On the scale of human suffering, Aloke Sen fares better than most Calcuttans. Yet perhaps, in the final analysis, it’s the struggle to survive amid decay and death that gives so many Calcutta artists and writers their subject matter.“With problems you have food for creation. You have your material,” said Satyajit Ray. “If you’re living in Stockholm all you can do is make films like Bergman does, about human beings and all the psychological this and that.”
Raja and Dakoo agree. Their work is obsessed by their love-hate relationship with the city and its problems. This tension is best summed up by filmmaker and actress Aparna Sen, who also edits Calcutta’s leading women’s magazine. She freely admits she hates the city, then adds, “But I know what it looks like in the morning, in the evening. I know what the streets are like and how the shadows fall…even though I hate it I can’t think of working anywhere else!”
Julian Crandall Hollick is an award-winning producer and writer of radio documentaries about Islam and Asia. He has written on European politics, Islam, and India for newspapers, academic journals, and magazines throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Asian and Arab worlds. His latest broadcast work is a series about how Muslims in a variety of countries integrate their faith into their other identities, called Living Islam.
The subway system of Calcutta is immaculately clean, runs smack on time, and doesn’t reek of urine—this in a country where nothing is particularly clean, nothing runs on time, and pretty much everything stinks of piss. Each station has well-tended plants, murals, and even TV sets playing news or movies. The stop below the Indian Museum boasts irreplaceable marble sculptures in fragile glass cases, all completely unmolested. The fare is one rupee, a little over a nickel, about one-twentieth what it costs to ride New York’s filthy, unreliable, crime-plagued sewer.
—Jonah Blank, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India
The Horns of Kaziranga
LARRY HABEGGER
Rhinos still roam the grasslands of Assam.
AT 4 A.M. CALCUTTA IS QUIET. THERE IS LITTLE ACTIVITY IN THE streets: a few rats scurry in the gutter searching for food, clambering over the mounds of sleeping people who crowd the pavement. Calcutta quiet is rare. The congestion here seldom permits the city to relax.
The only sounds now are the creaking of the rickshaw, its beaten wood grating like old bones under my weight, and the patter of the dhoti-clad rickshaw-wallah’s feet echoing off the buildings as he pulls me toward the bus stand. He flicks his head sideways to look at me out of the corner of his eye and mutters something without breaking his rhythm.
“I was taxi driver. Taxi no good. Rickshaw good.” Then something about rupees. I know he will ask for more money than we agreed upon. Baksheesh: as Indian as sacred cows and maharajahs. Then he’s quiet again, and I feel the sky. It’s crowding down, heavy with rain. But today I don’t mind because I’m off to track rhinos.
The rickshaw stops. Without warning the rickshaw-wallah sets down his yoke, almost tossing me headlong into the street. “Wait,” he says, then walks to the gutter to urinate. I’ve clearly put him to work before his morning ablutions. Ahead the ghostly hulks of two Brahma cows lurch across the street, stopping to graze on garbage. The rickshaw-wallah returns and we move on.
As I expected, he asks for double the agreed fare when he lets me off. I give him a few extra rupees for the early start, smile, say “thanks,” and walk away, hearing him grumble only an instant before I hear the creaking of the rickshaw.
The bus to the airport is only half full and goes smoothly, a pleasant surprise. More remarkably, the flight leaves on time and after a short hop over Bangladesh lands safely in Jorhat in the state of Assam. Outside, as I expected, it is raining.
A taxi driver buttonholes me on the tarmac before I even reach the terminal. His English is good.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Kaziranga.”
“Ah, you want to see the rhinos.”
I nod, smiling.
Kaziranga National Park is the final stronghold of the great Indian one-horned rhinoceros. It has been a sanctuary since 1901, and in 1972 it was declared a national park. Now the government of India finances and maintains it. The official count for rhinos in 1993 was over eleven hundred and the park is home to many other animals including some six hundred wild buffalo, several thousand deer and wild boar, sloth bears, and the occasional leopard and tiger. Poaching, however, is a very serious problem.
Central Calcutta is the last place in the world with hand-pulled rickshaws. Chinese immigrants introduced them in the late nineteenth century. Somewhere between seventy thousand and one hundred thousand barefoot pullers rent the high-wheeled contraptions by the shift. Most pullers are from Bihar State and they struggle to send a portion of their scanty earnings to their families. Some moonlight as small-time pimps and drug dealers. The strenuous work, poor diet, and grotty living conditions exact a grim toll on pullers’ kidneys, lungs, feet, and lives. Owners of rickshaw fleets are often wealthy and influential. Some, according to rumor, are politicians and police.
—Mary Orr, “India Sketches”
Jorhat is an agricultural city in a lush setting. Mostly rice and vegetables are grown here, and the jungle seems to encroach on all sides, squeezing onto fields, forming leafy borders for gardens on the outskirts of town.
I take the taxi to the bus station, and after a wait of an hour and a half am in line to buy a ticket, which in India is always a struggle. You must fight to get to the window, then fight again to get your money to the attendant before all of the other insisting hands. I was hoping it would be different in Assam, but it wasn’t.
Our bus pulls out shakily into the main street honking warnings to all creation. Just then a nonchalant beast crosses, ignoring the bus. For this the bus will stop and wait. The beast, a water buffalo, the divine brake inspector—nothing will divert him from his chosen path. Mythic vehicle of Yamah, god of death, black shiny hide and always casually chewing, he crosses the road and carefully completes his slow examination of our souls.
—Mark Antrobus, “Chasing the Rainbow: A Western Sadhu in India”
My seat is on the hump of the rear wheel, by a window that isn’t there. In its place has been jammed a rusted piece of sheet metal. The rain flows in and trickles down to the floor. When we start to move it blows in, splashing indifferently on my leg. I slide closer to the man next to me and prepare myself for the next fifty-six miles, or three and a half hours.
We stop for tea whenever the driver is thirsty. He seems to be unquenchably thirsty today, but I don’t mind because it gives me a chance to get out of the rain, and a cup of tea combats the chill.
A short while later two seats miraculously open up when we stop near a muddy path. The man next to me slides to the seat across the aisle and smiles at me. I slide to the aisle seat and it feels like shelter. Stretching my legs, I thank him, and sit back, able now to enjoy the scenery.
Assam is intensely green. Flat fields thick with rice run casually to the forested hills in the distance, a fresh, vibrant green flowing to meet the older, richer shade on the horizon. Blazing-white egrets stand idly, occasionally taking their graceful flight like a ballet done against an impressionist backdrop. For many miles we pass the rice fields, interrupted only by occasional clumps of forest where the hills send a delinquent finger toward the road. Then abruptly a tea plantation emerges. The flat, orderly spread of shrubs is speckled in light and dark green. Acacias stand among them like angels in a tranquil land. We roll on, through alternating fields of rice and tea.
The rain continues, heavily at times. The bus is now full, an unfortunate man in rags taking my former seat. His dark, haggard face is adorned in white stubble; his mouth is scarlet, his teeth red and rotting from years of chewing betel nut. He chews slowly now, and from time to time spits the flaming red spittle into the rain. He is not alone. On this bus at least half of the passengers are chewing, and not just the old people, but also young me
n in Western shirts and trousers, young women with beautiful dark faces wearing silver and gold nose jewelry and wild saris. For the first time, in the closeness of the bus, I can smell it, the slightly sweet rancidity of the betel nut. We bounce along, no one in any apparent hurry.
The monsoon is lingering, like an unwelcome guest. This year it has been especially heavy. The river Brahmaputra has flooded much of its valley, and thousands of villagers have been evacuated to relief camps. The rain continues to blow in on the old man and his scarlet spittle, and I begin to wonder if I’ll be able to get into the sanctuary.
A ripple of conversation flows the length of the bus and the man across the aisle tells me with a smile, “Your stop is the next one.”
I thank him and prepare to go out into the rain, suddenly reluctant to give up the security of this rickety bus bouncing through the countryside.
As the bus recedes in the distance I make my way up a narrow road through a tea plantation to a small complex of buildings at the top of a hill. Run by the government of Assam, the tourist lodge is reasonably priced and comfortable. Meals are cheap and adequate, and the friendly Assamese who manages the place assures me I’ll be able to visit the sanctuary, if the rain stops. The sky shows no signs of that, and the rain is steady until darkness comes suddenly at 5 p.m.
I have little hope of going into the park when I am awakened the next morning by a rap on the door at 4:30. I rise sleepily and step outside. It is dark and quiet. Water drips from the trees, but the sky is holding. At 5 o’clock it is light, and the sky, still overcast, shows signs of breaking up, lifting on the horizon like the hem of a long skirt to show pale sky beyond. A short while later, without breakfast, I climb into a jeep with six Assamese and we drive off, three miles to the elephant camp.
A cluster of Indians stands around a raised wooden platform, waiting for howdahs to be mounted on the elephants. The women are wearing their flowing saris, the men are dressed in slacks and sweaters just as colorful. It doesn’t take long to prepare the elephants, and we climb the platform to reach the howdahs, clamber aboard, three or four to an elephant, and slosh off into the swampy grasslands, a band of seven elephants.
Our pace is slow, but without warning and barely two minutes into our journey we spot our first rhino. It stands shoulder deep in grass, munching, stopping to stare at us as we approach. Seven abreast, we must be a formidable sight to its tiny eyes. It watches us until we come within thirty feet, then slowly turns and sloshes off. We follow it, cameras clicking, people chattering with excitement.
The rhino looks like an anachronism with its thick hide divided into sections like plates of armor. Its single stout horn and hooked upper lip give it a fierce appearance, but when it flaps its small ears it suddenly seems amusingly docile. Its eyes become sad rather than mean, and I see that it is a peaceful creature despite its prehistoric appearance.
Not far away another rhino is accompanied by a herd of swamp deer and an egret. The deer watch us curiously, while the rhino grazes and the egret rides on its back. Now and then the egret jumps off to snatch a meal, but each time it returns. As we move in their direction, the deer prance away to join a larger herd on higher ground.
We make our way slowly through the swamp, and rhinos appear everywhere. One is submerged up to its chin in a water hole, another peers at us through tall grass. Gray herons and egrets take flight and move in slow motion away from our path. Starlings chatter in the occasional trees. White-headed fish hawks swoop low over the waters, and a pelican, shining white like the egrets, glides effortlessly toward a landing spot in the distance.We see more deer, which panic and thrash through the tall grass as we surprise them, and more rhinos.
When we return to the lodge, the park official tells me the sanctuary will close tomorrow because the high waters are too hard on the elephants. He amiably suggests that I try to come back later in the season, and I smile, thinking of a place on the other side of the world.
Later that day I prepare to leave, to make my way out of Assam. I wait for the bus to Gawahati, hoping the rain will wait for me to get there. I had hoped to get out again to see the rhinos, but I finally decide that they are better off left alone. They seem happy here, and they will have peace for another little while.
Larry Habegger is executive editor of the Travelers’ Tales series. He is also co-author of “World Travel Watch,” a weekly syndicated column that appears in newspapers throughout the United States, on WorldTravelWatch.com, and on TravelersTales.com. He regularly teaches the craft of travel writing at workshops and writer’s conferences, and is a popular writing coach (information at www.larryhabegger.com).
An oboe trilled softly in the distance. India’s gods were stirring. I said good-bye to my friends and let myself be tempted into the darkness. A drum started playing. I ran towards the sounds, becoming part of a large crowd ascending the steps into a Hindu temple. Night and thousands of oil lamps had magically transformed the stone walls of the building. They had become a universe of warm, flickering stars. I had stepped into a Hindu vision of heaven.
Bells began ringing. A central building was illuminated with more oil lamps. A priest circulated a flame, a blessing, a purification from Agni, the Goddess of Fire. The crowd pressed to glimpse within the inner sanctum. Isolated yet visible, surrounded by yet more stars, washed by the hymns of hidden priests, was Vishnu, the center of the Universe, the Preserver.
—Jan Zabinski, “Walking the Length of India”
Wheels of Life
JOSIE DEW
Cycling in India is not for the faint of heart—but it offers unparalleled contact with local people.
WE LEFT THE GREY, NOXIOUS HAZE HANGING OVER INDUSTRIAL Delhi and headed for the countryside and Agra. Our escape was far from peaceful. The spine-shattering roads were a constant blur of bell-ringing cyclists all rattling and rolling and racing their way along beside us. It felt like the motorway as we swerved in and out of a surge of riders with overtaking and undertaking manoeuvres I never would have believed possible on two wheels. Often a plethora of people would perch precariously—on a single bike—fragile, veiled old women side-saddling on rear racks; boys balancing in crazy contortions; children strapped to the crossbar along with goats and ducks and carcasses. All this and yet they still managed to accelerate after us in hot pursuit. They were addicted to chasing and racing and no way were they going to let a couple of fancily kitted-out foreigners glide past unnoticed. We sped up, they sped up; we slowed down, they slowed down; we stopped to tend to the call of nature, they stopped to watch.We were constantly the centre of attention—and that is something you are stuck with in India, whether you like it or not.
The Indians could be hair-tearingly infuriating but they were wonderful people, always wanting to help even if they had no idea.
There seems to be only one style and make of bicycle in India—it is a black, single-speed with upright handlebars and fenders. It apparently comes in only one size as well; as I have seen countless Indian boys riding bikes so large, that one slip could dash all hopes of them ever enjoying sexual intercourse.
The problem this homogeneity poses is that riding my multicolored, twenty-one- speed mountain bike with bar-ends and panniers is the equivalent of the circus coming to town.
Whenever I pass another cyclist there is the inevitable, “Squeak, squeak, rattle, rattle, clunk” as he speeds up to pass (I use “he” because I can count on one hand the number of girls I’ve seen riding bicycles so far). Once he has successfully passed, wearing a determined grin, he stops pedaling and turns around to get a better look—forcing a radical swerve to avoid collision. This frustrating “leap-frog” can go on for kilometers.
—Willie Weir, “Cycling India: Letters from the Road”
“Which way to Jodhpur?” I asked a camel-man at a fork in the road with no signpost.
“Jodhpur? This way please,” he said with arm outstretched, pointing vaguely in a direction somewhere between the two roads.
“Jodhpur,�
�� I tried again, gesticulating vividly, “is left or right?’”
“Yes,” he said.
“Thank you,” I replied and carried on, none the wiser.
Apart from the roads being a swarming mass of everything that moved, there were also dangers of the immovable type. The positioning of road hazard signs was decidedly erratic and I often came across gaping chasms in the road, at least six feet deep, without the slightest warning. It was not just people who suffered from a lack of proper road maintenance but also luckless livestock—I once discovered a scrawny goat bleating listlessly as it lay trapped at the bottom of one such ravine.
Another time, as I was merrily flying along with Peter, the road suddenly disintegrated with a fifty-foot drop into a fast-flowing river. There had been no signs, no warnings, and it was only a good pair of brakes that saved us from plunging over the edge (where, we learnt later, two motorcyclists had died the previous night). A little delayed, we heard an urgent shout from a roadside workman busy with a small task force of men and camels.
“Hello! Mister—stop please!” he cried as he scrambled up the sandy bank. “The road—it is washed far away.”
“Yes, thank you,” I replied with bemusement, “we had noticed.”
As we were riding along one day, a bit of grit lodged in Peter’s eye and it puffed up so badly that he could not see out of it.
“What you need is an eye hospital,” I quipped, as if such a thing would exist among such ancient and underdeveloped scenes of paddy fields, stone-breakers, oxen-turned water-wheels, human-pulled carts, sari-clad labourers undertaking backbreaking work and men walking with sacks of goat fodder on their heads. As a cloud of thick, choking dust settled from a passing fleet of swaying camels, I read a sign beside us that said:
Travelers' Tales India Page 22
