Hi Allegra,                        India email 1

1) Zoos:

Last week my train stopped for 1/2 hour at a small very rural station some distance from my destination. There were only 3 people in my train car, me and 2 Indians. The passenger train car’s  windows had horizontal bars across them blocking ingress & egress. 

Suddenly 2 older Indian men with white traditional garb including turbans stopped outside our barred window and stared through at us, laughing in a very friendly way. We of course looked back at them thru the bars to the outside. This visual exchange went on for several minutes before they moved on.

I commented to my Indian friends that I felt like an animal in a zoo — not in an insulted manner. Moments later it occurred to me that ….       “ All people are animals in the other person's zoo.”

2) Sewage women:Y

Yesterday while dragging my bags down a Bundi street to a bus, 2 women in their colorful garb had apparently been working for several hours already digging the filthy dirt and debris out of the drainage channels along both sides of the street. The piles of sewage soaked ‘dirt’ was 1 1/2’ high; the smell — foul. This and similar tasks are the lowest caste Dalit’s jobs. 

Legislation is supposedly improving women’s rights, yet probably only in the larger cities and only amongst the wealthier class (upper 20%). For the lower classes bribery and (in villages) ancient tribal custom override any legislator’s fantasy.  

Rural village immolation of non-male bearing wives (estimated 1 out of 10 gets reported)  and honor killing (usually disputes over dowry) still continue. I suspect the ‘law’ has little interest in these activities as long as the services and agricultural products grown & sold by villages to India's cities for their survival is unabated. 

In THIS India I search out the back streets and occasionally an historical site that is intriguing.

3) Stepwells:

In Bundi I tracked down a step-well — one of a thousand that used to exist in India and Pakistan, 1 of 60 that existed in Bundi and 1 of 4 that I can locate on Bundi’s map.

These are beautiful huge, deep (60 - 80’) dug and stone lined water features with steps that cascade in downward patterns from small landing to small landing until you reach the varying water level for a swim or to wash clothes; most reminiscent of Muslim Mosque wall designs.

In the middle 1800s the wealthy built these for the populace. The area surrounding the actual grade at the top was often beautifully landscaped with covered columned areas and temples. They were the wealthy and common folk’s social and religious centers. 

My 1st step-well was blocked with a grated locked facade, but soon a young woman asked from an upper window across the street if wanted to see it. Her family is the caretaker, charging less that $1.50, as well they must because most stepwells are simply huge trash receptacles.

She opened the gate and graciously left me alone to follow the steps down and the wander about with my video camera.

Four more I found that day — a treat.

 

4) Main Market area:

While searching the stepwells I wandered through the main market area searching out the minutiae of entrepreneurial economic survival & ingenuity:
  -- a metal smith making gold jewelry elements by blowing on a torch’s flame with a small tube held in his mouth to increase the temperature, another installing tiny diamond-like stones in a new piece, and a 3rd cleaning gold with hydrochloric acid that produced a lung searing smoke when he mixed into a  2nd solution,

  -- across the street a man and women squatting at the gutter hand cleaning a rusted metal wok-like pan and other metal containers with black sand (an incredibly tiny entrepreneurial niche for bare survival),

  -- a man making the simple children’s kites that punctuate the spaces above roof tops,

  -- a clutch of women sitting on a dealer’s large futon-like cushion bargaining for silver to invest their family’s extra funds,

  -- a women making colorful bracelets with various sized wooden devices that looked more like antique exercise dumbbells or weapon’s , etc. etc, etc. 

Markets everywhere are a smorgasbord of curiosity for me.  Unlike some cultures and religious context, only a few refused my request to video. They all seem quite flattered. I felt like a gold miner walking down a stream picking nuggets from the wet sand below. 

 

5) Havelis (House of Wind)

Named for the multitude of ventilating windows in this desert Rajasthan area, in the 1800s wealthy Silk Road merchants built large intricate homes embellished by wonderful, colorful wall paintings — inside & out. In each of the small towns of Mandawa and Nawalgarh 200 +/- such homes were built. 

On my guide’s motorcycle we raced in the cool morning between these towns, walking                                                                           the streets and occasionally gaining access to the few homes that allowed it.

While everywhere you looked from the dusty, deteriorated, torn up streets the building walls above us refused to  hide their unappreciated legacy - large and small patches - of the grand paintings they once displayed dramatizing the overwhelming competition between the wealthy trader was reflected in the variety of building styles and floor plans and painted subjects. 

     

In Jaisalmer, a Silk Road desert city that began its existence by robbing passing caravans,

finally got ‘in the game’ with their merchant class building an equally numerous competitive volume of havelis’s distinguished by yellow sandstone carving rather than paintings. Again everywhere you look in The Old City within the fort and outside the
buildings reflect the extent of this cultural dynamic.

Well that’s it for now. Believe or not I planned to email just the 1st Zoo reflection, but got carried away. Whuda thunk!!!.

Take care,   Questions always welcome.

Scott

 

HI: India email 2:

Folks often ask me before I travel what my expectations are for each country. I usually reply that I have none although I do know what sites, etc I expect to see. My India itinerary is 73 pages long. But India was unique.

I said that, “ I expected India to be the largest 3^rd world country I had yet been in; that it would reflect the greatest gulf between any issue continuum’s extremes  -- now IMO, a major understatement. 

  Caveat: Note that I have only traveled in Delhi, Rajasthan (West Central India) and Agra (TajMahal) down > Varanasi, not yet South India or the mountains of N India. 

I slightly apologize for the tone of this writing, While it may be warped to a degree I cannot detect that ... because it comes from my own brain, which I believe it reflects the balanced, challenged truth as I experienced it. I also speak with other travelers and read Google articles while traveling. That other visitor’s opinions might differ so also might their India agendas and experiences.      ……. Anything less than ‘this truth’ would be intellectually dishonest and of little interest to me.

My American culture’s ‘politically correct’ phobia likes to admonish ‘judging’ others & their cultures. 

I don’t.      IMO judging is a natural, innate human brain function. I question the intellectual honesty of those who claim they don’t. 

  OTOH, what we do with that judgement is what is critical. Do we search out the pros and cons, grapple with the effect of our known prejudices and forcibly try to move to the center perspective? I sometimes succeed, sometimes fail ---- you can JUDGE!

This writing also helps me synthesize what I think I am learning from this experience. These words did not flow quickly and simply over a few hours. Rather, these thoughts have been created, added to and constantly edited over the last few weeks or so to reflect the nuances of my continuing experience. 

Finally, I am not trying to organize my thoughts into  a nice, logical flow of topics, but rather expanding the flow of thoughts I initially started with.  My lazy bad. I will probably continue to do the same.  

I begin….. 

North Central India (Delhi, Rajasthan, Agra) is a medieval, post-cataclysmic-like country which while appearing to be slowly re-building out of its rubble, is, in fact, with few exceptions sinking deeper into it.   Its over-population overwhelms all infrastructure - pure water, trash disposal, sewage disposal, roads & clean air - resulting in an unimaginable toxic swill. 

ARCHITECTURE:

Much of the architecture in the cities I have visited is with 3 exceptions old cement & brick structures, often overlaid with later shabbily executed additions punctuated by the occasional beautiful upgrade as well as abandoned, collapsing structures whose rubble may be recycled into the next structure. This may be the direct result of Mughul/Muslim destruction 200 years ago.

Occasionally a new building slowly rises and torn-up streets and alleys suggest creeping new infrastructure. Exploding population’s high density accommodation demands pragmatic, cheap materials and design, or lack of. Ironically, the brief glimpses I get into homes reveals a contrast of beautiful with the dark & sordid.

Yet, I hope that a well maintained exterior reflects a self-worth equally manifested inside. Beautiful shops of home accessories seems to support this. Ironically, the apparently wealthy mix with the poorest in a neighborhood because the inside of the home is the refuge and the exterior may not be as important.    

INFRASTRUCTURE:

In addition to the effect of near primitive infrastructure, life’s activity is hyper-frenetic, a constant scramble for any edge and oppressively loud as people rush furiously thru the chaos on their appointed rounds.

Varanasi’s Tight alley-streets often with sharp turns epitomized Varanasi’s neighborhoods further compressed by the out-spill of little shops and sidewalk parked motorcycles.

Pedestrians impatiently weave complex patterns thru assaulting motorcycles and a tuk-tuk’s onrushing engine roar, bleating honks & aggressive speed often passing close enough to rufflle a woman's filmy clothes; instant severe damage -- and yet, I have seen no accidents. 

TRANSPORTATION:

India huge exploding population demands many forms of people transport all of which compete with each other, pedestrians, cows, dogs, monkeys, occasional camel, elephant or donkey and pigs for passage down narrow roads, streets, alleys and even open market aisles.

Motorcycles & the traditional tuk tuks dominate.

Tuk Tuks: The 3-wheeled motorized taxis called tuk tuks have replaced the very early hand drawn rickshaw and to a large extent the  bicycle rickshaws, yet retains the tuks tuk's incredible agility in tight traffic.

Anecdote: My bicycle rickshaws ride: In Mandalay, Myanmar last year I did the typical tourist rickshaw ride in a bycycle rickshaw, quickly terminated this self-serving, self-fish experience.

I drew my own line regarding the bicycle rickshaw when the old man pedaling me was working so hard, I stopped him ⅕ of the requested distance, gave him the full agreed upon price and vowed to myself never again to subject my fellow man to beast of burden role.

Later, you can imagine my disgust with the 2 fat Euro’s riding in a bike rickshaw, yet ….. that man and perhaps his family ate that evening. 

Anecdote: Tuk tuk from Gwalior train station to Orchha: Tuk tuks are either private (hired for myself) or public (many riders/split cost). We had 3 women and I on the back seat facing forward, 1 women on the middle seat facing us and two men and the driver in the front seat plus my two bags, a large bundle of reeds and 2 large milk cartons. What would have cost me 300 rupees by myself cost me only 30 rupees (45 cents US). 

   The average tuk tuk driver makes 1000 rupees/day ($14.60) from which he must pay rent on the tuk tuk. I don’t believe that statistic because my rough estimate suggests that 40-60 % of all tuk tuks I see are not working. The supply is too great. The 1^st tuk tuk’s success did not guarantee the same success to the next 20

Horn Technique: Passage through India's maze of congested streets, & alleys is reflected, in great measure, by the constant blare of horns which in tone, intensity or musicality demand recognition.  Some tap the horn on & off continuously while others simply lay on it for the length of a busy street -- a mixed message of warning and hoped-for intimidation.

The tuk tuk’s near-constant bleating, the motorcycle’s similar but louder staccato. Motorcycles occasionally retrofit a car horn to usurp even greater authority. The car’s throaty blasts. Buses, trucks and still bigger buses use still louder horns and add the ‘intimidation of greater mass’ --appearing unwilling to stop their excessive speed demanding the right-of-way.

Road dominance is by the largest, loudest, most agile, boldest or arrogant coupled with the mandate to protect-your-own-front-end.The large 10 wheeler cargo truck’sstrident, shrill, ear splitting scream and finally, the giant tourist buses: new, arrogant, speeding and very very loud melodic horn.

Evidence of this chaoitic. but finely tuned cominucation system is, large trucks may have rear facing signage: “ Please blow horn”, apparently so they will know what smaller vehicles might be in danger.

Nighttime's constant, blaring,  grating noise until early next morning pervades all but the tightest, dead-end alleys. Appearing chaotic it actually works (I have seen no accidents), but at what cost to the human psyche?

The irony, is the transportation system works albeit with great noise, drama and sadly, great pollution. I have seen no accidents, just 1 downed scooter in Saigon (Ho Chi Min City).

Almost too subtle for me to detect is the human driver’s brain’s ability to process innumerable audio & visual signals and nuances and respond instantly. While a divided hi-way should solve the issue, tuk tuks, motorcycles and cars almost routinely drive down the wrong direction with all others accommodating.

Road access & control is a constant interplay of horn noise volume or uniqueness, agility and intimidating speed.

Pedestrian’s, cows, sleeping dogs and pigs seem to have immunity which I have yet to see severely violated. I did see a man try to nudge out of the way with his motorcycle’s front wheel a large cow sprawled across a tight alley in Jaisalmer Fort, but finally the man -- defeated- turned his bike around with stoic resignation. Some shop keeper’s have a stick for whacking a ‘too pushy’ beggar cows. One shop’s assailant apparently responded that, “The cow is ‘holy’ on the inside, but NOT on the outside.”  

 

 

 

TRAINS: 

Trains are another unique & vitally important transportation mode. The largest train system & employer in the world, India’s train system moves hordes of people back & forth for just a few rupees. The passenger cars are ancient to really old; battered, painted, deteriorating, dirty, utilitarian, but still functional(likje St. Petersburg, Russia's public buses).

Overbooking is not even a concept: arrive early enough for a ticket or just jump on at the last, its all the same -- everybody goes. Reserving a specific seat is often a raw delusion, supplanted with the relief of simply being able to go albeit jammed in with people, packages or standing ---as I did today from Orchha to Khajuraho. At many stations the cacophony is elevated by the hawkers who bring their street food onto the train selling to the next station where venders get off and take the next train back.                Common elsewhere in world.

Shabatiti tourist trains from Jaipur or Delhi to Agra (Taj Mahal) are the zenith at perhaps 20-30 years of age, but with reserved seats and somewhat amateurish snacks -- but the ‘attempt’ counts. The average Indian cannot afford that ride and yet to the Westerner it is a mere shadow of Euro, Japan or China’s high speed wonders.

I normally ride the 2nd class-general class (read: get ticket and take what you get) because I get mixed with the common folk which seems more authentic to me. 

Today in my jammed train compartment I was met by seemingly blank stares as I fought for a small space on a top bunk (upper L in PIK) . It would be a worrisome reception for 1-among-many if I wasn't a pink unicorn thrust without warning into their otherwise highly predictable world.

Some actually were offended when my feet hung down in the aisle from the top bunk until I showed my knee scars & a sophisticated elderly gentlemen smiled & made room for my feet up on the opposite bunk. Then another man smiled. I showed a small boy my tiny flashlight, he smiled and several people smiled and we all joked a bit. That emersion & final iffy acceptance is always a pleasure. 

Most important to me, I was right in the middle of a common villager’s food fest and festival travel. Don’t get that in 1^st class. Some encounters become more like the long business discussion with a man and his wife from Sikkim (1^st language - English) who specialize in growing cardamon spice for the Indian and world market. Always a refreshing, rewarding insight to another human’s totally different world ...and yet...not so different really. 

 

SLOW PACE ---

Contrast this high speed intensity --walking or riding  -with the slow paced -- particularly on small market streets and alleys --- equally dramatic. Shopkeepers in their stalls sit passively waiting the occasional customer not already lured by their many competitors. Craftsmen toil with sometimes primitive skills to produce beautiful work or a useful result. A man & his wife crouch roadside in a busy market as he scours rusted metal pans with a black sand until they are bright. A useful niche worth another day’s survival. Old men & women dawdling on a vacant step or around a tiny chai tea niche and watch life flow past as it has done throughout their lives albeit at greater density and speed.

Begging:

Begging women usually with very young children park themselves
for the day near a temple entrance giving all who pass or enter the opportunity to “gain merit’ on the Cycle of Life, their plaintive wails increasing predictably at a passing Western tourist not yet aware of the number of beggars they must support once they start or the underlying scam (Slumdog Millionaire).  The children for some reason seem consistently much darker than the average Indian. 

When they approach they appear filthy perhaps because they are the lowest caste and literally living on the street. I wave them away because I really do not want them to touch me.

My terrible mix of hypocritical compassion and callousness is palpably unnerving. I guess self-serving survival is my severe overseer. 

I call some begging a scam, sometimes controlled by some local mafi-like group, but in fact, the main character of Rudyard Kipling's book Kim is such a beggar on behalf of his lama friend.

Gaining merit by little charitable acts, dropping food in the Thai’ monk’s begging bowl or by building temples is cumulative in off-setting bad deeds.

Unfortunately I lack sufficient time to balance my ledger, so I don’t try.

The line between ‘begging’ and the tout’s constant harangue seems very close indeed. In Myanmar last year the young monk groups’ begging had transgressed ‘the silent, respectful opportunity to give’ into an “arrogant presumption of duty to give.”

 

TOUTS:

Tuk tuk and bicycle rickshaw drivers constantly offer their services. But you can walk by 5 of 6 tuk tuk driver’s with each one asking the same question, and the 6th watching all this will still ask you ‘You want tuk tuk?’. They will ask if you want ‘tuk tuk’ as though until that moment you had no clue that tuk tuks could be rented --- by you. It seems so inane; so constantly annoying. Yet, displays their daily desparation.

The pleasure of a tourist town’s sites is marred only by the insistence of the touts who plague the tourist like very desperate mosquitoes, often running across the road to hunt you down & following you ….  hawking their shop or services. 

Walking a mile or so alongside Varanasi's ghats maybe 20 or more people asked, “You want boat, Sir.” I shake my head. Some continue with the various reasons I should.  Often, the more clever will ask engaging questions or call me ‘Friend’ or as this morning, put their hand out for me to shake. For the uninitiated this all seems like good courteous form, but I have learned to instantly assess the context, the tone of voice, the question itself and have developed a fairly accurate radar for touts. 

A sad dilemma because you are caught between the genuine native and the tout. I want to engage the genuine friendly native as they laud the US and inquire deeper … and practice their English, the gateway to upward mobility throughout the world. Most Indians I have met have an awe of US that is humbling. Recognition of the tone and the context usually differentiates the tout from genuine. 

Interestingly, in the small Khajuraho tourist town the tout’s dominant ploy is “ I would like to practice my English.” Who would refuse such a plea, until you realize, ironically, that their is English is actually quite good. But if you naively engage you will dogged until you can be escorted to a shop, restaurant or tuk tuk and the CON continues. 

Know that for touts you ARE an ATM. Know they neither know or appreciate your lofty travel goals. Ignore them. The few who stand in your way to subtly intimidate you, walk straight forward into them. Collision has only happened a couple of times. 

In quieter moments I have  tried to understand why they seem so foolishly insistent.

My conclusion is that the over supply of every ‘thing’ and services offered is so great that competition is fierce for the slenderest profit driving them to raw desperation. Unfortunately, that rational, even if correct, does not free me from their annoyance. My solution: I simply ignore them as though I didn’t hear or see them or as though I don’t know English. 

In Khajuraho I was walking a 2 km stretch between temples in the countryside and had stopped at the roadside under a beautiful tunnel of trees to gaze across the fields when a tuk tuk driver pulled up and began insistently demanding I take his tuk tug. I refused to answer hoping he would get the point and drive on. Instead after several minutes of harangue he started beeping his horn to force me to respond. I did.

I quickly turned, took a couple of steps and kicked the front fender of his tuk tuk hard and yelled at him. I suspect what was most disconcerting to him was that I responded with obvious physical and verbal anger, but with a giant Jack Nicholson smile. In a bit of shock he drove off.

I simply could not believe his audacity. I was angry and intrigued at the same time. The guide book’s warn against anger. Yet sometimes...I guess it works.

India’s ANIMALS in the chaos --

Sprinkled everywhere and religiously immune from fear and accident are the innumerable dogs & puppies, cows and pigs that scour the trash for a tidbit or a tasty lick or sleep in the street’s middle daring humans to annoy their own gods. 

Yet, that ‘blind faith’ wrecks havoc on a few:
  -- 3 legged dogs;
  -- a cow’s near-useless rear leg producing a tortured lop-sided gait;
  -- a dog’s jumbled cluster of teeth-protruding at bizarre angles
         from the hole of its torn off mouth like some hideous
         boar-like creature;
  -- too many starkly ribbed animals, particularly young dogs & calves;  
 -- dogs with open wounds, diseased skin patches or orifice growths
         and ripped, scarred ears from territorial disputes.

Survival in these streets is oft times a deadly game. 

Anecdote: young Khajuraho dog: This afternoon in Khajuraho I walked by a ribbed, starving small, young dog plodding unsteadily up an  small incline. An hour later I walked by the same place and the little guy lay sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk -- but ‘No’, not sleeping, … He was dead!!!  I don’t believe I have felt the transience of death so quickly and poignantly as I did then.

Thrust into an uncaring, resource poor, over-populated world by nature’s demanding obsession -- its only reward for its short struggling survival -- was the peace of death. Good flight little spirit!

  -- a cow leaning against a temple sign, malnutrition's ribs and
         buttocks bones; more skeleton than animal;
  -- a scabrous dog biting at itself, but frantically, frustratingly unabl
         to reach the large portion of its itching gray-stripe patterned,
         hair-bare, diseased skin,  and finally,
  -- most heart-rending, the tiny fluffy puppy in the bus station
         stumbling on an injured leg from piece of trash to piece
         of trash in desperate hope of something edible. 

 

All these animals grub in the filth and garbage to lick a taste of human flavor or a discarded food bit, overpopulating with nature’s driving passion just like their overlords while splashing and punctuating everyplace with their feces.  Like anti-euthanasia for the terminally ill humans, it mocks our hypocritically lauded human compassion.

This is the dark side of the Hindu's unbridled reverence for animals & humans. 

 

The Westerner as an ATM --

Then, in the shops, like a sudden gust rustling thru an autumn tree, the street’s shopkeepers react like falling dominoes to a passing Westerner with any arresting English phrase -- ‘Hello, Sir”, “Where are you from, Sir?’, “What is your name, Sir?,  “Look at my shop, Sir”-- that might pause them a moment to ponder a trinket …..

Their voices filled with the desperation of Moses’s mother watching the small reed basket flow down river forever beyond her reach …. for the Westerner is a walking ATM with unimaginable resources. 

The compassionate of us walk by without response pausing only when genuinely curious or willing to buy. The wealth gap too great and humiliating to us to risk their unnecessary false-hope, and yet if we do buy, people eat another day.

This micro-dilemma illustrates the greater dilemma of overlaying our vision of fair employment on a economic system built on minuscule rewards for great effort within a colossal and expanding population. 

Anecdote: hard men & women labor: I saw men and women young and old digging a deep ditch by hand; 1 man dug up the soil with a pick, the next man hoed the loose soil into a shallow wok and handed it out of the trench to either an old dignified man or a 40 yr old woman dressed in the usual bright layered ensemble of sari garments to throw beyond the trench a few feet.

For this hard labor they make $5US/day while I make 30 times that/day with no effort. Force an increase in wages and the wise employer simply switches to the more productive backhoe and you’ve un-employed all those workers. 

 

Ultimate contrast:

The ultimate contrast in this nearly universal urban scene is between the costumes and the swill. Men occasionally wear a variety of colored turbans in various styles of wrapping depending on their  Indian state and tribe while women wear gorgeous colored layered garments, magnificently bright and airy saris that flutter in a walking’s simple breeze , elaborate long scarves wrapped around their head and shoulders and, if required, across their face. 

Yet barely beneath and alongside these brilliant costumes is a mix of animal excretion, shop and customer waste requiring a hopscotch skill to avoid or, worst, to stumble into a roadside waste channel of indescribable raw sewage mix and smell.

In search of step-tank in Varanasi this morning I was on the banks of a small river flowing to the Ganges. It was brown and opaque its banks totally bedecked of trash, a heard of cows and several clumps of pigs grubbed about or lay in the combined filth midst this residential area some of its streets torn up in hopes of new infrastructure. 

This omnipresent filth seems a vector medium for the virulent spread of disease that to me has seemed so potential midst the Indian & Chinese overpopulation where there may be an inherent fragile immunity against such a pestilence. To be honest, China is cleaner, it was the constant spitting everywhere - inside & out  -- that seemed such a potentially virulent a disease vector. 

Gaia, Mother Earth, may not long suffer this oppressive ‘human blight ‘ upon her land.  She might fight back with a swift, broad sword of pestilence (Covid, etc). Two thirds of some European cities were purged last.

 

Sites: 

The best of N Central India tourist-like sites so far has been tawdry to ‘good’ to the occasional ‘outstanding’. Many forts and palaces are simply run down piles of stucco coated brick, sloppily washed with a depressing yellow or rose color devoid of esthetic interest; occasionally a detail, a room, an exterior wall panel excites.

In Agra I discovered an unnoticed, shadow-hidden, unique method for raising a fort moat’s bridge -- a large round stone on an narrow axel could be released by pulling a peg causing the stones on either side of the doorway to roll down a curved ramp thus raising the bridge.

Mandawa and Nawalgarh’s painted havelis, Jodpur & Bundi’s stepwells and 1-2 forts were singularly outstanding, yet tourists seldom visit the haveli towns (see 1^st email) and Jodpur’s stepwells (see 1st email) were unknown to tourists within 5 minutes walking distance until I showed them piks to their amazement. Lonely Planet’s typically out dated guide books make no reference. 

Agra Fort & Jodpur Fort were good to outstanding with huge walls of elegant architectural detail (carvings, balconies) and occasional spectacular royal rooms. I never saw the  fog shrouded Taj Mahal in sunlight, but by world consensus it must rank esthetically ‘outstanding’, of course. [ Youtube’s National Geographic DOC  “Taj Mahal” gives an excellent insight into …..]   Orchha’s Raja Mahal palace wall paintings gave the 1^st real clue to the decoration covering the walls of most of the drab palaces. 

Khajuraho’s Western temple group is perhaps the finest and most interesting (read ‘prurient’) temple carving and condition I have seen except maybe for some of Bagan, Myanmar’s.

(Sorry, you’ll need a magnifying glass . I am trying to be discreet. ➙

 

Spontaneous Humor:

OTOH, not all is a nasty slog ----- while traipsing thru a very poor village outside Khajuraho with a photographer I inadvertently stepped on a man’s toes in a crowd of other men, I reacted with apology, but immediately realized they saw an element of humor.

So I purposely pretended to try stamping on his foot some more and everyone started laughing. We shared no language, no culture, but we shared a moment’s inherent humor -- we laughed.

The bridge was narrow across that great gap of our human cultures and lives … but it was a precious bridge indeed. 

Later in the village I saw children playing a simple game in which a few small round stones are set in a pile. A player attempts to knock over the pile with a tightly bound rag ball. If she does, she must re-pile the rocks before someone else retrieves the ball and hits her with it. The enthusiasm was boundless.

 

Extreme worst of India 

The extreme worst of India so far is the trash, sewage & offal’s ever present filth, stench, air pollution and the overall degradation of ‘most everything’ that might have once been inspired and beautiful; the chaotic degradation of overpopulation.

MOST of ALL is MY profound empathy for the tragedy of life lived by these people - old and young and un-born though I may have no right to pity those whose life may offer them their own prized dignity and value.  Some people may not like my ‘cake.’ (let them eat cake.)

Trash:

Trash and the visible contribution’s to it are every where and constant.
  -- well educated uniformed student of an upperclass family
      nonchalantly tossing a meal’s debris from the bus window,
  -- people emptying home trash directly into the street on assumptio
      it will somehow disappear,
  -- gorgeous sari dressed women in gorgeous saris cleaning the
      filthy street gutters,
 -- men spitting some kind of chew like a Wyoming cowboy,
  -- a confection shopkeeper who dropped a 2 sweets to the  ground beneath his feet, chose 2 new ones for me, then
      picked up the 2 dropped and put them back on shelf for sale,
  -- huge trash/garbage piles in any abandoned lot or open space,
-- Varanasi’s ghat waterfront & ____ River awash in trash
  -- the animal excrement in all its putrid, stepped-in forms,
  -- the abandoned ‘every thing, everywhere’ (Yesterday, a
      medium sized road roller embedded to its axel in the dirt
      roadside
  -- a mother pig with nestled piglet asleep in a puddle of black
      oozy semi-fluid.  And yet ………..

      Dalit woman from the cast of the untouchables working as      

                                scavangers, cleaning human excrements  --- ➔

 

……   Housewives and shopkeepers religiously sweep dirt from the stoop often pouring cupfuls of water to further freshen, women sweep streets and alleys every few days with primitive brooms of sticks, other women shop in beautiful saris, the occasional brimming crud encrusted dumpster surrounded by its overflow (Had they sufficient infrastructure I believe they would use it.) , shops with beautiful home fabrics, utensils and decorations that embellishes lifestyle and self worth, children’s laughter in the dust and my walk today in a Wildlife Sanctuary alongside a lovely Orchha river. And finally,  though the list could go on, the proud Indian’s question to this ‘foreigner’, “How do you like India.” to which I always reply in the smiling positive; --- a mandatory reply. 

 

Walking thru the worst of neighborhoods with dubious and pungent smells I often catch a brief whiff of some wonderful fragrance or food smell -- like a water lily in a cesspool it may suggest ‘hope.’

 

Pollution’s consequence:

Unfortunately, this unbridled, omnipresent, overbearing panoply of extremes conjures a great empathy and sympathy in me for these people. The ‘people’ (not the touts) I have met are wonderfulI people. Today a hostel owner spent several hours trying to help me get my cell SIM card working. Lost in Jaipur (intentionally, but more so than usual) I asked a man how to get to the metro station. He pointed to the back of his motorcycle and off we flew for a 15 min motor-cross thru crowded backstreets and alleys to the metro station. He would accept only my Thanks which were profuse. 

 

My sympathy?  I know they will die 10 years earlier than the average Amer/Euro. I suspect that some who look at my masked covered face recognize their peril, but deny their need to combat it or lack the cultural or financial resources to do so. Some statistics suggest over 2 million Indians will die each year from air pollution alone. I know that the damaged lungs, tainted blood, cancerous structures & wicked diseases will cause great pain, that life in general will be brutish devoid of realistic aspiration. Ironically, to them it is simply ‘their’ life. They know nothing else except the thin hint they might get from American /Euro movies. And, other travelers tell me … the worst is yet to come for me in Varanasi. Calcutta and Mumbai (Bombay) where to some accounts 60% of the people live on the streets, while the wealthiest of Indians live nearby. 

 

I listen to the naive quibbling of the American-entitled as the Cool-Aid swashes over their concerns for Trump’s environmental impact, his world diplomacy etc while being monumentally ignorant of the environmental devastation and political corruption in much of the rest of the world which may well blow on the political, economic and natural winds to us.  

 

I believe that if India has any hope it is in the wise and courageous actions (if they are) of Indian Prime Minister Modi and the contribution and responsible assistance of the 1^st world nation’s technology. It is in our interest. 

 

Varanasi Postscript:  ghats, etc:

      Last 2 days I visited all Varanasi’s riverfront ghats. 1st day --- a holy festival day. I walked down to the ghats in the huge crowd passing the cross-legged sitting poor that line the roadway w/outstretched begging bowls seeking offerings (usually rice) from the pilgrimers - coming and going-- who give for ‘merit’ on their Wheel of Life: theory of rebirth, "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence", karmic cycle, reincarnation --- a fundamental assumption of all Indian religions.

 

At the ghats some were auspiciously packed with people dumping food offerings into Mother Ganges on behalf of their deceased while others swam or dunked their bodies beneath the surface washing away a lifetime of sins (Ah, the temptation!). Some brushed their teeth. Many bought cheap plastic bottles to fill w/Ganges water for home. I looked on with the pity of one who has a good knowledge of body-dangerous ingestions, yet some research suggests that bacteriophages may protect these people from my fears. Perhaps. Like my fear of the Christian Church's hypocrisy, I fear that of these religions.

 

BURNING GHAT:

Eventually I passed the burning ghat where photography is ‘outlawed’ ….. kinda. After many admonitions, the 1st incoming offer was for 3,000 rupees for 1 minute of video ( $44 US) — a good deal cuz the Euro who was shooting a documentary, so their myth alleged — had paid 30,000 ($440 US.) I laughed at the blatant con, walked away as the next offeror approached. I declined, shot a few surreptitious clips  eventually moving on to Youtube and its very good amateur footage. This anecdote dramatizes the gulf (always a ‘gulf’ in India) between hypocritical opportunism and the genuine remorse & reverence of the families who immolate their loved one up to the god Shiva.  

 

 

 

The actual burning ghat site is in this American’s view somewhere quite beyond the profound edge of dark bizarre. Perhaps a cross between Harry Potter's worst nightmare and Game of Thrones medievalty. 4-6 levels from Mother Ganges water & ‘beach’ to  levels 2 -3 where burning occurs and upward into the less definable top.  

       

 

Looking out on the Ganges 5 large boats lie moored heaped high with firewood of all sizes unloaded by hand and carried 1 man at a time to the upper wood stacks’s seller. Between them and water’s edge a typical mix of trash, bamboo poles (?), filth

as Mother Ganges sloshes back and forth in the gentle Ganges current punctuated by colorful scraps of materials that adorn the pre-immolation corpse.

 

Another’s overall opinion:

I asked my young Brazilian roommate what her reaction to the burning ghat was. 

She replied that, “She felt so sorry for the deceased’s relatives because everyone else was watching the proceeding.” 

I asked , “Why.” 

“Because the relatives must go thru this devout experience with an unknown, unasked-for audience.”, she answered. There are alternative cremation site and methods with ashes spread on Ganges afterward.

I asked, “Why is that different from a Western experience where the deceased 1) lies in a church casket  open to all, 2) is driven in a large black hearse at respectful speed thru the streets, accompanied by police who shut down all intersections and ride shot gun on the parade’s entourage cars en route to 3) the graveyard where anyone, to my knowledge, is free to attend the actual burial.”   The burial being synonymous with the Indian immolation — just a lot longer moulding into dust.  

Our conversation ended.

 

On the 3rd level facing Ganga 3 iron grates sit in a row  large enough to hold a corpse and the necessary firewood and perhaps offerings. Now they were savoring only cold grey ashes while downhill on the other levels a few ash piles smoldered & 1 flamed softly towards its own end.  Few people stood near any of this.

 

The scene’s upper reaches are a combination of a sleeping platform for the Untouchables, aka Dalit, lowest caste that exclusively handles & burns actual corpse, a large middle level temple like room where drummers, cymbalists  etc. create an absolutely un-holy, but dramatic, cacophony send-off to the departed, of black soot covered holy temples that have witnessed these burnings for eons populating the upper hillside and beyond a block or so and finally, the huge piles of carefully stacked firewood that is bargained off to families according to the estimated amount of wood required. These huge firewood piles frame the sides & top of this entire scene and extend back from the top into every available space each centered around a seller’s 6’ high weight scales. 

     

 

 

 

 

 

         Sidebar: The Ganges Google-searched facts:

Some statistics indicate -------------   

Google your own stats set or / http://www.all-about-india.com/India-Ganges-River.html#sthash.lRdNij1z.dpuf  ,,,  http://www.all-about-india.com/Ganges-River-Pollution.html --- 

1) absorbs a billion+ waste gallons/day, ¾s is raw sewage, domestic waste and industrial effluent; doubled in last 20 yrs, 100% increase predicted w/in next 20 yrs spawned/spurred by India's 25 yr rapid population explosion, lax industry regulations, apathy and corruption.

2)  1 of 10  most polluted rivers in the world.  

3) Toxins, chemicals and other dangerous bacteria -- now almost 3000 times WHO’s 'safe' limit. 

4) 1000’s/yearly cremated bodies on river banks & pushed reverently into Ganges for the soul’s direct upward flight > heaven.

5) Hundreds ‘Unwanted’ or 'illegitimate' babies, cattle and other animal carcasses are dumped in the Ganges again with religious significance

 

6) Coliform bacteria levels: 2800+ times W.H.O safe level: 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml, 120 times official 500 faecal coliform per 100ml. Limit.--- too high to be safe for agricultural use let alone drinking and bathing

7) Overall rate of water-borne/enteric disease incidence, including acute gastrointestinal disease, etc. and was estimated to be about 66%

8) Main Ganges river polluters:  huge commercial industries, particularly leather tanning industry’s vast amounts of chromium, other toxins and chemicals with more unregulated factories each week. 

9) Tanning Industry: employs 50,000 people in 400+ tanneries using such toxic chromium chemicals. Care to guess at the working conditions? No! … me neither.

10) At Holy city Varanasi the Ganges River has formed a thick black sludge; highly toxic by scientists, but ‘perfect bathing’ for hundreds of thousands of locals and pilgrims.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OTOH, yesterday, I also saw a tall, young Amer/Euro pass me at the ghats with traditional Indian clothing, a large Sikkh turban, a neatly styled beard and backpack — living his dream. I was reminded of Steve Job’s early Asian quest. I appreciate this young man’s emersion into religion’s avowed mysteries and silently wish him a great life's journey as I do the young slim Indian man doing his yoga exercises (?) on a simple swath of cloth overlooking Ganges. Yet, hours later wonder if the health club I pass has air filters. 

 

 

Sidebar:

Moments ago I spoke with a young Brit who said when asked her opinion, “I love it.”

“Why “ , I asked.

“It is beautiful.” she replied.

“Why “ , I asked.

In sum she said (I paraphrase), “I love the way everything -- good, bad ugly -- contrasts with my English/Western values challenging me to accommodate & reflect on all of it, that is what I mean by ‘beauty.”

I agreed. 

 

 

Yesterday I wondered to myself  as I padded thru some-of-the-worst in search of un-named step-tanks, why do I keep walking thru this cultural, economic, architectural, polluted carnage sometimes purposely choosing the most secretive, ominous streets and alleys when I could sit comfortably in my hostel?

      

I think it is because I want my mind to be throughly pushed to the edge of its consciousness; to seek out every contrast to my American life and the other cultures I visit so that when I return to them I will notice and appreciate the subtlest differences of my life in these places. I have become somewhat immune to the moment-to-moment pity I feel for these people’s lives, yet sometimes I falter. I believe I must do so to stay objective and engaged. The doctor may empathize, but only after the surgery is completed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

India email 3 (response to Allegra)

HI Allegra,

 

*** below

 

On 1 21, 17, at 12:48 PM, Allegra Ahlquist <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Scott,

 

Thanks for your observation about how we have been taken

in by how to be cool, without having any care for our Mother.

I am becoming more and more aware of how much I am

becoming more appreciative of Her. 

 

*** Actually, my point was that in 1961 littering was ‘acceptable’ like India and much of Asia (excluding Japan, of course). But since then thru aggressive public promotion of anti-littering, I believe the nation has made a 180 degree turn — in the main. Granted there are still the no-class among us who see no light, but then I suspect there will always be. 

 

When driving down to

Sunsites I sing to the holes in the road, the rocks and pebbles,

the trees dancing in the wind. Dirt, unpolluted (is there any?)

is really beautiful, although it takes some re-programming

to see it, feel that way. Even when I was making figures of clay

I wasn't aware that it was DIRT. We're supposed to get rid of dirt

according to our training.

 

I just finished reading “Kim”, Kipling’s classic India novel about a lama and his chela (begging assistant) during the British era. After a particularly grueling adventure in India’s high Northern mountains and a Sahiba’s (very important woman) restoration of him, Kim wanders unsteadily from his sick bed out into the countryside and lies down in the dirt under a tree and beside an old wood wagon:  

 

Quote:  "He did not want to cry,—had never felt less like crying in his life,—but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share. Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One (the lama) comes back from meditation, tell him.'

There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away, with a young banian tree behind—a look-out, as it were, above some new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as he neared it. The ground was good clean dust— no new herbage that, living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds the seed of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart.(Scott’s emphasis)  And Mother Earth was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered to her strength. The many- rooted tree above him, and even the dead man-handled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.

Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously, for the house had told them where he had gone." 

 

And big winds. How powerful they are. All night they shrieked fitfully.and pulled me out of bed near 5, wind and rain swatting at the big south pane. And rain, and now light flakes of snow.

 

*** Yes some of my most memorable evenings have been in my van parked in some remote area with wind, rain or snow storms roaring outside swaying the van back and forth in their maelstrom. Too much fun! Once in Wyoming's vast grasslands away from anything human except the dirt road the wind/rain storm included brilliant lightning and crashing thunder almost directly above it seemed. 

 

 

Scott

 

India Email 4 - postscript;

 

Hello,

 

Disclaimer: All photos ‘other than’ the next 4 street scenes, are taken from Google Images. (Tim)

 

After I mailed out email # 2 I decide to cut the trip short by 2+ weeks. I had visited about 7 temples just outside Varanasi and found them immensely UN-interesting except, of course, a tastefully designed, executed and maintained Japanese Temple. It occurred to me that the next several weeks in Kolkata and Mumbai would simply pile on more of what you have already read of with my presumed high probability that little would rise to its promoted level. 

 

I believe at that moment, I shifted from ‘bold adventurer’ to “uninspired, burned out, solo traveler.” I just wanted it to end. I had already booked my flight to Kolkata, so I would return to USA from there. 

 

Kolkata: 

At 9:00 PM I flew into Kolkata (aka Calcutta), took a ratty pre-paid government taxi to my hotel and stepped out into one of the most depressing and ominous looking street scenes I have yet to see. Nor have I seen such hyperbole in any movie I recall. 

 

Directly outside my hotel’s unlit entry which looks only vaguely like its online picture was parked a beat-up, dust encrusted semi-stripped abandoned car & across the street others. The side walk was partially torn up. Trash was everywhere & deep indicating there was seldom, if ever, anyone sweeping. Down the street some neon lights hinted at small kiosk shops; shadowy, silhouetted figures clustered about.

 

I entered the dimly lit stairwell and climbed to the next floor both fearful and hopeful that I was at the right place; hopeful - cuz ‘home’; fearful  - cuz I dreaded the search for another hotel in that area that late at night. I knocked on a glass windowed door with someone at home; there was no sign, but … I was home. The man had no knowledge of my online reservation, but was convinced by my cell phone reservation copy. He promptly informed me that there was no running water. Only bucket water and cold showers. (Later I notice a large coffee cup-like electric water heater coil.) I was despondent & tired. I put my bags in my room which actually looked pretty nice. 

 

I forcefully suppressed my intrepidation and walked into the street in search of food.

 

The world’s 3rd world nations have a “build and forget’ philosophy of property management. They build a new hotel, fix only what does not have a cheaper, faster alternative. Eventually the beautiful new building deteriorates below the original profitable level and is sold off to those who lower the income, minimize repair/maintenance, and eek out a smaller profit. Finally, it is abandoned until razed and something new may arise. All examples are within 2 blocks. 

 

Walking the streets — more trash, broken sidewalks and singles, pairs and clumps of people standing about randomly in the dim street lights, squatting at the curbs or clustered around shops that sell pann (-- a preparation combining betel leaf with areca nut and sometimes also with tobacco, slightly narcotic, chewed and then spit out every so often leaving a — quoting Wikipedia — a "long colorful bright red stain on the pavement.” The scene was classic Hollywood movie stereotypical drug neighborhood scene. I instinctively reached for my Mafia Drug Dealer’s union card.

 

By morning I had a plan & had resolved to accomplish one small task — visit Mother Theresa’s ”Mother House.” When I looked out the window I immediately noticed the auto repair shops across the street accounting for a lot of the grime, debris & abandoned cars. Normally most dirty/dicy cities (think Cairo) … “look better when cloaked in the dark, gray shadows of night’, but ironically this daylight scene actually looked better, less ominous, more definable.  

 

 

 

 

Cemetary:

I walked more of N Central India’s streets some distance toward Mother Theresa’s stopping for a quiet walk thru an old English cemetery with graves dating into the 19th Century. The usual grave monument is a raised oblong brick box w/ white marble lined exterior and capped with a very large flat piece of stone. This box is filled with dirt under which somewhere lies the deceased. A large vertical head stone is often mounted at the end of the box &/or directly on it. Unfortunately, as the soil and perhaps the deceased ‘settle’ the large flat stone becomes unsupported and the weight of vertical monument breaks it or it topples over and shattering the slab.  Either way many graves have now become stone/brick piles.     

 

Cemeteries intrigue me with their usually much too succinct, ‘dumb’ headstones telling us nothing of the lives below them. How foolish. That we humans lie under costly, often surprisingly fragile headstones that belie the rich lives each of has led. 

 

I remember 20 years ago searching out Audie Murphy’s simple, marble headstone at Arlington Nat’l CEM inscribed with birth /death dates and his medals in an unpretentious field of his fellow soldiers, yet he was the most decorated soldier of WWII. 

 

I have envisioned an app that would provide an audio/visual scrapbook, if you will, when you walked within a few feet of a gravestone. This scrapbook would be an iCloud Facebook-like collection of everything either the deceased or living others chose to deposit about the deceased’s life. Imagine George Washington’s diary insights, a Colonist woman’s letter to a friend reflecting her hopes for her children, etc. 

Mother Teresa’s Mother House: 

At Mother Teresa’s Mother House which is a simple, but substantial structure down a small alley off a large street I briefly touched the huge smooth cement slab (12’ long x 3 1/2 ‘ H x 6’W) in which she lies. Then wandered thru the little museum of her life-long facial piks. I paused to let my eyes flick back and forth between a young Nun Theresa and the old, iconic one wondering if she imagined or even cared to imagine how her life would play out. She refused the Nobel Peace Prize for herself, accepting it only in the name of the poor. I sympathized with my imagined discomfort of the Peace Prize official’s in that PIK whose role of "symbolic, stand-in hypocrite" for WE ALL who profess our compassion, but do little to express it. 

 

                   

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One quote of Mother 

Teresa’s caught my attention, “ The greatest injustice ‘is'  terrible indifference.”  I have passed several hundred people begging, vastly greater numbers sleeping on sidewalks or doorways and entire families living their lives out against a wall on a busy street — tiny children that should never have been born -----;; avoided expensive cars arrogantly demanding the right-of-way past struggling hand pulled rickshaws. I’ve had lofty discussions about charity, poverty, self-worth and my own monumental selfishness;  nodding my head in accord with Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable description of the sacrificial, suicidal, life-abdication nunneries of his era or perhaps any. BUT, this moment brought tears to my eyes. My intellectual machinations could not endure the searing heat of her life’s service. 

 

 

 

Sidebar: 

I noticed this Princess Diana PIK amongst the Mother Teresa Google photos (?.)  WADR, the profound ‘gulf’ struck me.  The gulf between ‘total, unremitting, constant commitment and the ‘dabbling' of the rest of us. 

 

Yet I have often used Mother Teresa as an example of the word “altruism”s' inherent deceit ("belief in or practice of disinterested and self-less concern for the well being of others.”) IMO, Mother Teresa did what she did for the same reason I do what I do — it simply makes me feel good, fulfills me or whatever other lofty phrase you use to explain your motivation. But in spite of my rationalization, Mother Theresa remains even in my uneasy mind, the icon of self-service on behalf of others. And in some way I can’t or won’t put my intellectual finger on - she is morally better than I am. 

 

Holed up with a better attitude —

 

During my 1st evening of mild anxiety I thought I would simply move to Sudder St's tourist row of hotels etc. But after my visit to Mother Teresa’s I discovered a small modern cafe just down the street that serves the large new hotel hidden behind it. Closer to my hotel I discovered a 2nd similar one and a coffee shop seemingly so out of place. Things were looking better. I would eat lunch in one, then dinner in the other until I left 4-5 days later. 

 

However, to be honest I re-booked my return USA ticket to give me this time in Kolkata thinking I would see the sites, but I simply had no enthusiasm or confidence in the effort, so I just holed up --- researching hiking trails in the Alps. 

 

I often have several days at the end of a trip when I have or want nothing to do or see in-country. It is not an issue really. I simply hunker down and work on stuff I would work on if home: stocks, properties, Internet inquiries, reading, watch movie etc, writing, next trip.  During most of the trip I am jamming continually forward at an intense level often wishing I could just relax, but sometimes the vagaries of train/bus schedules don’t allow. So this pre-return down time is actually looked forward to. 

 

Last Days in the Hood:

Ironically, the more time in ‘the hood’ the more I acclimated: ignoring the filth, avoiding the pack of dogs I fended off one night, waving a reciprocal hand to the man who sold me my daily bottle of soda water, being recognized and smiled at by some of the men playing cards on the sidewalk or manning a street food stall after my friendly As-Salam-u-Alaikum” (Hello.) —  dominant Muslim neighborhood, chatting with an Indian family visiting home from their London life, watching 3 boys playing cricket in the street and  the respectful car driver paused quietly for a break in the action before passing thru. I was starting to feel ‘at home.’ in a very curious and self-deluded way.

 

Last evening I met a young Spanish woman staying in the Travel Inn before she would move to a nicer, less expensive hotel at Sudder Street. We had dinner and then walked the nighttime streets. It was surreal; I and this young woman casually walking this ominous, all male scene as though we were walking Barcelona’s tree ⬇︎arched, ⬇︎cafe boulevards. of cafe tables. In retrospect, it felt more like 2 actors walking thru a carefully prepared movie set just before their  “Action! Cameras!”. She related the difficulty of a solo woman’s Indian travel: a railroad ticket man that refused to talk to her or sell her a ticket, resolved when a man agreed to do it. I have great respect for these women.

 

Grand Succinct SUMMARY:  

 

Too often when I have abandoned my schedule and returned early (Japan, Egypt) folks presume I did not enjoy the country and the experience I had.  Not true!

 

I enjoyed India in the sense that I visit countries so that I will know ‘what they are’; so I will have had the experience. Granted, usually the expectations I have of the country, sites, people, etc. live up to ‘my generally good expectation’. Most of us have a ‘built-in’ expectation of Paris, London, Rome, Japan, Wales, Scotland, Spain, Portugal and even Antarctica. I had a vague expectation of Central & South America, Iceland, Tokyo, Greece, Sicily, Eastern Europe & the Balkans. My pre-trip expectation of India was really tentative--- “the biggest 3^rd world country of greatest extremes that I had yet to visit.” India fulfilled that expectation, but with extended boundaries I could not have comprehended before I went. 

 

The medieval, post-cataclysmic expectation was vastly exceeded while the sites were often vastly understated. Yet still  …. some sites - painted and carved haveli towns, Khajuraho’s Western Temple Complex, the step wells and a few forts were outstandingly memorable. The anecdotal encounters with ‘the’ people stood in stark contrast to the ‘context ‘ of India  -- they were remarkably ‘human’ in spite of the context.  

 

Finally, the terrifying noise, trash, filth and air pollution exemplified by my intentional, searching walks thru the ‘worst’ were exciting because they so assaulted my senses, sensibilities and ANY expectations I might have imagined. They were priceless and memorialized in my video and memories. However, if I hit myself on the head painfully with a hammer 10 times in row,  the 11^th time should be equally painful. I had had enough and that is when & why I abandoned India.

 

Tucson:

At 11PM Uber dropped me at my stored RV near the freeway off ramp. I took off my shoes, grabbed a large Lysol spray can and sprayed my shoes - inside & out -- and the exterior of my day pak and suitcase before entering the van.  A hopeful cleansing ritual after such Asian trips. 

By 8:00 am next morning I realized I had heard no horns from the increasing  traffic - not one. Later I looked at Tucson's mountains relishing the varied colors & landform details outlined against a blue sky back ground. I had not seen ‘blue skies’ in 2 months. After laundry I bought $120 groceries @ Fry’s Supermarket and another $160 at Sam’s Club-- thrilled at the array & relishing the taste. I could eat again! I was thin and older looking because I had not eaten much out of fear.

Now, I am in my mountain retreat, the wind gently rustles thru the trees while a dove chrrrs softly nearby. Munch a fresh salad in the warm sun, yet,…….  mental anecdotes of India already popping up in my brain. 

 

God bless America!

 

The END ---- really!

 

Scott

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott Eaton

[email protected]

 

 "Professional: one obsessed with the pursuit of excellence on behalf of their client." (author: me)

 

 

Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goals." (Unknown to me)