India

Jaipur India

Posted on by Laughingnomad

July 22-26 2002
The next day we discover we are the only guests in the Hotel Meghniwas and we have breakfast in the quiet restaurant downstairs. The night before Bob had a few minutes of the sweats but no fever…this morning he complains about not
feeling well…bones ache…no energy…tired…. I am silent and surly…but thanks be to the gods we hole up in our comfortable room all day watching movies on the HBO channel aware that this is our first bout of good old culture shock.

Culture Shock
I am having my first bout of culture shock on this journey. (My other culture shock experience in reverse was upon return to the States from a summer hitchhiking in Europe in 1965). Lonely Planet says there are several stages to this phenomenon. The first is the honeymoon stage-euporia and excitement-but the novelty quickly wears off and then comes the disintegration stage where instead of being thrilled you find yourself really disliking this new culture-right now in India it is because of the malodorous air, heat and noise.

Then you hit the reintegration stage when you grit your teeth and just get on with it because your return ticket isn�t for another six months! You blame every little problem on your host culture and become snarlingly hostile-for example, daring the next person to approach you for money.

By the autonomous stage you begin to focus on revising your travel style that is based on a more realistic assessment of local conditions…like never deliberately putting yourself at the mercy of a lunatic taxi driver. And we are realizing that underneath the layers of cacaphony there is an implicit order to the culture..very poor people finding the most efficient way to live that works for them…the many are not just individually lost on the sidewalks but are part of the community of their nearest neighbors…trading support and solace…ensuring survival.

Finally the interdependence stage is supposed to arrive when you develop an emotional bond with the new culture. Lonely Planet says this will take some time and effort but it will happen. We are not there yet we feel it coming…maybe…

Supposedly the more you know about the new culture before travelling the easier it will be…but god help me I don�t think there is anything that can prepare a westerner for India. What this experience WILL definitely do for you is cure you of any sense of feeling privileged or of being a more valuable person than the locals, just because you are American or have money or position, that you ever had or ever thought of having. Everyone endures the same conditions in the same way. In the movie “The Mexican” Brad Pitt cockily tells the cop “I am American!” The cop just looks at him and says “I am Mexican!”

Hotel Meghniwas
We luck out with a hotel that is well off the noisy street with grass and trees all around and a swimming pool in the back. The proprietors are professional and the staff is very friendly and helpful. After a nice quiet solitary Indian buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant we are invited by the proprietors, Mr. & Mrs. Singh, to have a drink with them in their office. Their two sons were educated in the states and live there still-one has a software business in Seattle and the other lives in New York. Mr. Singh is an articulate retired military person who has a good knowledge of Indian and US history and for an hour we appreciate his reasoned analysis of Indian, US and Arab domestic and foreign policies.

He says that the US and India got off on the wrong foot with each other years ago when Nehru, an aristocratic man that was highly educated in England, visited President Truman in the US. On the return to India Nehru remarked what a buffoon (or some such word) Truman was and US intelligence picked up the comment which injudiciously got back to Truman. Mr. Singh goes on to say that he thinks that in the next 5-10 years India and the US will become very very good friends because they will be the two biggest democracies facing the threat of China. Bob says that he has seen some very expensive looking homes in Jaipur and wants to know who would be living there. Mr. Singh answers that there are three upper class groups of people in India-first business owners, then politicians and then bureaucrats. I think that some of my friends and I who have worked for the state for years have been living in the wrong country!

Then Bob asks Mr. Singh what he thinks about the Pakistani/Indian conflict. He says the hostilities are old and the two countries have been threatening each other for years but there is a balance of power because both countries have nuclear capability. Furthermore, he flatly stated that this conflict is historical, it is not a situation defined by war and that India is not going to release a bomb just because a few villagers and politicians were killed in a couple terrorist raids!

He went on to say that people here are living life normally and the State department warning has ruined tourism that was already bad because of 9/11 and the off-season. The media carried the news today that the warning has been lifted but the damage has been done, he says.

Later I read an article in the India Times Magazine that reported that local corporate executives never did send their American expat employees home and furthermore they think the warning was timed to coincide with an orchestrated international move to pressure India and Pakistan to talk peace. The article, entitled “The Triggered Exodus” ends by saying that “the wait is now only for the nuclear silly season to end.”

Mr. Singh has some interesting but very big questions for Bob: are intra-uterine cures possible yet…are we close to human cloning…Bob tells him in all seriousness that he thinks man is headed for extinction and then the proprietor spends 20 minutes telling him how it is already slowly happening in India. Global warming and the resulting drought will leave Jaipur without water within two years.

We excuse ourselves when his brother and his wife come to the door and after Bob had been bitten by their dog. Should have opted for the rabies shots as suggested before we left home!

Pushkar India

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The driver has to ask 5 times for directions to Pushkar (no male pride here). Upon entering the village a guy sitting at a table lets down a red and white pole barrier and asks for a 15 rupee village tax. This is only for tourist cars…Bob says disgustedly that Oregon is really dumb.

In high season the ghats (steps or landing to the lake) will be full but this day there is hardly anyone at the ghats to bathe and obtain blessings in the holy water of Pushkar Lake-only a few young backpackers lounging at a refreshment table near the water. On the way back to the car we came upon two young men who were here from Delhi to take their engineer exams so they can qualify for a job on the railroad. Always the first question is “How do you like India”� Always I answer that I like India very much-especially the people. I beat them to the invariable next question: “Do you have children”� It is good in India to have sons.

Back to the road to Jaipur I see a sign advertising the “Pink Floyd Cafe Hotel…Wish You Wear Hear.” On the way out of the village there is a sign: “Thank’s.” We see men and women working on the road excavation in 100 degree heat loading gravel into the back of a truck using shallow pans carried on their heads…a man on a tractor with a hot pink turban…no speed limit and no cops on the road…hundreds of trucks waiting to load acres of marble…trucks all orange and painted with various designs…trucks are king of the road in India too…tribal woman with red over pink and orange over purple and flowered and multicolored and rings and big jewelry in their noses…we see STD everywhere but it stands for the State Telephone Department not Sexually Transmitted Disease.

The two lane Highway is being widened to four lanes with funds borrowed from the World Bank. But not in time for us with cars passing trucks honking that are passing trucks honking with motorcycles here and there honking on each side and in and out…camels pulling carts on the shoulders…at night vehicles use no lights honking…only for signaling an emergency like horns in the US. The last 12 miles are in the dark and by the time we get to Jaipur I am a frazzle…I have a headache from the diesel fumes…my ears hurt…no more road travel for me in the third world! And then I’ll be damned…after passing all those trucks…honking honking…the driver pulls over for tea!

Chittorgarh India

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On the way out of town the next morning, I am not surprised to see a dead cow that had been hit by a car. “The government will come and pick it up for the hide, (an hopefully not the meat) the taxi driver says, but the owner will be saying “where is my cow…”

Our travel options to the city of Jaipur is overnight sleeper bus, overnight sleeper train or taxi by day. Since we wanted to see the village of Pushkar and the countryside we opted for the taxi. Big mistake! National highway number 8 from Mumbai to Delhi is a narrow two lane road with bumper to bumper trucks with “please blow the horn” on the back of every truck; we know that India’s commerce is alive and well. Requirements for vehicle registration include good brakes, good horn and good luck. (Not necessarily in that order.)

It is Sunday and motorcyclists with women in beautiful saris sitting sideways on the back are traveling 50 miles to a Jain temple for a special festival. We see big shiny aluminum pots lined up on stoves in roadside stands. We stop for tea and see garbanzos, dried green peas and lentils soaking-waiting to be cooked for the day’s meal in the evening.

I had assumed that the brand new Indian-made car would have A/C but unfortunately it doesn’t and soon I am very irritable. I forsake tea for a watermelon flavored Fanta. We sit on plastic woven beds with rusted metal frames provided for people for their afternoon tea and rest. Children riding by on their bikes laugh and wave. We don’t know what to make of the staring adults and laughing children…

The road to Cittorgarh was on a flat plateau and we see the Fort, our first destination, high on a hill. The driver drives so fast through the town it is hard to see anything. Lonely Planet says the Fort epitomises the whole “romantic doomed ideal of Rajput chivalry.”

Three times the Fort was sacked, the last time by the Mughal emperor, Akbar, and on each occasion “jauhar” was declared in the face of impossible odds: the men donned the saffron robes of martyrdom and rode out from the the Fort to certain death, while the women and children immolated themselves on a huge funeral pyre-the second time a whopping 32,000 men and 13,000 women losing their lives. Apparently, honour was more important than life for these people. Today the Fort is a ruins but about 5000 people still live within it’s confines.

Mr. Singh’s Rickshaw In Udaipur

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We take the offer of Mr. Singh, the Sikh driver of an auto-rickshaw, a small, noisy, three-wheeled motorized contraption with no doors, to take us around the narrow streets that are filled with cows, people, dogs, pigs, men in dirty white dhotis (sarong which is pulled up between the legs) pushing handcarts, seller stands and motorcyles piled high with the entire family, other auto-rickshaws and cars that travel ridiculously fast, narrowly missing each other…trusting cows just lie down right in the middle of it all.

We go nuts taking pictures…Bob, over here, over here…in the local market with picture-perfect fruit and vegetables sold by tribal (adivasi) women sellers in colorful saris. The women laugh and put their hands to their mouths when they see themselves on the screen of the digital camera. Once in awhile, a woman will decline a picture and we respect her desire.

Mr. Singh tells us that the “higher cultured” women who have knowledge of the Indian religious texts (vedas) will want to follow the dictum of the sacred texts that say your image should not be reproduced. But the women loved having their pictures taken and I suspect the truth is that the tribal women have their own beliefs that may or may not include the texts of the vedas.

However, I was really touched by one middle class Indian tourist family from the state of Gujurat who handed me their year-old baby to hold-as if they they thought it would be a blessing for the child. Bob took a picture of the child and the father and as we walked away we heard a man calling us from behind. We looked around to see him running up the hill in his brown slacks and blue shirt. He wanted us to send him a copy of the picture so after a few more pictures of the whole family we copied down his address-we will have another pen pal.

Shilpgram Cooperative & Cultural Center
We were the only tourists in the center that has displays of traditional houses from the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa and Mahashtra. We pass by musicians and dancers that, bored to death, happily perform only for us and laugh when they see themselves on Bob’s video screen.

Monsoon Palace
For a breathtaking view of the entire valley, Mr. Singh’s rickshaw chugs up to the highest point in the foothills around the little valley to the Monsoon Palace built in the 1800’s by one of the Maharajas. The Palace is lit at night and from our hotel looks magical. But we don’t understand a word he says in his Indian accent as he describes the history of the palace!

Natraj Hotel Restaurant
For dinner Mr. Singh suggested we eat at the Natraj Hotel in the flat new part of the city. The word “new” is relative of course because it looks no different than the old city. The vegetarian restaurant full of men starved at the end of the work day serves a set-price thali (all you can eat) for 50 rupees or about $1.00.

Nine or ten barefoot waiters in dirty shirts and pants come around again and again with metal containers of potato masala, dahl (lentil soup), curd (yogurt), mattar paneer (peas and chunks of soft cheese in sauce), sabzi (curried vegetables), some other things I have forgotten or don�t know the name of, and chapatis and rice. The next day we are sick–the “GI’s” or locally known as the Delhi Delight.

Tea on the Hill at Sunset
As I am arranging to have some clothing repaired by old Mr. Basir Mohead at his tailor shop Mr. Singh happens along. We invite him to tea with us so we jump in his rickshaw and he takes us to the top of a quiet hill with a view of Lake Pachola where there are some picniking locals and a modest tea stall. While we drink our tea and are watch a soothing sunset, Mr. Singh remembers that the day before I had asked him where we could listen to some music and he offers to take us to his Sikh temple where a special pundit (chanter) that was booked a year in advance will be performing with tabla and drums.

Sikh Temple
At least 5 friendly greeters walk up and welcome us to the temple, give us little kerchiefs to cover our heads and take our shoes. Children stand around and stare and laugh-some attempting to walk up to us and talk but as soon as we make a move forward they pull back. The temple is jampacked, men on one side and women on the other, all sitting cross-legged knee to butt on the floor. I find a place in the back next to an older woman where I can lean up against the wall. I cannot get her to smile for the life of me. The music and voices were very soothing. I had hoped we could last until 11pm when about a thousand members of the temple would have a meal together that had been prepared earlier in the evening but between my loose stools and numb butt I decide at about 9:30 I have had enough and motion to Bob.

On the way out of the temple yard, Mr. Singh introduces us to his children, nieces and nephews who excitedly shake our hands and wish us goodbye. (The temple was full and many were listening to the music in the temple yard.) This close knit community has shared a very special evening with us.

Udaipur India

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July 18-21 2002
To make it easy on ourselves we left at 4am for a one-hour flight north to Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan. When the taxi pulled out we noticed the food stall down the street was still doing a brisk business at that hour. And with the exception of upscale Marine Drive along the bay, the streets on both sides all the way to the airport were covered at intervals with neighborhoods of pavement dwellers.

Our hotel in Udaipur, the Caravanserai (a word meaning traditional accommodation for camel caravans) is built entirely out of stunning white marble-floors, stairs, bannisters, walls-quarried about 50 miles away.

We have a view of Lake Pichola which is drying up because of the drought that has sadly plagued northern India for the last five years. The famous Lake Palace Hotel usually out in the middle of the lake is now actually on the bank.

This year’s expected monsoon has not arrived as yet–late with no rain predicted. Indiginous tribal women (adivasis) in their brightly colored saris with contrasting choli’s (sari blouses) crouch on their heels at the dhobi ghats (place for laundering) on small platforms out in the water to launder clothes and bathe themselves. Our hotel is on one of the tangle of streets in the old city and after a short walk we pile into bed for a nap.

The Internet Cafe
The internet cafe around the corner is run by a good looking 26 year old guy who likes being a businessman but went to medical school (Indians don�t need 4 years in a university first) to please his father. He and his wife live with his parents and siblings. His father owns a hotel and I gather the family is from an upper caste. A cousin who is single helps the young internet cafe owner with his business.

They ask me if I think things in their town are expensive and I reply that heavens no-for us westerners everything is very inexpensive. They say that some foreigners think everything here is too expensive. I ask who in the heck thinks this. They laugh and say emphatically “the Israelis.”

Then we talk about customs and the cousin says if he falls in love with a girl outside of his caste it would be impossible to marry her. Similarly, later around the corner we talk to a guy on a motorcyle who is on his way to visit his girlfriend of five years who he sadly can’t marry because she is not of his caste. I put my hand over my heart in sympathy for him.

Ghandi-India To So Africa

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In my last story, I mistakenly said that Gandi was born in South Africa. He was not. He was born in 1869 in Porbander in the Indian state of Gujarat where his father was chief minister.

He attended law school in London and since there were no opportunities at the time in India, he went to South Africa. The pictures on the wall of the museum in South Africa illustrate his experiences there including one when he was on his way to Maritzburg on the train where because of his color and race he was thrown out of his first class seat. This incident changed him for the course of his life.

He remained in South Africa for 10 years helping lay the foundation for the freedom struggle in the transvaal while at the same time developing his own framework for satyagraha (passive resistance). Ghandi returned to India from South Africa and lived at Mani Bhavan-the name of his home where he developed his ideals of Truth and Non-violence-and inspired his followers and devotees with a sense of service and sacrifice.

As Bob and I retrieved our shoes and walked down the hall to the door leading out into the street, I sense him following us, through the heat and dust. I turn around and ask “why are you trailing us from South Africa to India?” He is small, stooped over, tired but with sharp black all-seeing eyes. Then I hear Ghandi’s soft even voice: “I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

Four Taxis to Dinner In Mumbai

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In Mumbai one night it was so ludicrous we just had to laugh…afterward.

Taxi number one only got us to the end of our street before Bob, realizing the driver didn’t know where the hell to go, jumped out of the car.

Taxi number two was an old old man that had to stop three times to get directions to Tamarind St. (Less than two kilometers away.) Each time he would say oh yes-like finally he knew just where to go-just enough reaction to be encouraging. He really had no idea where he was going but knew we wanted to eat so he took us right to a good restaurant across from Victoria Station…McDonalds! Oh my god, look where he brought us, I groaned. We paid him and got out.

Then Bob went from taxi to taxi on the street asking if any of the drivers knew where Tamarind St. or Meadows House or if they knew of the restaurant named Ankur. Taxi driver number three insisted he knew where he was going and drove around until we realized we were right back where we started-exactly one-half block from our hotel! In frustration we got out and left the taxi driver sitting there. “I don’t know what he was thinking,” Bob said in exasperation…”what did he think was going to eventually happen?” Maybe a miracle,” I suggested?

Then another driver said he could get us there…ok…one more time. The fourth time worked. I counted 11 people attending 8-10 tables. Tells you something about wages in India.

Our Mumbai Neighborhood

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We watch India swirling with life on the street below our hotel window on the Colaba Causeway-the stretch of land that the English filled the Bay with that turned Bombay, now called Mumbai, from an Island into a peninsula. I love to watch the pretty (little children always are) school children in their clean ironed uniforms pour out of the building across the streeet at 3pm into loving care of parents who come to meet them helping carry away their florescent pink water bottles and blue backpacks like young school children everywhere.

The trim, graceful garbage lady in a dirty grey sari collects garbage out of the street at 7am in the morning with two pieces of cardboard and a green plastic tub…by evening the street gutter is full of garbage again. We are staying at an intersection of two streets and the woman cleans one street but not the other…one street must be her street…maybe she is paid by the private school so the parents don’t have to walk through the litter.

After four days the beggars know we won’t give them anything so they leave us alone…we have become part of the community of taxi drivers, fruit vendors, shop sellers, security guards and street cleaners. One pretty little beggar-woman carrying a baby looked up at me and asked where I was from…America I said…oh, she said with a sad face, I saw the plane that went into the big building on TV…are you afraid in America…

Migrants & Beggars In India

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Continuing our taxi tour with Asane, he takes us to a part of Mumbai where we will see many migrants and beggars…and the red light district.

As is happening all over the third world, migrants from rural areas make their way to urban areas hoping to better their lives. It almost never happens. Instead they squat on any little piece of ground they can find, even the road medians, and throw up tiny little huts made of found pieces of burlap and plastic. Soon, in desperation, the red light district sadly appears and now the city doesn�t know what to do with the people. Many become beggars.-many prostitutes.

Beggars
There is no developed government-sponsored social service system in India, however, the various religions all have societies (at least in large urban areas) that regularly give out money (additional rupees for each child) food and clothing, according to Asane the driver who is giving us a tour of the city. Women can make even more money by having 8-10-15 children who can all work the tourists so they are not interested in birth control. They do not want food-they want money.

There is a shortage of coins circulating in India because of the beggars so banks will buy the coins from the women and give them 10 rupees extra. But when Bob went to the Bank of India to get coins because businesses usually want as near to exact change as possible, he was told they could not make change for him. It�s mostly pretty little tribal women-usually very small, fine-boned migrants from the country with very bright colored saris who have learned to give those pitiful looks that become �professional� beggars. A trained girl of about four will follow you for about a block and a half (her neighborhood giving you �that look� and if she doesn�t score then will give up and turn back to her mother.

The local “CityInfo” tourist guide says not to give money but food instead so I try to keep food in my backpack. Mike, my son Greg�s friend who spent 5 months in India says just to give them the old �flick-of-the-wrist (get away) routine.

But the excellent novel about four people in India I am reading called “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry depicts a Beggarmaster who protects (owns) any pavement dweller who will pay him 100 rupees per week. For this the “beggar” gets protection from the police, freedom from the sweeps that will send them to the gravel pits and ditches, clothes, begging space, food and special things like bandages or crutches…” Lonely Planet says stories like this are common but many have no basis in fact. So who knows…probably every beggar has a different story.

When Bob asked Asane if he gives to beggars, he says he gives to real beggars like the old man with no legs or no arms who cannot work and has no other way to support himself. When asked what we should do about beggars, Asane said that when it comes down to it, it is a matter of each particular situation and what your heart says to do at that moment…probably wise counsel.

Asane’s Taxi Tour

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In Mumbai, we took a three-hour government sponsored tour in an Indian-made Ambassador car with “Indian A/C” which is a fan that sits on the dashboard. While we were waiting for Bob to run back to the hotel for the camera, Asane explained a bit about the Hindu ceremony (puja) that was taking place at a covered altar at the edge of the parking lot of the tour company a few feet away.

Asane is Catholic and he pays a fee for his children to go to school. His wife is a teacher but he says he forbids her to work because “who will stay home with the children?” Later he explained that his extended family (3 families) all live in housing joined together. I thought to myself that there was possibility here of shared child care but I did not ask.

I told Asane that I have practiced traditional meditation many years and then he wanted to know if I knew Rajneesh! Oh no, I said! But he was in my state, I said, and then asked him if the papers here made a big deal about the Rajneesh in India. Yes, he said, he was very rich and not a very good man and India ran him out of the country! Yes, I said, Oregon did too. Even though Rajneesh is dead, his ashes are kept at the Osho Commune International that is still doing a big business of running expensive meditation courses and New Age techniques about 4 hours away by train in Pone (Poona). Lonely Planet says that order to meditate at the commune you must fill out an application form, “prove HIV-negative by an on-the spot test and buy 3 swanky tunics…”

Open Air Laundry
Asane says we won’t see this anywhere else in the world! Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is an open air laundry where some 5000 dhobi-wallahs use rows of troughs and giant concrete tubs of water that stretch as far as the eye can see to soak, scrub and beat the heck out of thousands of pieces of soiled clothes. The dhobi-wallahs pick up the clothes in the morning and at the end of the day deliver them on their handcarts to their owners. The laundry is over 100 years old and each dhobi-wallah owns his own business-renting his four foot by eight foot tub from the government that provides clean water every morning and that by evening is fllthy dirty.

Terrorism
We asked Asane whether he thought there would be war between Pakistan and Kashmir. He said “no, otherwise we are finish. After war we don’t have business!” Pakistan wants Kashmir, he says, because it is the most beautiful place in India and lots of tourists bring in a lot of money.

Then Bob asked him what he thought of America being in Afghanistan. He said that it was a good thing for America to be stopping terrorism everywhere-that small countries cannot defend themselves in the face of this kind of threat, although there was a scathing editorial against the “New Imperialism” and “Bellicose Bush” in the next day’s India Times newspaper. Asane asked Bob if people in America were afraid of more terrorism. Not surprisingly Bob and I gave opposite answers-he saying that everyone was very afraid and I said that people were going about their business as usual even though they knew there would be a good chance of another attack.

Jain Festival
Asane took us to a local festival at a Jain Temple. The Jains believe that only by achieving complete purity of the soul can one attain liberation and that fundamental to the right behavior is ahimsa (nonviolence) in thought and in deed. They are strict vegetarians; everyone in the temple wore a cloth mask when performing their pujas to avoid the risk of breathing in a bug or mosquito. I was particularly touched by a young boy of about 14 and his younger brother who was reverently bowing before the puja table wearing a Billabong T-shirt.