by Frank Kusy
March 10th
I woke up this morning with two different passengers holding a loud conversation on the end of my bunk. I gritted my teeth, did some chanting to respect their lives, and gave them a death’s mask grin of friendship. They returned my smile and gave me a cheery little wave. Later, they bought me a bag of peanuts.
In Patna, I booked a quiet but grubby room at the Hotel Gaylord. I asked the elderly proprietor five times for some fresh linen, then gave up and drifted off into a long sleep. Later, when it had become dark, I walked round the local neighbourhood in search of a good film. But there wasn’t one to be found. The dimmed backstreets and alleyways positively seethed with disreputable ruffians and blackguards, all grinning out at me with appropriating eyes. I later learnt that Patna is notorious for its heavy population of thieves and vagrants. One of these days, I determined, I must get this kind of information in advance, rather than in retrospect. As it was, I picked my way back to the civilised part of town through the poorly lit, badly surfaced, beggar-strewn and generally unsavoury streets with a nervous sense of impending disaster. I wasn’t just imagining it – the air was thick with trouble.
Ever since I’d hit the streets of Patna this afternoon – the lonely wind howling up and down the dusty, deserted highways – I had been feeling uneasy about this place. It put me on edge, and had given me a nagging toothache. Even when I finally got my fresh linen (on the sixth attempt), I wasn’t much happier. Indeed, Patna as a whole was disturbingly short on laughs.
March 11th
Today marked the culmination of my journeys to various Buddhist centres in India – I would be travelling down to Bodhgaya, to see the Bodhi Tree. This tree is said to be a direct descendant of the one the Buddha sat beneath when he gained enlightenment some 3000 years ago. Naturally grown from a sapling of the original pipal tree which came from Sri Lanka 2000 years ago, it lies on the western side of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya. No other tree in human history has been the subject of such particular reverence.
The importance of my pilgrimage seemed to throw up a lot of unforeseen obstacles. The journey from Patna to Bodhgaya should have taken just four hours. In my case it took eight – mainly because I overslept and missed the early train out of Gaya. Two wasted hours were spent on Patna platform drinking innumerable cups of tea and fending off friendly beggars.
The later train to Gaya was jam-packed with people, stopped a total of fourteen times in between stations, and crawled into its destination two hours late. Walking out of Gaya station, I found a scene of absolute chaos. Struggling though a human sea of traders, passengers and beggars, I scanned the forecourt for an auto-rickshaw. With the town’s bus station miles away at the other side of town, this was the only way I could see myself getting to Bodhgaya – thirteen kilometres down the road – tonight. But there were no auto-rickshaws, and no taxis either. Gaya appeared to be the one place in all India which didn’t have them.
I was stumbling towards the distant bus station, weighed down with a heavy rucksack, when a voice floated over to me. ‘You are wanting to go somewhere?’ it offered. I looked up and saw an auto-rickshaw. I reached over and touched the driver’s arm, just to make sure he wasn’t a mirage. Then I gratefully accepted a ride. I offered him all that I had – twenty rupees – for the trip to Bodhgaya. But he wanted double. When I couldn’t pay it, he went all round town collecting extra fares. By the time he had finished, the small five-seater vehicle was groaning beneath the weight of an astonishing fourteen passengers. I spent the whole journey bent double, with a suitcase on my head.
I got out at Bodhgaya feeling as though I’d just been run over by a truck. Curtly informing the rickshaw man that I had deducted eighteen rupees ‘inconvenience tax’ from his fare, I gave him just two rupees – like all the rest of his passengers. To my surprise, he didn’t complain.
It was now near dusk, and the mosquitoes were already emerging from their little coffins and gathering hungrily around my unprotected flesh. It was vital that I find accommodation as soon as possible. But this, too, proved difficult. I dragged a poor cycle-rickshaw man all around town, trying various lodges and temples for a bed, but all were full. It was quite dark when we reached the Burmese Monastery and my long search finally came to an end. The room I obtained here was the cheapest I’d had yet (Rs3), but was little more than a bare prison cell. Apart from a crumbling table and chair, there was no furniture. The ‘window’ was a hole in the wall. The bed was single bare board, raised from the floor on a few bricks. There was no mattress or linen on it. Neither was there any ventilating fan, and the close evening air lay like a thick blanket over the room. But of course, there were plenty of mosquitoes! By the dim light of the single bare bulb, I could see them swarming in through the hole in the wall. They looked very pleased to see me. ‘Well, hello there!’ they seemed to be saying. ‘Mind if we drop in for a bite of supper?’ And there was no denying them.
But at least I had reached my objective. Taking up my book and beads, I went up to the Mahabodhi Temple. It was quiet here, but still open for business. Coming to the main shrine, I asked the shaven-headed monk on duty whether I could pay my respects to the Lord Buddha. He nodded, and asked another monk to be my escort. We went in silence round the side of the temple and turned a corner. Suddenly, there it was – the Bodhi Tree.
It stood inside a small stone pavilion, and was quite deserted. All those difficulties I had experienced in coming here turned out to be a benefit – nobody came out this late in the evening (9pm) to pay their devotions. I would be able to pray quite alone.
Or so I thought. My yellow-robed guide had retired into the night after letting me through the pavilion, and I had thought him gone. But then, as I settled beneath the Bodhi Tree and prepared to begin my prayers, he suddenly reappeared. Wild-eyed and excitable, the agitated young monk dashed over to tell me I was committing heresy, and began insisting I chant his mantra. It was after only a long comparison of the relative merits of our separate Buddhist faiths that he finally relented and sloped back off into the darkness.
I was now at last free to relax and enjoy my devotions. Seated within the embrace of the holy tree, I was conscious that it was here – three thousand long years ago – that the original Buddha had sat also, summoning forth the natural wisdom and life-force of this mighty pipal tree to set down the roots of a whole new religion for mankind. It also crossed my mind that he had endured many difficult hardships before coming to this place of his enlightenment, which surely (albeit in microcosm) reflected my own situation today.
March 12th
Had I known even half of what was coming my way today, I would never have got out of bed. It started quietly enough, back at the Bodhi Tree for morning prayers. The gnarled old sweeper attending the enclosure gave me a kind gift of dried leaves from the tree to take home as keepsakes. Thanking him, I stood back to view the stately, dignified bower at leisure. It was covered with tiny coloured flags and streamers, and was full of birds. The whole temple complex was thronged with birds, but they only seemed to alight and sing on this one tree.
As I walked the temple grounds, I passed along the famous ‘Jewel Walk’ and sat by the beautiful Lotus Pond. Later, in between the many small devotional stupas (stone shrines) erected privately round the temple circumference, I watched Buddhist devotees (of some ascetic sect) sliding back and forth on wooden prayer boards, their hands enclosed in small protective gloves to guard against friction burns and splinters. Finally, I came to the large golden statue of the Buddha within the main temple shrine. It was quite magnificent. Only one thing concerned me – the preponderance of money boxes in this place of worship. Also, there was the urchin who dragged me to see a crumbling bit of stone which he assured me was ‘Buddha’s mother’. He asked for money, too.
Near the Mahabodhi Temple is the Tibetan Monastery, housing the ‘Wheel of Law’. This ‘wheel’ – housed in a richly decorated and painted chamber – is actually a huge metal drum about thirt
y feet high. The inscription reads:
It is Wheel of Law. It is full of millions of hymns of Shree Vajrasattva and others deities. Please turn it once or twice from left to right. It is for the neollence of human being and cures the sins. It weigh more than 200 quentals.
I entered to find a small monk revolving the wheel slowly, ringing a little bell repeatedly as he walked around. He told me that if I joined him and went three times round in an anti-clockwise direction, all my past sins would be forgiven. I turned the wheel hopefully.
Back in my primitive cell, I considered whether or not to stay another night in Bodhgaya. Suddenly, my mind was made up for me. A huge, furry tarantula climbed in through the window, and began dashing round the room gobbling up mosquitoes. Before it moved on to me, I made a dash for my bags. I was fully packed and out of the Burmese Monastery in two minutes flat. You don’t see a lot of spiders in this country, but when you do, they are enormous. And they move very fast.
I left Bodhgaya at 9pm, and soon regretted it. To start with, the bus to Gaya had 77 passengers on board. I spent the whole trip wishing I had been born a dwarf. Then, in Gaya, I was told to wait at a bus-stop for the connection on to Nalanda. The ‘bus-stop’ was nothing more than a crowded cesspit on the side of the road, in which two crows were pecking out the eyes of a dead dog.
The bone-crunching bus journey to Nalanda left my backside red-raw and aching. It was so bad that the bumpy tonga-ride up to the ruins of the (famous) Buddhist university had me weeping into my rucksack. I only raised my head to admonish the driver for whipping his poor old donkey on with a split bamboo cane.
My plans to stay at Nalanda this night were rudely destroyed. The only tourist accommodation I found – the Burmese Rest House – wanted an extortionate twenty rupees even to sleep on the roof. I decided to take a chance on getting back to Patna tonight instead.
This meant I had to move fast. After a rapid whistle-stop tour of the area – walking quickly round this ancient seat of Buddhist learning (and site of the oldest university in the world) – I returned to the waiting tonga. The driver took me back to the bus-stop without inflicting any more wounds on the exhausted donkey, and I boarded the midnight bus for Bihar Sharif. This had a record number of passengers – eighty-two in all, plus an extra contingent on the roof. The only advantage of standing the whole journey was that my backside (now quite numb with pain) was spared further damage.
But then came the final leg. The three-hour bus trip back to Patna, and this was a quite unforgettable experience. I thought at first I had been lucky to secure a seat on the roof (the inside of the bus was jammed solid with people), for the heat and dust would have made travelling below like standing in a moving coffin. As soon as the bus started, however, I changed my mind. It set off down the highway as if pursued by the Devil himself. The ensuing blast of wind, dust and insects nearly blew me off the roof. Recovering my balance, I looked round and noticed that I was sharing this precarious situation with twenty-five flint-eyed Bihar bandits. They all swore a lot, stamped, clapped and sang raucously, in between surveying me coldly when I didn’t join in and fingering my bags with covetous intent. I became uncomfortable. I became even more uncomfortable when the sun’s warm rays faded, and the biting night wind sprang up.
Halfway through the long, cold journey, the ugly gorillas sitting with me on the roof took a violent dislike to an Indian who had taken a seat down below without consulting them. They wanted that seat. All of them wanted it. They wanted it so badly that they stopped the bus five times within the next hour to argue the case. Eventually, the poor driver became so harassed that he chucked the interloping Indian off the bus and left him shivering on the cold, dark road in the middle of nowhere.
It was now quite dark. The wind was one long continuous icy gale. The ruffians on top snuggled up to me for warmth. I didn’t dare object, lest they decided they didn’t like me after all, and instead opted to toss me off the roof into the black, friendless night. I lay quietly on the roof in their midst, frozen to the bone, and wondering how it was possible for three short hours to seem like three endless days.
I arrived back in Patna in poor condition indeed. And the Hotel Gaylord, remembering the fuss I’d made about the fresh linen, conspired to give me the darkest, dingiest and dirtiest room they had. I didn’t have to complain about the linen in this one – it didn’t have any linen to complain about. I didn’t wash, undress or unpack. I simply lay on the bare bed, and slept a solid nine hours.
March 13th
Today I prepared to leave the state of Bihar, on the midday train to Varanasi. Whilst not friendly, the station platform at Patna seethed with life and action. People busily unloaded bales of chopped wood, banana leaves and sugar-cane. Food vendors, selling handmade biscuits swarming with flies, loudly advertised their wares. Soldiers lay all over the place, looking disconsolate and bored. Beggars and cripples shuffled back and forth on box-carts, stretching their hands (when they had them) out for alms. Travellers coming off the train lay down to sleep on the platform, their clothes red and purple stained from Holi celebrations. Children ran up and down the platform, selling bananas and peanuts. In the background, a tinny tannoy blared out continuous unintelligible train directions. The whole scene was one large sprawling panorama of noise, colour and activity – a magic lantern of shifting images, moving through a choking backdrop of heat, pungent smells, and dust.
I was in no state for this last long train journey. Not only could I not remember my last solid meal, but my mind was now so disoriented by all the buses and trains I had been on recently that I could hardly remember where I was at present, let alone where I had come from or was going to. As I boarded the train, feeling vacant, an Indian enquired: ‘Where are you coming from?’ and I just couldn’t tell him. Five long minutes passed. Then I gazed blankly at him and replied: ‘Patna...I think.’ There was no question about it. I was in a bad way.
It was during this final run into Varanasi that I finally lost all sense of time, space and feeling. I came to the end of it completely broken and beaten in mind, body and spirit. The crush to get on that train on the first place had taken my last reserves of strength. And there were so many bodies piled up around me inside, that I lay in the tiny prison of a top bunk for seven wearing hours, unable to move a muscle. Nobody around me spoke a word of English. But that was nothing new; ever since leaving Delhi, I hadn’t met a soul who spoke my language. By now, I was so starved for conversation that I was beginning to hold discussions and debates with my tape recorder.
After a while, I got a grip on myself and told my mind to relax, and to trust that all would be well. And it was. As we came into Varanasi, my hold on reality and on my sanity was tenuous. But it was still there. I hailed a rickshaw driver, and told him to take me to a hotel, any hotel, that he could think of. He could only think of the Hotel Venus, a grubby, dirty establishment miles out of town. Again, I had a room with an overhead fan which blew all my clothes out the window. The small room-boy gave me an apologetic look. He had just fished out a pair of dirty underpants and soiled pyjamas from behind my bed.
Sitting at a nearby cafe, drinking ten consecutive cups of tea, I surveyed my condition. I felt incredibly old, incredibly dirty and incredibly tired. Over the past ten days I had covered more distance (3,000 kilometres) than Kevin and I had achieved in a whole month of regular travel. And much of it had been through the poorest, dirtiest and most perilous state in India – Bihar. All that I needed now was a good hot shower and a great deal of sleep. I was looking forward to meeting Kevin again tomorrow. I had a great deal to tell him.
March 14th
Early this morning, a small wizened brown man appeared at my door. He broke wind repeatedly, and insisted on giving me a massage. Undeterred by my objections, he produced a book of ‘testimonials’ from previous satisfied customers, and began trying to knead the kinks out of my shoulders. I only ejected him with difficulty. He was remarkably strong.
After te
n days travelling on my own, I was due to meet up with Kevin today at noon, outside Varanasi’s Tourist Office in the Mall. As I drew up in my rickshaw, a familiar voice drifted over to me. ‘Hello Baldy!’ it cried. And there was Kevin – lying in the shade of a low wall by the tourist office. He looked very hot, and still very bald himself.
Pleased to see each other, we began exchanging our separate experiences. Kevin had quite a lot to tell me. After Poona, he had gone to Bombay. Most of his time there had been spent hiding in his hotel room, his only forays into the outside world being to grab the occasional meal. His first night in Bombay, he had strolled out into the dark street to get a cup of coffee, and had immediately been chased back inside by a pack of wild dogs.
The next day, there had been a big festival on (probably ‘Holi’) and gangs of laughing Indian youths had pelted him with red paint every time he came into sight. Surviving this ordeal, and having fought off masses of traders trying to buy his dollars or sell him drugs, he had come to the famous Taj Hotel. The contrast between its lush, luxurious interior, and the nearby encampment of homeless, casteless beggars living in sackcloth tents at the side of an open sewer-line, came as a shock.
Kevin’s most interesting acquaintance in Bombay had been a little old man who took him off to see the city’s burning grounds. He told Kevin that if he waited long enough, the bodies burnt here reached such intense heat that the heads exploded with a loud pop, and the brains slid out. He had been genuinely puzzled that Kevin didn’t want to see this, and had become quite affronted when he didn’t go along with him to see the tower-tops where the Parsees put their dead out to be eaten by vultures.
Like most old men in India, this relic of the Raj proceeded to bore Kevin with countless stories of his glorious days in the British army. Then he had tried to show him the brothels of Bombay. He told Kevin that many girls came into these brothels after being kidnapped off the streets, and that they were kept in cages to prevent them escaping. Then he had asked Kevin for money, in return for this unsolicited (and unsavoury) guided tour of the city. Kevin had left Bombay in very sad spirits.
