The Road East to India

by Devika A. Rosamund

  There were a couple of men in the carriage – fathers, but no more. It was obvious that men did not usually travel there. What a different atmosphere there was in that carriage from an English train carriage. The women chatted as though they had known each other for years and offered around nuts and sweets etc. which they were eating all the time.

  There was a great feeling of ‘oneness’ amongst the women as they fondled each other’s babies and patted each other’s children on the head. A couple of times I had a baby thrust into my arms by a busy mother, or was expected to sit a child on my lap when the carriage was ridiculously overcrowded. There was no question as to whether one woman would look after another woman’s child. We were all women together; all ‘maternal’ and all were, in their eyes, natural ‘mothers’. It seemed to me that it reflected the attitude in this country that this is the only function of a woman – ‘motherhood’ − and that there is no other life than family life here.

  As a traveller and a lone woman with no family or children around me, I felt strangely out of place – almost unnatural! I tried to act like a mother but somehow I felt that I was not one of them. I felt awkward, but I did my best with the children. Every now and then a couple of men selling drinks, sweets, and serving very sweet milky tea in a big kettle, would knock on the outer door of the moving train and demand entrance to the crowded carriage – which was ridiculous. The women grumbled but always let the men in, who stepped over everyone and everything with their wares. How they ever manage to climb along the outside walls of the train while it is moving I can’t imagine – it must be terribly dangerous.

  Some of the women spoke to me, smiled at me and offered me their nuts and sweets. Certainly I was treated as a guest of honour and with great interest. I was quite sad that my voice was so hoarse that I could barely talk to them. One young girl gave me a bracelet.

  When we arrived at Lahore at about one o’clock in the afternoon, a passenger took me to the bus stop so that I could get a bus to the border. Crowds, literally, of people came and stood around me there as though they had never seen a foreigner before! They all stood around me in a circle asking questions: “Where do you come from?” “Where are you going?” etc., all smiling and pointing and staring as though in amazement and wonder. I don’t understand why! Perhaps it was because my hair is very light brown or perhaps because I was a woman alone! Perhaps I looked radiant with excitement and happiness! I felt like a celebrity. Again I was sad that my voice was so hoarse and I could not really talk to them. Loads of people promised to help me, but all I wanted was to get to the border quickly and with as little fuss as possible for I was not feeling very well.

  On the bus everyone was again staring at me and smiling for nearly the whole journey. They couldn’t take their eyes off me and offered me sugar cane and nuts. They touched my hair and my head scarf. I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with me! An old woman sat next to me. (Again the bus was so crowded I was sitting on my rucksack in the aisle.) She was holding two roosters in her arms. Their heads were bent low as if they were sick but every now and again they lifted their heads and looked about with beady eyes – poor things. One young Pakistani girl chattered away in good English to me, practically begging me to go to her house.

  Chapter Five

  India at Last

  Amritsar – Home of the Golden Temple

  Wednesday, 7th April 1976

  We arrived at the border at sunset, five minutes before the gate closed! I had to rush like mad and then walk about one hundred yards through to the Indian border. What relief I felt to at last make it into India without dying before I arrived!!

  A wonderful feeling of euphoria swept over me once I was through the Pakistani border. The day was quite cool but not hot. It was beautiful weather, and there were greenery and wheat fields all around.

  At the Indian border I was welcomed with chai (tea). Straight away I noticed the difference between the Indians and Pakistanis. The Indians here are Sikhs. They look noble and neat. They wear coloured turbans which are neatly and flatly tied, not like those untidy ones of the Afghanis.

  Immediately I liked the Indian Sikhs. They look trust-worthy and sincere. They treated me as a person and not as a sex symbol! Perhaps it is because they are not Muslims. They welcomed me to India but treated me respectfully.

  I felt overjoyed to enter India and this feeling is still with me. This is a moment I have dreamed about for eleven years (half my life) and I have made my dream come true. Here I was, walking into India alone – yes, I wanted to cross that border alone – and India smelt sweet and fragrant with blossom. I was at last out of Pakistan. I felt as if I had been through a long tunnel and now was entering the land of my dreams on the other side. As I entered India I was overwhelmed by the feeling: “I have come home.”

  I like the atmosphere here – even though Amritsar is a very poor and dirty town. A new and different energy pervades the place, and I feel interested and excited, but as yet I have seen little of India. At last I have arrived and I have stopped on the first stage of my journey to rest in this lovely, new, modern youth hostel here until I am really better. I have been sleeping nearly all the time. There are not many people staying here.

  From the bus station I took a rickshaw to the youth hostel. The rickshaws here are drawn by bicycle. They are tiny carriages – barely big enough to carry one person. I was afraid of falling out! What a lovely surprise I got when I arrived at the new hostel – it is very clean! I paid for a room to myself for 8 rupees (about 40p) as I was feeling unwell and I kept it for two nights.

  Tonight I am feeling better so I have moved to the women’s dormitory which is half the price. There is only one other person here anyway – a teacher who has been teaching English in Malaysia. She is making her way back to England overland. Yesterday morning I walked out to the bank to change some money. Here it is all right to wear my long wrap-around skirt around my waist with a sleeveless top – what a relief – and I went to find a chemist to get some aspirin to soothe my bad headache. My voice was still hoarse.

  Amritsar is so crowded and I nearly got run over many times by rickshaws and bicycles along the narrow streets. It’s not a very pretty town. There are some very poor, tumble-down stone houses – very, very low with slate roofs.

  I entered what I thought was a chemist. It was in fact the surgery of a private doctor who gives free medical advice. I asked for some aspirin but he examined my chest – and gave me about four different kinds of pills to take. He gave me some water in a dirty looking red plastic mug and told me to take the first dose now, which I did.

  Fifteen minutes later, after I had been to the bank, I had a black-out in the street and fainted! Suddenly all I could see was a misty white haze all around me and I could not stand up any more! I had just bought a notebook at a little stall at the side of the road when I came over dizzy and started to fall down. I managed to get a Sikh who was passing by, to flag down a bicycle rickshaw for me to take me back to the hostel. I couldn’t even see it when it came!

  There are very many rickshaws going up and down the narrow roads all the time. As soon as I was helped up onto the tiny seat I felt a bit better and when I got back to the hostel I slept all afternoon. I didn’t take the other doses of pills then! But I took the other dose when I awoke this morning at six o’clock as I knew it wouldn’t matter if I slept again then. I may save the third dose out of curiosity to find out what the Indian doctor has given me! The tablets haven’t killed me anyway! They might actually have done me good. Certainly I have been feeling very unwell and tired and have had a fever. The tablets he gave me have at least given me a good sleep! I have enjoyed my rest here and am staying longer until I am properly recovered.

  It’s not too hot here in Amritsar and it is lovely and cool in this hostel with the fans. I have spent all day yesterday and today resting or sleeping. Today I also attempted to write some
stories while I was lying here in bed! I have been drinking a lot – boiled water – I feel very thirsty much of the time. Tonight I had a nice vegetable dish in the hostel restaurant. The people working in the hostel are very nice to me.

  Saturday, 10th April 1976

  It is only a few days since I wrote in here but so much has happened. The longer I leave it the less I feel inclined to write because there is so much news to catch up with, but anyway let me recount my story from where I left off. In Amritsar I was ill, not just from a bad cold as I thought, but I really was sickening for something, although I am sure I got ill from drinking the tap water in that filthy glass that the doctor gave me in that surgery! I have had dysentery! It was horrible!

  I was feeling better and I spent the day, or half of it, with the school teacher also staying in the hostel. We went to the Sikh Golden Temple and lost each other there. It is a beautiful place surrounded by a moat. There were very many pilgrims there – some immersed themselves completely in the cold water, because it is holy water. Attached to the temple is a free hostel for pilgrims where I would have stayed if I had been feeling better. Also, the temple gives out free food at meal times and many poor people go there and sit on the ground in a courtyard and wait to be fed.

  I was invited to eat there and of course I could not resist the temptation to try the food, although I felt a bit guilty sitting cross-legged amongst all those poor people. We were given enormous, flat, gold-coloured aluminium plates. Food was brought around in dirty looking buckets: firstly rice – a stodgy, spiced mess was slopped down into our dishes, then a brown-coloured gruel with some kinds of beans in it. It was lukewarm and tasted horrible to me, like a kind of insipid gravy. That put me off Indian food for a while, but since then I have eaten delicious curries, so I realise that all the food in India is not like that! Also we were given chapattis which are round, flat, unleavened breads.

  I forced the food down me, for I felt that it would be wicked to waste it in such a place. After we had finished eating they came around with the buckets again for second helpings. I pulled mine away quickly – they had already given me an extra large helping the first time, probably because I am a foreign visitor. Afterwards I went to the corner of the room to see where the food was cooked in enormous iron pots. The washing up was done with sand, not water – apparently that is more hygienic.

  That night I had dysentery! It started with a fever. I was shivering and then I had stomach cramps. I was really worried – I thought I had appendicitis. I had dreadful diarrhoea and felt so horribly sick and faint that I could not see anything when I stood up – everything was like a white mist. I had a dreadful night.

  My friend who was staying in the dormitory with me, made some ginger tea for me to help take my temperature down, which helped a little. In the morning I decided to call the doctor when I found I was passing blood. I was afraid I had something worse than dysentery. The people running the hostel were so nice. They called the doctor for me and he arrived late in the afternoon and gave me some tablets which gave me relief from the sheer hell I was suffering. I took them with boiled water this time! My temperature was still so high. I asked him if he thought I had become ill through eating the food in the temple, but he replied, “Definitely not! It must have been unclean water, or the food you ate in Pakistan.”

  For the next couple of days everything I ate gave me diarrhoea and my sight was affected so that I couldn’t focus at all. It was really frightening – worse than the dysentery because I was so afraid that my sight was permanently damaged, perhaps because I had such a high fever. Slowly my sight has become normal again and how I appreciate it and thank God that I can see so clearly and enjoy the colours and beauties of the world, unlike the poor blind beggars I saw on the train. I thought that my sight was only partially gone but even that thought was too terrible for me to bear.

  It has taken me three days to feel better and now I have bought my train ticket for Delhi.

  Agra – Home of the Taj Mahal

  Sunday, 11th April 1976

  I have had a very hot, nine-hour journey. Travelling on a train second class is very uncomfortable with hard wooden seats – but it is very cheap. The people on the train have again been very friendly to me. I got out my sleeping bag for an old woman to sit on – those long journeys must be terrible for old people. By the end of the journey there were several people sitting on boxes on the floor in our tiny compartment. I had a seat because I had reserved one – it’s the only way to get a seat here. You have to pay extra, about one rupee (6p) for a reservation.

  I noticed the difference in dress between Indian and Pakistani women. Indian women wear beautiful saris instead of pantaloons and tunics. There were some enormously fat women in the carriage with huge stomachs rolling out of their saris (bare midriffs). One very fat family sat in the carriage with several tins of homemade cakes (like large lumps of very sweet fudge) which they kept handling. They were obviously taking them as a gift to someone somewhere. They opened the tin and gave me some to eat – very over-sweet they were. No wonder the whole family was so fat. The tea here is over-sweet too. They boil the milk with the tea and spices and put loads of sugar into the teapot before serving.

  The trains and station platforms also are like a circus, with people calling out their wares and selling cooked and uncooked foods, and cups of tea (called chai) in rough clay pots at every station. I looked through the window and I saw that people were actually sitting on the roof of the train and hanging on for dear life. I even saw people walking on the roofs of moving trains. I think it is not really allowed but the station staff turn a blind eye to it. I wonder how many people get killed that way. There were people crossing the railway tracks by foot and jumping off trains while they were moving, hanging onto the doors.

  I met an English guy on the train dressed in orange clothes wearing a wooden necklace of beads around his neck with somebody’s photograph on it. I asked him about it and he told me that he belongs to an ashram in Pune and this is the picture of the spiritual Master who lives there. His name is Osho*. It happens to be the same Master whose book of discourses I saw in Amsterdam – My Way, The Way of the White Clouds. I told him I would like to visit the ashram when I am on my way back up the west coast of India on my way home. He told me I should wait until the winter as it is too hot to go there now in the hot season, but I told him I will not be in India in the winter. However, he said there are people there now who stay all year round.

  It is obvious that I have chosen the wrong time of year to come to India – in this, the hottest season. However, I am not going to worry about the heat, I am just going to travel around wherever I want to!

  On arrival in Delhi, I took a little three-wheeled open taxi (a motorised rickshaw) to the youth hostel and found it closed, so the driver has brought me to a cheap hotel he knows in old Delhi. He grossly overcharged me for the ride even after I argued and complained and bargained. Now I make certain I never get into a rickshaw before the meter is switched on so they cannot cheat me. I have also got wise to prices, I know how much to pay rickshaw drivers. They always try to charge foreigners more – they think we are wealthy and ignorant of prices. I always find out average prices before paying out any money.

  Monday, 12th April 1976

  The little hotel I stayed in last night has suddenly been closed by the police. We were all turned out early this morning. I heard that they are closing a lot of the cheaper hotels, perhaps because some of the travellers staying there smoke hashish. Anyway, I had so many bites when I woke up – probably bedbug bites – that it is probably a good thing we had to move. I have moved with a couple of Australian guys to another cheap hotel recommended by a rickshaw driver. It is cleaner here and I have my own room for eight rupees a night. There are about twenty rupees to the English pound at the moment. When we arrived we immediately went out to eat in a little cafe and were met by the owner of a music shop nearby. He invi
ted us to see his sitars made by his own craftsmen on the premises and then invited me to be his guest for lunch.

  Thursday, 15th April 1976

  For the last two days the owner of the music shop has been taking me sightseeing around Delhi paying for my meals and taxis. The good food has done me good. I feel completely healthy and fit again now but my host got to be a bit of a nuisance at the end and I am afraid I left this evening without saying good-bye to him. He was trying of course to arrange for us to stay somewhere together and wanted to take me by car all over India which I do not want. He was also getting terribly domineering and possessive. I don’t want anybody dictating to me or ruling it over me! I need my freedom and I want to be my own boss.

  Friday, 16th April 1976

  I have taken the evening train to Agra. It is a much more pleasant journey than my last train journey – much cooler, and will only take a few hours. I spent most of the day before leaving Delhi walking around a shopping bazaar. I bought myself another long skirt for twenty-six rupees. I wanted another cool top to wear with it and I saw a little black sari top in a shop. I tried it on but it was too big for me. At once the shop keeper offered to alter it to fit me for twelve rupees, so after he had measured me I went away for an hour while he altered it on his sewing machine. I found a cheap, clean restaurant and had a delicious enormous salad for two rupees (ten pence).