“Sean?!?” My sister reprimands.
“What???” Maybe I was more than a little defensive. “He kicked my crutch!”
The day was, apparently, a particularly crowded one at the Baha’ii Temple in New Delhi, “the Lotus Temple.” Though, we never quite pinned the reason for the traffic, to my recollection. We wanted to start the tour of the “Golden Triangle” with a few sites in Delhi, and the Lotus Temple was my first experience crutching the long walkways up to temples on this particular tour.
I was a bit cranky. I hadn’t slept until about five in the morning because I was not able to find my sister and her friend in the airport when they landed. I woke up in full speed at about ten in the morning, using the trusty Internet to check my e-mail for any news about just where in Delhi they were. After a haggard reunion (none of us had gotten a shower or sleep that was worth mentioning), a meal at their hotel, and an hour or two of sitting in our room for the night moaning, “Damn I’m tired,” we finally got out to see the first sight.
So, maybe it wasn’t necessary to hit this Indian boy with my crutch after he kicked my crutch. Maybe an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. But, really, I didn’t hit him hard.
Kim’s scolding gave me ample reason to reflect at how much I was letting India sculpt me into something I didn’t really want to be. As Kim and I walked and crutched (respectively) towards the parking lot, I explained to her, still defensive, that people in India just aren’t sensitive towards others’ personal spaces, and that pushing was very normal here. I related the moral of the serial killer in the movie Seven, “You can’t tap people on the shoulder any more to get their attention; you have to hit them with a sledge hammer.” I was pleased that she didn’t seem to take much surprise or shock at me justifying my actions with the words of a fictitious psychopath.
India has a way to make you rough at the edges. All the travelogues I read about India make light of the otherwise-fruity Westerners who come to ashrams for yogic transcendence and end up scolding people and doing unreasonably spiteful things. The theme of my sister’s visit for me was such—I noted how I was yelling at or cursing someone everyday (at one point, I reveled: “Alright! Today it wasn’t our driver that I yelled at!!!”) All the while I was given, by sister and her friend, Jeff, both fresh off the boat from the US, a new reference point for the obvious volatility that was so very unusual for me. I was only slightly comforted that, within three days, Kim herself was like a frustrated time bomb when Indians were unable to communicate or somehow in the way: “Alright, it’s not just me, I knew it…”
Leaving the Lotus Temple, we asked to see a specific Sufi (a mystic sect of Islam) shrine that the guidebook said was stunning. Our (Hindu) driver refused, “That area’s not nice.”
“But that’s where we want to go.” Our driver was getting close to earning his daily yelling-at.
“Neighborhood is not nice.” He insisted, then, as if to quantify how unpleasant it was, “It’s Muslim…”
I set full into my persistent baby talk of broken English that I have convinced myself is easier for Indians who are not fluent in the language to understand. “Muslim is also nice. We want to go. Go there, go there.” Pointing at my map like a mad man.
“No, we go to Arkshadam.”— A famous modern Hindu temple that is just across the Yamuna from the heart of New Delhi. I was disappointed that our paid driver was beginning to give orders on the first day of our tour.
My degenerated English: “We go here first. We stop on the way. Here. Hizrat Nizamuddin. First, then to Arkshadam.” I searched him for a response.
Settling into the highway driving, realizing I couldn’t be sure where he was going. The driver pulled the car over and said “Fifteen minutes, I waiting here.” We had, apparently, reached a compromise without my knowing. He stopped at a park along the highway from which one could see the Sufi shrine in the distance. We were safely on the other side of fenced railroad tracks from the “not nice” neighborhood. Amidst the upper middle class Hindus that populated the park, we caught a few photos and sat and relaxed for a minute before heading back to the car.
Arkshadam, however, was amazing. The temple complex is less than 40 years but the architecture is completely stunning. As it was after sunset, we hurried to see the musical fountain—sprays of water illumined by colored lights that was set to a twenty or thirty minute recording of Indian classical music. Watching the fountain made me feel like the child that I had taken to behaving like recently.
After the show, we went to the main shrine, devoted to Swami Narayan, a saint from the not-to-distant past, maybe 19th century (no exact data, I sent my literature safely home with Kim so I would be able to use it later), who was the star of the lineage. Even from the outside, with every centimeter elaborately sculpted into divine figures and elaborate motifs, the temple is impressive. When one enters, and sees that the working is even more thorough on the interior, one is simply stupefied and giddy. The ceilings “vault”, for lack of a better word, into designs of concentric circles, the circles made from angels and Gods and nature-based patterns, with the highest, central most point, as modern (realistic) looking idols of the Gods. Every pillar was elaborately decorated. I was left with the feeling that the temple didn’t really need any actual central murtis (idols)—that the walls and the pillars and ceiling sufficed. However, the central idol was about a 30 to 40 foot tall statue of Swami Narayan meditating, looking almost like a Buddha, golden hued (if not actually golden) and with 15 foot statues of the principal Swamis that were devoted to Swami Narayan flanking.
We retreated to the snack canteen and as I sipped a soda and ate ice cream, I excitedly said. “Wow, I don’t know if the Taj Mahal is actually more impressive than that or not. I think that might be the most amazing building I’ve ever seen.” Luckily, we were headed for the Taj the next night, so Jeff and Kim could form their own opinions.
I think that, after the fact, they were unprepared to place one site or the other as more stunning. I, myself, feeling unprepared to crutch up to the actual Taj Mahal after having already crutched through the large entrance gates, sat and watched darkness descend all around the monument. I remembered on what it was like seeing the Taj last month, and appreciated all its beauty from my comfortable (other than the dusk-time mosquitoes) position at the close side of the reflecting ponds. Kim was pleased with the site, a point I tried to get her to elaborate on since her original plans for seeing India in five days were: “Well… I’d like to see the Taj…” However, India was already bringing out her inner child too, as she began snapping at street hawkers and beggars along with me. “Do you want to come back in the morning, see the Taj in daylight?” I wanted to do whatever she wanted while she was here.
“No, I want to get out of this city. I hate it here.” Fair enough. The street hawkers really are something else.
Next stop: Keoladeo National Park—“India’s most famous bird sanctuary”; “one of the world’s most important” wetland sanctuaries. (a la Rough Guide to India) After the excitement of the morning safari last month in Ranthambhore National Park, I insisted that we fit in a park. Keoladeo, less out of the way that Ranthambhore in the trip from Agra to Jaipur, was the target I chose. We took quaint bicycle rickshaws a couple kilometers into the park and back, taking about two hours for the whole trip. It wasn’t the same as driving around the ruins of Ranthambhore, expecting tigers around each corner (and finding, at least, photogenic monkeys), however, we were greeted by the cutest baby owl at the front of the park, who stood out from its niche in a tree, looking around, doubtlessly wondering what we were doing awake in the middle of the day, such prime time for sleeping.
We did see antelopes, which I really appreciated. Our guides, operating the bicycle rickshaws, made point to name all the birds we spotted, really great—bird-watching for dummies. When we passed a cow, our guide detailed: “Cows… milk… milk!” Making the motion of milking a cow with his hands. I laughed and tried to communicate—“We have those in America, too.”
We saw all three types of Kingfisher that the park had, which was the highlight of the bird watching for me (and I think the others, too) and the guides insisted we were lucky to see all three. After seeing the first kind of Kingfisher, which was black-and-white spotted, I pulled out my water bottle and questioned the driver: “It doesn’t look like the beer company’s label.” (For anyone who has never traveled to India or gone to an Indian restaurant in the US that serves beer, Kingfisher is the big brand—they’ve branched out into bottled water, which is the brand I prefer in India, it’s good tasting water—goes down smooth. An important factor when a study from the nineties found that many brands of bottled water in India had unusual amounts of pesticides in them.) The guide related that colorful, tropical-looking bird on the beer can was actually another kind of Kingfisher, a blue Kingfisher, which we later saw, much to our amusement.
From there, we moved on the Jaipur. Kim came down with Delhi belly, so I was by her side in the late night and morning, futilely offering my Ayurvedic herbs and probiotic enzymes, the stuff that everyone I knew swore by to cure Delhi belly within a (painful) 24 hour period. There’s not much to say about Jaipur—it’s a whirlwind of shopping and modern amenities without the sprawl of Delhi. I have lots of pictures that I’ll include of that insanely amazing architecture of the Rajas of the area—we went to Amber Fort palace.
We also took an elephant ride, another experience that you can’t say much about, other than we were all, or at least Kim and I, sure that we would fall off if the elephant made any quick moves. I was comfortable that the elephant was well trained and wouldn’t—until, at least, a dog started barking from inside a house, the elephant looked to the side and began to turn and face the dog. The elephant conductor (there’s a beautiful Hindi word for this, but I think “elephant conductor” is funny enough to warrant my not looking up the Hindi…) smacked the elephant a few times, giving him orders, and I just really prayed that the dog would shut up or that the elephant would be considerate of the four humans who thought it would be a good idea to ride him. When we were let off the elephant (onto a wall, 6 feet high—a frightening experience when you have one good leg, and the other leg was broken two weeks prior from jumping off a 6-foot high wall) we were left without much to say to the elephant and his conductor, who lingered a moment. The elephant looked benignly, peacefully at us humans. I reached out to pet his trunk. The conductor neatly piled the trunk onto the wall for more in-depth petting, I obliged, though weary of elephant snot. The elephant seemed to pass some of his peace and love on through his snout, and I left energized, understanding why elephants are thought to be so holy.
The transformation into children fully completed, India having done her work, my sister and I fought like children the next day as the journey to Delhi began—though, in Kim’s defense, she had been suffering badly from Delhi belly before returning to the city of its namesake, whereas digesting the same things, after my bouts with sickness in Rishikesh, just gave me a terrible rumble for a couple days—I was functional. Our fight left me depressed straight through their trip back to the States and my own trip back down to Bangalore.
My yelling and cursing that day came with my pre-paid taxi driver in Bangalore, who abandoned me without getting my room finalized, and left me on crutches in the hilly ashram. The ashram staff informed me that they had no idea I was coming, despite calling and e-mailing ahead of time, and they couldn’t guarantee me free stay and a position in the ashram. They suggested I pay for stay there until things got sorted out. I grudgingly obliged, though I put them on a short list for people I planned to sooner or later be childish at. During these first days of stay, I quickly realized that staying at the ashram was not going to work out. Walking to the “near” side of the ashram took about 20 minutes of crutching up hills, and walking to the “far” side took more like 45 minutes, given that I needed at least two exhausted, sweaty, panting breaks. As much as possible, I refused to use the autorickshaw drivers at the ashram which stay there, like birds of prey, waiting for Westerners they can overcharge, swearing up and down that they have base rates which cause the prices to be high and that they’ll have to “Return empty”—loosing valuable time they could otherwise devote to their life’s aspiration of always having a full auto. Avoiding spending my fifty cents or a dollar on transporting myself comfortably around the ashram, I quickly wore out my arms and my willpower, and became all the more short with people.
My second day at the ashram was my birthday. I was mopey; thoughts filled my head of leaving the ashram that I had so much looked forward to coming to. I moped my way to the internet café, moped out a few sad e-mails, and decided that the man running the internet café would be the person who got yelled at that day. I crutched up to the canteen, downed a couple lassis (“the hard stuff”) and cried for an hour or two. I really needed to leave.
The next day I got a suitcase that I had left with a friend before going up north, and I got to do the long Sudarshan Kriya, which took a lot of the fire out of my mope. I spent the day gathering phone numbers—my plan was to do panchakarma, a series of Ayurvedic cleansing treatments, something I’d always wanted to try, but can only afford to do in India, and then maybe take some kind of meditation retreat to keep my off my feet and on my butt until I get the cast off—at least two more weeks as I write.
I am now in some other section of Bangalore in an Ayurvedic hospital, going through with the panchakarma plan. With my time, (I have a lot of time, I sit on my bed all day reading) I’ve almost finished transliterating a Sanskrit prayer and hence learning how to read Devanagri, the script used to write Sanskrit and north Indian languages like Hindi, a somewhat purposeless skill in southern India, where the scripts are Dravidian influenced, circular and dizzying. I’ve devoted myself pretty strongly to VS Naipaul’s Million Mutinies Now, which, despite its 500 plus pages, won’t last too long unless the doctors bring me that TV and DVD player they keep talking about. One really interesting part of the book I read yesterday—discussing the Naxalite movement from the first hand experience of the idealistic Socialists who started it, and how they became “a little dismayed” when it turned into a murderous terrorist movement. Great reading.
My first night at the hospital was highlighted by a holy war between the Rajajinagar Mosquitoes and myself. It was by far the worst mosquito melee I’ve encountered in India on this trip. I thought I had extinguished enough of them before going to sleep after midnight, but I woke with many an itchy spot and near constant buzzing in my ears at three in the morning. I dawned my longsword and summoned my will to fight. (My “longsword” at three in the morning are my pyjama bottoms.) About half an hour later, with many a foe encrusted into my longsword, I lay down my weapon, and return to sleep, hoping that turning the fan on would save me from further incidence.
At about half-past five, the heathens launched their counterattack. By quarter to five, I could not tolerate it any longer. Again, I switched on the lights, and I swore myself to battle. After another half hour, I resigned myself to early morning reading and began formulating the wordings of my complaint to the hospital staff. Four hours later, when their working day was beginning full swing, I told the doctors of the holy war.
“Yes, but this is India, mosquitoes are ev…”
“I’ve been in India for three months. No matter Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Jaipur, Rishikesh, the absolute worst was last night.”
“Well, we can get you a coil.” Not a coil in the traditional sense, a contraption that heats up DEET and puts it into the air in a gaseous form.
“I don’t like those. They’re poisonous.”
“Well…”
“They’re poisonous.”
“It’s like this, do you drink Coke?” “No.”
“When you drink Coke, you take in all the chem…”
“I don’t drink Coke, I don’t touch the stuff. Maybe you do, and that’s fine with me, but I…” The doctor, with the DEET-to-Cola analogy, clearly wanted to win the position of the person who I would yell at.
“No, I don’t drink Coke, but…”
“I want a screen on the windows, or I will find another hospital.” I was fresh out of ideas for something more childish to say.
After a call with the doctor who ran the hospital this doctor, who I refered to later in the day as “the Stupid One,” for lack of knowing his name, came back in the room and said that they would get a screen and that the doctor who ran the hospital would be in to see me in a few hours, and he told me which treatments we would start.
The day passed, and I got my first treatment, a much-needed Shirodhara—bathing of the forehead with a stream of warm oil—one of my favorites, and a treatment Ayurveda is famous for. I was much more relaxed and content but not ready to show my weak side until I got a screen in my window and a good night’s sleep. The day passed on, as evening approached, I paged the attendants—“Where are the screens?”
The attendant in broken English, “Not possible. All stores close.”
Frustrated, I asked for the doctor, which is becoming my way of asking for someone who speaks English. The Stupid One came.
“Yes, we can’t get the screens, the stores are all closed, an actor is passing…”
An actor is passing? I had begun to understand that in India, everything closes for seemingly archaic holidays. I had begun to understand that the cinema is a powerful cultural force here, as anywhere. But closing stores because an actor passes through? “I don’t care if an actor is passing!”
“You may not care but…”
“I need these windows to be sealed or I can’t stay here!” I had already related to him earlier that after another night of broken sleep, I would really be impossible to deal with. At some point someone had stressed to me that people were violent outside. I was confused and assumed they were misplacing more appropriate descriptors.
We eventually stuffed blankets in part of the windows that don’t close by design, and I performed an elaborate ritual to the ceiling fan, hoping it would keep me cool in my sealed bunker. The next day, I began my regimen of herbs—I was to tell how well my body absorbed the herbs by the taste of my burps. Two doctors told me this, just to be sure. I was given a print out of instructions about the procedure. The instructions stressed that I was to withdraw my senses and not to over-stimulate the sense organs. I obliged and spent the early part of the day picking off dead skin from my feet and cuddling up with VS Naipaul in the most socially acceptable of ways.
A “band” on the closest street corner played Filmy music and the soundtrack of Bollywood films throughout the day as I was attempting to not over-stimulate my sense organs. A “band” is the popular Indian gadget of an amplifier with many low quality but powerful speakers, built into a cart that, in the end, doesn’t look dissimilar to a decorated ice cream wallah. Seeing this gadget get wheeled down the street, a portable soapbox or an instant leader of a processional, exemplifies how over-crowded and noisy Indian cities are; exemplifies how hard it is for an individual to be heard or noticed. Periodically, large groups of people would drive by hollering and cheering. Through my aggravation, I eventually decided to get myself out of bed and look at the goings-on in the streets.
Maybe 7 or 8 men sat idly by the band that was placed on the street corner. There was a garlanded photo, though I couldn’t make it out, I assumed it was some obscure God or deified historical figure of India. The streets were sparse, all the shops obviously closed for a second day. I thought of how insane Indians were to make so much noise with these bands that only a few people would actually want to hear—it seems like a simple and feeble expression of pride, the desire to make ones own cause foremost in everyone’s attention, whether they felt the same or not.
Occasionally, a chain of five to a dozen motorcycles would drive by, and men would cheer to the men standing near the band. The men wore bright yellow and red bandanas, or placed them on the motorcycles, and I soon noticed that there was a large yellow and red flag above the band. I assumed it was connected with some political group and that all this was somehow related to the “passing actor” of the day before.
After getting my Shirodhara that evening, the Stupid One was telling me about how all the shops were still closed. I asked him about the flag. “Yes, that’s all it.”
“All for an actor who came through?”
“He was a very famous actor.” Somehow I started to get the point. “He died?”
“Yes, he passed.”
“Oh, I thought you were trying to tell me he was passing through the area yesterday.”
“Yes, the body.”
It was starting to make a little sense. “It’s very hectic outside. People get beaten up, shops are getting stoned, 60 cars and busses and stores have been burned.”
“Burned?”
“Yes, 60 cars and busses. Do you read the English news?”
I hadn’t come across a paper. He gave me the popular English newspaper in Karnataka state, the Vijaya Times. The front page was completely on the death of the actor. Actually, so was the second page, and three-quarters of the third page. Much of the fifth and seventh pages were also on the actor. The newspaper was less than 20 pages altogether, about a third of the day’s post was on the event in Bangalore.
The actor, RajKumar had been largely responsible for bringing the Indian film industry to Karnataka state and popularizing films in the state language, Kannada. The front page has a quote from India’s Prime Minister and an article about the condolences of India’s President and Karnataka state’s Chief Minister. Actors are quoted saying that RajKumar was the greatest personality ever known to Karnataka and that those left behind in the film business were now but orphans.
RajKumar had also sparked public concern seven years ago, when leaders of the Sandalwood black market kidnapped him. During the 180-some days that he was held captive, the public began to hold observances and special pujas. The film industry in Karnataka vowed to stop working on films until he was returned. The governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were involved in negotiations for his return.
Now, with his death, the government declared official observances on Wednesday and Thursday, April 12th and 13th. Businesses closed down, and frantic fans attacked those that remained open. The body was moved back and forth to multiple destinations so that fans could pay their respects and “receive the darshan” of their beloved star. Police resorted to using tear gas in some cases to control crowds. In fans frustrations, arson began in several areas of Bangalore, burning cars and busses, even police vehicles. Small scale rioting began. The government pleaded autorickshaw drivers to stop running, yet with many busses attacked, public transport was lacking, and many people became stranded at their places of work.
In this way—me wondering why the local street corner had a band playing Filmy music, wondering what the red and yellow flags were; I believe I just lived through my very first rioting city. All the while, cuddled up with Mr. Naipaul and retiring my sense organs.
