Parcel




This beautiful object arrived in the mail today from the holy city of Pushkar. It's a bed cover, which we had shipped back to avoid paying excess baggage on the plane.

We told our tour leader that we wanted to do have the item shipped home, and he directed us an appropriate shop. It was a tiny hole in the wall next to a similar one where a number of people in our group had bought silver jewellery. When walked down the stairs with our gaudy bedspread in a plastic carry-bag, the man behind the counter,and his two or three colleagues hanging about in the remainder of the space, made enquiring gestures. We held up the bedspread and said something with the word 'post' in it; the man in charge gestured us to sit and made a phone call. People talking a language one doesn't understand almost always sound as if they're having a fight, so he probably wasn't yelling furiously at the person on the other end of the line. When he hung up, he said, 'Wait.' It wasn't yet three in the afternoon, so the electricity wasn't on, but the shop must have had its own battery, as the lights were working and the three PCs along the wall next to me were showing a scene of a green hillside and clear blue sky. I asked if I could use the Internet, a request that met with a relieved yes -- no one had to make the effort of talking to me without a common language if I was other wise engaged; Penny went back up to the street. It turned out to be the fastest Internet I'd found anywhere in India, and I had barely trashed the fifty or so accumulated emails offering me bargain watches, various medications, university degrees and bodily enhancements when an older man came into the shop, went behind the counter and picked up our plastic bag. I left the Internet, Penny came back down, and we were in business.

The newcomer was unsmiling, as if he had been woken from a deep after-lunch sleep. But he was not excessively grumpy, as if such interruptions were the price that must be paid for having the expertise to handle official matters such as this. He held the plastic bag in one hand at arm's length and jiggled it, then gave it to one of his underlings, who did the same. A third man then did likewise. The three of them exchanged comments, and the main man said: 'Three and a half to four kilos, OK?'

Not exactly scientific, I suppose, but the consensus seemed about right to me too. So we proceeded on that basis. I filled in a form. Then another form. Then wrote in a double-entry carbon book. Each time I gave my name, my home address, the address of our hotel in Pushkar, the contents and weight of the parcel. Penny and I agreed that we'd prefer air mail, taking up to nine days, to SAL, taking several weeks. We paid the postage, which was almost as much as the bedspread had cost, and stood there looking expectant.

The shopkeeper explained to us carefully that he knew what had to be done: he, or one of his compatriots, would package the cloth up, address it to me in Annandale, and take it to the post office. He reassuringly wrote his phone number on our copy of one of the forms, saying to call him if we hadn't received the parcel in two weeks. We thanked him and went back up into the daylight. If our tour leader hadn't recommended the shop, we would have been at least a little nervous about the prospect of ever seeing our purchase again. In all that combination of apparent adhocery and red tape, there must surely be any number of chances for things to go wrong.

But here it is today, probably the most beautifully packed postal item I've ever seen: the cloth bag has been folded tight around its contents and then carefully stitched shut by hand. Four dollops of wax have been melted onto the stitching, of which two have survived the journey completely intact. I'm reluctant to open it, it's such a thing of beauty.

And no one asked me to pay for my time on the Internet.

The object beside the parcel in the photo is my only other Pushkar purchase, a little book with a picture of baby Krishna on the cover. Unlike the baby God I am most familiar with, Krishna was a naughty child. I find irresistible the image of a blue god child pretending to be innocent when caught with his hand in the curd jar. No one ever told me that the Biblical injunction about becoming as little children included naughtiness. From now on, in my mind it does.

Posted: Mon - January 21, 2008 at 09:50 PM           |

©