A Final Delhi Farewell

Driving from our house to the Delhi airport, my father decided it was time to introduce some order to Indian roadways. As we approached a red light, he slowed down and stopped. Meanwhile, cars and trucks in the other 5 lanes continued speeding past in both directions.

In Delhi at night, traffic signals undergo a transformation. Instead of guiding vehicles they become roadside entertainment: just another set of bright lights, like distant cousins of the mini Ganesh shrines decked out in flashing LEDs found on so many dashboards.

And so the end of my last trip to India served up one more example of the many futile struggles that occur when West meets East. (Another notable incident includes questioning the difference between your “good name” and your plain old name, and what about your bad name?)



I hadn’t planned to end up in India again, but when I got the news that my mother broke her foot and was in a cast for 6-8 weeks with limited mobility, I soon had tickets for a surprise visit. The tears of surprise on my mother’s face when she opened the door one morning to find me standing there let me know it was a good decision. I have high hopes of exchanging the brownie points gained from that trip for a big present at Christmastime. Maybe one wrapped in shiny paper, stationed outside, in the shape of an Audi convertible.

I apologise for the month-long silence. I've been lazy, but the blog's not dead yet.

The Golden Temple

Like the previous India post, this one dates to a short while ago when I was still in that country. It's taken me a while to finally write it down.

A visit to the Taj Mahal is an example of what-you-see-is-what-you-get. There is only a small degree of separation between looking at a picture of it and visiting it in real life. What I found at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of places in the Sikh religion, was much more than a building.

I arrived in Amritsar, close to the Pakistani border in northwest India, early in the morning following an overnight train ride. Stepping inside the gurdwara (temple complex), there was an endless parade of people walking barefoot clockwise around a man-made lake, at the center of which sat the Golden Temple. I joined the crowd and before long found myself talking to a Sikh around my age. Normally I would be on edge, expecting some kind of trickery designed to end in the transfer of money from my wallet to his, but he was so genuinely friendly that I was instantly at ease. We sat on the cool marble in the shade and talked, and later, over chai in a stall outside the temple, he played me hit Punjabi and Hindi music from his phone, occasionally singing along with a heavy Indian accent.

That night I returned to the temple with Crystal, who I had met at the accommodation next door. Beds are provided free to any and all pilgrims — even to foreigners and non-Sikhs like us. Several hundred people were sleeping in the many rooms there, and also on the ground in the courtyard and the balconies surrounding it.

We went to the langar — a dining hall dishing out food to any and all who come, 24 hours a day, again, free of charge. It's an amazing operation that serves roughly 30,000 meals daily and runs on donations and the work of volunteers who prepare the food, serve, and wash the dishes.

At 1 am we entered the gurdwara once more to find some people sleeping around the perimeter of the pool and others standing on the causeway to the temple in the center. We joined the line to the central temple where during the day, the Guru Granth Sahib (holy book of the Sikhs) is kept. Each night it is ceremoniously carried out of the central temple and put to bed. We climbed several flights of stairs and came out on the open roof. There we sat with the stars above and the constant sound of singing and tabla-playing from the priests several floors below coming over the speakers. In front of and around us, people sat with prayer books following the words to the music. With each hour that passed — 2am, 3am, 4am — the temple complex filled with more and more people. By the time we left at 5am it was more crowded than when I had visited at 10 in the morning. As we walked out of the central temple and back along the causeway, I could feel the heat from the mass of people waiting in line to enter.

What I took away from my visit was far more than the image of the beautiful gurdwara. There was a very real feeling of welcoming around the temple, and a peacefulness too. (This despite the fact that there had been rioting nearby in the two days I was there, which I only found out subsequently.) I could have easily passed many more hours sitting, watching, and listening.

A Delhi Night

A quick note: this dates from several weeks ago before leaving India. It's taken me a while to snap out of the unproductive funk I was in there and write about it.

The evening began with an explosion. The last time it happened, my mother ducked and looked around wild-eyed, thinking a bomb had gone off. This time I knew it was the downstairs neighbours setting off fireworks. These weren't little firecrackers that shot some sparks in the air, they were full-on July 4th-caliber rockets. They let out an ear-splitting bang as they launched their payloads on skyward journeys; several seconds later the sky lit up with globes of lights and sparkles tumbling back down.

These fireworks are readily available for purchase in India at around US$8 apiece, and being somewhat of a firework fanatic, our neighbour had bought a crateload to celebrate his brother's visit to Delhi. He let off the smaller ones early on — a smart decision as apparently the launch platform had yet to be perfected. One mistakenly went off at an angle, shot into the street and under a car that happened to be passing by. I feared an explosion Hollywood style, sparks shooting everywhere as the vehicle was lifted high in the air, but luckily it let out a harmless flash and a bang while the car drove on.

As the show continued I started noticing other flashes against the dark sky, and soon a strong wind blew in with a few drops of rain. As dust flew everywhere the brothers packed up and headed indoors to wait out the oncoming storm. I went across the street to the Mother Dairy stand to buy some ice cream and as I waited for my change, the sky opened and rain poured as I've never seen before. The streetlights illuminated branches being thrashed by the wind and rain being blown in sheets. When two towers of stacked plastic crates came tumbling down onto a parked car, I thought it best to wait in the shelter of the concrete overhang of the Mother Dairy rather than risk having a tree limb land on me as I crossed the street. I stood and watched what looked like the backdrop of a live news bulletin — the type where the reporter is on site in a hurricane, clutching his raincoat against the weather onslaught.

At some point the wind subsided enough for me to venture out from under the overhang. I made a dash across the street to the house, getting drenched in a few short seconds. There was so much water washing down the road that my feet and ankles got a dirty bath in the process.

After showering and changing, I started opening the windows to let the now-cool air into my room. As I leaned out of one to fasten it open I heard a man coughing. It sounded far too close to have come from the street 3 storeys below. I looked around and in the dark, made out the shape of a monkey sitting on the balcony railing. Slightly surprised, I made sure to close the screen to avoid any surprise attacks while sleeping.

On the Road Again

After a 6 week pause in India I hit the tarmac this morning, touching down in Jordan. The temperature was below 25C, a very nice change from the 40+ searing heat of Delhi. I've yet to do much apart from sleep (the 6:30am flight was precisely timed to prevent me from resting more than an hour last night) but I get the sense of a very friendly peaceful atmosphere walking around the streets.

My good friend Eero is due to arrive in an hour and will be joining me for the next couple weeks. I'm looking forward to his company. For now, I'll wander around until he gets here. Sitting in this internet cafe I can hear the evening's prayer from a nearby mosque. It's a soothing sound in the clear evening air.

Last week I took a trip to Amritsar and the India-Pakistan border, where every evening the guards put on an incredible show when lowering the flag and closing the border gates. I didn't manage to write about it (and really, a video is needed to do it justice) but some pictures are online here. It has become such an event that crowds gather to watch from grandstands and there is an emcee to lead the crowd in chants of "Hindustan! Hindustan!" The guards' marching is straight out of John Cleese's hilarious turn in the "don't mention the war" episode of Faulty Towers.

There was more to the trip, like the incredible Golden Temple (pictures alone unfortunately cannot begin to give a sense of the atmosphere) and an unplanned jaunt up to Dharamsala / McLeod Ganj (abode of the Dalai Lama in exile). I hope to pick up my pen a bit more often now I'm on the move again.

Motorbiking Part 2

When Sunil, one of our guards, got married last year, he received a new motorbike as part of the dowry from his wife's family. His happiness with the bike rivaled his happiness with the marriage, and I could see how proud of it he was when he showed it to me. When he invited me for a ride I couldn't resist.

We set off from the house one night — him in front with motorbike helmet, me holding on in back. After wizzing around the area, we reached some quieter backstreets. At this point we swapped places and he let me take control of the bike. It was good fun to ride, but after cruising for a bit I made a critical mistake. As I came up to a main road I braked to check for traffic before crossing. I forgot that an intersection is not the place to slow down — it is the place to lean on your horn as you blaze across and continue on your merry way.

My pause had given the man in uniform on the corner an opportunity and he waved at us to stop. He sauntered up, looked at me driving in a borrowed bicycle helmet and undershirt, and said, "driver's license." My instinct told me it was a good time to keep my mouth shut. Sunil started arguing in Hindi with the supposed policeman. At fairly regular intervals, when the policeman had heard enough of Sunil's excuses, he turned to me anew to demand with a sour expression, "driver's license." But I wasn't foold by his charms and kept my mouth shut.

After several minutes of the same, he finally turned away and waved us on. A block down the road Sunil said to me, "In India, anything is possible," and we burst out laughing. It turned out the man wasn't a traffic policeman after all but part of the "home guard" and had no legal authority to fine motorists. I then understood the disgusted look on his face as we pulled off — he had failed to convince us to pay him a bribe, a skill all government employees in Delhi should excel at.

Household Staff

Most people, when they think of living in a place where they can employ people to serve them, picture a life of luxury. It's not easy to explain that when coming from a society which places a large emphasis on independence and the value of do-it-yourself, reality can be different than what you would assume.

Let me try to give a basic example: imagine you are the type of person that likes to be fairly inconspicuous in your day-to-day routine without causing other people too much bother. Now imagine that when you walk out of your house, you have a guard that — no matter that he's relaxing in his chair in the middle of a conversation with someone else — jumps to his feet, straightens his back, gives a salute and says, "Good morning sir!" And repeats the same performance every single time you leave or return.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In India my parents have guards 24 hours a day (work requirement, not our choice), a driver, and a housekeeper/cook. I can't carry a bag up the stairs to our apartment without someone insisting on taking it from me. I can't lounge around the house without a shirt on for feeling lazy when the housekeeper is busy washing the floor.

It's harder for my mother, who is turned into a manager in her own home. Our needs are much more basic than the average family with young children that need to be ferried to and from school and other events. My father's work is close enough he prefers to bike many days. I tend to go out at night after the driver goes home, and now I've conquered the traffic system here¹ I can take myself. So my mother is the one worrying that without anything to do, our driver isn't getting satisfaction from his job. She also had to deal with a previous housekeeper who my parents found stealing. After being around the housekeeper for close to 2 years and helping her family, it was quite a personal blow.

But obviously it's not all rich man's misery and tears. Our current housekeeper, Asha, is wonderful. She has a great sense of humour and although she refused to go to school after the age of 5, she's very sharp. She has picked up English, language #3 after Hindi and Telugu, at an incredible rate. My friend Em and I decided to take her out to lunch one day for a break from her usual routine. We went via the Delhi metro which is a surreal experience even for me. It's not yet two years old, and to enter it is to transition from one of the dirtiest, dustiest cities anywhere to a modern world where everything is new and surfaces shine with cleanliness. It is so out of place that I expect it to collapse one day, as the city rejects it like an immune system rejects a donated organ.

Asha had never been before, and she gave a small shout upon seeing an escalator for the first time in her life. She was thrilled with the whole trip, from waiting on the platform to riding the train to coming up the escalator in a different part of the city.

As we walked around Connaught Place, she pointed at all the light-skinned, blue-eyed mannequins in the clothing store displays and named them "Em" or "Nigel", gender depending. When I protested that I had brown eyes Asha told me I needed to get coloured contact lenses.²

To make it a memorable experience we went for western instead of Indian food — TGI Friday's. I don't know if Asha understood the random pieces of Americana decorating the walls, and I struggled to explain the concept of a hippie to her although my mother helpfully pitched in with things like "long hair" and "smelly". But I was impressed with her willingness to try things. Had it been me trying Indian food for the first time, I probably would have had a spoonful and left the rest. Asha ate everything but the sour cream, which she deemed too strange.

Several weeks later we made homemade ice cream, one of the few foods that seems to bridge all cultures with its universal appeal. Once she learns to make it by herself and I can ask her to whip up a fresh batch, I won’t be able to complain about the hardships of living with household staff anymore.

1. It's simple actually — big rules over small. As we have an SUV, "conquered" is the right word. Cars, scooters, bikes, and all other lower life-forms scatter before my wheels.↩


2. Funny, but slightly unsettling as I know Asha doesn't like her dark skin. This isn't all that uncommon in a country which is disturbingly overt in promoting pale skin as beautiful — skincare products that claim to make you white are easy to find in stores.↩

Delhi

From India Picture...

I was holding onto my seat white-knuckled as we drove from New Delhi airport, dodging the cows wandering along the road, weaving around the huge trucks sharing space with cars, scooters, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, and people just walking alongside the traffic. This is the vivid memory I have of arriving in India for the first time 3 and a half years ago. I remember the sign hand-painted on the back of every truck: Horn Please. "Horn please?" I thought, as the sound of beeping came at me from all sides. "Surely they're not asking people to make more noise."

And I recall realising, upon seeing all types of vehicles heading up roads the wrong way, that in India there are no rules, only guidelines. This idea was reinforced every time Naveen, the driver-turned-friend from my father's work, entertained my mother and me by saying, "In India, anything is possible!" before doing a U-turn into oncoming heavy traffic, or taking a shortcut down an impossibly narrow street packed with people, animals, and cycle-rickshaws.

I also remember talking to people who had visited India in the '80s, commenting to them that it must have been such a different place back then. I was initially surprised when I heard the response, "No, not really." But as I got to know the excruciating beaurocracy underpinning so many facets of the country, I began to understand.

Our driver Sukhdev, for example, is involved in a lawsuit against a previous employer who didn't pay him for his last 3 months of work. The lawsuit was first brought 18 years ago. 3 plaintiffs in the same suit have died in the interim. It is still ongoing. This is the pace of things here.

So you can imagine how fascinating it's been to notice differences on each return visit. India is starting to change. There is now a highway leading from New Delhi airport. Gone are the pedestrians and non-motorised vehicles. Gone is the traffic heading the wrong way. It's smooth sailing, at least by Indian road standards.

Large areas of Delhi are now cow-free, the result of an effort that began a couple years ago to clear the streets of bovine roadblocks. The humorous scenario involved the government placing a bounty on each cow. Freelancing cow-shepherds then drove around spotting wandering groups of the animals, bundled them into the backs of trucks, drove across the river Yamuna and outside the city limits, and then dumped their loads. Sort of what I imagine the mafia do to witnesses after intimidating them.

Many of these steps are undoubtedly required to enable India to progress, but they do take away some of its charm. I left the flat one sunny day a few years ago and walked downstairs to the car to find an elephant there, tearing off tree branches for a morning snack. Although I may have hid it because this was my home and I wanted to act like a local, my excitement was no less than the first time an elephant ambled by the flat, owner in tow. Naveen was present on that first occasion, looking on as I scrambled to get my camera to capture the event.

"This is amazing!" I was thinking at the time. "An elephant! On the street! Walking by my house! An elephant!"

Just as amazing was watching Naveen when my mother commented to him that where we come from, elephants don't wander the streets.

"Really, ma'am?" he said with a look of wonder. "Don't you have elephants in your country?"

Who knows what changes are in store for India? The idea of elephants on the streets of Delhi may seem just as hilarious to Naveen's grandchildren as the idea of elephants strolling around DC seems to me.

Himalayas

From Sikkim / Darj...

A few days ago I got back from an 8-day trek in the Himalayas. It involved a lot of steep climbs, fog, and freezing weather. In other words, not unlike a summer in San Francisco. What was unlike San Francisco was the style of hiking. When I was living there last year I took a trip to Yosemite National Park with Anne. Between the two of us, we carried two hiking packs with clothing, sleeping bags, tent, and supplies. This is not the way things are done in India. I was with my parents and Marlene, a friend of ours. To sustain the four of us, there was a guide, a cook, 3 ponies, a pony-carer, 4 yaks, a yak-carer, and 3 porters. I could die of altitude sickness, but I wasn't going to die of loneliness.

Speaking of altitude sickness, the hike was tempting fate a little bit — my previous two bouts with high altitudes ended with me accepting bitter defeat (one with a dramatic K.O.). But this time, in ascending from 1,700m to roughly 4,500m, we did things in proper fashion and took two rest days to acclimatise on the way up. These seemed to do the trick as I had no major problems.

We had two 4am rises to hike to lookouts by dawn, but the pain and shortness of breath from the thin air was worth it. The scenery was spectacular. We had views of Kanchenjunga, 3rd highest peak in the world after Everest and K2, as well as neighbouring peaks and glaciers at the base of the mountains.

On the last evening, the four of us stood at the small Tibetan village of Tsokha looking out. In front of us, we could see for miles down the valley, and to the side, up to sharp peaks. We watched as an immense cloud engulfed the valley below us, then slowly moved upwards. Standing above the cloud in the clear air, we could see the edge of it approach us bit by bit, until finally we were wrapped in a cold white mist so thick that trees 10 meters away disappeared.

This may have been the last big hike on my trip. If so, it was a fine way to end things. I was a little worried on the drive to the starting point when we passed an overturned car on the windy mountain road, blood-spattered windshield lying nearby. It seemed an ill omen to begin with. It's lucky I'm not superstitious or it might not have turned out so well.