured slowly. I learned in Delhi that even the busiest people in the biggest rush still manage to find five minutes to stop and eat or drink a cup of tea. I like that. “Come back soon!” says Nutan, and bursts out laughing.

She makes a mean cup of chai

Breaking news: it’s “hot”!

Proof!

Yes, after all that complaining it looks like summer might finally have arrived in Edinburgh, and it’s driving the locals wild. Strappy tops and hotpants have been excavated from the backs of wardrobes; sunglasses are firmly attached to faces, and bingo wings are flapping without a care in the world. Every square inch of grass in the city’s parks has become a sunbathing hotspot for students, pensioners, the unemployed and other general skivers, all hoping to transform their pasty Scottish complexions into beaming beacons of bronzed beauty. It’s nineteen degrees.

For goodness’ sake, people of Edinburgh, it’s not that hot!

I find the whole thing quite hilarious. Right now in Delhi I know the mercury will be creeping up to almost 45, a temperature that would probably render your average Scot unconscious, if not dead. When I mentioned our local ‘heatwave’ on Facebook I ended up triggering a long chain of comments from friends getting grilled in Delhi, roasted in Chennai, and boiled everywhere in between. All except my Dilli saheli, Anu, who’s currently in Sweden. “It’s SO COLD,” she said. “Like Delhi winter. I am drowned in wool.” The temperature in Stockholm? A bone-chilling twenty one.

I suppose it’s all relative. I remember reading this headline in the Hindu in January and laughing so much I almost choked on my CCD cappuccino. If somebody used to the Indian climate rocked up for Christmas in Edinburgh they probably wouldn’t stand a chance. Well, unless they’d come from Ladakh.

The weirdest thing about Edinburgh, though, is that the weather seems to be completely schizophrenic. This time last week I walking to meet a friend for lunch, wearing thermals, boots, a winter coat and wooly hat. It was raining in that famous Sottish way – horizontally – and you could barely see anything through the fog. And now, as if by magic, the sky is as blue and dry as my jeans hanging out on the washing line. It’s like that joke, that if you come to Edinburgh you need to have a massive handbag so you can carry all the essentials for every type of weather (an umbrella, a raincoat (for when it’s too windy to open the umbrella), a scarf, gloves, sunglasses, sunblock…), because it’s quite possible you’ll experience them all in one day.

So us Scots have learned that when the sun shines we have to make the most of it. In the past two days I’ve seen several men out in their kilts, enjoying that special summer breeze that only kilt-wearers can. In a park, one man in a yellow sarong was lost in concentration making a daisy chain, completely oblivious to the outside world. And everyone else, it seems, is lounging about at pavement cafes, sipping coffee and trying to look all European-chic, pretending they are sur le Continent.

I’d prefer a café au lait…

I can’t mock this, though. I’m too busy enjoying wearing my sandals and short sleeves. And while I have been sniggering at the locals’ rising hemlines, bare shoulders and desperate attempts to get a tan, you can’t really blame people for being optimistic. Especially when it’ll probably snow next week.

Learning versus Laziness, and other things I feel like whingeing about

So the plan to ‘write about Scotland’ has failed miserably.

Although this is (probably) more down to my extreme laziness than anything else, I would like to point out that the lack of fascinating Scottish blog posts isn’t entirely my fault. It has been constantly cold, grey and raining here, and, frankly, I’d rather sit at home and watch reruns of Come Dine With Me. So that, dear readers, is exactly what I’ve been doing.

(But what about your new job as a tour guide, you cry? Well, the thing is, we haven’t had any bookings yet. Probably because of this misery-inducing weather. I don’t think many tourists would want to spend a whole day trudging through the mud, trying to catch a glimpse of Edinburgh Castle through the fog…)

I shouldn’t really complain, though, seeing as it’s currently something like forty degrees in Delhi. I’d much rather drown in the Edinburgh rain than in a pool of my own sweat. Sitting here in thermals, two jumpers and fluffy slippers, it’s hard to imagine the heat of the Indian summer, even though I suffered through months of it last year and the year before. I remember buying huge slabs of ice from an aunty on the street (who knows where she got it, or how she stopped it from melting!) and putting them in a bucket so I could have a freezing cold shower before bed. I remember the agony of the long power cuts, when the fan would stop turning and there was nothing you could do but wait, and slowly overheat. All through May and June I’d think of any excuse to go on the metro, or to the cinema, or to CCD just so I could relax in the AC – but then the moment I stepped back outside the heat just felt worse.

You can also use the iced water to chill your lychees!

Yeah. I don’t miss that.

And actually, that’s one of the main reasons why I picked Inner Mongolia as my next home: it’s bloody freezing there!

Yes, yes, I know Scotland is too. But because I’ll be living right on the edge of the Gobi desert (and who wouldn’t want to live there?!), it means one massively-important thing: IT WON’T RAIN! Well, not very often. And ‘not very often’ is good enough for me.

In March, as Delhi started to heat up after the winter, I began to fantasise about knitwear. About knee-high, fur-lined boots. About not sweating in general. The cold, Inner Mongolian desert would be my new best friend. And as my neighbours in Saket L-Block slowly shed their woolen shawls and sandal-socks, I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and imagined myself galloping around the chilly wilderness of my future home country, on horseback, with a good-looking-yet-slightly-unkempt Chinese sidekick. And then going home to my yurt to drink hot tea and wear hats made of yak’s wool.

But while I expect I’ll love the climate, there’s one big problem facing me in Inner Mongolia: I don’t speak Chinese (or, um, Mongolian, for that matter). I doubt I’ll be able to hook a handsome horserider when all I can say is ‘You good? Thank you!’ I have been trying to learn, though – goodness knows I have enough free time – but it’s just so difficult. The pronunciation makes no sense to me, and the famous ‘four tones’ are nothing short of mind-boggling.

“Figure 1 may help to make this clearer”. Er, it doesn’t.

I suppose, looking back, Hindi must have seemed impossible in the beginning, too; I know I couldn’t hear much difference between ka and kha until I’d been studying for a while, and I remember when the alphabet just looked like weird lines and shapes. But it’s so hard to go back to square one! Especially when you’re the biggest procrastinator of all time (did I mention the Come Dine With Me reruns?). It will be a miracle if I can memorise five sentences of Mandarin before I leave Scotland in August.

Learning something of the language will definitely make life easier, though. I contacted an American teacher in Baotou (the city where I’ll be living) on Couchsurfing, who said that although there are hardly any foreigners living there, the locals are really friendly and welcoming. This is probably the biggest incentive to study there is, then – how great would it be if I could understand what the locals were saying to me?! And if I could actually reply?!

A few days ago I watched this programme where a teenage boy managed to become fluent in Arabic in five months, or something. True, he was studying constantly, and living in an Arabic-speaking country. (And, er, being filmed for a documentary about learning complicated foreign languages super-fast.) But it just shows that it’s not impossible if you put the effort it.

Ah, Effort. My long-lost friend/enemy.

But I did enjoy the warm, fuzzy (smug) feeling I got when I used my Hindi in Delhi. And even though I could have just spoken in English, I really think knowing the local language made a difference in the relationships I formed with people, like the chaiwallah at Uni, or the Airtel uncle who gave me free chocolate eclairs every time I recharged me phone. Even the other week, while I was out flyering for the Edinburgh walking tours, I spoke in Hindi to some Indian tourists, just to see what their reaction was. And they loved it! Although my Hindi is still far from impressive, they seemed genuinely thrilled to chat to me in their own language, and it made my day. So, in the end, there’s really no question that the studying is worth it. And in that case, I suppose I should make better use of this time stuck inside while it’s raining.

Summer in the City: How my new part-time job (and R.K. Narayan) made me love Scotland (and want to write about it) again

I’ve been back in Scotland for three weeks now, and I’ve spent quite a large portion of that time feeling guilty about not writing anything for this blog. Yes, I do realise how unproductive that sounds, and I know that in three weeks I could have easily written pages and pages of stuff (instead of sitting on my backside at home, which is what I was actually doing), but finding time wasn’t the problem. I’ve just had absolutely no inspiration.

(I believe the term for this is ‘writer’s block’, but we all know that that’s just a clever way of making ‘laziness’ sound a bit more professional.)

To be honest, I used to be of the opinion that the only point of ‘blogging’ was to help boring and deeply narcissistic people while away their long and meaningless days by spewing pages of pointless information out into the depths of the internet. Why would I want to read a detailed description of what someone I’d never met had just had for lunch, for example? But obviously all this changed last year when the blogs editor from the Times of India got in touch. Of course I would write for them, I gushed, I love blogging! Such a fabulous opportunity! Bloggy-bloggy-bloggy-bloggy-blog!

And I quickly realised that this ‘little and often’ style of writing was fun! And that people were actually reading the stuff I’d written, and saying (mostly) nice things about it! And that, out there in the depths of the internet, there were zillions of really interesting, good, funny blogs and bloggers that I’d never known about. And what I admire most about these people is that, unlike me, they always seem to be able to think of something to say…

How do they do that? I mean, in Delhi I never ran out of material. And I know I’ll have endless things to write about when I’m trying to get my head round China. But here in Scotland? It’s cold, it’s grey, it’s wet, and I just can’t see why anyone would want to read about it.

Well, I couldn’t until recently.

I’ve found out that my future employer, aka the school in Inner Mongolia (actually, it’s a college, but anyway) doesn’t need me until the end of August, which means I’ll be spending the summer here in Edinburgh. And that means I have to find myself some work in the meantime. Skip forward through some internet job searching, and the long and short of it is that I’m going to be a tour guide for a new company, right here in the Scottish capital. Wheee!

Appropriately, and perhaps what sparked the urge to apply for the job in the first place, was that I’d just finished reading ‘The Guide’ by R.K. Narayan. If you haven’t read it (and you really should, because Mr Narayanji is amazing), it’s about a guy called Raju who spent many years of his life working as a tourist guide in his hometown. The story, which is told via a massive flashback, describes the succession of strange events which caused Raju to become rich and famous, then to get locked up in jail, and then later to accidentally turn into a sort of holy local celebrity.

Of course I wasn’t imagining myself getting famous, or, come to think of it, imprisoned, but Raju’s tour guide life did sound pretty good. I liked the idea of showing people the best parts of my city, and getting paid to be out all day in the fresh air.

So, to prepare for this job, I’ve been busy walking all over Edinburgh and learning about its history. And it’s as if a light has suddenly been switched on over the dark clouds. There are buildings here that have been standing for five hundred years! There are tombs of famous writers and philosophers; old stables, mills, factories, and their workers’ housing, now converted into swish flats and offices; bridges built over valleys to link ancient villages together – villages that grew and joined and finally became the city I live in now. And then there are the ghost stories; tales of witches and plagues and public hangings; of body snatchers; of things so dark and gruesome that we can’t help but be fascinated by them.

Only, I didn’t really care about all that. I was too busy waiting to go back to India, to Delhi, to a city whose history was actually worth learning about!

Why is it that we never pay attention to what’s right under our noses?

Scotland + Bollywood = err, this, apparently!

So yes. I’m going to stop avoiding this blog and start writing about Scotland while I’m here. One reader (and new friend!) told me that I really should be blogging about this aspect of my life, that it would be interesting for people in India in other countries to read, and she’s (hopefully!) right. I spent the first twenty two years of my life in this strange little country and I’ve never bothered to write anything about it, and it’s only now that I realise how obscenely unpatriotic of me that is.

So please watch this space. I might even put on a kilt for you.