Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  It is not only Suraj’s father and grandfather who were charnel men. Every member of his family, those still living and those dead for centuries, has worked the Burning Ghats of Varanasi. It binds them together, makes them one. A harmonious home, Suraj says, is the greatest blessing any man can have.

  A boy of six or seven, Suraj’s son, is hopping among the cadavers. Here he straightens an arm, there he tucks in a brocade shroud, proudly helping out as best he can. One day father and son will work side by side, one day the son will take the father’s place, one day the son may even burn the father on his own bier. Today the boy is whistling cheerfully as he picks his way through the corpses.

  I ask Suraj if he is happy with his life.

  And do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than another’s, even if it be great. To die in one’s duty is life: to live another’s is death.

  —Bhagavad Gita 3-35, quoted by Geoffrey Moorhouse in OM: An Indian Pilgrimage

  Happy, not happy, he says the question has no meaning. A man’s life is his life, nothing more, nothing less.

  An old woman is burning on the pyre Suraj has built. She lies on top of four cross-stacked logs, with smaller sticks piled tidily on her chest. The fire melts the air, blurring all the scenery behind it, like the jet flow from an airplane. Downwind, the stench of fleshy corruption is almost intolerable. Much of the woman’s skin is charred, some of it flaking off, and a bright white bone is all that is left of her leg. But the flames have not yet reached the head. Eyes shut, lips slightly parted, moisture just beginning to bead on the forehead--she could as easily be basking on a beach. When her scanty hair finally catches fire, her lips twitch without losing their serenity. The woman greets oblivion with an involuntary smile.

  There is no way to know anything about the woman’s life. Perhaps she had been born a Brahmin, perhaps a Shudra. Perhaps she had been the wife of a fisherman, perhaps a cabinet minister in her own right. She entered the world nothing more than a body, left it a body and nothing more. In the end, fire burns away all class, all caste, all wealth, all luck, all social distinction, all human inequity.

  Death is the only leveler, for there is none in life.

  Jonah Blank also contributed “Monument of Love” to Part I. Both of these selections were taken from his book, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India.

  I regard untouchability as the greatest blot on Hinduism. This idea was not brought home to me by my bitter experiences during the South African struggle. It is not due to the fact that I was once an agnostic. It is equally wrong to think that I have taken my views from my study of Christian religious literature. These views date as far back as the time when I was neither enamored of, nor was aquainted with, the Bible or the followers of the Bible.

  I was hardly yet twelve when this idea had dawned on me. A scavenger named Uka, an Untouchable, used to attend our house for cleaning latrines. Often I would ask my mother why it was wrong to touch him. If I accidentally touched Uka, I was asked to perform the ablutions, and though I naturally obeyed, it was not without smilingly protesting that untouchability was not sanctioned by religion, that it was impossible that it should be so. I was a very dutiful and obedient child and so far as it was consistent with respect for parents, I often had tussled with them on this matter. I told my mother that she was entirely wrong in considering physical contact with Uka as sinful.

  --Mahatma Gandhi, Speech at the Depressed Classes Conference, Ahmedabad, 1921

  My Delhi Home

  CHERYL BENTLEY

  Family is where the heart is.

  IN MY INDIAN NEIGHBORHOOD, PESKY LITTLE THREE-WHEELED auto rickshaws, old bicycles, 1950s-style Ambassadors—the matronly car of India’s bureaucracy—sputtering motorcycles carrying entire families, and the middle class’s favorite auto, the zippy Maruti, yip and bellow in a perpetual traffic jam. Along with pedestrians, tourists, beggars, cobras in baskets, fortune tellers, crows, touts, ear cleaners, shoe shiners, peddlers, and dogs, they scrabble for every atom of free space.

  The York Hotel rests one story above this show, but it does not attempt to remove itself from the bustle below. It is a wise decision, for nothing in India is isolated from life’s mayhem, and its mystery.

  Many years ago my reservations at another hotel were muddled, and I found myself needing a place to stay. Having learned that there is often wisdom behind India’s cosmic or comic—I have never decided which—design with its mission of unerringly scrambling careful plans into chaos, I accepted my mishap goodnaturedly and ended up at the York.

  The match with the hotel has been blessed. Staying there has drawn me to the street, where much of Indian life, from hawking to bathing to peeing, unfolds and has included me in the neighborhood’s pulse, which in spite of the street frenzy, is slow, stretched out to encompass the living and dying of endless generations. And most of all, it has ceased being just the hotel in which I stay during my frequent trips to India and become, instead, my Indian home.

  On its two-story perch above Connaught Circle, New Delhi’s heart, the York boasts cherry-red carpets, massive gray granite tubs inviting long soaks until you find it takes an hour to fill them, and bulky furniture with faux wood veneer. Its best rooms face away from the street and have no windows. But I always know the time of day by the sounds of traffic leaking in, despite of the rooms’ resolute backs to downtown. In the cool gray Delhi mornings, noises are soft, like prayers. By ten o’clock they have become as fierce as Indian summers. Mid-evenings they subside into the hush of the dark.

  The York has all the middle class comforts—television, telephone, and air conditioning, but something usually breaks down. Part of the rhythm of life there is to phone in the complaint several times, listen to promises to send a repairman up “in five or ten minutes,” the Indian euphemism meaning any time between now and eternity, and finally watch with admiration as our hero arrives, jiggles wires, and shakes ailing instruments, coaxing them back to life with string and a prayer.

  In this country where many branches of families live together, staying at the York is like being an arm of one of India’s extended families. You learn to accommodate each other’s bad moods and foibles. The bearers know to get a move on when dealing with this impatient American, and I try to ignore the blatant hints for baksheesh , especially from the beady-eyed bathroom cleaner who eternally stations himself outside my door panting to be tipped for un-requested and unwanted services.

  But all is forgiven when I return from California and instead of inquiring when did I arrive, someone asks in gentle accusation, “Madam, where have you been?” hinting that the York has felt an emptiness that only I can fill.

  Every morning the dobie-wallah, or laundry man, bicycles in to collect laundry. I have long since stopped asking that my clothes return un-ironed. This nation with its exquisitely silken sari-swathed women does not appreciate the natural look.

  He delivers my garments, crisply pressed and fresh-smelling, the same evening except when the monsoons pelt Delhi. During the rainy season it takes several days to dry pieces. Those times even the hotel’s towels come back soggy.

  But I don’t mind. I savor the idea of my things being dried in old-fashioned sunshine (laundry draped over fences and lawns is a common Delhi sight) and enjoy the novelty of my cushioned life’s bow to nature.

  The York is on the outer circle of Connaught Place, a series of neat concentric circles laid out by the British, no doubt to impose a sense of order on the pandemonium of India. Today the white paint of its stately pillars has sunk deep within the wood into a patina of timelessness, and the once glistening marbled walkways dulled by a half century of grime. Connaught Place wears the look of India, always crumbling away, but never changing.

  In Delhi thereseem to bebe more people who shine and repair shoes than people who actually wear them. When a weasely-looking man tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that my shoes were stained, I chased him away: Connaught Circus con men know more tricks than
you can imagine, and one of their favorites is to daub ketchup (or worse) on your shoes and then clean it up for a fee.

  —Jonah Blank, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India

  On the York’s block are a tiny mosque atop a Muslim food stand, two tailors who ply their trade with antiquated sewing machines, and Rajinder’s, a shop supplying car seat-covers and radios. Men from Rajinder’s work on the sidewalk, snipping and hammering and never cleaning up after themselves, but in this crowded country where any empty space is fair game for colonization, no one complains.

  Across the street businesses such as Bhandari Homeopathic Stores, Alankar Shirtswala, and Moonlight Tailors and Drapers occupy molecules of storefronts. Most have been owned by the same family for generations and in India’s ancient linkage of lifetimes will be passed on to the sons of the current owners.

  But many do not have even slivers of shops and exist only from the uncertain gifts of the street. I met nine-year-old Sanjoy several years ago when we chatted while I waited for a bookstore to open. “Madam,” he purred in the prim Indian English that seemed at odds with his merry hazel eyes, “if only I had a shoeshine box to make my way in the world.”

  My American respect for initiative promptly gifted him with 100 rupees.

  Of course, Sanjoy never bought his box; but since I had already fallen in love with his snappy repartee and mop of sandy curls, we became friends. Later, his pal Deepak, less clever but gentler than Sanjoy, peered at me with brown soulful eyes and also crept into my heart.

  The boys live in a peculiar world, half adult and half child. They spend their days conning tourists, handing over half of their earnings to policemen in order not to be hassled, and playing. Bequeathed by generations of their families, their inheritance is the street, their dreams dependent on the discards of others.

  I bring them presents with each visit. The kids whoop with delight. I feel pangs of guilt that I cannot do more.

  Sanjoy and Deepak are a cut above the beggars who work the area. One filthy family often turns up in the next block. The granny has honed one mean sales pitch. Having discovered you can get almost anything by hounding your quarry into submission, she follows me for blocks moaning, “Chapati! Chapati!” (“Bread! Bread!”) until I cave in with a few rupees.

  At the corner weaving in and out of cars waiting for the light to change are a beautiful young woman with luminous eyes and a thick plait of black hair falling down her back and a man who looks you in the eye with alert intelligence. Both are as clean as you can be if your home is the street. Her lower body is paralyzed. She drags it along behind her as she pulls herself with her hands into the road soliciting motorists. He has no legs at all.

  I often bring them food from Nirula’s, the fast food restaurant in the next block. Although I am curious about these two attractive, intelligent people, I have learned from the helplessness that my involvement with Sanjoy and Deepak often stirs up, to keep my distance. I have begun to understand why most of my Indian friends steer clear of the poor. The more you enter their lives, the more you feel powerless to fill their enormous needs.

  Sprinkled throughout the neighborhood are the large, old-fashioned restaurants that were formerly Delhi’s most glamorous eating places. The York itself has such an establishment, a cavernous place manned by elderly, gentle waiters with sloping shoulders.

  As do most Connaught cafes, the York restaurant probably spans at least half a century. My friend Vijay remembers eating there forty years ago during excursions from his home in the state of Rajasthan. In Vijay’s boyhood eyes, the York was the epitome of sophistication.

  Today, though, with the advent of private clubs and five-star hotels for the elite, the York and other Connaught Place eateries are merely bastions of basic Indian cuisine and sweet but unpolished service. They cater to large families and the lower echelon of businessmen. I retire to them when I want to be alone. Losing my procession of touts and beggars at their doors, I become the fly on the wall, eavesdropping on the buzz of the politics of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], the Hindu-revivalist party, at the Embassy; or the humdrum of business-speak at the Volga; or the jabber of mom and pop and babies at the York.

  But it is to Nirula’s that I go when I long for a bit of Americana. Years ago Papa Nirula sent a son to Cornell to study restaurant management and has been raking in the profits ever since. Nirula’s was a pioneer in take-out food and salad bars.

  During my frequent Nirula fixes, I met Kasim, one of the hosts. The soft-spoken, middle-aged Kasim traveled the hefty journey from his home in Old Delhi by motorcycle six days a week to work ten-hour days. He arrived at work early and stayed until the last diner dribbled out, often at midnight. Always sensitive to his customers, he knew my routine after only a couple of visits. I had only to walk through the door for a fresh orange juice and pot of tea to appear at my favorite table, which had been saved, even though Nirula’s has no reservations, because Kasim knew it was my breakfast hour.

  Over the years Kasim’s story unfolded. He had worked in an Arab country, saved a nest egg of thousands of dollars, and spent almost every bit of it throwing his brother a lavish wedding—not a strange deed in India, where the family is sanctified almost as much as the gods.

  Still, Kasim often regretted his extravagance as he struggled on his meager Nirula’s salary. He was forced to dip into his small remaining savings to send his younger children to private schools and the eldest son to university.

  Three years ago I returned to India, expecting Kasim’s big smile of welcome, only to find that he had been fired. The waiters said that the owner had chosen him as the scapegoat for an innocent misunderstanding.

  In India jobs are hoarded like the rare treasure they are. Kasim has been unable to find another one.

  Most of my childhood was lived in a house on Alipur Road in Old Delhi. The Turkish and Moghul tombs nearby and the abandoned British residences even then starting to crumble taught me that history was a game decay always won. My first paintings were of tombs and my first poems drenched with the easy pathos of vanished grandeur. When I first visited London at seven, I saw in my mind’s eye cows grazing around Nelson’s column as they graze around Kutb Minar. My ayah used to sing an old Hindi song:“All things pass away except God

  O my God show me your face before I die.”

  —Andrew Harvey, Hidden Journey: A Spiritual Awakening

  His son has dropped out of university; his younger kids no longer go to private schools.

  The last time I saw him he had landed a one-night waiter’s job and talked about it throughout the summer, the one claim to productivity this once proud man could chalk up.

  Not long ago I tried to avoid the pain caused by the Kasims and Sanjoys by staying in a hotel far away from Connaught Place.

  My trip was peaceful, painless—and vapid. The York had made me grow too accustomed to real life. The visitor’s shield I had thought would protect me from the Connaught Place dramas had long ago fallen away, probably becoming a part of the neighborhood’s abundant garbage, waiting to be recycled by another traveler who wanted to take pictures, have a few safe adventures, and return safely to her native land.

  I wish her well, but I don’t envy her. Like it or not, the York and environs have become part of who I am. Through India’s strange alchemy, my secure, strong, American self has been vanquished by a fragile world perpetually teetering on the verge of collapse and sorrow. It is a world I worry about, suffer with, and miss when I am away from it.

  Maybe that’s what having a home is all about.

  Cheryl Bentley spent time in El Salvador during its civil war, taught school in the Iranian desert, served in the Peace Corps in Thailand, and birded around the world. She lives in San Francisco and says she never steps on ants.

  How do you cope with poverty? That must be the question I have been asked the most frequently by visitors to India over the many years I have lived there. I often reply,“I don’t have to. The poor do.�
�� It’s certainly true. I live a very comfortable life in Delhi, while the taxi drivers just across the road have to sleep in the open during the hot summer. I have a three-bedroom flat. The taxi stand is their home. I am surrounded by India’s poverty, but I don’t suffer it. I also know there is very little I can do about the poor and that no one has yet found an answer to their problems. The crocodile tears that have been shed over India’s poor would flood the Ganges; that’s why I don’t feel any need to add my drop to them. Graham Greene once wrote, “Pity is cruel, pity destroys.” I agree that we must not pity the poor. I believe, however, that we can respect them.

  —Mark Tully, The Defeat of a Congressmen and Other Parables of Modern India

  PART TWO

  SOME THINGS TO DO

  Merle Haggard and the Ambassador

  JAMES O’REILLY AND LARRY HABEGGER

  A drive in the south offers countless rewards.

  COLONEL WAKEFIELD WORE A FAINT SMILE.“ANYONE WANT TO SEE a leopard?” We nodded, cold but still eager after hours of bouncing around the forest in a jeep. The Colonel shone his flashlight on a sign at the entrance to Nagarhole National Park. Indeed there was a leopard on it, a very nice leopard, a painted wood leopard. Not exactly what we had in mind, but it gave us a good laugh as we headed back to the lodge.

  Nagarhole is a little-visited game preserve in the south of India in Karnataka state, two hours southwest of the fabled city of Mysore. It is home to a stunning array of beast and bird, from leopard, elephant, gaur, and yellowhorn to tiger, fish owl, peacock, and kingfisher. You can watch the charge of a bull elephant from an elevated hide, from a jeep, from a coracle on the water at dawn, or ride elephant-back into the bush at sunset.