Ravi

He goes by the name Ravi now. Someone with the same name as him had been the subject of a scandal in India some years back so when he moved to the city, he changed it. Ravi is a good name he says. A lucky name. He speaks Hindi, Rajastani and Kashmiri, his fathers tongue. To communicate with us he's learned a little English. Nouns mostly, no verbs. He teaches us the Hindi names of the food he cooks and laughs at our pronunciation. He laughs a lot, softly, tucking his head into his shoulder and shrugging. He talks mostly with his hands, which are brown and wide. On a European man they might have looked awkward but Ravi's upward sweeping stiff-fingered movements are almost balletic in their expressiveness.  It's amazing how much you can say with a pair of hands, some nouns and no verbs.

He's quite short for a man. He says that where he comes from this is good because the houses are small there. His wife, he tells us, is even smaller. They were married when he was fifteen and she was thirteen. It was an arranged marriage. Ravi thinks this is the best way. Europeans make such a fuss and waste so much time and then get divorced anyway. Ravi says there are very few divorces in India. He and his wife have two daughters. Shreya is eight.
'Shreya English good!' he says proudly. They live with their mother and grandparents in the Rajastani village that is Ravi's hometown. It's a nice village but there's no work there so his uncle got him this job as a cook in Ahmedabad. Once every six weeks he makes the seven-hour bus journey home to his family. He brings his daughters little treats from the market. For his wife he buys cloths of coloured silk.

His day starts early. He gets up at 6:30 to make breakfast. Spicy omelettes and milky Indian coffee. He puts the television on in the living area so that he can listen to Hindu prayer services while he cooks. After he gets us off to work, he cleans the apartment, then goes to the market to shop for the days meals. He buys food fresh every day and won't let us eat anything that's more than a day old. "No, no, sick! Sick!"  he cries, snapping a bowl of yesterday's sabzi from my hands. He doesn't like us eating curd either but I like it so much he finally relents and then serves it every day until I eventually get fed up with it. He doesn't eat at the table with us but sits on the floor of the kitchen holding the bowl in his left hand, using the right to feed himself. He thinks sitting on chairs is not good for his back.

When we find a gecko in the apartment we're very excited. We think of him as a low maintenance pet, actually, a no maintenance pet because he just comes and goes as he pleases but we like to watch him. Ravi also gets excited but not in the same way. His usual smile fades and he shakes hands and head as he gazes up at the little yellow creature. I panic a bit, watching his right hand go repeatedly from left hand to mouth, thinking he might be planning to serve up gecko for dinner. I remember that he's a strict vegetarian and relax but go back to wondering what he's talking about. Giles, who's French and speaks less English than Ravi but seems to have some sort of telepathic connection with him, gathers that Ravi is worried about the hygiene implications of having a gecko in the place. He claims geckos carry disease in their urine that might be dangerous to our delicate European constitutions. We try to reassure him that we're from stout farming stock but the language barrier gets in the way once more. We don't see the gecko again after that night.

When tension rises between Ahmedabad's Hindu and Muslim communities, the streets become unfriendly. The office stays closed, which is just as well since Ravi won't let us out of the apartment anyway. He still goes to the market every day for fresh food but he doesn't stay out long. He wanders around the apartment, back and forth, hands clasped behind his head. His eyes have lost their twinkle. In the evenings his friends come. They have urgent conversations in the kitchen. They take time to smile and practice their English with us but their eyes always wander back to the news reports on the television that Ravi keeps on all the time. The company arranges flights home for us. It is too dangerous for Ravi to travel to Rajistan so he will stay on at the apartment until things calm down. He thinks they will calm down soon. It's always like this he says. Everybody goes crazy for a few weeks and then they get tired and things go back to normal. You just have to keep safe for those few weeks. He laughs. He'll be fine he says. He's always been a lucky man. Lucky man. Lucky name. No problem.

On the day we leave he carries my bags down to the car. Then he stands in the front of the building and waves as we pull away.
'Boboaji! Boboaji!' he calls after us.
Maybe it's a Hindu blessing or something.

We're half way through a long, exhausting, but reasonably good journey when we finally understand.