26 December 2008

A strange Christmas

I haven't had Christmas in India for a good many years. So I was naturally curious what it would be like in 2008- a year that's been so fraught. I remember a few Christmases from childhood, in Bombay, with the city in the seventies and the early eighties still quite proud of its oddly scattered Jesuit heritage. There are specific parts of Bombay like Bandra and Byculla which have concentrated Christian populations and everywhere you went, you could see the gaily-decorated puny little Christmas trees and stringy lights and the smell of marzipan, sugar and cakes emanating from old-fashioned Agas. In those parts of Bombay, Christmas so very much resembled the little unfashionable English county Christmases. Pure, simple and really about Christmas. Lots of carol singers, belonging to various churches. No horrid mall Santas or kids shrieking about the latest gadgets that they 'demand' Santa bring them or worse, the cynical ones screaming to their unsuspecting friends and siblings that 'there's no goddamn Santa, okay!'

This year we had an old-fashioned home-bound Christmas. Like the ones in the seventies where Mount Mary's Church in Bandra was filled with the Goans and the Bombay Christians and their visiting relatives in outfits that could bring on blindness but with their faces wreathed in smiles that didn't come from money or glamour but from the sheer joy of being in hallowed gothic halls with loved ones and hymn books in hand. I remember those well. (All convent-schooled kids do). And although I don't go to church and I wasn't even in Bombay this year, it was a happy, contented Christmas. With friends and family and tons of food and simple presents without conspicuous designer labels and all kinds of to-ing and fro-ing. We simply ate, chatted, ate some more, drank some more, chatted some more and realised that we mostly disagreed about everything, chased kids about the living room, ate some more and marvelled at our stringy lights. Every year, Christmas is about international flights being booked to gather the scattered members of an insanely hyperactive family in one place that everyone agrees upon. Lots of skiing, lots of exchanging of ridiculously expensive presents and everyone with their requests of their favourite foods. It was such a breather this year to trim the irrelevant nonsense and just focus on the 'school Christmas' version that I remembered so well, growing up. Before the unreal life set in. And it's exactly as wonderful as I remember. Whenever a table is presided over by a mother who cooks up a storm for the people she loves, wherever there are kids with their untainted lives still intact, wherever there is mutual respect and genuine affection, that's good enough for me. I don't need a Harrods hamper or a Rockefeller Centre tree.

And just as Boxing day was coming up (this, we take seriously and usually have our packages ready on Christmas eve) I heard that Harold Pinter had died. It was strange to hear that. He was one of the few playwrights who I'd seen, met, heard and performed in his wonderful play 'Betrayal.' As have many of my theatrical fraternity in many countries. And I wondered what kind of Christmas Pinter's family would have. It's somehow appropriate that he died at Christmas time. It's hardly likely to be forgotten and in his vein, quite a dramatic exit. Happy Christmas Mr. Pinter. After all, it was a life well-lived.

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