I have a complaint about Indian drinking straws. They don't work. They collapse when you try to use them. That could lead me to think of another tourist slogan ("We REALLY suck") but I won't. Whoops. I just did.
So my time to India has drawn to a close. I don't feel like I gave it half the justice it deserves in these Dispatches. Then again, I was here for a month, and the time's already gone! I can't believe it. My time in India whizzed past me--like a bullet that misses.
In the previous Dispatch, on top of belittling the homeland of 1 in 6 of Earth's inhabitants, I discussed how I'd not yet encountered the India of the TV and the movies. I was beginning to doubt there was a middle class at all.
I shouldn't have been so naive. While my fellow tourists are putting on Gandhi robes and pretending to be paupers (while Daddy sends them checks), they never come in contact with an India as actual as the dingy, dusty one where the tourists ghettos are invariably located.
Back in Cape Town, I'd met a charming Argentinean girl named Irina; we slept in the same dorm room at the St. John's Waterfront Lodge. When I told Irina, in honesty and anxiety, that I was heading to India, she gave me the e-mail address of a guy she'd somehow met online. His name was Sanjeev, and he was our age. Information about him was unreliable, but I figured if he had an e-mail address, he must be somewhat middle class. I mean, in India it's hard enough to find light bulbs with lampshades, let alone computers that don't run on hay.
In Delhi, I wasted an entire day in contacting him, which was stupid of me. But I guess I've been going it more or less alone for such a long time that the thought of connecting with someone wasn't foremost on my mind. But on my second night in Delhi, I returned to my hotel (the Hotel Star Palace, popular with Japanese) to find Sanjeev had swung by, with his business card, in the hopes of finding me and taking me to dinner. I'd missed him.
The next morning, I was packing to leave on my 1:30 train when I got a call. It was Sanjeev, and he was still interested in meeting. He mentioned (with a trace of disdain) that he wasn't familiar with the part of Delhi in which I was staying. Funny--every independent tourist that comes through Delhi seems to stay in Paharganj, which is adjacent to the New Delhi Railway Station. And here was a lifelong Delhi resident who was not only unfamiliar with it, but possibly disgusted by it. (Perhaps I'd been a little too forgiving of India's squalor, I considered.)
He couldn't come back up to my seedy part of town to get me, so he said he'd send his car and driver for me. We would have coffee.
I was excited! I was going to be carried by a servant to a meeting!
His man, of course, was late. He showed up at 11 (I had a 1:30 train) wearing a plain muslin suit and asking for me in Hindi. He was a little dark man with a little dark moustache, wiry and thin, and he spoke no English. He led me out into the dank little alley that passes for Delhi's main tourist boulevard, the Main Bazaar of Paharganj, and patted the seat of a cycle-rickshaw. We both boarded and it whisked us--side by side, me and this funny tiny man--through the hubbub of Delhi's morning mayhem to the front of the train station. Sanjeev's Man gave the rickshaw-wallah Rs 5. Wow! I was being ushered like a V.I.P.! Since Sanjeev's Man and I never spoke (we couldn't), I felt almost like I had a servant of my own.
Now was the part where we get to ride in a car, I thought excitedly. I was hoping for one of those retro Ambassadors. I would ride in the back looking bored--wouldn't that be just TOO colonial? But I was directed instead to an average navy-blue compact that had a cheap LED-lit shrine to some blue-skinned goddess on the dashboard. (I think it was Parvati but I was taught never to discuss religion or politics. Just the other day in Agra's market I'd let it slip that Indira Gandhi's assassination was due to a stupid political mistake in Amritsar--which it certainly was--and my cycle-wallah nearly swallowed his handlebars.)
Anyway, Sanjeev's Man started the car, which leapt with a start into the pulsating throng. Thus began our wild shooting-gallery approach to finding space in Delhi's notorious traffic.
I confess, by this time in my travels in India, I was not very frightened by driving. We could be going three cars-wide down a two-lane street with a lineup of rickshaws and cows standing resolutely before us, and I merely pick at my fingernails in abject boredom. I have learned that it all works out in the end. So we swerved through New Delhi's tangled web of roundabouts and thoroughfares--which from the air resembles the molecular structure of ethyl alcohol and down on the ground smells like it. We passed the legions of mansions with their low salmon walls, past the flyover next to the Rail Museum (where I'd visited the day before to view its tedious collection of rusting locomotives) and past some particularly ungrammatical graffiti: SATAN IS UNDER MY FEET IN JESUS. We roared toward the Qutab Minar in South Delhi. I found it altogether soothing that my experience in Delhi should begin and end in the same suburban area, by that imposing tower begun in victory by the Muslims in 1173.
There was a moment of mystery when Sanjeev's Man pulled over in the bus land of Shantipath and told me, in Hindi, to wait in the car. He walked to a crowded bus stop and appeared to be polling the commuters. (Does everyone in India know each other? I thought. They sure act like it.) I kept to my identity as his master's favorite, and stared ahead. He got back in and we continued, stopping every so often to ask three-wheeler drivers, fruit sellers, and gatekeepers if they knew where we were going. At one point, Sanjeev's Man tapped his watch and chuckled; it was 11:30 and we were late. At another, as he backed away from a gate manned by an impassive guard, we backed into a couple's car with a squelch. The other driver got out to inspect the damage, and scolded Sanjeev's Man, who had already ineffectually apologized in two languages and shrugged, which in India seems to ward off any threat, real or implied, of litigation. A passing cyclist caught me eye and we shared a special moment between us, laughing at Sanjeev's Man.
We pulled into an apartment complex, were told to go away, and as we pulled out, Sanjeev himself appeared, coming from across the street and looking cross. He got in back and scolded his man for being stupid and late, and we drove to our actual destination across the road.
Over coffee in the lobby of the Qutab Hotel, Sanjeev and I talked. In addition to projects including helping international companies set up shop in India, he also runs a group designed to protect foreign tourists from the rigors of Delhi corruption. He's appealed to the government tourists boards for help, and they say, "Yes, yes, and excellent idea," and then forget he exists. It's so typical of India. Everyone complains about follow-through here, because there isn't any.
Lots of fascinating topics passed in record time. In May, for example, the population will officially hit a billion. "It's our doomsday," Sanjeev laughed. India also has a huge computer programming industry--now one of the world's most important. By Sanjeev's estimation, 250 million Indians could be considered middle-class by Western Standards--you know, mobile phones, swimming pools, and fancy Japanese cameras.
(When he told me this fact, I knew immediately Sanjeev had extensive contact with Western interests. No Indian would discuss numbers in terms of "millions" because the number doesn't exist. Say "million" and you'll get a dull glinty stare in return. They count in lakhs, which is 100,000, and in crore, which is 10 million. If I were an Indian, he would have counted the middle class as 25 crore.)
Other fun facts: When his friends move abroad for a while, their asthma goes away. A train can derail in India and kill 1,000 people and nobody resigns over it. There is no accountability, Sanjeev laments. Emissions aren't controlled because the governments change so rapidly. Yet using the Internet for long-distance phone calls is illegal because--surprise--the government owns the core phone lines and they don't want competition.
He asked about Irina; he said he was in NYC for only one day, once, because the stories about crime scared him (kind of like how American tourists avoid India for the same reasons, I thought). He asked if I liked Indian women.
"I do, but they're all hiding!"
"Ah, you're not going to the right places." He said it was pity I hadn't contacted him sooner because he could have shown me the India that doesn't grab at you as you pass it. And it IS a pity. I agreed to contact him next time; after all, if a month here can pass like a week for me, there will most likely have to BE a "next time."
It wasn't until Sanjeev's Man, awakened from a noon nap in the car, was driving me back to catch my train that I realized I'd just had a delicious cup of filter coffee! Real bean coffee, not Nescafe! And with a guy using a cell phone! I had tasted a whole segment of India that most independent tourists never even realize exists--mostly because it lives at a comfortable distance from the bus stands and train stations that rule our lives here. Now I was being dragged back into the churning throng of Delhi. We stopped next to a dilapidated city bus ("Operated by D.T.C.") and a girl vomited something vibrantly orange onto the road from one of the windows. Must have been eating whole betel nuts or drinking carrot juice. It streamed down the side of the bus, and I knew I was back in that scummy India that Sanjeev tried to know so little about. India! I thought. What a crazy country! Hospitality, wealth, poverty, hostility.
Meeting Sanjeev has given me fresh intolerance for those giddy-up tourists who play dress-up in India. Essex girls wearing bindis on their foreheads! To me, a bindi on a white girl is increasingly a symbol for "strike me here."
I dashed for the train to Varanasi, which has a rep as being the worst for tourist crime. People offering you delicious food, which of course knocks you out while they snatch your gear. For the 17-hour journey, I had booked a berth in 2nd Class A/C, which was 3 times the cost of basic 2nd Class but exponentially more comfortable and safe.
Sharing my compartment was Deb, a computer programmer from Delhi visiting his uncle in Varanasi, who, as fate would have it, was mulling a job offer in Palo Alto, California. We talked about the difference between India and America for a long time; it was much on both our minds. I told him it was good fortune he could meet an American at a time he was in turmoil about moving there, away from his family, for several years.
His fears of America were based on the rumors and the movies. He feared he would be mistreated because he's an Indian and therefore a minority. I said maybe he would now and then, but he was going to a liberal part of the country and, after all, by 2015 something like 25 percent of Americans will be Hispanic, so being white was becoming meaningless. He also seemed particularly disturbed by our American values; when I told him my brother was divorced and my parents were currently divorcing, he got very quiet before asking me what made so many people do that. I thought about it. "In most cases, I guess it's an extention of consumerism," I said. "If it doesn't make you happy, get a new one." In India, where a deal is a deal (but less so these days in the middle classes), this is a mind-boggling idea.
Deb is 32 and not married, so he's really feeling the crunch. Even I feel it. Everyone who meets me asks me if I'm married. When I say I'm not, they ask if I have a girlfriend. To them, this isn't rude--it's a core question in every man's life. When I told one guy in Agra that I wasn't married, he instantly asked me if I was in India for the men!
Which brings me to the Facial Hair Follies. India's a nutty place for facial hair. Ninety percent of men here have moustaches because they don't want people to think they're gay. That's true! Yet men hold hands on the street--it's not seen as sexual. (I put it this way: Here the boys touch boys but if boys touch girls they're beaten. At home it's the other way round.) Meanwhile, I've never seen such bizarre tonsorial arrangements as decorate the chins of my fellow travelers. Such a freaky constellation of chin pubes! Stripes and mohawks and lazy sideburns and long braided goat-beards and long bushy nests. It's really gross, I think. What makes every guy but me turn his chin into a Chia-canvas? Maybe I'm just not spiritual enough, dude.
Deb and I enjoyed our trip. It was extremely comfortable. The attendants bring you sweet milk tea (chai) in your own Thermos with a little ceramic cup. And they come around every so often with delicacies like spicy tomato soup, which they serve in little cups; you drink it. It's wonderful! Deb's mother had made him some dinner, too: meethi ka parantha, which is roti bread made with leaves that aid digestion, wrapped around omelets with chilis. And he also gave me some sweets from a shop in Delhi: rasogolla, which are homemade cheese balls boiled in sweet water; and sandesh, a brown, light, moist sweet. Deb and I bonded over food. And it didn't knock me out!
Another fun fact I bet you didn't know: Some Hindus eat beef! Deb said his brother and his father both like a steak from time to time. There's an black market for it! Who knew? Golly knows it's easy enough to find a cow; you can't throw a Campa Cola without hitting one. Cranky bastards. Hate it when you grab their horns; if allowed to get tame like they are in India, cows take on the temperament of house cats.
And then Varanasi! I can't say enough about it. I think everyone should go to Varanasi, at least once. For Hindus, it's the best place to die, because to die on the Western bank of the Ganges is to be released from the cycle of rebirth. As you can imagine, then, the city attracts the dead and the dying. It's a cluster of dark, fetid passageways and jumbled with hostels for the soon-to-die. Lepers populate the uncommonly tumultuous streets, which are among the dustiest, noisiest, and most crowded I've seen in India. The alleys are lined with black doorless passageways filled with the cries of unseen babies within. The emaciated cows on the streets turn their heads slowly, creepily as you pass, regarding you with unreadable black eyes. Rubbish and soupy shit pile and ripen underfoot. The dead themselves often appear, carried on stretchers through the streets to the river, draped in red and gold cloth, on their way to the pyre.
You find the lowest of the low here. In Varanasi, India almost broke my heart for the first time. A leper, 40 years old (but looks 60--the usual formula here), was sitting near Dasaswamedh Ghat, and he held out his hands for baksheesh. As I usually have to do, I passed him. He moans quietly after I go. And I think: Why is he here in this city? He's here because he expects to die soon. And why, then, is he begging? He's begging because, truly, he wants to survive. Somewhere along the line, he got leprosy; it wasn't his fault. He probably lost everyone and everything. And so the man who would much rather live is dwelling--and waiting--for time to run out in this City of Death.
I almost cried when I realized that, and not just because I passed him by.
Meanwhile, to die on the Eastern bank of the Ganges means you come back as a donkey. Therefore, it's absolutely empty. A sandy plain.
If you ask me, Hinduism, with its thousands of gods each appealing to a different subject, is so enduring because it appeals to the Indians' enduring love for bureaucracy. And I have decided it's so outrageously messy--I mean, the streets are truly paved with excrement--because of caste. Most people feel it's beneath them to stoop to cleaning up. Why bother as long as there are still Dalits?
The Ganges is where the action is. It's a slow-moving river plied at all hours by long sliver-shaped oarboats. There are very few motorboats, which makes for an exceptionally peaceful scene. Crowds congregates along the ghats--or steps down to the river--to do their laundry, bathe in the holy waters, play cricket, sell chai...you name it. While many observant Hindus bathe flock to the river each sunrise to bathe and perform their pujas, most Westerners would never dream of bathing in the river. Then, the whole riverbank, which looks as continuous and majestic as the wall of a city-wide fortress, is bathed in gentle pink light and teeming with the ritual of daily life. If you look closely, you can see everything from dead animals to bloated human corpses bobbing northward in the water. At night, the local children have dogfights with their kites from the ghats.
But the principal attraction, one might say, in Varanasi are the two Burning Ghats, Harishchandra Ghat and Manikarnika Ghat. Here, the dead are burned. The air in Varanasi (which also is knows as Benares, Banaras, and Kashi--choose one) is therefore always choked with the aroma of cooking human meat. Near the ghats, you can hear the gentle sizzling and popping of skulls overheating, organs exploding, etc. The thighs, by the way, burn the most readily. It takes around three hours to reduce a life to ash. For the record, we smell like beef.
It is very ironic, though. Around Harishchandra Ghat is a collection of idle and bored-looking sacred cows. Meanwhile, the people are being cooked.
After a month in India, such sights didn't turn my stomach. They will stay with me, though. At home, we're so sheltered from these ugly realities of life. I watched one exceptionally tall man being cremated; the bottoms of his legs didn't quite fit into the pyre. Every few minutes, they would shift positions, like gentle kicks in protest to the fire. Thank goodness I was staring at one of those lucky cows when the left leg fell off the rest of the body. The sole of the foot turned and landed flat on the ground, as if it was the only part of the body that had wised up and decided to walk away. But the other leg held fast to the knee, and anyway, there were only white-and-black char marks, capped by streams of flame, where the left knee should have been. A man in a simple white cloth was squatting nearby--I guess he was the bereaved--and he called for an attendant when the leg started to make its getaway. Like, "Hey, my buddy's leg just came off; service, please!" Only former untouchables are allowed to perform this sacred task of burning the dead (another impenetrable mystery of Hinduism), and this one grabbed the leg by two sticks and slid it underneath the fire, like kindling. I wonder what killed the guy. (Hey--I wonder if it WAS a guy.)
Here's something you should know that I can't find a smooth transition for: Indians (and some other Asians) don't nod "yes" like we do. They do a weird waggle of the head; to the untrained it seems like a screw-you kind of shrug. Here's how to imitate it: Put a finger on your nose, keep it still, and rotate your head around it. There! Now you can say "O.K." in India. (But please remove your finger first.)
I was understandably torn about being in Varanasi. While my fellow tourists didn't seem phased about turning these holy events into their holidays, I felt a little uneasy about it. It doesn't seem right to me--even though I'm glad I've done it.
And, yes, there are good things here. I gave one little boy a noogie when he wouldn't stop asking me for pens. (The number-one most requested item from foreigners in any third-world country ; they sell them.) He left his sandals next to me and ran away; while he was gone, I put a rupee in each one. He came back and slipped them on, then got puzzled. When he realized what I'd done, he cracked up--and invited a flood of less charming children to come over and take a crack at my wallet. (I subsequently excused myself.) And there was Atul, the son of a sanskrit teacher, who runs a snack-and-water stand. They invited me over to their house. But I could only imagine me sitting awkwardly on a rug, waiting for the chai to cool, while they queried my marital status in abominable English. What seems on the surface to be a golden opportunity for cultural exchange too often pans out as a series of awkward culture clashes. I declined, but as politely as I was taught.
Yesterday, I had to say goodbye to India, for now. Strange how I didn't want to leave. I had been so terrified at first--and now I'm used to it. But with a Dutch girl named Miriam (one of the unnamed cast of characters I keep seeing from city to city), I took an hour-long three-wheeler ride to the airport for the 50-minute flight to Kathmandu.
I guess I thought Nepal would be full of dark, happy people who sheepishly bow, hands together, whenever you get near them. Perhaps that comes later. But the first thing I noticed is the young women are out of this world! Cross Native Americans with Italians and you approach one-tenth of their beauty.
My first Nepali was a little bald man whose voice appeared to never have changed. A queer sort of guy--I was expecting something a little more exotic. He cashed my traveler's check at the airport. Miriam and I prepaid a taxi into Thamel, staggered around to find our own rooms, and soaked up the absolute Westerners that Kathmandu has become.
It wasn't until I was checking into the Hotel Potala that I realized my passport was gone.
While the realization--and the subsequent backpack-dumping--was unpleasant and gave me sweaty palms, I maintained my cool. Maybe India trained me and maybe I've just come to expect all kind of disasters in travel. All I said was, "This is what comes of being too proud of your visa stamps." I was genuinely mellow, and rapidly formulated a plan. I decided to go back to the airport and retrace my steps.
So I did. Grabbed a cab (even thought to bargain first!) and went back. And as I strolled up to the Currency Exchange, the little bald man with the boy's voice held up my passport.
Oh, man, am I lucky.
I grasped this little man by the cheeks and planted a kiss on his bald head. The man, whose name turned out to be Dinesh, told me he tried to phone the hotel I'd put on my form, which in a burst of typical fiction I'd described as the Hotel Holy Land. I tried giving Dinesh some money, but he declined. So I promised to bring him one of my plastic change purses--the kind you squeeze from either end--when I flew out for Bangkok in three weeks.
Like I said, I was beyond lucky.
And the luck continues. Here I am in Kathmandu. That's fun to say! It's much hazier than they lead you to believe (those scoundrels!), but it's still a world apart. The valley is warm, so you can wear shorts this time of year, but once you leave the valley (Nepal is 75 percent mountains), it gets crisp.
This morning I strolled amongst the tall pagodas of the wooden temples in Durbar Square, and up the main road--which, perversely, has no name--that slices through the center of town. No crap underfoot, the hawkers reasonably in check. New sights like prayer wheels, old ones like statues of Ganesh. I think I need a few days to decompress; I may have been used to operating in India, but clearly, it was at an intense level. I'm coming down in Kathmandu.
Last night I tried a Western-food transplant (steak and cheese burrito), but my body rejected it. Maybe the sense memory of burning meat from Varanasi isn't quite removed enough. I seem more or less all right today, though; I began my morning with a bagel and yak cheese (look deep into my eyes--I'm not joking.)
So I'll discuss more about Nepal as soon as I see more. In the meantime, greetings from the Top of the World.
Right now I'm in: Kathmandu, Nepal
Days: 288 Countries: 26
P.S. I'm working on finding a scanner so you can see me at the Taj. Check my site periodically.