A Travel Junkie's Diary

by Dina Bennett

In this lovely lake heaven, full of floating green gardens, giant egrets resting on lily pads, and fishing skiffs as delicate as an eyelash on a teardrop, no one seemed at all miffed. The chairs were stacked, the ladies wandered off, heads together, arms around each other’s waist, the men spat their red spittle, the dignitaries called for their long boats to return to shore, and flags were collected for another occasion.

  It’s not every day that a president comes to visit, but I suppose it’s happened before that he fails to arrive.

  The Tired Deva

  KOLKATA, INDIA, 2013

  Her feet are strewn with orange marigold blossoms and plastic bags. Shreds of crinkled paper from exploded firecrackers and clay shards from broken oil lamps that long ago burned out lie scattered across the wood stage on which she stands.

  Perched on her blue painted podium, Lakshmi seems to have lost her normal calm and loving expression. But then, it’s been a long, hard night of revelry so she has every right to look weary. Despite that, her fine red sari still shimmers with gold thread, and her filigreed and enameled gold crown is perfectly upright, fanning around the long, tousled black hair that frames her face and hangs to her waist. A full-length marigold garland draped round her neck is all she has left from the festivities.

  In spite of Lakshmi’s sleepless night, the golden skin of her plump cheeks still glows and the only shadows under her enormous, wide-set black eyes are ones made by the thick rim of kohl outlining her eyelids. I never looked so good after an all-nighter.

  Hip cocked, head slightly tilted, an expression of benign resignation playing across her face, she offers me a lotus held in her hennaed hand, gold and pearl bangles lying still and silent on her wrists. That lotus isn’t all she holds. Nestled like a wriggling baby in the crook of her left arm is a bulbous red vessel shaped like a snowman, its fat belly and round head topped by a pointy hat. Legend says it’s full of gold, though from the outside it’s impossible to tell. Yet Lakshmi betrays no concern that in this destitute part of Kolkata someone might rob her. Perhaps that’s because her pet owl sits on a conch shell by her side. In terms of godly rides, he’s not as powerful as the elephant or lion that accompany some of her kind, but he can certainly fly her away if she’s threatened. That’s his job.

  If Lakshmi weren’t a plaster statue, her bee-stung ruby lips would surely now open in a yawn, stifled by the desultory lifting of a limp wrist. Her kohl-rimmed lids would bat once or twice. “What do you want from me?” she’d ask. “I’m just a goddess. Don’t I, too, have a right to rest?”

  On this morning after, the street in front of her is filled with locals and Kali devotees. While Lakshmi stands ignored amidst the litter, some early risers—or late revelers—cluster around chai-wallah stands. Others gather under clouds of smoking, spiced oil, which rises from the blackened pans of nearby street food vendors. One such slaps wide disks of potato into a thin batter, then drops the coated slabs into the oil where they sizzle and puff into crispy soft pillows, to be sprinkled with chili powder and salt, wrapped in a square of newspaper, and handed to a hungry customer. Beggars take up their places in front of the gates leading in and out of Kalighat Kali Temple. Two young girls in ragged shorts and T-shirts squat by a communal water tank in the middle of the street. Opening the rusty tap, they wet the bristles of their tooth brushes and commence morning ablutions under the gaze of a thin old man in a white dhoti who sits cross-legged on a nearby stoop, his navel-length white beard carefully combed, one hand clutching, claw-like, the knobbed end of a walking stick.

  Last night Lakshmi herself was the focus. Twelve hours ago, the street was filled with the sharp crackling of fireworks, as revelers and worshippers jostled shoulders and jabbed elbows to get close enough to Lakshmi to offer her food and sweets. Under a perfumed shroud of incense, the crowd chanted her 108 names, repeating prayers and singing devotional songs. On that brightest night of the year, under a moon gorged to fullness, in this poorest of poor sections of Kolkata, who wouldn’t sing and chant and pray and revel and plead with Lakshmi to descend to earth, to replace a year’s-worth of anger and stagnation with optimism and renewed ambition, to take away the darkness of poverty.

  But now it’s daytime, and Lakshmi does not seem quite up to the monumental task of bestowing prosperity on all. At least not yet. And not in the face of the Black One, the powerful goddess Kali across the street, she of the three eyes, the four arms, the black face, the lolling tongue, the blood-smeared face and breasts.

  Daytime is Kali’s time and there’s a clotted line of pilgrims pressed hip to rump around her temple, eyes trained in blissful concentration, measuring the distance to the temple corner, and from there the door that will admit them into Kali’s divine presence. Undeterred by her terrifying form, they consider Kali the kindest and most loving of all Hindu goddesses. To them she’s the mother of the whole universe, a great protector, and they are here to lay their personal difficulties at her feet and ask for help. Despite that everyone has a problem so insurmountable they cannot fix it themselves, the mood is festive. Everyone seems relieved that soon enough their burdens will be lifted, or if not lifted, at least soothed by Kali’s maternal interest. Lakshmi may have the power to answer prayers for prosperity, which is helpful to some. But others have more complex, or more mundane, problems better suited to Kali’s ample heart and capacious powers. Given the long line for Kali, and the empty stage around Lakshmi, it seems Kali’s your go-to goddess when faced with one chance to ask for the world and maybe receive it.

  So, at least, might be the reasoning of the young woman who sits on a straight-backed chair under the Kalighat Temple sacred banyan tree. Eyes closed, she keeps her head lifted to receive droplets of water sprinkled on her and the baby kicking on her lap. The sprinkling is done by a crone in a faded sari, who rhythmically paces back and forth between the woman and a bucket of water, completing a simple choreography of dip, sprinkle, pray, dip, sprinkle, pray. Most likely the water in the bucket was taken from the street spigot, but now, by virtue of its proximity to the sacred tree, it has a derived ability to bless.

  Perhaps the young woman has come in thanks for having her prayer for a baby answered. Or maybe she’s here for another go, hoping now for a second child, eager not to tamper with the formula that worked the first time. Perhaps her seat on the chair under the sacred tree has nothing to do with the baby and she’s there because her husband’s ill or her mother-in-law’s too mean, or she’s lost her way. The tree and Kali, goddess of infinite knowledge and inner purity, will fix it. For a small fee.

  Behind Kalighat Temple, next to the Harkath Tala where bulls and goats are sacrificed, a priest gently hugs a black billy goat to his chest. The small goat has been washed, its coat now moist, its delicate hoofs and softy curling horns patent leather shiny. Strangely, it is neither writhing nor squirming to escape, but instead seems to snuggle deeper into the man’s warm, enfolding arms. The remains of a recently nibbled hay meal are on the ground nearby. This is a happy, well-fed goat who is pleased with life. He doesn’t know that the good times are about to end.

  An incoming tide of devotees surges through a gate, but the goat stays calm, as if hypnotized by the hum of mantras from inside the temple. Soon it will have its throat slit while the devotee who paid for the sacrifice croons his prayers to Kali. Interesting trade, one goat for improvements in one person’s life.

  Even if Kali ignores the prayers, the goat is not wasted. Its meat will find its way to the temple’s charity kitchen. Later, when rice from a vast cauldron is dished into the plastic bags and bowls brought by the homeless, they will also have a spoonful of goat stew to moisten it. For now, those same homeless sit patiently outside the temple, and there are far more cupped hands outstretched than there are hands reaching into a pocket or purse for a spare coin.

  Back at Lakshmi’s deserted stage, a cur with the fine beige coat and pointy snout that are standard issue among Kolkata’s pariah dogs, noses through the detritus at Lakshmi’s feet. His jaws s
nap in excitement as he uncovers a sweet. He rips at the waxy paper, shaking his head to loosen the wrapping. Too hungry, he bolts the bit of pastry, paper and all, then sits on his bony haunches, considering the morsel that will go a small way toward filling his empty stomach. Lakshmi may be tired, but she doesn’t play favorites.

  Come Back!

  PUERTO CISNES, CHILE, 2008

  Turning left off the Carretera Austral, we find ourselves driving down a gravel road bound so tightly by steep slopes that it’s barely wide enough for one car. On both sides giant ferns tickle the car, immense rhubarb-like plants try to hug us, and masses of delicate, magenta fuchsias wink and nod, everything dripping from the myriad tiny springs spraying gossamer silver threads through the foliage. When we reach the bay, the road literally is hacked out of the cliff, sea below one side, sheer walls above the other. I’m on the sea side, where it’s apparent that if we drop off the edge we’ll be gone forever. This strikes me as so awful a fate that I squeeze myself away from the door, hoping by this maneuver to put an extra few inches between myself and the water that will flood through if we plunge into the ocean.

  The cliff road dead ends in the fishing village of Puerto Cisnes, where we’ll stay the night. In the sheltering dusk, the darkly forested slopes that wedge Cisnes between hills and sea recede. We get out of the car to stretch our legs with a stroll on the shore. Yellow and blue dories, those deep-bellied fishing boats, recline on the damp sand left by low tide, like pebbles in a fisherman’s palm. The sun lingers on the horizon, a hot orange spotlight on the dogs romping and tossing kelp in the air.

  Next morning, our old Avis Pathfinder seems to be sliding toward the bay, despite that it’s parked on level ground. “Bernard, you realize we drove seventy-eight hundred miles from Beijing to Paris and never once had a flat? And now, with a rental car, we get a flat tire. Can you believe this?” But neither of us is aggravated, because a flat tire is a novelty, something new to deal with. And besides, we’re in a civilized place with a choice of family-run breakfast cafés. And if there’s one thing that I know from life in general and road trips in particular, it’s that a meal can improve just about everything. We offer a nearby tire repair man the whole day to patch the tire, eat a mound of scrambled eggs and toast washed down with rich coffee, and hire a boat with attendant captain to take us to Chile’s largest island, Isla Magdalena, an hour and a half offshore.

  As we motor out over the rolling swells of the deep blue ocean, we pass floating cages connected by steel walkways. They stretch out in an endless line, parallel to the mainland. At first, I think they’re traps waiting to be emptied. But they’re large, perhaps thirty or more yards long, and they’re anchored in the bay. “Salmon farms,” says Miguel, our young captain, with disgust.

  A Puerto Cisnes native, Miguel is a man of medium build and natural authority. His green polo, baggy brown trousers, and sockless loafers are relaxed enough to make approaching him for conversation easy, yet formal enough to reassure me he’s used to being in command of the boat. I am still that person who doesn’t trust the ocean not to do its worst with me, and it’s important for my peace of mind to know that I’m with someone who’ll get me back to shore safe and dry.

  Miguel’s black hair, shaggy and glossy, blows off his forehead as he squints into the west, and he stands loose-limbed at the wheel, one arm making modest course corrections as naturally as breathing. He tells us that in the recent past, Cisnes was a thriving independent fishing village. Until the Carretera Austral was built, the villagers’ main connection with the outside world was via the weekly mail boat. When the Chilean government sold fishing rights for the local waters to Spanish industrial fishing enterprises, those companies went at it with gusto, profit in mind, overfishing the waters and putting the formerly self-sufficient local fishermen out of business. Then, with perfect timing, the salmon-farming enterprises moved in. Norwegians set up the first ones, and now there are hundreds. They offered everyone good jobs and people were happy for the pay. After all, they couldn’t make a living fishing on their own anymore. But working on a salmon farm requires being away from home for twenty-day shifts. What seemed to us a pristine coastline was horrifyingly polluted. And what struck us as a charming, isolated village was actually a community under terrible strain, divided between inviting in more farming operations in order to boost incomes versus finding a way to return to the independent fishing life in order to salvage traditions.

  Isla Magdalena is a national park, and the fantasy I’ve created for our day is that we’ll have a chance to walk around on fertile, shadowy paths once our private launch docks there. As we approach, one thing becomes clear: if ever there were 608 square miles that did not need the protection of national park status, Magdalena is it. Magdalena’s rocky shoreline is primed to create a shipwreck and the inland flora rising 5,446 feet to the peak of Mentolat Volcano is so tightly knit that to promenade through it would be like walking through a felt hat. I doubt any government official ever set foot there to investigate exactly what they were protecting.

  From the water, though, the island’s shoreline is beautiful, in a nature-left-to-its-own-devices way. Delicate branches weighted with fuchsia blossoms dangle like plump pink and magenta fingers toward the water’s edge. Wild grapevines wrestle with smaller shrubs, smothering them in a passionate, tangled embrace. We drop anchor in a quiet lagoon of calm aquamarine water, where Miguel lowers a small skiff. He clambers down a rope ladder, leaving us on board. “Watch,” he says. Paddling a short distance away he flings a cobweb of fishnet onto the water with a broad flourish. It’s so lacy and light it lingers on the surface as if loath to sink. As it disappears, he lets the current drift him back to the boat, where he lashes the skiff to the side. “Salmon escape from those cages,” he says, climbing back on board. “We catch them all the time.”

  “And I bet you don’t return them to the farm manager, do you!” I say and we all laugh, though ruefully. I’m not sure whom I’m rooting for: the wily fish that has managed to escape its captivity, or our captain—and us—who wouldn’t mind a dinner of flapping-fresh salmon.

  Miguel pulls a bottle of chilled mango juice from a small refrigerator, pours us each a glass and the three of us sit on the little deck at the prow of the boat nursing the cool nectar, sun warming us, the gentle rocking and slapping of waves lulling us to silence. Suddenly the net seems to be yanked down by a hidden hand. “I think we’ve got one,” Miguel shouts, springing up to look. “Maybe even two,” he adds, while the net jerks and the skiff to which it’s attached bounces like a bathtub toy. Forgoing the rope ladder, Miguel does a pirate leap from deck into skiff and paddles out to the edge of the netting circle, which he carefully pulls in hand over hand. The net rises, a black filigree necklace sparkling with crystal droplets. As the last of it clears the water’s surface, we see two silvery salmon, ten pounds each, thrashing in the bottom. Miguel stands, legs apart for balance, broad grin on his face. “Dinner!” he yells. “For all of us.” He holds up the netting to display the wiggling trophies so Bernard can photograph. I suspect his happiness is magnified knowing he’s gotten some of those corporate salmon for free.

  Puttering back toward the port, Miguel asks if we’d like to stop by the place where he grew up, describing a spit of land with vegetable garden, orchard, livestock, and, best of all, his parents. I nudge Bernard with my elbow. “Family farm. Let’s go, no?”

  When I was young, I read Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. Over and over again I would immerse myself in the story of “The Red Shoes,” “The Snow Queen,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The one that captivated me most was “The Little Match Girl.” I grew up in an early twentieth-century Dutch Colonial house with a yard surrounded by azaleas and rhododendrons, and massive apple trees left so long untended that they were big enough to hold both a playhouse and a swing. My existence was secure, with parents who doted on me and a sister who willingly played pick-up sticks with me and let me tickle her in the bath. I n
ever had any sense of being without. Yet I strongly identified with Andersen’s shivering young pauper, her naked feet blue from cold on that wintery New Year’s Eve. Growing up, we were the only Jews in a neighborhood of Mafia-connected Italian Catholics. We were expected at the table at 6:30 every evening, when all the neighborhood kids were let loose to play on the street before dark. We wore shorty shorts to their Bermudas, ate goulash to their pizza. And in my early elementary school years, I spoke with an accent picked up mimicking the English of my French mother and Austrian father. That my teacher thought it appropriate to make me stand at my desk repeating words in proper American did not help my self-esteem. I wasn’t poor and I didn’t sell matches, but I definitely felt like an outsider looking in.

  On a road trip, that sense of not belonging dyes my perception of each day. Though he’s never spoken about it, I know Bernard feels this as well, because we are as one when it comes to visiting people’s homes in foreign places. We have tacitly agreed that it’s the first of two ideal ways to banish the frustration of otherness and bring about the ease of belonging, the second being watching a soccer match on the TV of a local bar.

  Now, Bernard nods enthusiastically. Miguel drops anchor offshore from the family home built on a swatch of green lawn up a short slope from the shore. Set back from the lemon-yellow house are rows of gnarled trees and behind them, jungle, of the same opaqueness as that which covered the islands we passed on the Evangelistas.

  As we crowd into the little skiff, a school of dolphins surfaces to escort us to the dock where his parents wait. His mother, mousy-haired and grandmotherly in a cotton dress cinched around her broad middle with an apron, is ebullient, spreading her arms wide to welcome us. Barely introduced, she grabs me to her bosom in a prolonged hug, then places my chilled hand in her warm one. Her palm is both pillowy and rough, her fingers gripping mine like a vise. Miguel’s father, tall like his son, looks like he’s adopted Bernard, linking arms and bending his head as he enunciates, “Welcome!” in English. For the next hour we roam the property arm in arm, hand in hand, inspecting the house they built themselves, walking the freshly weeded rows of their vegetable garden, identifying herbs, playing “How do you say this in Spanish and here’s what we call it in English.”