When I went back later to have an ice cream and drink, the manager (or owner) called me into his office, chatted to me for half an hour, ordered me a meal and a huge ice cream sundae and also cancelled my own original bill! He also invited me to stay in his place. Unfortunately – or luckily! – I was able to say truthfully that I was leaving Delhi on this evening’s train, but he gave me his card and told me to come and stay with him when I return to Delhi later.
If I was willing to sleep with anybody, I could stay in India indefinitely without any money at all, travelling around, but unfortunately I don’t want to live like this! I have met some girls that do. I would hate to have to tag around with someone all the time just because I am indebted to them.
Monday, 19th April 1976
I am now staying in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. I have met a very nice young Indian man here. I have enjoyed a couple of moonlit nights with him sitting by the Taj Mahal. Seeing it by moonlight is wonderful. It is entirely built of white marble and is regarded as one of the eight wonders of the world. It is a mausoleum created to house the grave of the Mughal Emperor’s wife and was completed in 1648 C.E. It took twenty-two years to build and cost thirty-two million rupees, I am told.
The Indian friend who accompanies me here in the evening is very sweet and gentle and treats me with respect calling me Madam! I don’t mind him kissing me – he does it so nicely. He works in the Travel Agency at the Clarks Shiraz Hotel where I go to swim in the pool. It’s wonderful to swim in the cool water in this hot climate. He has a university degree and a Bachelor of Education degree too but he works in the hotel because he earns more there than he would elsewhere and he has to look after his old mother. He tells me he earns six hundred rupees a month and teachers in India earn half that – that is not more than eighteen pounds a month!
When I was travelling here on the train, I asked the people in my compartment (all men for a change) if they knew of the guest houses in Agra mentioned in my book, India on $5 to $10 a Day. One man suggested that I stay in a cheap little place owned by a friend of his in the same road. When we arrived in Agra he kindly ordered a rickshaw and took me to the place, which wasn’t too bad as cheap Indian guest houses go.
I was invited into the man’s house for a cup of tea before we reached the hotel and I met his wife and children. They live in one small room with two beds – one for him and his wife, and another large bed for the three children – a small girl and two little boys. There was a mosquito net right around their bed. Their mother gave me tea and homemade sweets, and then I went to the little guest house where I was the only tourist and was made quite a fuss of. I was glad when they gave me a padlock for the door when I asked for one.
The first night they asked me for twelve rupees for a double room (after I complained that fifteen rupees was too much.) The second day they gave me a single room for eight rupees after some Indians had left. I noticed in the book that some people paid ten rupees in that hotel – it’s necessary to make a fuss about the price or they charge as much as they like and put the price up for tourists who look wealthy! I think I don’t look rich, but anyway, they think all foreign travellers have money.
I wanted to visit one of the schools in Agra – there seem to be plenty – because I wanted to find out about teaching here. I asked a rickshaw driver to take me around, and stopped him at a little Methodist mission school where I asked if I might speak to the principal. I was shown into the pastor’s house and invited to sit down and chat. His wife is the headmistress. I showed her my School Teaching Certificate and she said she would be pleased to have me as a teacher in the school, and if I could obtain permission to work in India, they would pay me. She said that the new school year starts in July after two month’s summer vacation.
The family invited me to meals on Easter Sunday and suggested that I stay for a couple of nights in their attached Methodist mission guest house. Here I met the Reverend Powell – an American missionary who lives here. I am pleased be able to stay here as it is very cheap and clean – quite a luxury in comparison to the other guest houses I have stayed in in the heart of the village.
Tuesday, 20th April 1976
I have really enjoyed my stay in Agra, riding around on the little bicycle rickshaws. One day I went across the river to visit Baby Taj – a beautiful monument built to the same design as the Taj Mahal but smaller and more delicate. The river is fascinating. I saw many buffaloes bathing in the water. The sunsets over the river here are beautiful. The day I spent with the pastor and his wife was very pleasant and the Indian curries she cooked for lunch and dinner were fantastic. I felt quite guilty telling her I was vegetarian when she invited me. She cooked vegetarian meals for me – egg and fish curry (though fish is not really vegetarian). The food was so tasty. She dressed me in a sari too in the evening.
This morning I visited the school which was a very interesting experience. It started at 7.30 in the morning. I dragged myself out of bed at 7 o’clock. The temperature was pleasantly cool at that hour. The bell rang and the children lined up – all in their little school uniforms, maroon and yellow. The boys even wear maroon trousers. Children here seem smaller for their age than English children. Before school started the children said prayers for a few minutes in the playground.
Lessons went on until 10 o’clock when there was a short break. After that the nursery (kindergarten) classes went home. The other children stayed until 12.30 pm, when school finished. The morning was broken up into 35 minute periods and lessons were very formal. I suppose they have to be – some of the classes have nearly seventy children in them! The nursery class (three to five year olds) has sixty-eight children in it. The children were having end of year exams – even the nursery class! They were mostly recitation tests. The school is English medium. I stayed and observed all the classes. In one of them, all the sixty children were sitting doing nothing while each child went up to the teacher individually and recited a rhyme in English – this was part of the exam! The teacher was giving them marks out of 30.
However bad I think the very formal rote method of teaching is, and it is, I have to admit that it seems that the children learn very quickly to speak and write English. Even children in the nursery class were reciting little rhymes and could answer simple questions and obey commands in English even though it is not their native tongue. In the first class (children aged five to six years, though some older children are kept down) the children counted to a hundred and then wrote the numbers. The same test was on practically every page of their number book. It looks as though they do this every day!
I spent some time talking to the teachers – mainly a young staff wearing attractive saris. They were very friendly to me. Afterwards I visited the school craft department. Here the children speak only a few words of English. Their lessons are conducted in their mother tongue. The craft department is incredible. They make beautiful carpets and bags. When the boys leave school, if they can do nothing else, at least they will know a craft and perhaps be able to set up their own little workshop.
This afternoon the jeweller in the hotel shop here got me free entrance to the hotel swimming pool and invited me to lunch tomorrow. I have also been invited to dinner tonight by another jeweller who exchanged my watch for two black star ruby rings. I have been informed by other travellers that apparently it is possible to sell these gems in Europe for three times the price paid here. Well, it’s worth a try, and I paid nothing for them.
Just now I was invited to watch the Indian dances at this hotel free of charge – it usually costs 20 rupees! One of the men who works in the hotel just came up to me as I was sitting here writing this diary, and told me I could go free to see the dances. I don’t know whether I will get to the dinner in time though! All the Indians who work in this hotel know me as I’ve been swimming in the pool four times now.
Wednesday, 21st April 1976
Last night I went to the jeweller’s
shop as I had been invited for dinner and I had a horrible experience. I should have known that there was something strange about the owner inviting me to his shop in the evening after it was closed.
When I got inside, he locked the door and started trying to fondle me and made suggestive, crude comments. It was obvious what he wanted but I was having none of it. He offered me an emerald ring but I refused it. I was a bit scared but I remained calm and finally firmly reminded him that he had invited me for dinner and I wanted to eat. I was playing for time! He called through the bars of the window to a boy passing by, asking him to fetch a take-away meal from the restaurant down the road! I then managed to get hold of his keys which I saw in his pocket.
I purposely acted as if nothing was amiss and kept them in my bag saying I was waiting for the food. When it came I ate it even though it was a shabby kind of meal. I did not want him to see I was afraid. I had the feeling that if I panicked then he might become aggressive, so I remained centred and calm. Amazingly, after I had eaten, he let me open the door with the key and allowed me to go out. I think I was lucky because I could have been raped there. I might have been in grave danger. I remember that girl I met in Pakistan who said she had been raped.
Chapter Six
Varanasi – a Holy City
Friday, 23rd April 1976
Here I am in Varanasi in the midst of all the Hindu temples I wanted to see, but am spending the day and probably tomorrow too, stuck in a hot hotel room again like I was in Amritsar – typical! Something else had to happen! Now at least I don’t have dysentery, or worse, but I have sprained my ankle after falling down a hole last night in the uneven old streets, and it has swollen up double the size. I can’t walk on it at all. At the moment one of the boys who work in the hotel is massaging my foot with ice. I asked for ice and a bucket of water which is good for sprains and swellings – probably it won’t do much good now anyway. I hope he won’t ask for ten rupees afterwards – I didn’t ask him to massage my foot.
I was so angry last night. After I had sprained my ankle and we took a rickshaw back to the hotel (I am sharing a room with a German guy called Genaut whom I met on the train from Agra) the rickshaw driver took us a long way round in order to get a bigger fare. (Admittedly he didn’t know I had hurt my foot. I should have told him.) He asked for six rupees which we didn’t pay. One of the drivers did that to me in Agra when I wanted to visit the Taj Mahal bazaar. It was an interesting ride through a little village, but I was angry that he tried to cheat me. I had been there several times before and knew the way. I paid him the normal price and actually an extra fifty paisa, and flatly refused to pay any more. Some of the rickshaw drivers are quite honest and then if the price is cheap I sometimes tip them if I am feeling generous. Some Indians are very helpful – sometimes too much so, and many are a pain in the neck!
I was feeling so fed up this morning about my sprained foot because there was a power cut for three hours from about 4.30 in the morning and the fan stopped working. It was unbearably hot and I sat outside the room on a chair as that was a little cooler and spent my time watching the dawn and brushing away the thousands of mosquitoes. The pain in my foot was bad enough but the heat was worse! I decided then to fly home as soon as possible – just as I did when I had dysentery – but afterwards of course I reconsidered and decided that if I fly anywhere it will be to the Himalayas, to a cool climate where there are beautiful surroundings and I can rest my foot for a while!
After that boring information about my left foot I shall recount the story from where I left off – and I do have a lot to express, in way of events and also feelings.
I had dreaded the train journey from Agra to Varanasi, but in fact it was pleasant. I had reserved a sleeper on the night train leaving at 9.45 in the evening, and it arrived here at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon.
The compartment was not overcrowded for a change and there were two bunks free – also fans which went off at night with the electric light! But at least a cool breeze came through the window. I saw Genaut on the platform looking for his reserved place. Our names were written in Hindi on a list on the side of the train. I had already found my place with the help of another Indian passenger. I was pleased to see another European travelling on my train and we discovered that we had bunks in the same compartment.
The bunks were like wooden benches – very hard – so I was glad I had my sleeping bag to lie on. At night I always put my handbag (the very large green zipped cloth bag I made out of some of my mother’s curtain material) with my passport and my money, at the bottom of the sleeping bag at my feet to keep my valuables safe. I never leave my handbag alone anywhere during the day either – I carry it everywhere. It has all my money in it!
In our compartment there was also an Indian family – a young girl in a sari with her husband and young baby. There was a corridor in the train and no door which closed on our compartment. Along this corridor came beggars and boys carrying nuts, drinks, ice creams and meals for sale at every station where the train stopped. There were a couple of blind beggars and a man with hands amputated. I have seen some terrible sights here in India – and some conditions that could be treated in the West. I have seen many people sleeping on the platforms. Perhaps they are waiting for trains or perhaps they are homeless.
The stations are always so crowded, and as I said before, they remind me so much of fairgrounds. Most of the trains are old steam trains and are very noisy and smoky.
On the journey the train passed through some villages – primitive places with huts. I saw a well in one village like those I saw in Afghanistan. The countryside was quite dried up and sandy, perhaps because it is the hot season, but apparently this is one of the hottest plains in India.
When we arrived in Varanasi we took a rickshaw to a cheap little hotel mentioned in my book, India on $5 to $10 a Day, but it was full so we came to this place recommended by a rickshaw driver where Genaut and I are sharing a room – it’s cheaper to share – fifteen rupees between us. We have our own toilet (Indian style – a hole in the ground which is tiled) and shower, but of course it is not luxurious.
I feel a bit uneasy about sharing a room with a man again. Sometimes I wish there was no such thing as sex then I wouldn’t have to worry about refusing − whether it is expected of me or not! However, Genaut is nice and is not demanding anything from me. He was doing research work in chemistry at a university in Japan where he spent two years. He is on his way home to Germany, spending some time in India. He can now speak Japanese!
Yesterday afternoon, after we had showered after the hot, sticky journey, we had a meal in the little restaurant and had to wait ages for it. They certainly take their time. I had cheese and peas curry with rice – large lumps of white stringy cheese which has not got much flavour – it is called paneer. One thing that is very nice here in India is lassi, a drink made with yoghurt and shaken up with a little milk and sugar and sometimes lemon.
After we had eaten, we went out walking – what a town! Actually it’s a city, but like all Indian cities that I’ve seen, except Delhi, it appears more like a large village. There are so many bicycles and rickshaws that it’s a real problem to cross the road or even walk along the narrow streets. Indian towns are the picture of chaos in no small way. There are market stalls everywhere, and flower stalls selling offerings for the temples. There were more of these as we got nearer to the River Ganges.
There is food being cooked and sold at the sides of the roads, cows and bullocks walking the streets, dogs lying around everywhere (some very thin), monkeys in the trees, and temples of all shapes and sizes – some are low and triangular and some consist of many tiny towers like asparagus tips ascending from the roof. The buildings along the roads here are often very elaborate, very crowded together and shabby with numerous balconies and pillars – queer looking.
Hundreds of people crowded the streets where we were walking. Then sudden
ly we came upon the river. There are steps leading down to it. It is the sort of sight that I had to stop and gaze at: it was evening and the water seemed to be shrouded by a misty haze. There were people everywhere crowding the steps, diving into the filthy water – Mother Ganges – holy river! There are dirty straw parasols under which holy men sit by the water, and hundreds of people sit listening and talking with them. There are small Hindu shrines with idols inside at the water’s edge, and lots of wooden boats filled with people going up and down the river. Never have I seen a sight like it – it took my breath away.
Again I had the sensation of fear and wonder that I had felt in Herat, Afghanistan. As Genaut said, we feel this way because we are experiencing something we have never known before. Suddenly it is thrust upon us as though we have been whirled away to another planet, to another universe, and we are trying to identify with it, to understand this other world, but there is nothing in our minds with which we can associate it, so we cannot relate with it, and it frightens us. I am glad I am not alone here
Many of the boys and old men are dressed in shabby loin cloths – a long piece of dirty-looking material draped around their waists – particularly by the river. Women wear shabby-looking saris. We walked along the water’s edge on the uneven steps crowded with stone shrines, idols and high and low temples. Then we came across the funeral burning spot – the Ghats. About five or six bodies were lying on the ‘beach’ steps, shrouded and tied like mummies. Some were already placed in piles of wood ready to be burnt, and there were three fires already burning.
The Road East to India Page 7
