Dec 25, 2009
I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
With no puja bells ringing or Filmi singing
Pounding from tuk-tuks on the go
I'm dreaming of a white...wait
naw naw fuck that shit let's keep it on the real
I'm loving tropical Christmas
With every Christmas post G Buddha writes
I feel my days are merry and bright
And remember that win-ter in America bites
Fuck dreaming of a white Christmas
I'm sipping lassis by my pil-low
I'll be pimp juice smuggling and sari snuggling
While you're frozen balls-deep in snow
So may all your chump-ass Christmases be white
मेर्री फुकिंग क्रिसमस
PEACE
Dec 23, 2009
Mahatma Ghostface
I knew I had to take a vacation when I saw four Santa Claus heads on pikes by the side of the road. "Aaah it's almost Christmas!"
Traveling Gujarat has taken its toll and I was eager to get to my last stop in the state, its major city of Ahmedabad, a metropolis of 5 million people notorious for its traffic and pollution, and famed as the home of "Mahatma" Mohandas Gandhi's spiritual and political movement. But to get there first I had to cross 100 kilometers of "the most nail-bitingly terrifying road in all of India." I was prepared for the worst, but perversely excited for the thrill.
"Fear has its uses; cowardice has none."
-Mahatma Gandhi
I boarded the bus with solemn resolve.
It was nothing close to the worst. Perhaps ashamed by the highway's reputation, state authorities have apparently replaced it with a beautiful divided highway with a median with purple-blossoming shrubs, and the sturdy, efficient bus didn't even stop for pedestrians at the side of the road. It was the most pleasant bus ride in all of India.
Ahmedabad is indeed a huge city with terrible congestion and air that melts the lungs. The town is about evenly split between Hindus and Muslims. This place became a great city as capital of the Sultanate of Gujarat and is full of majestic mosques. The Islamic influence is very strongly felt here. There is an especially high ratio of women walking the streets in burkhas, forced to do so by their conservative families. Joke's on the men, though. Their oppression of the women, who having been forced to cover their mouths are going to have 15 years added to their lives. I am now so accustomed to smog it hardly consciously bothered me and I noticed that only sissy tourists wore masks, so I refused to do the same.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to makes mistakes."
-Mahatma Gandhi
I probably have cancer.
I arrived at breakfast time and found myself in Lucky's Cafe. At first I noticed there was a tree growing out of the restaurant, as one sometimes finds, but then I noticed something weirder. There were little knee-high fenced enclosures squeezed between the tables at seemingly random spots around the restaurant. I looked in and saw that they contained green Muslim gravestones, which decorated the floor almost like carpeting as waiters shuffled about serving lassis and sandwiches between the tombs.
I took a rickshaw out to the Sabarmati Ashram, the commune from which Gandhi conducted his political activities for almost 15 years. It was the most fascinatingly boring place I have ever been to. There is nothing to please the eye. Even its formerly serene location by the riverside is now in the hub of endless gray apartment blocks. There are just a few sparse huts and a tiny museum with a handful of inspirational posters and photographs. Nonetheless, I highly recommend it. You can look into Gandhi's room as he kept it, with nothing more than a mattress, a spinning wheel, and a little table. All around the museum you find pictures of him spinning textiles, making sandals, and generally being manhandled by or leading marches of people twice the size of his frail frame. I recently finished reading his autobiography, which taught me that he was a very, very strange man. I also felt he was deeply mistaken in his belief that the masses could be spiritually awoken on a pursuit of Truth that would lead to true freedom, but can not help but admire greatly how his solitary example of an astoundingly virtuous and pure-hearted path could prove so effective.
The rest of the day was spent on a tour of numerous Indo-Islamic mosques, of which two merit special mention. The Siddi Sayed mosque is a squat little thing but it features carved lattices that are said to have single-handedly made the rest of India start praising Gujarati architecture. And damn, they are some nice lattices, a delicate, irregular but harmonious pattern of carved loops forming the shape of draping tree branches. The other, the grand Jama Masjid, is a huge, well-proportioned building supported by a thicket of slender Hindu columns. Beneath the main entrance is a black stone slab used as a welcome mat. It is actually the base of a Jain idol buried head-first in front of the mosque. OWNED.
Behind the mosque lies the sprawling Ahmedabad bazaars, a warren of streets of various crafts completely packed with human traffic. At some point I found myself in the Ladies' Bazaar, a huge open-air brassiere market. I had numerous opportunities to take great photographs of groups of burkha-clad women browsing the forest of undies, but kept my camera tucked in my pocket. For a cosmopolitan sophisticate like myself, getting lynched is a bit passe. There were also other men around, lurking to watch the shopping in progress and guffawing as they placed bets on what bra size the burkha- and sari-clad women would end up buying. Regardless of whether they won or lost, they cheered when a woman's purchase exceeded their expectations and sighed when they had overestimated. They encouraged me to participate but I politely refused. "The women in your country have big breasts?" they asked. I responded that like everywhere they came in all shapes and sizes. "The ladies having the biggest breasts is bests, yes?" they continued. I informed them I believed breasts of any size could be enjoyable, both aesthetically and as tactile experiences. Feeling inspired to do so, I further pontificated on the importance of inner beauty, and how happiness is truly best attained by joining oneself not to the woman with the fullest tits, but the woman whose meritorious and caring heart beats most endearingly beneath her full, ripe tits.
"Even a single light dispels the deepest darkness."
-Mahatma Gandhi
As my words sunk in they came to a deeper recognition of what they knew to be true and nodded their heads in agreement.
I wandered about the bazaars some more and killed time in a number of other ways. In the old citadel I was surprised to discover the courtyard to be a nest of lawyers and typists conducting legal business under the trees, and was frequently harangued by tatty-looking typists whose skills with the typewriter obviously did not pay for their drug habits, and completely ignored by the sharply-dressed attorneys who zipped about on Indian scooters in their business-formal wear. I was puzzled enough, when I left the citadel's side gate, rounded the corner, and came across a half-naked man riding an elephant towards a crate of bananas. I sat on a bench nearby to write, but was distracted by the efforts of stall-keepers to constrict the elephant's fruit-grabbing to the designated crate, and while watching this somehow fell asleep .
I woke up on a park bench and there were the Santa heads on pikes. I was exhausted and the reminder of the upcoming holiday was pretty hard to ignore. Upon completion of my work in Gujarat I resolved to take a soothing vacation from being on a wearying professional vacation. I booked a ticket up to Rajasthan via a rail line that recently suffered a serious accident in which several people died, but would take me to a place where a relaxing atmosphere, an absence of work, and a beautiful woman await me. I weighed my options and decided to be true to myself.
"Forsake not pimpin', even unto death."
-Mahatma Ghostface
Mahatma Ghostface is big pimpin'.
Traveling Gujarat has taken its toll and I was eager to get to my last stop in the state, its major city of Ahmedabad, a metropolis of 5 million people notorious for its traffic and pollution, and famed as the home of "Mahatma" Mohandas Gandhi's spiritual and political movement. But to get there first I had to cross 100 kilometers of "the most nail-bitingly terrifying road in all of India." I was prepared for the worst, but perversely excited for the thrill.
"Fear has its uses; cowardice has none."
-Mahatma Gandhi
I boarded the bus with solemn resolve.
It was nothing close to the worst. Perhaps ashamed by the highway's reputation, state authorities have apparently replaced it with a beautiful divided highway with a median with purple-blossoming shrubs, and the sturdy, efficient bus didn't even stop for pedestrians at the side of the road. It was the most pleasant bus ride in all of India.
Ahmedabad is indeed a huge city with terrible congestion and air that melts the lungs. The town is about evenly split between Hindus and Muslims. This place became a great city as capital of the Sultanate of Gujarat and is full of majestic mosques. The Islamic influence is very strongly felt here. There is an especially high ratio of women walking the streets in burkhas, forced to do so by their conservative families. Joke's on the men, though. Their oppression of the women, who having been forced to cover their mouths are going to have 15 years added to their lives. I am now so accustomed to smog it hardly consciously bothered me and I noticed that only sissy tourists wore masks, so I refused to do the same.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to makes mistakes."
-Mahatma Gandhi
I probably have cancer.
I arrived at breakfast time and found myself in Lucky's Cafe. At first I noticed there was a tree growing out of the restaurant, as one sometimes finds, but then I noticed something weirder. There were little knee-high fenced enclosures squeezed between the tables at seemingly random spots around the restaurant. I looked in and saw that they contained green Muslim gravestones, which decorated the floor almost like carpeting as waiters shuffled about serving lassis and sandwiches between the tombs.
I took a rickshaw out to the Sabarmati Ashram, the commune from which Gandhi conducted his political activities for almost 15 years. It was the most fascinatingly boring place I have ever been to. There is nothing to please the eye. Even its formerly serene location by the riverside is now in the hub of endless gray apartment blocks. There are just a few sparse huts and a tiny museum with a handful of inspirational posters and photographs. Nonetheless, I highly recommend it. You can look into Gandhi's room as he kept it, with nothing more than a mattress, a spinning wheel, and a little table. All around the museum you find pictures of him spinning textiles, making sandals, and generally being manhandled by or leading marches of people twice the size of his frail frame. I recently finished reading his autobiography, which taught me that he was a very, very strange man. I also felt he was deeply mistaken in his belief that the masses could be spiritually awoken on a pursuit of Truth that would lead to true freedom, but can not help but admire greatly how his solitary example of an astoundingly virtuous and pure-hearted path could prove so effective.
The rest of the day was spent on a tour of numerous Indo-Islamic mosques, of which two merit special mention. The Siddi Sayed mosque is a squat little thing but it features carved lattices that are said to have single-handedly made the rest of India start praising Gujarati architecture. And damn, they are some nice lattices, a delicate, irregular but harmonious pattern of carved loops forming the shape of draping tree branches. The other, the grand Jama Masjid, is a huge, well-proportioned building supported by a thicket of slender Hindu columns. Beneath the main entrance is a black stone slab used as a welcome mat. It is actually the base of a Jain idol buried head-first in front of the mosque. OWNED.
Behind the mosque lies the sprawling Ahmedabad bazaars, a warren of streets of various crafts completely packed with human traffic. At some point I found myself in the Ladies' Bazaar, a huge open-air brassiere market. I had numerous opportunities to take great photographs of groups of burkha-clad women browsing the forest of undies, but kept my camera tucked in my pocket. For a cosmopolitan sophisticate like myself, getting lynched is a bit passe. There were also other men around, lurking to watch the shopping in progress and guffawing as they placed bets on what bra size the burkha- and sari-clad women would end up buying. Regardless of whether they won or lost, they cheered when a woman's purchase exceeded their expectations and sighed when they had overestimated. They encouraged me to participate but I politely refused. "The women in your country have big breasts?" they asked. I responded that like everywhere they came in all shapes and sizes. "The ladies having the biggest breasts is bests, yes?" they continued. I informed them I believed breasts of any size could be enjoyable, both aesthetically and as tactile experiences. Feeling inspired to do so, I further pontificated on the importance of inner beauty, and how happiness is truly best attained by joining oneself not to the woman with the fullest tits, but the woman whose meritorious and caring heart beats most endearingly beneath her full, ripe tits.
"Even a single light dispels the deepest darkness."
-Mahatma Gandhi
As my words sunk in they came to a deeper recognition of what they knew to be true and nodded their heads in agreement.
I wandered about the bazaars some more and killed time in a number of other ways. In the old citadel I was surprised to discover the courtyard to be a nest of lawyers and typists conducting legal business under the trees, and was frequently harangued by tatty-looking typists whose skills with the typewriter obviously did not pay for their drug habits, and completely ignored by the sharply-dressed attorneys who zipped about on Indian scooters in their business-formal wear. I was puzzled enough, when I left the citadel's side gate, rounded the corner, and came across a half-naked man riding an elephant towards a crate of bananas. I sat on a bench nearby to write, but was distracted by the efforts of stall-keepers to constrict the elephant's fruit-grabbing to the designated crate, and while watching this somehow fell asleep .
I woke up on a park bench and there were the Santa heads on pikes. I was exhausted and the reminder of the upcoming holiday was pretty hard to ignore. Upon completion of my work in Gujarat I resolved to take a soothing vacation from being on a wearying professional vacation. I booked a ticket up to Rajasthan via a rail line that recently suffered a serious accident in which several people died, but would take me to a place where a relaxing atmosphere, an absence of work, and a beautiful woman await me. I weighed my options and decided to be true to myself.
"Forsake not pimpin', even unto death."
-Mahatma Ghostface
Mahatma Ghostface is big pimpin'.
Dec 22, 2009
The New India (it sucks)
I am soon to finish my tour of Gujarat and will be enjoying a brief, self-rewarded Christmas break in Rajasthan with friends before setting off on the next phase of this adventure. After a series of remote and/or fiendishly inaccessible historical attractions, I have since had the dubious pleasure of visiting Gujarat's major industrial metropolises. For a similar experience, I recommend taking a month-long tour of whatever places you wish in Europe, and then finishing it off with stops in Dusseldorf and Dortmund. These Gujarati cities are unknown to the world for their blandness, beheld only by business travelers and those passing through on a direct course connecting the nation's greatest cities and one part of the country to another. Eastern Gujarat is the Delaware of India.
My first stop was Surat, a large industrial town of 2.5 million people with the world's largest diamond business. I arrived via "sleeper bus", a misnomer that leads one to expect it might be possible to sleep on board. I finally did slip into an exhausted unconsciousness around 4am only to be awoken at 5, kicked off, and left to dazedly ponder my whereabouts, which I was able to pinpoint as precisely as "under a bridge somewhere." I somehow made it to a hotel, checked in, and collapsed on the bed. When I awoke I scoured the room for clues as to my location, finally discovering in the room service menu that I was in Surat. I have woken up not knowing where I am many a time, but never before in a Dry State.
My task for the day was to buy a replacement for my Indian phone's SIM card, which requires Indian government approval and therefore is impossible to accomplish sensibly. As a foreigner with few documents and fewer contacts, this became a labor of cutting red tape with a spatula. Though I metaphorically dodged rolling boulder traps and swung on vines across pits of snakes I was ultimately unable to clear the final hurdle: proof of my location in India. Needless to say, for an itinerant travel-writer this is not exactly easy to come by. I tried multiple ploys across the city to skirt this requirement but to no avail. I finally relented, conceding that my request was probably unreasonable. It was almost as though I were trying to purchase a number for a phone that would travel with me.
Over the course of my wanderings on this quest I saw a fair amount of Surat and was shocked by what I beheld. It was crowded, ugly, and aggressively fast-paced...but it was clean. There were no huge, perpetually windblown piles of dust in front of every sidewalk. There was no livestock roaming the streets. Traffic was dense and murderous but squadrons of white-helmeted traffic police ensured that it flowed continuously rather than degenerating into gridlock. Foul water and human feces were either rocketed into orbit or were carried underground through a system of pipes. I was at last in the New India, where industry, technology, and connection to the global economy brought wealth and modernity. Wealth and modernity turn out to be a noisy gray heap, but it's a noisy gray heap that works (sort of)(I mean, it's no Geneva)(but it's also no Agra).
Surat has large Indian shopping centers by the dozens. These cavernous, multi-level, semi-open edifices at first impress (my God, there must be thousands of square inches of open space!), but then you realize that it is just the bazaar built upwards. Access to upper levels is through dark and spit-encrusted stairwells and the jumble of shops is almost as confusing as ever. This is not the sleek design of the Western malls where a brand name and a carefully-selected display case lure you in. Instead the shops beckon with an avalanche of signs that clutter every available inch of space. A typical marquee does not read "B.K. Bhawani Office Supply Shop", it reads
After meeting a personal acquaintance (shout-out) who confirmed that yes, Surat is uncommonly functional and uninteresting, I made my way north by train to Vadodara. Vadodara, aka Baroda, is pretty much a smaller version of Surat that trades Surat's policy of actually having rubbish swept from the streets for the privilege of actually having trees. It is also home to a large and prestigious university, where the filthy street stalls make good business feeding students munching on fly-ridden ethnic food and studying from organic chemistry textbooks. I discovered that my hotel was quite close to the "Ladies' Residences" sector, where I also noted that the shards of broken glass cemented to the top of the compound walls were about twice as large and dangerous-looking as those elsewhere on campus. We all know what that means...The venue of tonight's Student Life orgy is going to have to be moved to the Faculty of Arts building.
I popped out of Vadodara as quickly as I could on a trip to see the ruined city of Champaner, former capital of the Sultanate of Gujarat and a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is allegedly devoid of tourists. I had to transfer to a second bus on the way there, and at first thought that this bus's charming aquamarine paint scheme would make up for the fact that it was apparently constructed of tin sheets recycled from a cannon-testing facility. That was until I saw that the vehicle's battery was actually just five car batteries looped together by jumper cables and sitting in a rusty open box on the floor next to the gearshift.
Champaner is not a hardly-visited spot.By "devoid of tourists" the guidebooks must shamelessly mean "devoid of white people" because there were tons of picnicking Indians and elementary school trips covering everywhere within an easy 5-minute walk of the bus stand. Here's why there's no Western tourists and the Indians go no further: it's a huge pain in the ass. There are magnificent mosques and temples scattered around but at some distance from eachother. In between are unmarked patches of countryside, ugly little villages, and random fences that make it impossible to move in a straight line towards where you're guessing the next attraction is. The "maps" the ASI has here and there are more conceptual than cartographic, missing key features such as 'roads', not being to scale, and labeling sites with uninformative captions such as "13. Mosque". When you finally do stumble into something it is quite lovely but the authorities are complete fools not to make the tiny investments necessary to make this a major tourist destination.
Perhaps the single worst bit of planning at Champaner was to locate the bus stand adjacent to a Degembara Jain temple with very low walls and a very tall nude statue, making it quite impossible for pious visiting Hindus and Muslims to catch a bus without first catching a glimpse of foot-long stone noodle.
Back in Vadodara a pair of students befriended me at the food stalls and invited me to join them in sharing some bootleg Gujarati whiskey. I declined, because Gujarati moonshine is so bad (it kills people) that for reasons of Prohibition and public health, the state assembly is currently debating making the manufacture of "spurious hooch" punishable by death. I am not down with drinking this shit. If whiskey will be the end of me it's going to be on my terms. Why die of methanol poisoning when you can die in an ill-considered feat of physical prowess? If I'm going to be killed by alcohol, it's going to be while bungee-jumping naked off a minaret with a rope of bedsheets, thank you. very. much.
My first stop was Surat, a large industrial town of 2.5 million people with the world's largest diamond business. I arrived via "sleeper bus", a misnomer that leads one to expect it might be possible to sleep on board. I finally did slip into an exhausted unconsciousness around 4am only to be awoken at 5, kicked off, and left to dazedly ponder my whereabouts, which I was able to pinpoint as precisely as "under a bridge somewhere." I somehow made it to a hotel, checked in, and collapsed on the bed. When I awoke I scoured the room for clues as to my location, finally discovering in the room service menu that I was in Surat. I have woken up not knowing where I am many a time, but never before in a Dry State.
My task for the day was to buy a replacement for my Indian phone's SIM card, which requires Indian government approval and therefore is impossible to accomplish sensibly. As a foreigner with few documents and fewer contacts, this became a labor of cutting red tape with a spatula. Though I metaphorically dodged rolling boulder traps and swung on vines across pits of snakes I was ultimately unable to clear the final hurdle: proof of my location in India. Needless to say, for an itinerant travel-writer this is not exactly easy to come by. I tried multiple ploys across the city to skirt this requirement but to no avail. I finally relented, conceding that my request was probably unreasonable. It was almost as though I were trying to purchase a number for a phone that would travel with me.
Over the course of my wanderings on this quest I saw a fair amount of Surat and was shocked by what I beheld. It was crowded, ugly, and aggressively fast-paced...but it was clean. There were no huge, perpetually windblown piles of dust in front of every sidewalk. There was no livestock roaming the streets. Traffic was dense and murderous but squadrons of white-helmeted traffic police ensured that it flowed continuously rather than degenerating into gridlock. Foul water and human feces were either rocketed into orbit or were carried underground through a system of pipes. I was at last in the New India, where industry, technology, and connection to the global economy brought wealth and modernity. Wealth and modernity turn out to be a noisy gray heap, but it's a noisy gray heap that works (sort of)(I mean, it's no Geneva)(but it's also no Agra).
Surat has large Indian shopping centers by the dozens. These cavernous, multi-level, semi-open edifices at first impress (my God, there must be thousands of square inches of open space!), but then you realize that it is just the bazaar built upwards. Access to upper levels is through dark and spit-encrusted stairwells and the jumble of shops is almost as confusing as ever. This is not the sleek design of the Western malls where a brand name and a carefully-selected display case lure you in. Instead the shops beckon with an avalanche of signs that clutter every available inch of space. A typical marquee does not read "B.K. Bhawani Office Supply Shop", it reads
B.K. Bhawani Store.Its neighbor will go to even greater heights of redundancy with something like
XEROX. FAX. ISD/PCO/STD. mobile batteries. chargers. print cartridges. office stationery and supplies retailing. Printing services.
B.K. Bhawani Store, 14/1 Shurav Complex, 4th level, Mirzapur Rd., Surat (Guj.) Mobile:943798453493
Shri Krishna Memory ServicesRepeated hundredfold, it serves only to obscure where you're going because it becomes a chore where you can only find the name of the store by completing a 150-foot Gujarati wordsearch puzzle. The bazaar mentality has also carried over in other ways too. Many of these shopping centers are filled entirely with one type of store, as if the city's priests had dictated that you could only lease property in the Surapatnam Shopping Complex if you were born into the Sony/Panasonic digital camera-selling caste. Worst of all are the phone-credit vendors who receive free signage from every brand they carry, ensuring that every commercial street in the Subcontinent has at least 5 shops whose facades look like this
Offering:
DV TO CD
DV TO DVD
CD TO DVD
DVD TO CD
DVD TO DV
MEMORY CARDS
COMPUTER PRINTOUT
Shree Krishna Sales & Trading Corp., 23/5 Podrat Compound, Surat (Gujarat)
BSNLVikaparayam Enterprises Ltd. AIRTEL Vikaparayam EnterprisesAs you can see, the Byzantine procedures of SIM card shopping have left me with some bitterness towards the merchant classes. It was probably this exasperation which pushed me to embark on a mission of documentary photography after sundown by standing (or rather, hopping about madly) in the middle of the most chaotic rush-hour traffic I could find. I had to delete dozens of unrecognizably blurry photographs, the products of streaking lights in which neither I nor my subjects deemed it prudent to remain motionless for so much as a nanosecond. Photography in the thick of urban Indian traffic is like trying to simultaneously play Frogger, Dance Dance Revolution, and Pokemon Snap in an unventilated basement lined with strobe lights. The only difference is, if you lose you have to let a Cubist sculptor redesign your leg and you spend the rest of your life wheeling yourself around on a skateboard and tugging at tourists' trouser cuffs for change.
VODAFONE Vikaparayam Enterprises Ltd.
TATA INDICOMVikaparayam Enterprises LLC.
!dEAVikaparayam Enterprises Ltd.
...
After meeting a personal acquaintance (shout-out) who confirmed that yes, Surat is uncommonly functional and uninteresting, I made my way north by train to Vadodara. Vadodara, aka Baroda, is pretty much a smaller version of Surat that trades Surat's policy of actually having rubbish swept from the streets for the privilege of actually having trees. It is also home to a large and prestigious university, where the filthy street stalls make good business feeding students munching on fly-ridden ethnic food and studying from organic chemistry textbooks. I discovered that my hotel was quite close to the "Ladies' Residences" sector, where I also noted that the shards of broken glass cemented to the top of the compound walls were about twice as large and dangerous-looking as those elsewhere on campus. We all know what that means...The venue of tonight's Student Life orgy is going to have to be moved to the Faculty of Arts building.
I popped out of Vadodara as quickly as I could on a trip to see the ruined city of Champaner, former capital of the Sultanate of Gujarat and a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is allegedly devoid of tourists. I had to transfer to a second bus on the way there, and at first thought that this bus's charming aquamarine paint scheme would make up for the fact that it was apparently constructed of tin sheets recycled from a cannon-testing facility. That was until I saw that the vehicle's battery was actually just five car batteries looped together by jumper cables and sitting in a rusty open box on the floor next to the gearshift.
Champaner is not a hardly-visited spot.By "devoid of tourists" the guidebooks must shamelessly mean "devoid of white people" because there were tons of picnicking Indians and elementary school trips covering everywhere within an easy 5-minute walk of the bus stand. Here's why there's no Western tourists and the Indians go no further: it's a huge pain in the ass. There are magnificent mosques and temples scattered around but at some distance from eachother. In between are unmarked patches of countryside, ugly little villages, and random fences that make it impossible to move in a straight line towards where you're guessing the next attraction is. The "maps" the ASI has here and there are more conceptual than cartographic, missing key features such as 'roads', not being to scale, and labeling sites with uninformative captions such as "13. Mosque". When you finally do stumble into something it is quite lovely but the authorities are complete fools not to make the tiny investments necessary to make this a major tourist destination.
Perhaps the single worst bit of planning at Champaner was to locate the bus stand adjacent to a Degembara Jain temple with very low walls and a very tall nude statue, making it quite impossible for pious visiting Hindus and Muslims to catch a bus without first catching a glimpse of foot-long stone noodle.
Back in Vadodara a pair of students befriended me at the food stalls and invited me to join them in sharing some bootleg Gujarati whiskey. I declined, because Gujarati moonshine is so bad (it kills people) that for reasons of Prohibition and public health, the state assembly is currently debating making the manufacture of "spurious hooch" punishable by death. I am not down with drinking this shit. If whiskey will be the end of me it's going to be on my terms. Why die of methanol poisoning when you can die in an ill-considered feat of physical prowess? If I'm going to be killed by alcohol, it's going to be while bungee-jumping naked off a minaret with a rope of bedsheets, thank you. very. much.
Indian Rap Names
Indian Rap Names Available
Infamous Ruffian B.I.G.
Ice Lassi
Deputy Ticket Inspectah Deck
Ol' Dirty Brahmin
50 Paise
MC "Can't Touch This" Dalit
G-Unit Vitrified Tiles Mfg. Subdivision
Method-wallah
Malnourished Joe
Gorkha Boy
Mos Very Def Today, Good Sir
Jain-Z
Dr. Drenambooridipadajee
Pariah Doggy Dogg
Public Health Enemy
Utterly Ludacris
C.W.A (Cooliez With Attitude)
Indian Rap Names Already Taken
Immortal Technique
Brother Ali
Korrupt
Indian Rap Names You'll Have To Kill Me For
Ghostface Buddha
Infamous Ruffian B.I.G.
Ice Lassi
Deputy Ticket Inspectah Deck
Ol' Dirty Brahmin
50 Paise
MC "Can't Touch This" Dalit
G-Unit Vitrified Tiles Mfg. Subdivision
Method-wallah
Malnourished Joe
Gorkha Boy
Mos Very Def Today, Good Sir
Jain-Z
Dr. Drenambooridipadajee
Pariah Doggy Dogg
Public Health Enemy
Utterly Ludacris
C.W.A (Cooliez With Attitude)
Indian Rap Names Already Taken
Immortal Technique
Brother Ali
Korrupt
Indian Rap Names You'll Have To Kill Me For
Ghostface Buddha
Dec 19, 2009
Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Jainism
Reversing recent trends, here comes an effort-post.
Another day another big-ass sacred mountain. As I stood at the bottom of Shatrunjaya hill, the most holy place in the entire Jain religion, the dholi litter-bearers were desperate to carry me to the top. "It's over 3000 stairs!" they would proclaim, sure that this would persuade me to retain their services. "Only 3000?" I replied, "Bitch, please", and set off up the stairs.
This post, centered upon my visit to Shatrunjaya hill, is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Ghostface Buddha's guides to various subjects of Indian interest. I had planned to begin with the vital subject of Hinduism, only to discover that it was incredibly difficult for the same reason it is neccesary: Hinduism is really, really complicated. I will instead delay that venture until I have a better understanding of it, and will instead begin this series with Ghostface Buddha's guide to Jainism.
The Jains revere Shatrunjaya as a piece of mountaintop plucked from the Himalayas (and coincidentally deposited in Gujarat where all the Jains happen to be living) where Adinath, the first tirthankar, and 19 of the other 23 tirthankars attained enlightenment. (However this is disupted; many are said to have attained enlightenment elsewhere. This discrepancy may be due to difficulties of translation, as their are multiple levels of enlightenment, and none of these should be confused with moksha or "liberation", which most found on the other side of the country). Below Shatrunjaya is the town of Palitana, a truly unremarkable dump of a town that with only one decent restaurant, and even it serves only Jain cuisine. You've been hearing a lot about the Jains from me lately because Rajasthan and especially Gujarat were strongholds of Jain influence. In Gujarat they are common enough that most Gujarati restaurants (which are marvelously quirky places) offer "Jain options" on the menu, and invariably serve onions, lemons, and chilis on a separate little plate so as not to mistakenly serve them to Jains. Gujarati restaurants also finish the meal with a little dish of lemon-water for you to wipe your fingers in, but this is probably just the product of Gujarati restaurants' pretensions of world-class service. It is also said that Shatrunjaya will be the one mountain that floats above the floods when the world is destroyed at the end of this age. The town of Palitana at the bottom will not be spared from the Deluge. I'm sure it won't be missed.
Anyways, as I ascended the 3000 fairly forgiving stairs the temple city at the summit slowly came into view. Shatrunjaya boasts over 900 temples. I was unimpressed by this figure. Indian sites always claim to have "hundreds of temples", most of which turn out to be little boxy shrines barely big enough for to contain a small idol or mini-temples to deities' animal servants and the like in the approaches to the main temples. I climbed first not to the main cluster of temples, but to the uppermost ones from which I had a view of the entire complex, and lo and behold, there actually were 900 real temples, containing thousands upon thousands of lesser shrines. Across the plateau the linear form of the fortified walls of the numerous tunks, or temple precincts was punctuated by a sea of mighty spires projecting from within. The tunks sitauated below me revealed a labyrinth of temples small and large, squeezed between eachother wherever they could fit. As I wandered through the precincts the temples only seemed to multiply, as popping through narrow passages, rounding corners up half-concealed stairways, and weaving through forests of columns and arches led to more and more of the magnificent Jain shrines. In the lesser-known upper tunks I meandered almost alone through the canyons of carved stone, from time to time stumbling across a small group of lay pilgrims or monks paying their respects to the main temples of the less-revered tirthankars. Young pujaris (I believe this is the term), or temple-keeping apprentice priests dressed in yellow and orange carried pots of burning incense and tended to the rituals on the thousands of unvisited tirthankar idols.
Tirthankar idols are perhaps my favorite of all Indian religious art. They are similar to Buddha statues, but usually carved of serene white marble, with facial features and simple accessories made from metals, jewels, and semi-precious stones. They sit in the kayotsurga position (closely related to the lotus position), and are frequently found with offerings of lotus flowers in their laps. The more magnificent idols reach tremendous sizes and positively shine from the radiance of their marble, the glittering of silver and gold on their bodies' energy points, jewels upon their heads, and glorious crowns. Far more common are the throngs of minor idols, often numbering 108, that line the periphery of many temples. These are small, simple marble idols adorned with ceremonial pastes that reside in their own little shrines in gallery-like collections of tirthankars. One temple I was invited into was a dark, cylindrical chamber built into the bastions of a tunk which contained a circular promenade of thousands of tiny idols, repeating the chain of tirthankars through some sacred number of repetitions. Photography of Shatrunjaya's idols is strictly forbidden, but this was perhaps the last Jain site I will visit in a long time so in an ancient subterranean temple I snapped a few shots of neglected old idols purely to illustrate the art form.
Eventually I made it to the main tunk, which enclosed the temple of Adinath, the Holy of Holies in Jainism, the temple to the first tirthankara on the mountain where he found the Truth. Entering through a carved arch, the solemn austerity of the silent other tunks was replaced by the bustle of monks, nuns, and priests ascending and descending a wide staircase lined with twisting trees and marble temples with fantastic idols shining out through the many chambers. Many of these temples are the religion's principal shrine to that tirthankar, marking the point of his (or in one case, her) ultimate enlightenment, and the fineness of the idols within bears testament to their significance. Particularly striking were the figures of Neminath, in brillant black marble, and of Parsvanath with his hood of snakes.
At the top of this staircase a tunnel led into the final enclosure, the inner tunk-within-a-tunk that housed the Adinath temple. A great clamor or bells and chants echoed off the walls as hundreds of pilgrims recited prayers and from time to time praised "ADINATH....ADINATH". A pujari led me to a staircase that led to the roof of the tunk walls, from which I observed the activity below. The tops of arches formed stairs and bridges between the roofs of temples, and by one of these paths I entered the Adinath temple from above. A circular orifice allowed me to gaze down at the prostrated pilgrims in the main temple chamber below, engrossed in prayer. In the wings a long line of pilgrims snaked out from the courtyards, waiting their turn to approach the threshold of the sanctum sanctorum and pray before the main Adinath idol, a brilliant 7-foot seated statue with a silver and gold crown and huge jeweled eyes. Though high above the worshippers I remained unnoticed I took no pictures. Some things just have to be respected. From here I wandered across narrow bridges to other rooftops before returning to the Adinath temple where I stepped out onto the balcony and beheld a majestic view of endless temples crawling down the slope. The temples in the innermost tunk were unique, bizarre constructions, some with open-air shrines facing in all directions from atop towers, the shining tirthankars gazing in the cardinal directions from their lofty thrones radiating like lighthouses out to the world below.
I returned to the main level of the courtyard and circumambulated the Adinath temple. The temples behind were shaded by a revered tree, which I was told was the very tree under which Adinath achieved enlightenment (Buddhists have a similar practice, though the particular tree Buddha famously found enlightenment under is gone, and the trees revered today are ones carefully cultivated from that tree's descendants). How Adinath, who by all accounts was hundreds of meters tall and crossed kilometers with every step meditated under this tree was beyond me, but I felt it best not to poke at this precise moment. While I admired this tree, a lay Jain in pilgrim's attire approached me and spoke to me in flawless English. He took it upon himself, much to the satisfaction of his family, to explain Jainism and the Shatrunjaya hill to one of the few foreigners who had seen fit to make the journey to this sacred place. His name was Raaj, and I am indebted to him for his thoughtful explanations that demystified much of Jain belief and mythology for me.
The Jains do not believe in a "God" in the sense that Christians or even Hindus do. There is just the universe, whose lost shards are the souls of living beings. A Jain's highest goal then is to return to unity with the universe through attaining enlightenment and then liberation. The Jain cosmos is shaped like a hourglass, with this Earth in the middle. Above the Earth are about 26 layers of heavens, divided into 3 classes of abodes of gods and other heavenly beings that have attained different levels of enlightenment. This Earth is the home of humans, animals, and other lesser 'gods' (for the lack of a better term) that remain connected to earthly affairs. Below the earth are seven hells, and you do not want to be reborn there. In addition to this world, there is a parallel world, for reasons we will see later.
Time is infinite and cyclical. There is no Alpha and Omega. There are merely cycles, or chakras, of great duration in which all the events of the universe essentially repeat themselves. These chakras are divided into subperiods. We are presently in the age of kali-yuga, the age of wickedness and chaos, a concept shared with Hinduism (the age of Kali, mistress of Chaos). As the last age of the cycle, it is destined to be wicked as most of the finest souls have already been liberated from this world, leaving mostly the impure, the weak, and the wicked behind. Striving for total enlightenment in this age is hindered, in fact impossible. Thus, one must hope that the virtue of their life earns them rebirth in one of the lower heavens, from which it is possible to then hop via rebirth into the parallel world, which is currently undergoing the age of virtue. When this age ends, the world will be destroyed and history will begin anew. Raaj said we are quite close to the end, which will come in about 1000 years from today on some calendar. Jains that adhere to the other, "cosmic mind-fuck" calender of ridiculously long time periods (see below) also say that we are near the end, but have at least 100,000 years to spare.
In each cycle, many souls may achieve enlightenment, but exactly 24 will achieve such perfection as to shine as beacons to the rest of the world. These are the tirthankaras, or "crossing-makers". Of the 24 tirthankaras of the present age, the most revered are Parsvanath the 23rd, who laid out the most influential of the Jain teachings and Adinath, the first. Historians conclude that only the last two, Parsvanath and Mahavira can be dfinitively cited as historical figures, living around 800BC and 550BC respectively. Historians have traditionally said that Mahavira is the true founder of the Jain religion, and that earlier tirthankaras are likely myths, while clues indicate the some were prophets remembered from a distant, hazy past at the dawn of Indian civlization. Increasingly, they are beginning to reconsider some Jain claims that the religion is much older and may date hundreds of years earlier to at least Parsvanath's age in the same form, and may have precedents as early as the Indus Valley civilization. Jains claim that the founder of the religion (in this age) was Adinath, and depending on who you ask this happened about 80,000 years ago or some ludicrous distance (such as "592.704 Quintillion Years") in the past. Jains thus claim that they are the world's oldest active religion, Hinduism dating a mere 75,000 years in their view. From a historical perspective they may be correct, as some of the other extant religions of great age, such as Hinduism and Judaism did not exist in anything resembling their current form until well after Jainism and Buddhism were established around 550BC (Jainism slightly predates Buddhism. Some Jains will claim that Buddha himself was a Jain for some five years before rejecting it as one of the extremes to be avoided on his Middle Path to enlightenment. It is certainly known that Buddha was closely associated with some of Mahavira's disciples.)
I mentioned before that enlightenment is different from liberation. Liberation is the final act of uniting with the universe, i.e the death of an enlightened being, though "ascensions to heaven" in the Jesus-like fashion distinct from worldly death are possible but exceedingly rare. Enlightenment refers to the moment when the knowledge itself is achieved, in the Buddha-like fashion, and leaves the enlightened being time to live, walk the earth, spread his wisdom, and so on.
I gained little knowledge regarding the various fantastic myths of the various tirthankaras. There seems to be little agreement or consistency on the points of individuals living millions of years and so on. Some accounts from scripture read like the acid trips of an ascetic monk with a well-used graphing calculator, while some Jains cite figures that are surely legedary but at least try to ground themselves in the real world. If I ever get to the bottom of this matter I will let you know.
Just as there are multiple heavens, so too are there multiple levels of enlightenment, and every soul in the universe rests somewhere on a detailed map of how enlightened they are. For instance, a soul that has truly realized the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, has achieved the second of about fourteen major levels. Jainism describes five main principles for humans to concern themselves with: Non-Violence, Detachment, and Truth are the most important. Non-theft and Celibacy (in a sense) also are significant. The principle of ahimsa is from which the Jains adopt their strict vegetarianism. Many Jains wear masks to prevent breathing in and killing insects, and taken to logical extremes many monks refuse to bathe for it will kill bacteria, which are deemed just as worthy. Jains praise the marvels of modern science for making them aware of such beings, but also hold some quirky scientific beliefs. For instance, some insist that it is quite impossible to take an airplane or boat across the South Pole because it passes on the lower half of the cosmic hourglass, while passage over the Arctic region is simple and commonplace. "Look at any airline chart" Raaj told me. I declined to contend that the dearth of flights across the Antarctic likely had much to do with a low demand to short flights between Sydney and Tierra del Fuego.
The principle of Detachment is where the sects of Jainism divide. Degembara monks insist this must include clothing and wander about naked, whereas Svetembara Jains believe that due to the nature of society, limited clothing must be worn if the message is to be shown to the people. As a consequence of Degembara belief, they also claim that since women can't go around naked, women can't achieve enlightenment. Svetambara find this mysoginistic and are one of the few indigenous Indian religions that actively encourage female participation in higher religious and monastic life.
The relationship between Jainism and Hinduism is vigorously, though amiably contested. Hindus will say Jains are part of their fold. However, this is part of the same process of "Hindu-ization" that has been going on for thousands of years. Essentially, the Hindu faith attempts to co-opt any sect it does not completely despise (i.e not Muslims) by merging their gods into the Hindu pantheon, typically as "aspects" of the major deities. Criteria for inclusion in Hindu-dom seems to rest more closely upon the sects' willingness to participate in the caste system. For this reason Hinduism clashes aggressively with Islam and Christianity, and has historically tried to subvert Jainism and Buddhism for denying caste. Their answer to Buddhism for instance is to claim that Buddha was merely the 9th incarnation of Vishnu and had some pretty nice things to say but y'all are missing the point and need to start being good Hindus again. Jains accept the existence of Hindu gods, but not as "Gods" per se. They are considered more as powerful, semi-enlightened souls in the heavens that also look up to the tirthankaras, and spend their time meddling in earthly affairs for human benefit. Lakshmi thus intervenes to ensure wealth, and Ganesh is like a cosmic accountant of karma, who can advance the fortuitous benefits of good karma you are destined to accrue at a later date. A key distinction is that although they are invoked as celestial actors, like the tirthankaras themselves (which they are beneath), they are not actually Gods and are thus not worshiped.
Jains now number some 5 million people, a paltry 0.5% of the massive Indian population, which leads some of them to pessimistically label their own religion extinct in the present age. Their influence however is widely felt, as they were once much more prominent. Even today, this 0.5% of the population controls 20% of India's wealth (they are prominent figures in commerce and industry), a staggering disproportion that even they themselves are at a loss to explain. In the past when they were much more numerous, Jain ideology had a significant impact on Hinduism and vice versa. Many scholars cite Jainism as the inspiration for many Hindu sects adopting vegetarianism and non-violence. Gandhi himself credited a Jain teacher for inspiring many of his own beliefs, and the ideals of ahimsa and satya (truth) for which he was best known are distinctly of this heritage. Jain art and archicture also intertwine with Hindu traditions. Jain and Hindu temples have similar external appearances, though the figures identfied as gods or earthly chrachters such as sexy musicians in Hindu temples are said to be residents of the lower heavens in Jain templs, a sort of angel-like position of semi-divine souls that sacrifice full enlightenment for the time being to focus on helping mortals along their path.
Raaj and I concluded our discussion with an exchange of contact information (so that Raaj's somewhat well-known scholarly uncle might forward me recommendations of good books on the subject of Indian religions) and the revelation that Raaj has moved from his home in Mumbai and currently resides in -I kid you not- Edison, New Jersey.
Reading this over, I seem to have engaged in a few too many digressions and may not have done the best job of explaining some of the central tenets. In particular I wrote this a little non-sequentially with insertions and re-shufflings galore so the division of paragraphs is far from optimal, but so it goes. This is as good an explication of a complicated, ancient faith as you are going to get from a writer whose usual material consists of dick jokes and antagonistic remarks towards cows.
I finally walked back down the mountain. I had poked into nearly all the tunks, and though a few remained I felt that laying eyes on 700 or so out of the 900 was probably good enough, and the day had reached a suitable climax at the Adinath temple, so I began my descent. As I neared the bottom a crooked-toothed old man in Jain robes hobbled up to me and spoke. "Did you climb the mountain?" He asked. I responded that I had, and he asked me "Did you see the Sanctum Sanctorum?" Taken aback by his startling vocabulary I replied that yes, I had seen that as well. "You are lucky" he said. I pressed him further. People had been calling me lucky all day, in a blissful way that indicated some sort of deeper luck than merely being fortunate enough to see a lovely place. He continued "Shri Adinath teaches us that only the most lucky people can climb this mountain. You the outsider have come a very long way and shown you are among the lucky. Surely you were called here, and are doubly blessed." The Jains, in my experience, have always been among the most welcoming and magnanimous people, and they often do make me feel as though I am truly lucky.
I got off the mountain and passed through the bustle in the town below. I had a ticket for a sleeper-bus that night out to the major cities and the 'real world.' As the bus began to thump along the awful rural roads and oblivious Indian youths used their speakerphones to blare "Filmi" music well into the night, I felt as though I really was re-entering a different world. And so it is too that we return now to Ghostface Buddha's usual fare.
The hell-forged iron can rumbled down the road, the diesel fumes sneaking through its broken window frames as proof of its diabolical origin. Somewhere in Elysium, a suddenly roused Plato raises his finger and proclaims to the unhearing world above "Aha, verily the Idea of the noisome shit-wagon has been at last realized in physical form!"....
Another day another big-ass sacred mountain. As I stood at the bottom of Shatrunjaya hill, the most holy place in the entire Jain religion, the dholi litter-bearers were desperate to carry me to the top. "It's over 3000 stairs!" they would proclaim, sure that this would persuade me to retain their services. "Only 3000?" I replied, "Bitch, please", and set off up the stairs.
This post, centered upon my visit to Shatrunjaya hill, is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Ghostface Buddha's guides to various subjects of Indian interest. I had planned to begin with the vital subject of Hinduism, only to discover that it was incredibly difficult for the same reason it is neccesary: Hinduism is really, really complicated. I will instead delay that venture until I have a better understanding of it, and will instead begin this series with Ghostface Buddha's guide to Jainism.
The Jains revere Shatrunjaya as a piece of mountaintop plucked from the Himalayas (and coincidentally deposited in Gujarat where all the Jains happen to be living) where Adinath, the first tirthankar, and 19 of the other 23 tirthankars attained enlightenment. (However this is disupted; many are said to have attained enlightenment elsewhere. This discrepancy may be due to difficulties of translation, as their are multiple levels of enlightenment, and none of these should be confused with moksha or "liberation", which most found on the other side of the country). Below Shatrunjaya is the town of Palitana, a truly unremarkable dump of a town that with only one decent restaurant, and even it serves only Jain cuisine. You've been hearing a lot about the Jains from me lately because Rajasthan and especially Gujarat were strongholds of Jain influence. In Gujarat they are common enough that most Gujarati restaurants (which are marvelously quirky places) offer "Jain options" on the menu, and invariably serve onions, lemons, and chilis on a separate little plate so as not to mistakenly serve them to Jains. Gujarati restaurants also finish the meal with a little dish of lemon-water for you to wipe your fingers in, but this is probably just the product of Gujarati restaurants' pretensions of world-class service. It is also said that Shatrunjaya will be the one mountain that floats above the floods when the world is destroyed at the end of this age. The town of Palitana at the bottom will not be spared from the Deluge. I'm sure it won't be missed.
Anyways, as I ascended the 3000 fairly forgiving stairs the temple city at the summit slowly came into view. Shatrunjaya boasts over 900 temples. I was unimpressed by this figure. Indian sites always claim to have "hundreds of temples", most of which turn out to be little boxy shrines barely big enough for to contain a small idol or mini-temples to deities' animal servants and the like in the approaches to the main temples. I climbed first not to the main cluster of temples, but to the uppermost ones from which I had a view of the entire complex, and lo and behold, there actually were 900 real temples, containing thousands upon thousands of lesser shrines. Across the plateau the linear form of the fortified walls of the numerous tunks, or temple precincts was punctuated by a sea of mighty spires projecting from within. The tunks sitauated below me revealed a labyrinth of temples small and large, squeezed between eachother wherever they could fit. As I wandered through the precincts the temples only seemed to multiply, as popping through narrow passages, rounding corners up half-concealed stairways, and weaving through forests of columns and arches led to more and more of the magnificent Jain shrines. In the lesser-known upper tunks I meandered almost alone through the canyons of carved stone, from time to time stumbling across a small group of lay pilgrims or monks paying their respects to the main temples of the less-revered tirthankars. Young pujaris (I believe this is the term), or temple-keeping apprentice priests dressed in yellow and orange carried pots of burning incense and tended to the rituals on the thousands of unvisited tirthankar idols.
Tirthankar idols are perhaps my favorite of all Indian religious art. They are similar to Buddha statues, but usually carved of serene white marble, with facial features and simple accessories made from metals, jewels, and semi-precious stones. They sit in the kayotsurga position (closely related to the lotus position), and are frequently found with offerings of lotus flowers in their laps. The more magnificent idols reach tremendous sizes and positively shine from the radiance of their marble, the glittering of silver and gold on their bodies' energy points, jewels upon their heads, and glorious crowns. Far more common are the throngs of minor idols, often numbering 108, that line the periphery of many temples. These are small, simple marble idols adorned with ceremonial pastes that reside in their own little shrines in gallery-like collections of tirthankars. One temple I was invited into was a dark, cylindrical chamber built into the bastions of a tunk which contained a circular promenade of thousands of tiny idols, repeating the chain of tirthankars through some sacred number of repetitions. Photography of Shatrunjaya's idols is strictly forbidden, but this was perhaps the last Jain site I will visit in a long time so in an ancient subterranean temple I snapped a few shots of neglected old idols purely to illustrate the art form.
Eventually I made it to the main tunk, which enclosed the temple of Adinath, the Holy of Holies in Jainism, the temple to the first tirthankara on the mountain where he found the Truth. Entering through a carved arch, the solemn austerity of the silent other tunks was replaced by the bustle of monks, nuns, and priests ascending and descending a wide staircase lined with twisting trees and marble temples with fantastic idols shining out through the many chambers. Many of these temples are the religion's principal shrine to that tirthankar, marking the point of his (or in one case, her) ultimate enlightenment, and the fineness of the idols within bears testament to their significance. Particularly striking were the figures of Neminath, in brillant black marble, and of Parsvanath with his hood of snakes.
At the top of this staircase a tunnel led into the final enclosure, the inner tunk-within-a-tunk that housed the Adinath temple. A great clamor or bells and chants echoed off the walls as hundreds of pilgrims recited prayers and from time to time praised "ADINATH....ADINATH". A pujari led me to a staircase that led to the roof of the tunk walls, from which I observed the activity below. The tops of arches formed stairs and bridges between the roofs of temples, and by one of these paths I entered the Adinath temple from above. A circular orifice allowed me to gaze down at the prostrated pilgrims in the main temple chamber below, engrossed in prayer. In the wings a long line of pilgrims snaked out from the courtyards, waiting their turn to approach the threshold of the sanctum sanctorum and pray before the main Adinath idol, a brilliant 7-foot seated statue with a silver and gold crown and huge jeweled eyes. Though high above the worshippers I remained unnoticed I took no pictures. Some things just have to be respected. From here I wandered across narrow bridges to other rooftops before returning to the Adinath temple where I stepped out onto the balcony and beheld a majestic view of endless temples crawling down the slope. The temples in the innermost tunk were unique, bizarre constructions, some with open-air shrines facing in all directions from atop towers, the shining tirthankars gazing in the cardinal directions from their lofty thrones radiating like lighthouses out to the world below.
I returned to the main level of the courtyard and circumambulated the Adinath temple. The temples behind were shaded by a revered tree, which I was told was the very tree under which Adinath achieved enlightenment (Buddhists have a similar practice, though the particular tree Buddha famously found enlightenment under is gone, and the trees revered today are ones carefully cultivated from that tree's descendants). How Adinath, who by all accounts was hundreds of meters tall and crossed kilometers with every step meditated under this tree was beyond me, but I felt it best not to poke at this precise moment. While I admired this tree, a lay Jain in pilgrim's attire approached me and spoke to me in flawless English. He took it upon himself, much to the satisfaction of his family, to explain Jainism and the Shatrunjaya hill to one of the few foreigners who had seen fit to make the journey to this sacred place. His name was Raaj, and I am indebted to him for his thoughtful explanations that demystified much of Jain belief and mythology for me.
The Jains do not believe in a "God" in the sense that Christians or even Hindus do. There is just the universe, whose lost shards are the souls of living beings. A Jain's highest goal then is to return to unity with the universe through attaining enlightenment and then liberation. The Jain cosmos is shaped like a hourglass, with this Earth in the middle. Above the Earth are about 26 layers of heavens, divided into 3 classes of abodes of gods and other heavenly beings that have attained different levels of enlightenment. This Earth is the home of humans, animals, and other lesser 'gods' (for the lack of a better term) that remain connected to earthly affairs. Below the earth are seven hells, and you do not want to be reborn there. In addition to this world, there is a parallel world, for reasons we will see later.
Time is infinite and cyclical. There is no Alpha and Omega. There are merely cycles, or chakras, of great duration in which all the events of the universe essentially repeat themselves. These chakras are divided into subperiods. We are presently in the age of kali-yuga, the age of wickedness and chaos, a concept shared with Hinduism (the age of Kali, mistress of Chaos). As the last age of the cycle, it is destined to be wicked as most of the finest souls have already been liberated from this world, leaving mostly the impure, the weak, and the wicked behind. Striving for total enlightenment in this age is hindered, in fact impossible. Thus, one must hope that the virtue of their life earns them rebirth in one of the lower heavens, from which it is possible to then hop via rebirth into the parallel world, which is currently undergoing the age of virtue. When this age ends, the world will be destroyed and history will begin anew. Raaj said we are quite close to the end, which will come in about 1000 years from today on some calendar. Jains that adhere to the other, "cosmic mind-fuck" calender of ridiculously long time periods (see below) also say that we are near the end, but have at least 100,000 years to spare.
In each cycle, many souls may achieve enlightenment, but exactly 24 will achieve such perfection as to shine as beacons to the rest of the world. These are the tirthankaras, or "crossing-makers". Of the 24 tirthankaras of the present age, the most revered are Parsvanath the 23rd, who laid out the most influential of the Jain teachings and Adinath, the first. Historians conclude that only the last two, Parsvanath and Mahavira can be dfinitively cited as historical figures, living around 800BC and 550BC respectively. Historians have traditionally said that Mahavira is the true founder of the Jain religion, and that earlier tirthankaras are likely myths, while clues indicate the some were prophets remembered from a distant, hazy past at the dawn of Indian civlization. Increasingly, they are beginning to reconsider some Jain claims that the religion is much older and may date hundreds of years earlier to at least Parsvanath's age in the same form, and may have precedents as early as the Indus Valley civilization. Jains claim that the founder of the religion (in this age) was Adinath, and depending on who you ask this happened about 80,000 years ago or some ludicrous distance (such as "592.704 Quintillion Years") in the past. Jains thus claim that they are the world's oldest active religion, Hinduism dating a mere 75,000 years in their view. From a historical perspective they may be correct, as some of the other extant religions of great age, such as Hinduism and Judaism did not exist in anything resembling their current form until well after Jainism and Buddhism were established around 550BC (Jainism slightly predates Buddhism. Some Jains will claim that Buddha himself was a Jain for some five years before rejecting it as one of the extremes to be avoided on his Middle Path to enlightenment. It is certainly known that Buddha was closely associated with some of Mahavira's disciples.)
I mentioned before that enlightenment is different from liberation. Liberation is the final act of uniting with the universe, i.e the death of an enlightened being, though "ascensions to heaven" in the Jesus-like fashion distinct from worldly death are possible but exceedingly rare. Enlightenment refers to the moment when the knowledge itself is achieved, in the Buddha-like fashion, and leaves the enlightened being time to live, walk the earth, spread his wisdom, and so on.
I gained little knowledge regarding the various fantastic myths of the various tirthankaras. There seems to be little agreement or consistency on the points of individuals living millions of years and so on. Some accounts from scripture read like the acid trips of an ascetic monk with a well-used graphing calculator, while some Jains cite figures that are surely legedary but at least try to ground themselves in the real world. If I ever get to the bottom of this matter I will let you know.
Just as there are multiple heavens, so too are there multiple levels of enlightenment, and every soul in the universe rests somewhere on a detailed map of how enlightened they are. For instance, a soul that has truly realized the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, has achieved the second of about fourteen major levels. Jainism describes five main principles for humans to concern themselves with: Non-Violence, Detachment, and Truth are the most important. Non-theft and Celibacy (in a sense) also are significant. The principle of ahimsa is from which the Jains adopt their strict vegetarianism. Many Jains wear masks to prevent breathing in and killing insects, and taken to logical extremes many monks refuse to bathe for it will kill bacteria, which are deemed just as worthy. Jains praise the marvels of modern science for making them aware of such beings, but also hold some quirky scientific beliefs. For instance, some insist that it is quite impossible to take an airplane or boat across the South Pole because it passes on the lower half of the cosmic hourglass, while passage over the Arctic region is simple and commonplace. "Look at any airline chart" Raaj told me. I declined to contend that the dearth of flights across the Antarctic likely had much to do with a low demand to short flights between Sydney and Tierra del Fuego.
The principle of Detachment is where the sects of Jainism divide. Degembara monks insist this must include clothing and wander about naked, whereas Svetembara Jains believe that due to the nature of society, limited clothing must be worn if the message is to be shown to the people. As a consequence of Degembara belief, they also claim that since women can't go around naked, women can't achieve enlightenment. Svetambara find this mysoginistic and are one of the few indigenous Indian religions that actively encourage female participation in higher religious and monastic life.
The relationship between Jainism and Hinduism is vigorously, though amiably contested. Hindus will say Jains are part of their fold. However, this is part of the same process of "Hindu-ization" that has been going on for thousands of years. Essentially, the Hindu faith attempts to co-opt any sect it does not completely despise (i.e not Muslims) by merging their gods into the Hindu pantheon, typically as "aspects" of the major deities. Criteria for inclusion in Hindu-dom seems to rest more closely upon the sects' willingness to participate in the caste system. For this reason Hinduism clashes aggressively with Islam and Christianity, and has historically tried to subvert Jainism and Buddhism for denying caste. Their answer to Buddhism for instance is to claim that Buddha was merely the 9th incarnation of Vishnu and had some pretty nice things to say but y'all are missing the point and need to start being good Hindus again. Jains accept the existence of Hindu gods, but not as "Gods" per se. They are considered more as powerful, semi-enlightened souls in the heavens that also look up to the tirthankaras, and spend their time meddling in earthly affairs for human benefit. Lakshmi thus intervenes to ensure wealth, and Ganesh is like a cosmic accountant of karma, who can advance the fortuitous benefits of good karma you are destined to accrue at a later date. A key distinction is that although they are invoked as celestial actors, like the tirthankaras themselves (which they are beneath), they are not actually Gods and are thus not worshiped.
Jains now number some 5 million people, a paltry 0.5% of the massive Indian population, which leads some of them to pessimistically label their own religion extinct in the present age. Their influence however is widely felt, as they were once much more prominent. Even today, this 0.5% of the population controls 20% of India's wealth (they are prominent figures in commerce and industry), a staggering disproportion that even they themselves are at a loss to explain. In the past when they were much more numerous, Jain ideology had a significant impact on Hinduism and vice versa. Many scholars cite Jainism as the inspiration for many Hindu sects adopting vegetarianism and non-violence. Gandhi himself credited a Jain teacher for inspiring many of his own beliefs, and the ideals of ahimsa and satya (truth) for which he was best known are distinctly of this heritage. Jain art and archicture also intertwine with Hindu traditions. Jain and Hindu temples have similar external appearances, though the figures identfied as gods or earthly chrachters such as sexy musicians in Hindu temples are said to be residents of the lower heavens in Jain templs, a sort of angel-like position of semi-divine souls that sacrifice full enlightenment for the time being to focus on helping mortals along their path.
Raaj and I concluded our discussion with an exchange of contact information (so that Raaj's somewhat well-known scholarly uncle might forward me recommendations of good books on the subject of Indian religions) and the revelation that Raaj has moved from his home in Mumbai and currently resides in -I kid you not- Edison, New Jersey.
Reading this over, I seem to have engaged in a few too many digressions and may not have done the best job of explaining some of the central tenets. In particular I wrote this a little non-sequentially with insertions and re-shufflings galore so the division of paragraphs is far from optimal, but so it goes. This is as good an explication of a complicated, ancient faith as you are going to get from a writer whose usual material consists of dick jokes and antagonistic remarks towards cows.
I finally walked back down the mountain. I had poked into nearly all the tunks, and though a few remained I felt that laying eyes on 700 or so out of the 900 was probably good enough, and the day had reached a suitable climax at the Adinath temple, so I began my descent. As I neared the bottom a crooked-toothed old man in Jain robes hobbled up to me and spoke. "Did you climb the mountain?" He asked. I responded that I had, and he asked me "Did you see the Sanctum Sanctorum?" Taken aback by his startling vocabulary I replied that yes, I had seen that as well. "You are lucky" he said. I pressed him further. People had been calling me lucky all day, in a blissful way that indicated some sort of deeper luck than merely being fortunate enough to see a lovely place. He continued "Shri Adinath teaches us that only the most lucky people can climb this mountain. You the outsider have come a very long way and shown you are among the lucky. Surely you were called here, and are doubly blessed." The Jains, in my experience, have always been among the most welcoming and magnanimous people, and they often do make me feel as though I am truly lucky.
I got off the mountain and passed through the bustle in the town below. I had a ticket for a sleeper-bus that night out to the major cities and the 'real world.' As the bus began to thump along the awful rural roads and oblivious Indian youths used their speakerphones to blare "Filmi" music well into the night, I felt as though I really was re-entering a different world. And so it is too that we return now to Ghostface Buddha's usual fare.
The hell-forged iron can rumbled down the road, the diesel fumes sneaking through its broken window frames as proof of its diabolical origin. Somewhere in Elysium, a suddenly roused Plato raises his finger and proclaims to the unhearing world above "Aha, verily the Idea of the noisome shit-wagon has been at last realized in physical form!"....
Dec 18, 2009
Diu: The Definitive Report....naaahhhhh
Diu: to write at length about it would be to revolt against the spirit of the place. Diu is a former Gujarati and Ottoman port island that was held by the Portuguese for some 400 years, and has adopted a charming Portuguese indolence. I spent a few days doing little but wandering the old Portuguese streets, lounging on the quiet beaches, and listening to the drunken ramblings of the handful of alcoholic Gujaratis who still loiter about this Prohibition-free enclave on weeknights. There are lovely old Portuguese churches. The church of St Paul looks like some sort of giant, maritime-themed pastry, the sort of place Princess Peach would build if she were a born-again Catholic. There's a fort on the tip of the island, and another, incredibly phallic fort seemingly afloat in the straits.
Just spent the whole day unsuccessfully trying to overcome layers of red Indian red tape in a big, bland industrial city. Just thinking about Diu makes me want to kick back and have a banana lassi over some coconut-curried prawns.
What to say about Diu? I don't know, man, I just sat around and ate seafood all day. Diu is all right in my book.
Just spent the whole day unsuccessfully trying to overcome layers of red Indian red tape in a big, bland industrial city. Just thinking about Diu makes me want to kick back and have a banana lassi over some coconut-curried prawns.
What to say about Diu? I don't know, man, I just sat around and ate seafood all day. Diu is all right in my book.
The Ghostface Buddha Theme Song
I was listening to music on yet another lousy bus ride, when I stumbled across this gem I had forgotten about. I immediately decided it would have to be Ghostface Buddha's theme song.
Click Here
Woe to you, oh Earth and sea...
Click Here
Woe to you, oh Earth and sea...
Dec 15, 2009
StairMasta Killa
I came to Jungadh to climb Mt. Girnar. At a hilltop fort on the edge of town I looked about me and wondered "Which of these peaks is Mt. Girnar?" Then I saw it. There was no question that the next day I would be ascending the massive, ludicrously steep extinct volcano I saw before me. Mt. Girnar is holy to the Hindus, but especially to the Jains, who believe that Neminath, the 22nd tirthankar, ascended to heaven from the mountaintop after 700 years of meditation. The summit is reached by climbing 10,000 steps. Ten. Thousand. Steps. As I surged upwards for unknown hours, time became nothing, even altitude held no meaning. There were only steps, and the more steps I climbed the further behind I left the rational world. This is the chronicle of the steps, unedited and unaltered.
Step 800. It's about 10am and I've been climbing the mountain for some time. I've just noticed that every so often the steps are numbered and have decided to keep a journal of my ascent. I can't believe I've only climbed 800. It feels like thousands, and there will be thousands more. There are people coming down the mountain. Old female Jain monks wrapped in white robes and carrying sticks, scrolls, and even dishes of holy water are descending with the greatest of ease. I see old Hindu people slowly hobbling down as well. How did they get up? I'm strained as it is. What's their secret?
Step 900. It is ridiculously hot. The temperature has surged over 90 degrees Fahrenheit and I'm already drenched with sweat. I'm still in the mere foothills of the real mountain, and it definitely gets steeper ahead. It's gonna be a long day.
Step 1100: I'm overtaken by a porter with two huge boxes of food and water tied to his head. He's delivering merchandise to one of the many much-needed rest-stalls on the ascent. The sun is rising mercilessly high in the sky. Men with cargo are moving faster than me. This is not good.
Step 1250: I have climbed 1250 stairs. There are...damn. I am 12.5% of the way to the top. This is obscene.
Step 1700: It took 9 years to build this staircase. If I may suggest something...if it takes 9 YEARS to build the stairs, at the start of the 20th century no less, perhaps the builders would have saved themselves and everyone else a lot of trouble and built a damn cable car instead. Even religious pilgrims would not complain about being carried up this beast.
Step 1900: 1,900/10,000 ffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk
Step 2300: Less writing, more climbing. I'm now high on the mountain. The stairs are cut into the side of a sheer cliff face and are becoming relentlessly steep. It's high enough that minor Hindu shrines have started appearing. Many of the Hindus are quitting here. There are two porters ahead, sharing a load suspended from beneath a large pole they carry on their shoulders. They grunt and sweat, and as go around a hairpin corner ahead I see their cargo: a fat, huffy Hindu woman sitting cross-legged in a hanging litter. GOD DAMN IT. THAT'S HOW THEY GET UP. They actually do just get carried up. There is no difficulty that Indian people can't overcome by hiring a poorer Indian to overcome it for them.
Step 2550: I hear screeching whistles. Two police officers with feathered hats, flawlessly ironed blue shirts, and wood-handled rifles are flying down the stairs, shooing everybody in their path. Behind them follows an entourage: four men bearing a litter with a very distinguished old Jain monk are skipping down the stairs at a terrifying pace.
Step 2750: I stop to read an inscription by a Hindu shrine. It marks the spot where a son is commemorating his father, a Maharaja's, ascent to heaven "joining with God." I wonder which Maharaja it was. It doesn't say. But there is more writing. The "Maharaja" died in... 2001. I hate maharajas.
Step 3150: A rest-stall ahead. I hear music. It can't be. I wanna make love right now na na. It is. AKON, YOU BASTARD. WHY MUST YOU HAUNT ME IN ALL MY TIMES OF STRUGGLE? INDIAN PEOPLE, YOU BASTARDS, WHY MUST YOU LISTEN TO AKON?
Step 3250: Music again. It's not Akon. It's....Aaliyah? I recall that Aaliyah died young after plummeting from a great height. I try not to read it is an omen.
Step 3450: I do not smell good.
Step 3900: I walk through a stone gateway and I am in the Jain temple city. How? There should be thousands more stairs. I ask a pilgrim how many stairs there are. He says 10,000. But we're only about 4000 up? Oh, you see, there is a miscount! They didn't number the first 3,000 stairs.
That explains a lot.
The temples were as usual fascinating. They cascaded down the edge of the small plateau they were set on, creating a multi-layered mosaic of spires and domes seen from above. Within the temple precinct hundreds of shrines to marble tirthankaras are serenely attended to by white-masked Jain monks. Paste is rubbed on the statues' feet, and grains of rice are laid out in swastikas in front of carved marble mandalas. From the center of the main temple and eery chant is heard. I creep to the antechamber and look within. A hundred pilgrims are crammed into the dark sanctuary where Jain priests and monks are attending to a pitch-black marble statue of Neminath with a golden crown. They wash and polish pieces of gilded armor which they place on the idol's shoulders and the pilgrims prostrate themselves in adulation. There are dozens of temples more. A walk into a tiny temple to find it completely occupied by a 16-foot marble statue of Shantinath. In another I lose myself in a labyrinth of narrow hallways before emerging near the central shrine where an image of Mahavira sits above a mound of flower petals.
I resume climbing.
Step40007000. In front of me a pigeon is laboriously climbing the mountain one step at a time. How stupid can a bird be? YOU HAVE WINGS, ASSHOLE.
Step40507050. There's another Jain temple a little above the temple city. I peek around and take some pictures of the temples below as I was forbidden to photograph their interiors. A pilgrim invites me inside the sanctuary. I am made to pray before the image of Adinath and my forehead is marked with tikka paste. It's a Digambara Jain shrine. This is the hardcore branch of Jainism. Their monks don't wear white robes and masks, in fact they don't wear anything. You can instantly tell you're in a Digambara temple by the numerous photographs of completely naked gurus lying around. This is probably why Svetambara Jains refuse to share temples with them.
Step 7150: 7150...the shit I make myself do...
Step 7350: I have reached a summit. There is a Hindu temple up here, and I see a narrow ridge with more peaks beyond. I walk behind the temple. There is a large concrete platform. I go to the edge, assuming it is there to offer a special vista. It is spectacular but the platform seems unnecessarily large. I notice a ring of faded yellow paint, and in the center....an H. It's a helipad. FUCK.
Step 7500: I have descended some steps and walked across level ground on a stone causeway and then walked up some more steps. There is a small Shiva shrine on this second peak. An orange-robed saddhu speaks to me, smiles, and insists I sit next to him. We make some conversation in poor English and he motions me to get up. He applies more tikka paste to my head and yammers a Hindi recitation of some sort, then points me to a tiny hole in the rocks coated in orange paint and tells me to crawl through, as it is sacred to Shiva. I get on hands on knees. The tunnel can't be more than 18 inches tall. I worm my way through the dust until I emerge from the tunnel and find myself...on the other side of the rock. I stand, look around for a bit, and casually walk around to the front of the rock, where the saddhu is encouraging others to do the same thing. I laugh it off and tell the saddhu I will see him later when I come back down the mountain.
Step 7850?: I don't know how many steps there are. Even the monks haven't bothered to label them this far. All I know is that there are a lot.
Step 7900?: The next peak is an impossibly steep upthrust of rock with a single shack-like temple upon its pinnacle. It's almost vertical with no stairs to be seen. I don't know how they built it. There are no steps up and carrying building materials must have been incredibly difficult. Oh well, at least there's no stairs so I can't be expected to climb it.
Step 8250?: WRONG. There are stairs on the far side of the volcanic tower. The ascent is so steep that the builders couldn't build stairs on the mountain itself, but were forced to build artificial bulwarks zig-zaging into the heavens alongside the cliff face to reach the top. Ugh. Why do I have to hate quitting so much? Up I go.
Step X: Counting stairs is futile. It's probably been about 9000. I'm at the very top of the third peak. A saddhu is controlling proceedings in the small temple, and being a bit of an imperious ass to the pilgrims, instructing them impatiently in the rituals they must perform. He takes one look at me, sees I am clearly not here for that blessing, smiles and covers my entire forehead with tikka then gives me a tiny piece of coconut. I walk around the three-headed idol, take one last look at the wilderness below us, and steel myself for the descent to the ridge and arduous ascent back to the second peak.
Step X: Some pilgrims take me under their wing and lead me to a remote temple compound down a spur of the stairs on the mountainside. There is a pilgrim shelter and I receive a blessed meal of lentils and rice. They ask no money for the food, but I discreetly slip some small banknotes into the offering tray by the shrine.
Step X: I'm back at the second peak. The crazy saddhu is still there. I say hello.
"Aaaahhhh hello, you name Brazil!"
"Uh no, my name is [GFB's 'Indian name']"
"Braziiiiil!"
He motions for me to sit and talk. I sit. He assumes the lotus position and begins humming. Every so often he asks me a question or dispenses some garbled explanation of his meditations. Often when he would ask me a question I would begin to answer and he would cut me off by saying "Silence! Oooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" and resuming his humming. He asks me another question. I begin to answer, and he squawks "Silence!" then walks away giggling behind a rock. A hear him quietly saying "Silence! Attention! hee hee" and then giggling to himself some more. I decide it will be well worth it to ride this out and see what happens.
He invites me into his house for tea. Opposite the shrine he has a single-room plaster dwelling with a bed and a gas stove. He begins boiling water. I ask him if it is OK for me to take photographs in his house. He replies "Not my babu problem, yours." I tried to unravel his answer. Was he saying that he had no problem with it but that I would? Was I the one likely to suffer some mysterious consequence. I look behind me and above the bed is a poster of Kali, the black-skinned Mistress of Chaos with a necklace of human skulls. I choose not to photograph that side of the house.
He hands me a metal cup of tea but it is too hot to handle and I fumble with it clumsily. He takes my cup and pours the tea into a saucer. "Indian satellite" he says. What? He points to the roof. "TV TV, satellite. Tea dish Indian satellite." Finally I understand he is calling the tea dish an Indian satellite and begin to joke with him when he raises his hand to cut me off..."Ooom Ommmmmm Oooommmmm Namaaaste Ooom Namaste *BBBBUUUUURRRPPPP* God, God, God."
It is becoming problematically late in the afternoon. If I don't leave soon the sun will set while I try and make it down some 7,000 unlit stairs, but I just can't tear myself away.
There is a loud metal rattling. A mouse is climbing around the crockery rack. It runs down a ladel, hangs upside down, and begins swinging from spoon to spoon.
"This good?" The saddhu asks giddily.
"Is it good?" I reply cautiously.
He points to the acrobatic mouse, "This good. This commando!"
He smiles broadly. I smile. Silence.
"hee hee hee"
"OOoooooommmmmMMmmmmmmmm"
"India man very lucky!"
"Lucky?" I ask. If there was one thing India did not seem to possess it was good luck. He then proceeded the explain the joys of asceticism, and how the Indian man could have no worries in the world by renouncing possessions and living simply. I had been waiting for this cue, as I do every time I meet an ascetic.
"In my country we have a saying about money, that it's not good." I told him.
"Yes?" he asked, grinning.
"Mo' money, mo' problems." I said as though I were reciting an ancient scroll.
"More money more problems, yes!" he replied.
"hee hee"
"Oooooooommmmmmmmmmm"
"hee hee hee"
"More money more problems. hee OOOMmmmmmmmm"
"Silence!"
I had been in his hut for almost two hours and the sun now seemed to be mere inches from falling behind the opposite hillside. I excused myself and set one foot out the door.
"Ba ba ba ba ba"
I turned and looked.
"Ok bye bye Brazil."
"My name's....never mind."
"Brraaaaaaaaaazzzziillllllllll."
Step X: I'm at the bottom and I don't know what the fuck happened to me today.
Step 800. It's about 10am and I've been climbing the mountain for some time. I've just noticed that every so often the steps are numbered and have decided to keep a journal of my ascent. I can't believe I've only climbed 800. It feels like thousands, and there will be thousands more. There are people coming down the mountain. Old female Jain monks wrapped in white robes and carrying sticks, scrolls, and even dishes of holy water are descending with the greatest of ease. I see old Hindu people slowly hobbling down as well. How did they get up? I'm strained as it is. What's their secret?
Step 900. It is ridiculously hot. The temperature has surged over 90 degrees Fahrenheit and I'm already drenched with sweat. I'm still in the mere foothills of the real mountain, and it definitely gets steeper ahead. It's gonna be a long day.
Step 1100: I'm overtaken by a porter with two huge boxes of food and water tied to his head. He's delivering merchandise to one of the many much-needed rest-stalls on the ascent. The sun is rising mercilessly high in the sky. Men with cargo are moving faster than me. This is not good.
Step 1250: I have climbed 1250 stairs. There are...damn. I am 12.5% of the way to the top. This is obscene.
Step 1700: It took 9 years to build this staircase. If I may suggest something...if it takes 9 YEARS to build the stairs, at the start of the 20th century no less, perhaps the builders would have saved themselves and everyone else a lot of trouble and built a damn cable car instead. Even religious pilgrims would not complain about being carried up this beast.
Step 1900: 1,900/10,000 ffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk
Step 2300: Less writing, more climbing. I'm now high on the mountain. The stairs are cut into the side of a sheer cliff face and are becoming relentlessly steep. It's high enough that minor Hindu shrines have started appearing. Many of the Hindus are quitting here. There are two porters ahead, sharing a load suspended from beneath a large pole they carry on their shoulders. They grunt and sweat, and as go around a hairpin corner ahead I see their cargo: a fat, huffy Hindu woman sitting cross-legged in a hanging litter. GOD DAMN IT. THAT'S HOW THEY GET UP. They actually do just get carried up. There is no difficulty that Indian people can't overcome by hiring a poorer Indian to overcome it for them.
Step 2550: I hear screeching whistles. Two police officers with feathered hats, flawlessly ironed blue shirts, and wood-handled rifles are flying down the stairs, shooing everybody in their path. Behind them follows an entourage: four men bearing a litter with a very distinguished old Jain monk are skipping down the stairs at a terrifying pace.
Step 2750: I stop to read an inscription by a Hindu shrine. It marks the spot where a son is commemorating his father, a Maharaja's, ascent to heaven "joining with God." I wonder which Maharaja it was. It doesn't say. But there is more writing. The "Maharaja" died in... 2001. I hate maharajas.
Step 3150: A rest-stall ahead. I hear music. It can't be. I wanna make love right now na na. It is. AKON, YOU BASTARD. WHY MUST YOU HAUNT ME IN ALL MY TIMES OF STRUGGLE? INDIAN PEOPLE, YOU BASTARDS, WHY MUST YOU LISTEN TO AKON?
Step 3250: Music again. It's not Akon. It's....Aaliyah? I recall that Aaliyah died young after plummeting from a great height. I try not to read it is an omen.
Step 3450: I do not smell good.
Step 3900: I walk through a stone gateway and I am in the Jain temple city. How? There should be thousands more stairs. I ask a pilgrim how many stairs there are. He says 10,000. But we're only about 4000 up? Oh, you see, there is a miscount! They didn't number the first 3,000 stairs.
That explains a lot.
The temples were as usual fascinating. They cascaded down the edge of the small plateau they were set on, creating a multi-layered mosaic of spires and domes seen from above. Within the temple precinct hundreds of shrines to marble tirthankaras are serenely attended to by white-masked Jain monks. Paste is rubbed on the statues' feet, and grains of rice are laid out in swastikas in front of carved marble mandalas. From the center of the main temple and eery chant is heard. I creep to the antechamber and look within. A hundred pilgrims are crammed into the dark sanctuary where Jain priests and monks are attending to a pitch-black marble statue of Neminath with a golden crown. They wash and polish pieces of gilded armor which they place on the idol's shoulders and the pilgrims prostrate themselves in adulation. There are dozens of temples more. A walk into a tiny temple to find it completely occupied by a 16-foot marble statue of Shantinath. In another I lose myself in a labyrinth of narrow hallways before emerging near the central shrine where an image of Mahavira sits above a mound of flower petals.
I resume climbing.
Step
Step
Step 7150: 7150...the shit I make myself do...
Step 7350: I have reached a summit. There is a Hindu temple up here, and I see a narrow ridge with more peaks beyond. I walk behind the temple. There is a large concrete platform. I go to the edge, assuming it is there to offer a special vista. It is spectacular but the platform seems unnecessarily large. I notice a ring of faded yellow paint, and in the center....an H. It's a helipad. FUCK.
Step 7500: I have descended some steps and walked across level ground on a stone causeway and then walked up some more steps. There is a small Shiva shrine on this second peak. An orange-robed saddhu speaks to me, smiles, and insists I sit next to him. We make some conversation in poor English and he motions me to get up. He applies more tikka paste to my head and yammers a Hindi recitation of some sort, then points me to a tiny hole in the rocks coated in orange paint and tells me to crawl through, as it is sacred to Shiva. I get on hands on knees. The tunnel can't be more than 18 inches tall. I worm my way through the dust until I emerge from the tunnel and find myself...on the other side of the rock. I stand, look around for a bit, and casually walk around to the front of the rock, where the saddhu is encouraging others to do the same thing. I laugh it off and tell the saddhu I will see him later when I come back down the mountain.
Step 7850?: I don't know how many steps there are. Even the monks haven't bothered to label them this far. All I know is that there are a lot.
Step 7900?: The next peak is an impossibly steep upthrust of rock with a single shack-like temple upon its pinnacle. It's almost vertical with no stairs to be seen. I don't know how they built it. There are no steps up and carrying building materials must have been incredibly difficult. Oh well, at least there's no stairs so I can't be expected to climb it.
Step 8250?: WRONG. There are stairs on the far side of the volcanic tower. The ascent is so steep that the builders couldn't build stairs on the mountain itself, but were forced to build artificial bulwarks zig-zaging into the heavens alongside the cliff face to reach the top. Ugh. Why do I have to hate quitting so much? Up I go.
Step X: Counting stairs is futile. It's probably been about 9000. I'm at the very top of the third peak. A saddhu is controlling proceedings in the small temple, and being a bit of an imperious ass to the pilgrims, instructing them impatiently in the rituals they must perform. He takes one look at me, sees I am clearly not here for that blessing, smiles and covers my entire forehead with tikka then gives me a tiny piece of coconut. I walk around the three-headed idol, take one last look at the wilderness below us, and steel myself for the descent to the ridge and arduous ascent back to the second peak.
Step X: Some pilgrims take me under their wing and lead me to a remote temple compound down a spur of the stairs on the mountainside. There is a pilgrim shelter and I receive a blessed meal of lentils and rice. They ask no money for the food, but I discreetly slip some small banknotes into the offering tray by the shrine.
Step X: I'm back at the second peak. The crazy saddhu is still there. I say hello.
"Aaaahhhh hello, you name Brazil!"
"Uh no, my name is [GFB's 'Indian name']"
"Braziiiiil!"
He motions for me to sit and talk. I sit. He assumes the lotus position and begins humming. Every so often he asks me a question or dispenses some garbled explanation of his meditations. Often when he would ask me a question I would begin to answer and he would cut me off by saying "Silence! Oooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" and resuming his humming. He asks me another question. I begin to answer, and he squawks "Silence!" then walks away giggling behind a rock. A hear him quietly saying "Silence! Attention! hee hee" and then giggling to himself some more. I decide it will be well worth it to ride this out and see what happens.
He invites me into his house for tea. Opposite the shrine he has a single-room plaster dwelling with a bed and a gas stove. He begins boiling water. I ask him if it is OK for me to take photographs in his house. He replies "Not my babu problem, yours." I tried to unravel his answer. Was he saying that he had no problem with it but that I would? Was I the one likely to suffer some mysterious consequence. I look behind me and above the bed is a poster of Kali, the black-skinned Mistress of Chaos with a necklace of human skulls. I choose not to photograph that side of the house.
He hands me a metal cup of tea but it is too hot to handle and I fumble with it clumsily. He takes my cup and pours the tea into a saucer. "Indian satellite" he says. What? He points to the roof. "TV TV, satellite. Tea dish Indian satellite." Finally I understand he is calling the tea dish an Indian satellite and begin to joke with him when he raises his hand to cut me off..."Ooom Ommmmmm Oooommmmm Namaaaste Ooom Namaste *BBBBUUUUURRRPPPP* God, God, God."
It is becoming problematically late in the afternoon. If I don't leave soon the sun will set while I try and make it down some 7,000 unlit stairs, but I just can't tear myself away.
There is a loud metal rattling. A mouse is climbing around the crockery rack. It runs down a ladel, hangs upside down, and begins swinging from spoon to spoon.
"This good?" The saddhu asks giddily.
"Is it good?" I reply cautiously.
He points to the acrobatic mouse, "This good. This commando!"
He smiles broadly. I smile. Silence.
"hee hee hee"
"OOoooooommmmmMMmmmmmmmm"
"India man very lucky!"
"Lucky?" I ask. If there was one thing India did not seem to possess it was good luck. He then proceeded the explain the joys of asceticism, and how the Indian man could have no worries in the world by renouncing possessions and living simply. I had been waiting for this cue, as I do every time I meet an ascetic.
"In my country we have a saying about money, that it's not good." I told him.
"Yes?" he asked, grinning.
"Mo' money, mo' problems." I said as though I were reciting an ancient scroll.
"More money more problems, yes!" he replied.
"hee hee"
"Oooooooommmmmmmmmmm"
"hee hee hee"
"More money more problems. hee OOOMmmmmmmmm"
"Silence!"
I had been in his hut for almost two hours and the sun now seemed to be mere inches from falling behind the opposite hillside. I excused myself and set one foot out the door.
"Ba ba ba ba ba"
I turned and looked.
"Ok bye bye Brazil."
"My name's....never mind."
"Brraaaaaaaaaazzzziillllllllll."
Step X: I'm at the bottom and I don't know what the fuck happened to me today.
Dec 14, 2009
Ordeal; Debacle; Travesty
Of all the Indian texts, none encapsulates the core of the Hindu religion better than the Bhagavad Gita... except for the Gujarati State Bus Timetable; it itself is nothing but maya, an illusion fraught with suffering.
I was in the town of Junagadh, a quirky little city that long ago was once a major center of Buddhism and later became the center of a small Muslim state. The city itself is crowded and smelly as one would expect but features some surprising Gothic architecture downtown as well as the tombs of the Nawabs of Junagadh and Buddhist caves carved into the rocks beneath what was later the Muslim fort. The Muslim tombs were beautiful, while the Buddhist caves (which were also reused as Jain and Hindu caves) were basically cubic boxes inside rocks with wildly overpriced admissions (two dollars for this??) My real reason to be here however was to climb Mt. Girnar, a story I will tell at a later date.
I was to go from Junagadh to Diu, an island just off the coast some 168km away, a relatively easy haul even for an Indian bus. I rose at 7:30am to catch the 9:00 bus, expecting to arrive in Diu around 2:00pm. Guess what didn't happen.
There were buses scheduled at 8, 9, and 12. When my alarm went off I figured "8? Screw that, catching the 9." What would have happened if I took the 8? We shall never know.
The day started well, or so it seemed. I was highly entertained by a teenage boy with the slogan "No Entry" (why?) and a Valentine's heart embroidered on his shirt waaayyyyy too low on his back to prevent me from chuckling. Then I saw his father, a splendid old Kathiawadi man dressed from head to toe in white, with a poofy-shouldered shirt, poofy pants tucked into his knee-socks, a huge turban, and a monocle. I expected to spend the rest of the day being amused.
I got on the bus I was directed to at 9:00am and we uneventfully drove away. For 5 kilometers. At that point I saw two French tourists desperately scrambling off the bus. At the last instant one of them turned and said to me "This bus is not going to Diu."
Well, balls.
I hustled to unwedge my luggage from the ceiling and also leaped off the bus. The French and I took a rickshaw back to the bus stand, where, surprise surprise, the bus we should have been on had already left. A silly error on our own parts perhaps? No. It was part of a vaster, far more sinister conspiracy.
There was still the 12 o'clock bus. A longish wait, but whatcha gonna do? I took to drafting my forthcoming post about Mt Girnar. At some point I looked up and saw a mob begin to form in a circle around me. No. Not again. I feigned ignorance of English and went to buy some snacks, rather than sitting still for a circus to form around me. At the snack stall I purchased what was to become my only sustenance for the entire day: a bag of strawberry-flavored peanuts. They exist. The taste and texture are essentially that of a pink Froot Loop with a peanut trapped inside. It is not the worst strawberry-Froot-Loop-based concoction I have ever tasted, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement considering I once consumed a two-year old can of a beverage called "Liquid Cereal." As for the strawberry-flavored peanuts, they taught me a valuable lesson: never purchase a food you know you're going to hate if there is also a reasonable chance you will find yourself compelled to eat the entire container.
Around 11:57 I began to grow concerned, and the French could be seen anxiously pacing the bus depot, Frenchishly chain-smoking their cheap Indian cigarettes (beedis). The bus should be here by now.
12:01. The bus is late, I hope. I dash to the inquiry desk to make sure I'm not about to miss a bus sitting before my eyes. The Inquiry Man said "12:00 bus is canceled. Please wait until 1:00 bus."
"But there is no 1:00 bus on the timetable."
"Bus is at 1:00 to Una."
[Una is a town 30min from Diu, and a common and convenient transfer point]
"Oh Una, OK. But I don't see it on the timetable?"
"Bus is at 1:00."
Another hour passed. I was rather annoyed. 4 hours in the bus station with a bunch of goggle-eyed Gujaratis waiting to close in as soon as I drop my guard was wearing on my patience. At 12:45 I hatched a plan. I approached the French. Between the three of us we could personally inspect every bus entering the Junagadh bus depot and interrogate the drivers. This way we could not get on the wrong bus again.
At 1:13 we were forced to concede there was probably not going to be a 1:00 bus. I went to the Inquiry Desk.
"Excuse me." *knocking on window in various ways* *more knocking* "Hey." "Inquiry Man." *knocking* *rolling pebble through ticket slot into Inquiry Man's newspaper*.
[Reluctantly] "Yes sir?"
"Where is bus to Diu?"
"At 12:00 bus was scheduled."
"Yes, but it was canceled, and you said there was a bus at 1:00"
"There is no 1:00 bus."
[body language becomes exaggeratedly impatient] "1:00 bus canceled?"
"No sir. No 1:00 bus. Diu bus is at 12:00."
I relayed this 'information' to the French. Their emotive gesticulations of silent dismay were such that I suspected they might be Parisian mimes whose costumes and makeup were lost in a luggage mishap. The Frenchman hustled off and returned with a double-pack of beedis. Francois and Francine didn't even move this time; they just shook where they were standing, tossing one beedi butt after another at their feet. A mustachioed Indian approached. He told us he also was going to Diu, and was taking the 2:15 bus and would help us. Jacques, Josephine, and I expressed our gratitude but I decided it would be prudent to seek confirmation. I paid another visit to Inquiry Man.
"No bus at 2:15 to Diu" he said.
Silence. Suggestive glances. Stroking of the chin. "And when, do you suppose, might there be a bus to Diu, if I may ask?"
"Please take bus to Una."
"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh I see. And now, tell me, when is that?"
"2:15"
Reader, there are such things as miracles. At 2:15 there was a bus to Una! But first to get on the bus we had to fight for it. Gujaratis mob buses. Knowing that there aren't enough seats for everyone to be comfortable, they behave like cheeky, aggressive children, using all sorts of contrivances from tossing a sweater through windows to 'claim' a seat, to ramming old ladies who are trying to get off the bus and tossing their luggage overhead to gain an advantage on the rest of the crowd. The Marcel, Margarite and I formed a small, elite colonial army. We assumed the V formation, with me at the head. I did not trust the snail-eaters to take the lead, as the modern French species has too far degenerated from their noble Frankish forbears and are all too inclined to turn and run in the face of martial adversity, trampling any companions in the path of their fromage-spilling rout. I found the Gujaratis to be more vicious in their assault but less tenacious in their defense than their Rajasthani bus-scrambling brethren. Perhaps by being generally better-nourished they are less acquainted with the tactical deployment of bony elbows. I added several notches to my bone-hammers. The French did an adequate job of following. They make excellent rear-echelon troops when there are no vineyards and prostitutes to divert them.
Having secured places on the bus (in my case, standing astride my luggage) we settled in for the five-hour haul. It may have been uncomfortable but we were on our way.
For 36 kilometers.
After 36 kilometers
We didn't know how serious the mechanical difficulties were and we were trapped in the back rows anyway, so there was little we could do as those Indians at the front of the bus fled like a herd of terrified gazelle to flag down and get on a passing bus before the rest of us even knew what was going on. The other bus became full to the brim and drove off, leaving some fifty people remaining stranded by the side of the road. "Joke's on them," I figured optimistically "It's gonna be an easy fix and the rest of us are going to Una with a half-empty bus to ourselves."
The bus driver emerged covered in grime from under the engine. He dropped a single wrench onto the ground and shook his head. The conductor solemnly said "Bus broken." Another bus was dispatched to retrieve us, but we did not know when it would get there. "Well, certainly not right now" I figured, this time correctly, and sauntered off the highway to urinate amidst a flock of sheep.
We waited and waited. Trucks drove past, honking to warn us that TRUCK COMING. Camels strolled by with giant piles of hay. Great. Camel-carts move more efficiently than we do. I started doing some arithmetic in my notebook. It was now a little after 3:00. That we should have been in Diu already if we had gotten the first bus was a given. Now, let's see, after six hours from our scheduled departure we had advanced 36 kilometers, easy math, 6 kilometers per hour. But being very generous and assuming we were on the 12:00 service to Diu instead, it works out to about 12 kilometers per hour.
It's official: The Gujarat state bus service traverses short-to-medium distances less rapidly than a well-nourished Kenyan.
Finally a bus came for us, destined for Veraval, a port some ways up the coast from Una. The mob swarmed over the asphalt. The conductor of our bus, taking charge of his self-appointed duty of escorting the foreign sahibs did his utmost to get us on the bus, but it was no use. The Indian blitzkrieg was too furious, the other bus too crammed with its own passengers and the new arrivals who fought their way into the last millimeters of aisle space like a battalion of drowning soldiers onto the only lifeboat.
About twelve of us remained at the roadside. Besides myself were the driver, conductor, some eight Indians of a more peaceable persuasion, and the two middle-aged frog-nibblers. A third bus chugged up the road, continued chugging, and blew its melodious horn "BOOP DE BOOP LATER SUCKERS".
A fourth bus rambled up, and to our joy pulled over to the side of the road fifty yards ahead. The first to the door was a Indian family who had abandoned their pacifism out of desperation and were all set to board, luggage poised like boulders in a catapult to be slung through the doorway. Then the bus closed its door and drove away - PSYCHE!
The Gallic Contingent was reduced to despair.
At 4:45pm a fifth bus pulled alongside. PSYCHE. The Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation is a snot-nosed brat that bullies the smaller kids into trying the same trick over and over again as the children weep because they know that only more of the same humiliation is held in store.
Bus number six....
SALVATION
Salvation is going to Veraval. Who cares. We all get on.
The only good thing about my experiences with Gujarati buses is that I can impart to you knowledge accumulated about various lesser-visited Gujarati cities I've been forced to experience, so that you might avoid the same.
The city of Rajkot is a large, smog-choked transit and business hub where Ghandi used to live. It smells like an exhaust pipe. Don't go there.
The city of Porbandar is a medium-sized, smog-choked industrial hub where Ghandi also used to live. It smells like a chimney. Don't go there.
The city of Veraval warrants special mention. It is a medium-sized, smogless port with one of India's largest fishing fleets. Ghandi never lived there but he passed through several times. The entire city reeks of fish and even kilometers from the coast it smells like having one's face forced through a barracuda's sphincter. Don't go there.
It was thus with some displeasure that we had to disembark in Veraval and wait for a bus from there to Una. The bus pulled into the station. It was a local bus, and I mean a local, local bus. Of all the filthy, slapshod rattletraps I have ridden in this vast, underdeveloped country, this was the most poorly constructed of all. This bus was a glorified soda can with wheels. Flaps of steel hung off here and there; windowpanes bounced on x, y, and z axises of motion, smashing against the window frames in all three. This bus looked like the product of a troop of 14-year-old Boy Scouts who had been told by their drunken scoutmaster that they could all try "just a little" whiskey if they promised to work on their Riveting merit badges afterward.
At long last, with a rusty scrap of metal dragging off the rear bumper, the bus pulled into Una bus station. It was 8:00pm, 11 hours after I had meant to depart, and some six hours after I meant to be down the road in Diu. In fact the French and I would finally get to Diu on a delayed bus a little before 10, but I didn't know this yet, so there was on more thing to do. I walked to Una's Inquiry Desk...
"When is the next bus to Diu?"
"We don't know."
I was in the town of Junagadh, a quirky little city that long ago was once a major center of Buddhism and later became the center of a small Muslim state. The city itself is crowded and smelly as one would expect but features some surprising Gothic architecture downtown as well as the tombs of the Nawabs of Junagadh and Buddhist caves carved into the rocks beneath what was later the Muslim fort. The Muslim tombs were beautiful, while the Buddhist caves (which were also reused as Jain and Hindu caves) were basically cubic boxes inside rocks with wildly overpriced admissions (two dollars for this??) My real reason to be here however was to climb Mt. Girnar, a story I will tell at a later date.
I was to go from Junagadh to Diu, an island just off the coast some 168km away, a relatively easy haul even for an Indian bus. I rose at 7:30am to catch the 9:00 bus, expecting to arrive in Diu around 2:00pm. Guess what didn't happen.
There were buses scheduled at 8, 9, and 12. When my alarm went off I figured "8? Screw that, catching the 9." What would have happened if I took the 8? We shall never know.
The day started well, or so it seemed. I was highly entertained by a teenage boy with the slogan "No Entry" (why?) and a Valentine's heart embroidered on his shirt waaayyyyy too low on his back to prevent me from chuckling. Then I saw his father, a splendid old Kathiawadi man dressed from head to toe in white, with a poofy-shouldered shirt, poofy pants tucked into his knee-socks, a huge turban, and a monocle. I expected to spend the rest of the day being amused.
I got on the bus I was directed to at 9:00am and we uneventfully drove away. For 5 kilometers. At that point I saw two French tourists desperately scrambling off the bus. At the last instant one of them turned and said to me "This bus is not going to Diu."
Well, balls.
I hustled to unwedge my luggage from the ceiling and also leaped off the bus. The French and I took a rickshaw back to the bus stand, where, surprise surprise, the bus we should have been on had already left. A silly error on our own parts perhaps? No. It was part of a vaster, far more sinister conspiracy.
There was still the 12 o'clock bus. A longish wait, but whatcha gonna do? I took to drafting my forthcoming post about Mt Girnar. At some point I looked up and saw a mob begin to form in a circle around me. No. Not again. I feigned ignorance of English and went to buy some snacks, rather than sitting still for a circus to form around me. At the snack stall I purchased what was to become my only sustenance for the entire day: a bag of strawberry-flavored peanuts. They exist. The taste and texture are essentially that of a pink Froot Loop with a peanut trapped inside. It is not the worst strawberry-Froot-Loop-based concoction I have ever tasted, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement considering I once consumed a two-year old can of a beverage called "Liquid Cereal." As for the strawberry-flavored peanuts, they taught me a valuable lesson: never purchase a food you know you're going to hate if there is also a reasonable chance you will find yourself compelled to eat the entire container.
Around 11:57 I began to grow concerned, and the French could be seen anxiously pacing the bus depot, Frenchishly chain-smoking their cheap Indian cigarettes (beedis). The bus should be here by now.
12:01. The bus is late, I hope. I dash to the inquiry desk to make sure I'm not about to miss a bus sitting before my eyes. The Inquiry Man said "12:00 bus is canceled. Please wait until 1:00 bus."
"But there is no 1:00 bus on the timetable."
"Bus is at 1:00 to Una."
[Una is a town 30min from Diu, and a common and convenient transfer point]
"Oh Una, OK. But I don't see it on the timetable?"
"Bus is at 1:00."
Another hour passed. I was rather annoyed. 4 hours in the bus station with a bunch of goggle-eyed Gujaratis waiting to close in as soon as I drop my guard was wearing on my patience. At 12:45 I hatched a plan. I approached the French. Between the three of us we could personally inspect every bus entering the Junagadh bus depot and interrogate the drivers. This way we could not get on the wrong bus again.
At 1:13 we were forced to concede there was probably not going to be a 1:00 bus. I went to the Inquiry Desk.
"Excuse me." *knocking on window in various ways* *more knocking* "Hey." "Inquiry Man." *knocking* *rolling pebble through ticket slot into Inquiry Man's newspaper*.
[Reluctantly] "Yes sir?"
"Where is bus to Diu?"
"At 12:00 bus was scheduled."
"Yes, but it was canceled, and you said there was a bus at 1:00"
"There is no 1:00 bus."
[body language becomes exaggeratedly impatient] "1:00 bus canceled?"
"No sir. No 1:00 bus. Diu bus is at 12:00."
I relayed this 'information' to the French. Their emotive gesticulations of silent dismay were such that I suspected they might be Parisian mimes whose costumes and makeup were lost in a luggage mishap. The Frenchman hustled off and returned with a double-pack of beedis. Francois and Francine didn't even move this time; they just shook where they were standing, tossing one beedi butt after another at their feet. A mustachioed Indian approached. He told us he also was going to Diu, and was taking the 2:15 bus and would help us. Jacques, Josephine, and I expressed our gratitude but I decided it would be prudent to seek confirmation. I paid another visit to Inquiry Man.
"No bus at 2:15 to Diu" he said.
Silence. Suggestive glances. Stroking of the chin. "And when, do you suppose, might there be a bus to Diu, if I may ask?"
"Please take bus to Una."
"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh I see. And now, tell me, when is that?"
"2:15"
Reader, there are such things as miracles. At 2:15 there was a bus to Una! But first to get on the bus we had to fight for it. Gujaratis mob buses. Knowing that there aren't enough seats for everyone to be comfortable, they behave like cheeky, aggressive children, using all sorts of contrivances from tossing a sweater through windows to 'claim' a seat, to ramming old ladies who are trying to get off the bus and tossing their luggage overhead to gain an advantage on the rest of the crowd. The Marcel, Margarite and I formed a small, elite colonial army. We assumed the V formation, with me at the head. I did not trust the snail-eaters to take the lead, as the modern French species has too far degenerated from their noble Frankish forbears and are all too inclined to turn and run in the face of martial adversity, trampling any companions in the path of their fromage-spilling rout. I found the Gujaratis to be more vicious in their assault but less tenacious in their defense than their Rajasthani bus-scrambling brethren. Perhaps by being generally better-nourished they are less acquainted with the tactical deployment of bony elbows. I added several notches to my bone-hammers. The French did an adequate job of following. They make excellent rear-echelon troops when there are no vineyards and prostitutes to divert them.
Having secured places on the bus (in my case, standing astride my luggage) we settled in for the five-hour haul. It may have been uncomfortable but we were on our way.
For 36 kilometers.
After 36 kilometers
the bus broke down.
We didn't know how serious the mechanical difficulties were and we were trapped in the back rows anyway, so there was little we could do as those Indians at the front of the bus fled like a herd of terrified gazelle to flag down and get on a passing bus before the rest of us even knew what was going on. The other bus became full to the brim and drove off, leaving some fifty people remaining stranded by the side of the road. "Joke's on them," I figured optimistically "It's gonna be an easy fix and the rest of us are going to Una with a half-empty bus to ourselves."
The bus driver emerged covered in grime from under the engine. He dropped a single wrench onto the ground and shook his head. The conductor solemnly said "Bus broken." Another bus was dispatched to retrieve us, but we did not know when it would get there. "Well, certainly not right now" I figured, this time correctly, and sauntered off the highway to urinate amidst a flock of sheep.
We waited and waited. Trucks drove past, honking to warn us that TRUCK COMING. Camels strolled by with giant piles of hay. Great. Camel-carts move more efficiently than we do. I started doing some arithmetic in my notebook. It was now a little after 3:00. That we should have been in Diu already if we had gotten the first bus was a given. Now, let's see, after six hours from our scheduled departure we had advanced 36 kilometers, easy math, 6 kilometers per hour. But being very generous and assuming we were on the 12:00 service to Diu instead, it works out to about 12 kilometers per hour.
It's official: The Gujarat state bus service traverses short-to-medium distances less rapidly than a well-nourished Kenyan.
Finally a bus came for us, destined for Veraval, a port some ways up the coast from Una. The mob swarmed over the asphalt. The conductor of our bus, taking charge of his self-appointed duty of escorting the foreign sahibs did his utmost to get us on the bus, but it was no use. The Indian blitzkrieg was too furious, the other bus too crammed with its own passengers and the new arrivals who fought their way into the last millimeters of aisle space like a battalion of drowning soldiers onto the only lifeboat.
About twelve of us remained at the roadside. Besides myself were the driver, conductor, some eight Indians of a more peaceable persuasion, and the two middle-aged frog-nibblers. A third bus chugged up the road, continued chugging, and blew its melodious horn "BOOP DE BOOP LATER SUCKERS".
A fourth bus rambled up, and to our joy pulled over to the side of the road fifty yards ahead. The first to the door was a Indian family who had abandoned their pacifism out of desperation and were all set to board, luggage poised like boulders in a catapult to be slung through the doorway. Then the bus closed its door and drove away - PSYCHE!
The Gallic Contingent was reduced to despair.
At 4:45pm a fifth bus pulled alongside. PSYCHE. The Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation is a snot-nosed brat that bullies the smaller kids into trying the same trick over and over again as the children weep because they know that only more of the same humiliation is held in store.
Bus number six....
SALVATION
Salvation is going to Veraval. Who cares. We all get on.
The only good thing about my experiences with Gujarati buses is that I can impart to you knowledge accumulated about various lesser-visited Gujarati cities I've been forced to experience, so that you might avoid the same.
The city of Rajkot is a large, smog-choked transit and business hub where Ghandi used to live. It smells like an exhaust pipe. Don't go there.
The city of Porbandar is a medium-sized, smog-choked industrial hub where Ghandi also used to live. It smells like a chimney. Don't go there.
The city of Veraval warrants special mention. It is a medium-sized, smogless port with one of India's largest fishing fleets. Ghandi never lived there but he passed through several times. The entire city reeks of fish and even kilometers from the coast it smells like having one's face forced through a barracuda's sphincter. Don't go there.
It was thus with some displeasure that we had to disembark in Veraval and wait for a bus from there to Una. The bus pulled into the station. It was a local bus, and I mean a local, local bus. Of all the filthy, slapshod rattletraps I have ridden in this vast, underdeveloped country, this was the most poorly constructed of all. This bus was a glorified soda can with wheels. Flaps of steel hung off here and there; windowpanes bounced on x, y, and z axises of motion, smashing against the window frames in all three. This bus looked like the product of a troop of 14-year-old Boy Scouts who had been told by their drunken scoutmaster that they could all try "just a little" whiskey if they promised to work on their Riveting merit badges afterward.
At long last, with a rusty scrap of metal dragging off the rear bumper, the bus pulled into Una bus station. It was 8:00pm, 11 hours after I had meant to depart, and some six hours after I meant to be down the road in Diu. In fact the French and I would finally get to Diu on a delayed bus a little before 10, but I didn't know this yet, so there was on more thing to do. I walked to Una's Inquiry Desk...
"When is the next bus to Diu?"
"We don't know."
Dec 11, 2009
To The End Of The World
I discovered the other day that Indian thought is sinking into my mind deeper than I realized. It was late at night and I was standing in the last town on the western extreme of India. The hotel manager knew he had the lowest rates in town, but also knew he could milk me for every penny below the price of his competitors. As I inspected the room and prepared to launch into my "good-humored outrage" routine to lower the prices, a small rodent scurried out from under the bed and fled towards the shower. Unfazed, I dropped my act and cooly said "There is mouse. 200 rupee discount." My reasoning proved unassailable.
Dwarka is yet another holy city, one of the twelve or so holiest places in Hinduism. It marks the West of the four cardinal direction temples at the extremes of the country, and was also the resplendent capital of Krishna's kingdom when he walked the earth. Though no remains of this ancient capital can be seen, there are many ruins sunken off the coast. Before earthquakes and sedimentation shrunk the Saurashtra peninsula and enlarged Kutch, this really was the end of the Hindu world, and having traveled hours and hours across the sparse countryside to get here and look out at the sun-mirror sea, its not hard to see why the early Hindus were content to label this the end of the gods' concerns. Of course, even in ancient times they knew that it wasn't really the end of the world. Asking Hindu pilgrims in Dwarka today, I found that the modern age and globalization have had little effect on their esteem for the place.
"The gods made the world round," a seller of religious trinkets told me "but this is the true end." And indeed, to many of the Hindu people I spoke with, it was a solid fact that beyond the temples looming over Dwarka's lonely beach lies only sea and the land beyond which belongs almost to a different planet.
A jolly bearded saddhu approached me and I asked him the same question.
"You see, after Dwaraka there is only empty. Empty, empty, and then bad."
"Bad?" I asked.
"Arabs."
"Arabs bad?" I continued, containing a chuckle as I tried to provoke a tirade.
Raising his index finger he quickly and cheerily instructed me "Very most Muslim peoples." He then stared at me with a smile on his face, content in the thorough impartation of his wisdom.
I made it my business very first thing in the morning to visit Krishna's temple. Its massive spire soared some sev...
OK, actually I made it my business first thing in the morning to go to the beach and stare victoriously at the Arabian Sea. It was coincidentally the first time I have laid eyes upon the Indian Ocean, and I felt that doing so in Dwarka would hold some deeper meaning. I was dissapointed in this regard, as it looked very much like an ordinary, albeit isolated, beach with a European-style lighthouse. The sea itself of course looked much as you would expect it to: blue with a hint of grey, and then a horizon. I don't know why I thought it might be otherwise. Denied this special triumph I took my next order of business, which was releiving myself into the Arabian Sea. I can now say, my friends, that I have left a little taste of myself in each of the Earth's four mighty oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and now Indian. World domination is but a step away.
I made it my business earlyish in the morning to visit Krishna's temple. Its massive spire soared some seven stories over the rest of the town and a triumphant flag billowed from its pinnacle. Indian army troops guarded the perimeter with heavy machine guns, overlooking a bustling milieu of pilgrims, merchants, and cows. Passing throught the stringent security I made my way into the temple precinct. Within I found an intoxicating spectacle of bhramins, disciples, monks, saddhus, and other pilgrims in a mystifying diversity of costume. Alongside the standard orange rags were men with their entire faces painted yellow, priests in white skirts with pink flowered shoulder pads, haircuts ranging from fearsome dreadlocks to baldness to the daintiest of Shivaite hair-strands. There were a group of albinos with their hair colored orange and a group of young students receiving waves of white paint on their faces. A saddhu with a bouncing belly danced in circles, tapping the ground with his stick and repeating praises with an increasing shortness of breath. A group of women dressed in dark blue saris sat on the ground gazing at the top of the spire. I looked up and watched as a tiny little man climbed a giant rope to a platform swaying on the flagpole and began changing the standard from one of yellow and blue to one of purple and white. As the flag finally unfurled a great cheer arose from the crowd and their eyes followed something downwards, watching I did not know what. Mine remained fixed on the flag and I was thus taken by complete surprise when sprightly men hurled themselves around my body, nose-diving into the stone pavement, then rising and shouting with joy as they and the blue-sari women emerged from the scrum with shards of shattered coconuts.
I have asked, and travel writing does not offer hazard pay for dodging ritually dropped coconuts. This gig has no perks.
From the Krishna temple I headed down an alley to the coast. There was one final temple there and a row of ghats topped with a dozen or so minor shrines. The standard for priestly behavior here was considerably more lax. Pot-bellied brahmins milled about in orange robes and wifebeater T's, scratching their armpits and wiping spots of spilled dahl off their chests. Some of these I recognized from the temple earlier. The lesser shrines were clearly where the priests went to kick back. From behind quivers of incense sticks in almost every shrine came the tinny sound of transistor radios, all tuned to the same cricket match, which the brahmins listened to intently, listlessly responding to the needs of local worshippers who came to pay their respects to the gods. If there was ever an illustration of the deficiencies of having a hereditary caste of clergy this was it.
You may recall that your humble correspondent is engaged in a blood feud with India's cows. You may also recall that deep in the Thar Desert I delivered a crippling pimp-slap to the Last Cow In India. I must confess, as satisfying as it was, that that cow's location was a mere accident of cartography. Though doubtless the last cow in that desolate region before the Pakistani border, could there not be a thousand other cows similarly located along the length of India's frontier? My satisfaction was not complete. In Dwarka, though, I stood upon India's spiritual frontier, the place definitively marked as the western edge of Hindudom. I think you see where this is going.
As I loitered on the ghats, I noticed a pair of cows molesting some picnicking women, who responded by hitting the cows in the face with shoes. I waiting, biding my time for the perfect moment. At last, one cow broke away and headed towards the end of the ghats where the estuary met the sea at a spired temple and made a beeline for a cart of juicy cabbages. As the cabbage-wallah scrambled to protect his goods I, superhero-like in my timely intervention, swept in a smacked the cow heartily upon the gut, driving it to the very edge of the stone promenade and the temple wall, trapping what was truly and unquestionably the Last Cow In India inches from a fall into the lapping waves of the Arabian Sea. I then delivered a single patronizing baby-slap to the snout and strolled away as a few dozen Indians stared and wondered what I looked so damn smug about. A handful asked me directly while I was smiling so oddly.
"You could never understand."
It was now past sundown. Around the bend from the ghats, the beach stretched along the side of town and ended in a small rocky point. A group of Hindus stood huddled around a bundle on the ground. Through their legs I saw the supine form in its delicate green shroud. It was a corpse. Soon after they carried the body off towards the rocks where two crematory fires already roared. They placed the stretcher on the wood and lit the fire with burning brush. Dwarka is a place of strong darshan, where the barrier between the world of men and gods is especially penetrable. As the mourners stood patiently watching the slow dissapearance of their loved ones, none of them wept or seemed to grieve. With the mighty Lord Krishna's throne somewhere beneath the glistening star-stroked waves offshore, they could perhaps seek solace in the words with which he soothed the despondent Arjuna, and maybe just as they knew that where they stood was not really the end of the world, that death isn't the last to be seen of this world either.
Dwarka is yet another holy city, one of the twelve or so holiest places in Hinduism. It marks the West of the four cardinal direction temples at the extremes of the country, and was also the resplendent capital of Krishna's kingdom when he walked the earth. Though no remains of this ancient capital can be seen, there are many ruins sunken off the coast. Before earthquakes and sedimentation shrunk the Saurashtra peninsula and enlarged Kutch, this really was the end of the Hindu world, and having traveled hours and hours across the sparse countryside to get here and look out at the sun-mirror sea, its not hard to see why the early Hindus were content to label this the end of the gods' concerns. Of course, even in ancient times they knew that it wasn't really the end of the world. Asking Hindu pilgrims in Dwarka today, I found that the modern age and globalization have had little effect on their esteem for the place.
"The gods made the world round," a seller of religious trinkets told me "but this is the true end." And indeed, to many of the Hindu people I spoke with, it was a solid fact that beyond the temples looming over Dwarka's lonely beach lies only sea and the land beyond which belongs almost to a different planet.
A jolly bearded saddhu approached me and I asked him the same question.
"You see, after Dwaraka there is only empty. Empty, empty, and then bad."
"Bad?" I asked.
"Arabs."
"Arabs bad?" I continued, containing a chuckle as I tried to provoke a tirade.
Raising his index finger he quickly and cheerily instructed me "Very most Muslim peoples." He then stared at me with a smile on his face, content in the thorough impartation of his wisdom.
I made it my business very first thing in the morning to visit Krishna's temple. Its massive spire soared some sev...
OK, actually I made it my business first thing in the morning to go to the beach and stare victoriously at the Arabian Sea. It was coincidentally the first time I have laid eyes upon the Indian Ocean, and I felt that doing so in Dwarka would hold some deeper meaning. I was dissapointed in this regard, as it looked very much like an ordinary, albeit isolated, beach with a European-style lighthouse. The sea itself of course looked much as you would expect it to: blue with a hint of grey, and then a horizon. I don't know why I thought it might be otherwise. Denied this special triumph I took my next order of business, which was releiving myself into the Arabian Sea. I can now say, my friends, that I have left a little taste of myself in each of the Earth's four mighty oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and now Indian. World domination is but a step away.
I made it my business earlyish in the morning to visit Krishna's temple. Its massive spire soared some seven stories over the rest of the town and a triumphant flag billowed from its pinnacle. Indian army troops guarded the perimeter with heavy machine guns, overlooking a bustling milieu of pilgrims, merchants, and cows. Passing throught the stringent security I made my way into the temple precinct. Within I found an intoxicating spectacle of bhramins, disciples, monks, saddhus, and other pilgrims in a mystifying diversity of costume. Alongside the standard orange rags were men with their entire faces painted yellow, priests in white skirts with pink flowered shoulder pads, haircuts ranging from fearsome dreadlocks to baldness to the daintiest of Shivaite hair-strands. There were a group of albinos with their hair colored orange and a group of young students receiving waves of white paint on their faces. A saddhu with a bouncing belly danced in circles, tapping the ground with his stick and repeating praises with an increasing shortness of breath. A group of women dressed in dark blue saris sat on the ground gazing at the top of the spire. I looked up and watched as a tiny little man climbed a giant rope to a platform swaying on the flagpole and began changing the standard from one of yellow and blue to one of purple and white. As the flag finally unfurled a great cheer arose from the crowd and their eyes followed something downwards, watching I did not know what. Mine remained fixed on the flag and I was thus taken by complete surprise when sprightly men hurled themselves around my body, nose-diving into the stone pavement, then rising and shouting with joy as they and the blue-sari women emerged from the scrum with shards of shattered coconuts.
I have asked, and travel writing does not offer hazard pay for dodging ritually dropped coconuts. This gig has no perks.
From the Krishna temple I headed down an alley to the coast. There was one final temple there and a row of ghats topped with a dozen or so minor shrines. The standard for priestly behavior here was considerably more lax. Pot-bellied brahmins milled about in orange robes and wifebeater T's, scratching their armpits and wiping spots of spilled dahl off their chests. Some of these I recognized from the temple earlier. The lesser shrines were clearly where the priests went to kick back. From behind quivers of incense sticks in almost every shrine came the tinny sound of transistor radios, all tuned to the same cricket match, which the brahmins listened to intently, listlessly responding to the needs of local worshippers who came to pay their respects to the gods. If there was ever an illustration of the deficiencies of having a hereditary caste of clergy this was it.
You may recall that your humble correspondent is engaged in a blood feud with India's cows. You may also recall that deep in the Thar Desert I delivered a crippling pimp-slap to the Last Cow In India. I must confess, as satisfying as it was, that that cow's location was a mere accident of cartography. Though doubtless the last cow in that desolate region before the Pakistani border, could there not be a thousand other cows similarly located along the length of India's frontier? My satisfaction was not complete. In Dwarka, though, I stood upon India's spiritual frontier, the place definitively marked as the western edge of Hindudom. I think you see where this is going.
As I loitered on the ghats, I noticed a pair of cows molesting some picnicking women, who responded by hitting the cows in the face with shoes. I waiting, biding my time for the perfect moment. At last, one cow broke away and headed towards the end of the ghats where the estuary met the sea at a spired temple and made a beeline for a cart of juicy cabbages. As the cabbage-wallah scrambled to protect his goods I, superhero-like in my timely intervention, swept in a smacked the cow heartily upon the gut, driving it to the very edge of the stone promenade and the temple wall, trapping what was truly and unquestionably the Last Cow In India inches from a fall into the lapping waves of the Arabian Sea. I then delivered a single patronizing baby-slap to the snout and strolled away as a few dozen Indians stared and wondered what I looked so damn smug about. A handful asked me directly while I was smiling so oddly.
"You could never understand."
It was now past sundown. Around the bend from the ghats, the beach stretched along the side of town and ended in a small rocky point. A group of Hindus stood huddled around a bundle on the ground. Through their legs I saw the supine form in its delicate green shroud. It was a corpse. Soon after they carried the body off towards the rocks where two crematory fires already roared. They placed the stretcher on the wood and lit the fire with burning brush. Dwarka is a place of strong darshan, where the barrier between the world of men and gods is especially penetrable. As the mourners stood patiently watching the slow dissapearance of their loved ones, none of them wept or seemed to grieve. With the mighty Lord Krishna's throne somewhere beneath the glistening star-stroked waves offshore, they could perhaps seek solace in the words with which he soothed the despondent Arjuna, and maybe just as they knew that where they stood was not really the end of the world, that death isn't the last to be seen of this world either.
Dec 10, 2009
The 7.9 Richter Salt Shaker
Bhuj is an unloved place. Even its name stinks of sloppy neglect. "Bhuj". Why not call it "Flump" or "Blop" and get it over with? Bhuj is more or less forgotten by the rest of India owing to its great isolation. It is part of the region of Kutch, a dry, sparsely populated mound of dirt cut off from the rest of the world by the ocean and by the temperamental Rann of Kutch. During the summer monsoons the Rann is a treacherously flooded saltwater marsh interspersed with small dots of sand and brush. Kutch becomes an island for several months. For the rest of the year the Rann dries up and becomes a searing, lifeless expanse of white-hot salt. (Click on this Google Maps Link to see where adjacent satellite grid photos were taken at different times of the year near a seasonal "island" in the northern Rann). I am assured that it has a captivating beauty but circumstances have conspired that I should hardly see it. I caught a glimpse while leaving Kutch. The southern highway crosses the Little Rann at its narrowest point. This corridor - along the highway and near to industrial centers and ports - was not beautiful at all. High-voltage power lines and fuel pipes followed alongside on salt-encrusted stilts, and the mighty jaws of industry had crushed the natural habitat into a giant salt farm. As far as the eye could see there was salt - mounds and mounds of it, slumping at perfectly regular intervals next to barren quadrilateral units of salt-raked mud. Near the road, salt-farmers had built their homes on company land, carelessly piled dirt with tight clusters of appaling concrete boxes tilted perilously on the shifting heaps. Where nature had grown danger, man has tamed it and built despair.
Kutch (or Kachchh as the orthographical masochists seem to prefer) has lain behind this barrier for centuries, ever the wealthless spoil of third-rate conquerors who ventured across the wastes to claim that which the mighty hadn't bothered with. It shelters a culture quite unlike the rest of India, where only a handful of outpost-like frontier towns punctuate the fields of dust and distant villages where life seems trapped in a different age. In the far south is the port of Kandla, hanging onto India by the taut thread of the causeway over the Little Rann. The rest of Kutch is a land forgotten.
In Bhuj you can't help but see the tribal life of the villages all around you. While the men of the tribes tend to their sheep and camels in the desert, the women make crafts in the village and come to town to trade. There are the Jat women with their coil-like necklaces, old Rabari women with their embroidered black dresses, Ahirs with their noses pierced by a heavy ring supported by knotted locks of hair. There are the Patels, the traditionally settled people of the towns walking about in all white, and the grubby Sindhis, Hindu refugess from Pakistan who make their living in the modern industries. I even saw a number of Siddis, the African-descended laborers who with sad predictability comprise an extremely low caste in society.
Apart from the vibrancy of the ancient ways of life, Bhuj also echoes with loss. In Mt. Abu I saw a shrine where pilgrims worship the spot where Shiva's toe steadied an earthquake. They will build no such shrine in Bhuj.
In 2001 most of Bhuj, and indeed much of Kutch, was utterly demolished by a catastrophic tremor. The medieval heart of Bhuj collapsed in moments. The mud-walled villages had no chance. The slowly-restoring ruins of Bhuj's palaces are all that's left of the old town. The windnig medieval streets remain, turning through loops and zig-zags as they have for generations. But now the idiosyncratic alleyways of history have been shattered like a glass jar; the trapped air of the past has rushed out never to return, and the alley walls have been pieced together with the cold, textureless conformity of modernity like so much duct tape. The new Bhuj is bricks and painted concrete. Many in India would be overjoyed to have housing built to the high standard of reconstructed Bhuj, but the piles of ancient bricks lying broken in overgrown backlots on narrow lanes from an unmistakably earlier era tell of something lost. While the world has forgotten Kutch, Kutch now struggles against forgetting itself.
Determined to see what of this land's aura still shines out from beneath the rubble, I walked through the citadel gates, past the crumbling remains within, and inquired as to the status of the palaces. The curator, a humble scholar with a passion for the history and culture of Kutch, told me wearily "Regretably you have come when the palace is closed." I slumped and murmured "Oh, I see," then began to walk away sullenly, thinking that the arduous journey to Kutch may have been for nought.
"Please come back at 3 in the after-noon. Then Bhuj siesta time is over."
Palace open? Siesta? Museum curator makes the basket and gets the foul call. 3 points.
I returned promptly at 3 and began my tour of the palaces. The oldest, the Darbargadh, was a crumbled shell and looked unlikely to ever be fully restored. The second-oldest, the Aina Mahal, was open and fascinating. The first few rooms hinted that it would be one of my favorite kinds of Indian museum: the royal junk collection. As the maharajas still own most of their old palaces (or control them through charitable trusts) the contents and management thereof remain subject to their royal idiosyncracies, the result usually being that these palaces house mountains of crap that nobody without a gilded-tuft turban has cared about in 60 years. You find polo trophies, preposterous portraits, silver-plated butt-scratchers ("back-scratchers"), outrageously impractical firearms, stamp collections, ivory parcheesi sets, taxidermed animals, and above all: entire galleries of paintings and photos of the king with other dignitaries hunting soon-to-be-taxidermed animals. The Maharaos of Kutch - though lacking in the wealth of the Maharajas of Jaipur or the arrogance of the Maharanas of Mewar - did amass a wonderful junk collection.
Beyond the entrance halls you find the throne room, a lovely chamber of stone, tile, and painted wood where the Maharaos once sat on a platform amid a pool where delicate misting fountains cooled the air (and no doubt dampened the blouses of comely musicians). Kutch had one period of greater prosperity when it became a somewhat useful stop in the age of ship and sail. The palace is thus filled with a near-comical panoply of 18th-century European decor, featuring floors of blue tiles impeccably copied from the Dutch, mirrors imported from the Belgians, and cluttered hangings of portraiture that almost reek of month-old scones in their stale Britishness. There is also some lovely art of the native Kutchi style, which is actually a charming fusion of Chinese and European painting of the era executed on glass. Taking this fusion perhaps a step too far, the subjects of these paintings seem largely to be slant-eyed white peope in frocks with incongruously off-center probosci for noses.
Moving on to the Prag Mahal, I was prepared for boredom. The newest of the palaces, the Prag Mahal belongs to that tragic interlude in Indian architectural history when many large structures were built in the Victorian "Gothic" style with Indo-Islamic pretensions. I expected the over-spacious yet stuffy ambiance of an overblown but still second-rate English manor, as so many late Indian palaces tend to be. I found not tedium, but horror.
First of all, the most Victorian thing about the palace is not its pseudo-monastic collonades or even its superfluous belltower, but the bewildering number of pigeons residing (and shitting) within. The earthquake-splintered ceilings bow under the weight of shifting masses of the flying rats, and the commonplace random detonation of Indian fireworks sends Hitchcockian flocks of them careening along the balconies and tumbling through the hallways with little regard for earthbound objects and people in their path.
The Grand Hall is quite grand, adorned with small engravings of masculine Roman types enacting Biblical dramas and massive half-naked man-statues with tantalizingly loose man-cloths supporting the upper gallery with their oh-so-dreamy man-arms. The effect is, however, rather lessened by half of the eiling falling off and the the chandeliers hanging snapped and crooked. Besides the great hall only a few rooms are open, and these contain the royal taxidermy. The horror...pure horror.
Suffice to say, the royal taxidermy did not fare well in the earthquake. Nevertheless, it has unfathomably been put back on display despite being in a state of complete ruination. The animals are sewn back together wrong or not at all, halves of heads split asunder as though by an axe-blow, or worse. Some of the species can't be recognized. Others... oh God, the hippo... resemble the tumultuous proto-erotic nightmares of a Joseph Mengele, abominations Victor Frankenstein wouldn't stitch from the grave, the profucts of a frenzied schizoid trapped in a dungeon of needles and carcasses. My friends, I took a few photos, but be warned, some things can not be un-seen.
I returned to my hotel room and slept poorly. The mosquito bites I suffered from an uncloseable window seemed all too much like the pinpricks of a madman drunkenly sealing flaps of flesh after spilling a bag of sawdust in the dried-out cavity where my liver should be.
I was to go to some villages, a distant monastery, and go wandering to the edge of the Great Rann in the north, but when I stopped by the police station for the cursory permits required to visit the borderlands I was surprised to find my commonplace application rejected. Turns out the Chief Minister (governor) of Gujarat was visiting the area and demanded complete security, lest a foreigner enter the 250-kilometer radius of his whereabouts and make a dastardly suprise attack across an endless horizon of salt. This Chief Minister, a Mr. Narendra Modi, is a borderline fascist. I don't say this because he inconvenienced me (which he did), but because he is "suspected" or complicity in abetting modern-day progroms against Muslims. Mr. Modi joins my shitlist of Indian public figures in second place just beneath the Maharana of Mewar.
I left Kutch the next day, taking the salty highway I described above. Kutch may have been leveled by a terrible earthquake, but it is time for the land of Saurastra to feel a true calamity. Ghostface Buddha is coming.
Kutch (or Kachchh as the orthographical masochists seem to prefer) has lain behind this barrier for centuries, ever the wealthless spoil of third-rate conquerors who ventured across the wastes to claim that which the mighty hadn't bothered with. It shelters a culture quite unlike the rest of India, where only a handful of outpost-like frontier towns punctuate the fields of dust and distant villages where life seems trapped in a different age. In the far south is the port of Kandla, hanging onto India by the taut thread of the causeway over the Little Rann. The rest of Kutch is a land forgotten.
In Bhuj you can't help but see the tribal life of the villages all around you. While the men of the tribes tend to their sheep and camels in the desert, the women make crafts in the village and come to town to trade. There are the Jat women with their coil-like necklaces, old Rabari women with their embroidered black dresses, Ahirs with their noses pierced by a heavy ring supported by knotted locks of hair. There are the Patels, the traditionally settled people of the towns walking about in all white, and the grubby Sindhis, Hindu refugess from Pakistan who make their living in the modern industries. I even saw a number of Siddis, the African-descended laborers who with sad predictability comprise an extremely low caste in society.
Apart from the vibrancy of the ancient ways of life, Bhuj also echoes with loss. In Mt. Abu I saw a shrine where pilgrims worship the spot where Shiva's toe steadied an earthquake. They will build no such shrine in Bhuj.
In 2001 most of Bhuj, and indeed much of Kutch, was utterly demolished by a catastrophic tremor. The medieval heart of Bhuj collapsed in moments. The mud-walled villages had no chance. The slowly-restoring ruins of Bhuj's palaces are all that's left of the old town. The windnig medieval streets remain, turning through loops and zig-zags as they have for generations. But now the idiosyncratic alleyways of history have been shattered like a glass jar; the trapped air of the past has rushed out never to return, and the alley walls have been pieced together with the cold, textureless conformity of modernity like so much duct tape. The new Bhuj is bricks and painted concrete. Many in India would be overjoyed to have housing built to the high standard of reconstructed Bhuj, but the piles of ancient bricks lying broken in overgrown backlots on narrow lanes from an unmistakably earlier era tell of something lost. While the world has forgotten Kutch, Kutch now struggles against forgetting itself.
Determined to see what of this land's aura still shines out from beneath the rubble, I walked through the citadel gates, past the crumbling remains within, and inquired as to the status of the palaces. The curator, a humble scholar with a passion for the history and culture of Kutch, told me wearily "Regretably you have come when the palace is closed." I slumped and murmured "Oh, I see," then began to walk away sullenly, thinking that the arduous journey to Kutch may have been for nought.
"Please come back at 3 in the after-noon. Then Bhuj siesta time is over."
Palace open? Siesta? Museum curator makes the basket and gets the foul call. 3 points.
I returned promptly at 3 and began my tour of the palaces. The oldest, the Darbargadh, was a crumbled shell and looked unlikely to ever be fully restored. The second-oldest, the Aina Mahal, was open and fascinating. The first few rooms hinted that it would be one of my favorite kinds of Indian museum: the royal junk collection. As the maharajas still own most of their old palaces (or control them through charitable trusts) the contents and management thereof remain subject to their royal idiosyncracies, the result usually being that these palaces house mountains of crap that nobody without a gilded-tuft turban has cared about in 60 years. You find polo trophies, preposterous portraits, silver-plated butt-scratchers ("back-scratchers"), outrageously impractical firearms, stamp collections, ivory parcheesi sets, taxidermed animals, and above all: entire galleries of paintings and photos of the king with other dignitaries hunting soon-to-be-taxidermed animals. The Maharaos of Kutch - though lacking in the wealth of the Maharajas of Jaipur or the arrogance of the Maharanas of Mewar - did amass a wonderful junk collection.
Beyond the entrance halls you find the throne room, a lovely chamber of stone, tile, and painted wood where the Maharaos once sat on a platform amid a pool where delicate misting fountains cooled the air (and no doubt dampened the blouses of comely musicians). Kutch had one period of greater prosperity when it became a somewhat useful stop in the age of ship and sail. The palace is thus filled with a near-comical panoply of 18th-century European decor, featuring floors of blue tiles impeccably copied from the Dutch, mirrors imported from the Belgians, and cluttered hangings of portraiture that almost reek of month-old scones in their stale Britishness. There is also some lovely art of the native Kutchi style, which is actually a charming fusion of Chinese and European painting of the era executed on glass. Taking this fusion perhaps a step too far, the subjects of these paintings seem largely to be slant-eyed white peope in frocks with incongruously off-center probosci for noses.
Moving on to the Prag Mahal, I was prepared for boredom. The newest of the palaces, the Prag Mahal belongs to that tragic interlude in Indian architectural history when many large structures were built in the Victorian "Gothic" style with Indo-Islamic pretensions. I expected the over-spacious yet stuffy ambiance of an overblown but still second-rate English manor, as so many late Indian palaces tend to be. I found not tedium, but horror.
First of all, the most Victorian thing about the palace is not its pseudo-monastic collonades or even its superfluous belltower, but the bewildering number of pigeons residing (and shitting) within. The earthquake-splintered ceilings bow under the weight of shifting masses of the flying rats, and the commonplace random detonation of Indian fireworks sends Hitchcockian flocks of them careening along the balconies and tumbling through the hallways with little regard for earthbound objects and people in their path.
The Grand Hall is quite grand, adorned with small engravings of masculine Roman types enacting Biblical dramas and massive half-naked man-statues with tantalizingly loose man-cloths supporting the upper gallery with their oh-so-dreamy man-arms. The effect is, however, rather lessened by half of the eiling falling off and the the chandeliers hanging snapped and crooked. Besides the great hall only a few rooms are open, and these contain the royal taxidermy. The horror...pure horror.
Suffice to say, the royal taxidermy did not fare well in the earthquake. Nevertheless, it has unfathomably been put back on display despite being in a state of complete ruination. The animals are sewn back together wrong or not at all, halves of heads split asunder as though by an axe-blow, or worse. Some of the species can't be recognized. Others... oh God, the hippo... resemble the tumultuous proto-erotic nightmares of a Joseph Mengele, abominations Victor Frankenstein wouldn't stitch from the grave, the profucts of a frenzied schizoid trapped in a dungeon of needles and carcasses. My friends, I took a few photos, but be warned, some things can not be un-seen.
I returned to my hotel room and slept poorly. The mosquito bites I suffered from an uncloseable window seemed all too much like the pinpricks of a madman drunkenly sealing flaps of flesh after spilling a bag of sawdust in the dried-out cavity where my liver should be.
I was to go to some villages, a distant monastery, and go wandering to the edge of the Great Rann in the north, but when I stopped by the police station for the cursory permits required to visit the borderlands I was surprised to find my commonplace application rejected. Turns out the Chief Minister (governor) of Gujarat was visiting the area and demanded complete security, lest a foreigner enter the 250-kilometer radius of his whereabouts and make a dastardly suprise attack across an endless horizon of salt. This Chief Minister, a Mr. Narendra Modi, is a borderline fascist. I don't say this because he inconvenienced me (which he did), but because he is "suspected" or complicity in abetting modern-day progroms against Muslims. Mr. Modi joins my shitlist of Indian public figures in second place just beneath the Maharana of Mewar.
I left Kutch the next day, taking the salty highway I described above. Kutch may have been leveled by a terrible earthquake, but it is time for the land of Saurastra to feel a true calamity. Ghostface Buddha is coming.
Dec 9, 2009
In Memoriam
Ghostbeard Buddha
September 28, 2009 - December 8, 2009
After a valiant battle against shaving, our friend and companion Ghostbeard's life was suddenly...cut short this past Tuesday in Dwarka.
Ghostbeard will be remembered not only for his prodigious length at such young age, but also for his warm soul, Hindu-baiting antics, and numerous contributions to charity.
He fought nobly to the end, forcing the beard-trimmer attachment to an impotent halt on many occasions and even causing his assailant to snap shut more than once. Hotel sink and shower drains were no match for him. With his last breath he slew a mighty hybrid toilet.
He is survived by his face of 9 weeks, Ghostfaceface.
Rest in peace.
September 28, 2009 - December 8, 2009
After a valiant battle against shaving, our friend and companion Ghostbeard's life was suddenly...cut short this past Tuesday in Dwarka.
Ghostbeard will be remembered not only for his prodigious length at such young age, but also for his warm soul, Hindu-baiting antics, and numerous contributions to charity.
He fought nobly to the end, forcing the beard-trimmer attachment to an impotent halt on many occasions and even causing his assailant to snap shut more than once. Hotel sink and shower drains were no match for him. With his last breath he slew a mighty hybrid toilet.
He is survived by his face of 9 weeks, Ghostfaceface.
Rest in peace.
Dec 6, 2009
All Eyez On Me / Bus Stop Of The Living Dead
Having been in the state of Gujarat for a little over 24 hours, I feel I am now qualified to identify the primary difference between it and Rajasthan: while public transportation in Rajasthan seems specifically designed to kill me, Gujarat's public transport takes the more subtle approach of making me want to kill myself.
I was at Mt. Abu bus station, where a white-robed Brahma Kumaris cultist was loitering, using her excellent English to distribute patently false information about bus schedules out of Mt. Abu. So began my day. The ticket salesman was little better. I walked up to his window and said "I'd like a ticket to Palanpur." . "There is bus in eight minutes, yellow bus coming" he replied. "Excellent, one ticket please," I said, expecting to be sold a ticket. "One minute sir," he replied, and turned his attention to a paper bowl of spiced chickpeas siting on his desk. I stood, waiting. He noticed me still standing there."Five minutes, sir, five minutes." Let me get this straight, my bus is leaving now in four minutes and I am to wait five minutes so that this man can finish his peas before selling me a ticket. This is the level of customer service you can expect from Indian government enterprises that offer its employees no prospect of collecting baksheesh.
After five minutes he wiped his mouth, turned to me, and did not sell me a ticket but said, "This green bus here leaves in ten minutes, you buy ticket at that booth."
"How were the peas?" I asked with exaggerated enthusiasm
"Not peas, dal," he said.
"Dal was good?"
"Yes, very good."
"Glad to hear it," I said, clapping, and walked to the green bus. It left in twenty minutes.
The man sitting behind me on the bus was a German professor on sabbatical. I found out some 14 hours later that his name was Jens. It would be. Turns out he also was making the lengthy journey to Bhuj. Usually I have a policy against just talking to the other Westerners I meet on the bus, as I feel that is probably a little racist, and because most tourists I meet are dreadfully boring. It's rarely two minutes before they ask some variant of "Have you been to Agra yet? Isn't the Taj Mahal amazing?" I made an exception on this occasion though as we were both embarking blindly on a 500-kilometer trip through a state with a different language and potentially requiring up to 5 distinct bus transfers, for which we had not a single timetable, and could result in us being stranded in a desert in the wee hours of the night. It was wise to join forces. Though a valuable resource, I soon found his company tiresome, and his terribly German attitude towards disorder almost impossible to placate.
The bus's first stop was at the town of Abu Road. Here the bus stopped in the station for almost an hour before continuing. After this hour, and after the passengers had all squeezed in, the bus started its engine, rolled forwards, and made a left turn directly into the repair yard. Fully loaded with waiting passengers, the bus rolled over a repair pit and workers began hammering on the fuselage and performing maintenance on the gearbox. I heard an electrical humming and saw flashes of light. Though I am mostly inured now to the Indian way of doing things, the realization of what was happening almost made my head explode.
Allow me to make abundantly clear how terribly conceived Indian bus services are: after an hour idle at the station, when all the passengers were finally on the bus, at this very time, and not before, when, let me repeat, the bus was sitting idle for an hour, it was scheduled for the bus to undergo some welding.
We sat and they welded. I spoke to the Indian next to me. "Good thing we didn't miss the bus. We'd have to wait for them to build the next one." This remark was translated into Hindi and spread like wildfire, much to the consternation of the conductor who made his way to my seat to make a very stiff apology. A brief argument about the (in my view) absurdity of the situation ensued and I let slip a number of profanities which made me seem much angrier than I actually was, and resulted in most of the bus staring at me for the remainder of the hour-long ride to Palanpur. Being stared at was to become a recurring feature of the day.
We crossed the border into Gujarat and arrived at Palanpur. I noticed immediately that Gujarat was different from Rajasthan. While Rajasthan has a reputation for general backwardness, Gujarat is one of the most prosperous parts of India. Even in this rather anonymous town the buildings had a bit of a modern shine to them. The roads were superb. All day, even in the remote desert of Kutch, we traveled on divided highways that were almost up to Western standards. Everywhere were the signs of thriving industry, and though busy and chaotic, Gujarat seemed to be moving forwards faster than it was moving back.
Jens and I got off and began making inquiries on how to get to Bhuj. To our relief we discovered that in two hours a bus would take us all the way there, arriving late at night but requiring no transfers in forlorn desert villages. Jens went to buy food and I seated myself near the platform and waited. Huge mistake.
I busied myself attempting to learn Gujarati numbers and alphabet. Though quite similar to Hindi, some of the letters were completely foreign to me, and the numbers were essentially random squiggles. I figured them out, then sank into deep concentration memorizing them from the pages of my notebook. The space around me suddenly seemed full of shadows, and I looked up to discover that I was completely surrounded by a swarm of Indian men. I had about a two foot radius of personal space, beyond which were ranks upon ranks of gawking Gujaratis. Men in the back, five rows deep, stood on benches to get a better view. The faces of short men and children poked out from under the arms and between the torsos of people in the front rows. As usual, those closest to me were the wise-asses, and began asking me all sorts of questions. Hearing me speak caused the audience to grow even larger, until nearly the entire bus station, well over a hundred people were all engrossed in my answers and pressed in a tight circle around me like the audience of a cockfight, causing passersby to become curious as well, until I saw people leaving their business on the street to come see what was so interesting at the bus station. A bus station is the worst place to be a spectacle, because even when some people get bored or catch a bus and leave, there is always a constant stream of replacements.
Few of them spoke English, and my captive conversation with the jokers in front was constantly interrupted by heads forcing their way through the crowd to ask the few questions they could muster. "What is your country? Your name?" and so on, time after time. While most Indian men seem intent on prying into Westerners' sex lives, Gujaratis have another fascination: alcohol. Gujarat, despite its modernity, is a dry state. The only reason Gujarat being trapped in 1919 isn't completely appalling is because the rest of India is trapped in about 1873. Anyways, the predictable result of alcohol being completely forbidden is that everyone seems to be obsessed with it. I have long held that Prohibition is a sure way to pervert the soul. "You are liking English wine?" they kept asking. 'English wine' in India means 'liquor'. It took me a while at first to learn this, and I was initially confused by the number of English Wine Shops I saw around, figuring that only Indians with their self-defeating obsession with all things English would be the only people on Earth capable of swallowing the swill wine produced in England. Then I realized this meant not English wine, but actually Indian whiskey, which I have refused to personally sample, but am told by other travelers is just as bad.
I tried to at least make the attention useful. The more helpful among them offered me travel information which I knew to be misinformed. I tried to steer them into teaching me some basics of the Gujarati language. "You don't speak Gujarati?" They asked, perplexed. "No, I speak Spanish and English. I also am learning some Hindi."
"Hindi language but not Gujarati?" The crowd grew more and more puzzled and made a great stir. "Why don't you speak Gujarati?" they asked in all seriousness. The ever-growing and encroaching crowd had begun to stress me. I had already been a spectacle for over an hour and had gracefully responded to the constant barrage of uninvited interrogation but this was too much.
"BECAUSE NOBODY SPEAKS GUJARATI" I snapped "EVEN INDIAN PEOPLE DON'T SPEAK GUJARATI. DO YOU SPEAK FUCKING NORWEGIAN? NO, AND I DON'T SPEAK GUJARATI. WHY SHOULD I? WHO THE FUCK LEARNS GUJARATI?"
Taken rather aback, "Indian people do speak Gujarati" they insisted.
"No, only you people speak Gujarati, because you are from Gujarat."
One person volunteered "Every Indian person I am knowing speaks Gujarati. Very few people in India speaking full Hindi."
I just grasped my head in my hands.
I assure you, dear reader, that everything in this post, including what I am about to relate, actually happened and has not been the least bit embellished.
The situation I was sitting in was like being in the eye of a hurricane, I thought. My own mostly calm demeanor only served to highlight the great tempest around me. At least I have my two feet of empty space, I thought, though I neglected to consider the consequences of having what I thought was the benefit of open air above me. As I mentioned, there were over a hundred people forming rings around me, rendering me not unlike a bulls-eye, which I was about to become. As I responded to some inane question or another (I believe it may have been from some smartass trying to be funny by asking if I shave my pubic hair), I noticed a chunky yellow something appear on my backpack. I looked up just in time to see a group of birds in the ceiling fan above me, and a second lump of bird shit fall directly onto my shoulder.
If a bird had shat on me, I would have been annoyed, but to have a bird shit on me and only me at this moment as I was surrounded by a hundred other viable targets tipped me over the edge. Struggling to contain my fury, I got up, and made my way over to Jens (who had returned largely unnoticed due to the attention centered on me) to consult about our escape. We had another hour to endure. The crowd followed me, and Jens proved less capable of coping than I was. He started gesticulating at at the crowd with his hands. "Please open ze window", he pleaded while making a parting gesture. "OPEN ZE WINDOW PLEASE". Two or three Indians would grasp his meaning and oblige, only to have the gap filled by others in a matter or moments. "WINDOW. HELLO. YES. ZE WINDOW OPEN. OPEN WINDOW." I just started laughing at Jens and at how hopeless it was as I also began to seriously question if I could take another hour of this myself without completely cracking.
Just then a man in a sweater barged his way through the crowd and identified himself as being in charge, and ordered us to follow him. At first I thought he was another person trying to help us with mistaken information, but Jens immediately followed. I slowly gathered my luggage and followed as well. Ahead of me I saw Jens in a small office down a dark hallway, and two Indian men pushing a crowd of gawking Indians out the door. They held it a sliver open, and began shouting at me to come as well, waving urgently as I noticed the crowd slowly start to regroup, focus, and shuffle in my direction. I know this scene. I have watched many zombie movies, and this is the part where I have to fight my way into the door at the last second without getting bitten, lest my erstwhile companions give me up for lost and board the door shut, leaving me to my fate among the living dead. As soon as I squeezed my pack through the entrance, the station master and his deputies dead-bolted the door shut. This seemed to finally deter the crowd, who figured they would see no more of us before their buses came.
The station master apologized profusely and offered us the most services and comfort he could muster, placing phone calls around Gujarat and ordering bus conductors and ticket officials across the state to see to it personally that we had a comfortable ride to Bhuj. One deputy braved the zombies to bring us chai. A few undead gathered behind the station to gaze at us through the barred window, but I felt secure in the knowledge that they couldn't get in and would easily be repulsed by a sharp metal object through the brain if they started trying to pull the bars out.
When our bus finally arrived in the afternoon, the entire station staff assembled to form a protective cordon and escort us out of the station master's office. The one image that flashed through my mind now was not from a zombie movie, but rather the infamous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald under police escort from the Dallas police station. I scanned about nervously for an Indian Jack Ruby.
They were waiting for us but we were successfully loaded onto the bus, where two men were guarding spaces for us to sit and place our luggage. Finally, I thought, now all we have to do is sit for eight hours until we get there. If only this were so.
For most of the eight hours I did actually just sit there. There were no close brushes with death, as the wide, well-paved, divided Gujarati highways were quite safe. The exception was whenever the bus needed to make a right turn. Indian bus drivers have not yet come to terms with the concept of highway exit ramps and underpasses. "Exit on the left? But we are turning right," they say to themselves, bringing the bus to a halt not at the actual exit but at a gap in the highway divider and steering the bus carefully through the narrow space so that they might drive headlong the wrong way through traffic on the expressway until they can exit on the right and go the wrong way down the on-ramp. Nevertheless, the ride was generally quite boring and very long. The terrain grew flatter and flatter, sandier and sandier, and I questioned why I was choosing to go into a desert again. We carried on well through the night.
There was a man on the bus with a serious physical abnormality. He was extremely short, not quite a dwarf, but only chest-high, and he walked with great difficulty. He also had a strange squinting expression from his tiny, recessed eyes which I took to be evidence of some genetic disorder. At about 8 o'clock, he began stumbling up the bus aisle and seated himself next to me. He settled a bit, then spoke to me in English. "I am one hundred percent blind" was the first thing he said. Then how did he find me??? Good God, I thought, he can find white people by scent. He then asked the first two customary questions (where are you from? what's your name?) before rolling up his trousers. My goodness. This man - a kind and gentle man, I must say - this man's soul may have been created by Almighty God, but his legs were created by M.C. Escher. They looked more like question marks than limbs. He spoke his fifth sentence "thirty six fractures." Jesus fucking Christ. By now the entire bus was staring aghast as the foreigner and the 'freak' spoke to each other. I did my utmost to be gracious and friendly while the man's young helper (a relative?) came over to take photographs of the two of us sitting together. Even the Indians clearly thought that something deeply strange was happening and looked on, literally with their mouths hanging, as I held a pleasant conversation with this friendly man as he wiggled his crooked legs about, very glad that he was too blind to see that I was deeply nervous about my own conduct as everyone watched. More photographs were taken and one passenger took it upon himself to translate our conversation for the rest of the bus. There was much whispering and I believe that ultimately people were impressed by my handling of the situation, and were especially relieved that I discussed his legs to the man's satisfaction until he rolled his trousers back down.
Eventually, the blind man exhausted his English and we couldn't talk any more. He began fumbling with his phone, turned the volume all the way up, and began playing a song. As a blind man perhaps he had greater developed his hearing and enjoyed music a lot I thought. The song sounded very Indian until I recognized it was Western, Danish in fact. This song is the most popular Western song in India because if the lyrics (which the Indians seem to enjoy greatly) were in Hindi it would be indistinguishable sonically from mainstream Hindi pop. That song (and remember, I have sworn I am not making any of this up) was Barbie Girl.
Though he had lost interest, nobody else had, and the rest of the bus continued to stare at me for a long time, perhaps to see how I would react at having the cripple continue to sit next to me for an extended period playing Barbie Girl. Eventually, most of them turned away, leaving only a very attractive girl in the seat ahead and across from me continuing to shamelessly stare. Very well, I thought, two can play that game. Me and the girl stared directly at each other for over three hours.
I don't think I've ever been so sexually frustrated in my entire life, and yes, I do remember middle school.
Late, late at night we suddenly came across a huge number of Tata trucks coming the other way out of the desert. A few minutes later I realized we were stopping by Kandla, which despite being in the middle of a wasteland is the busiest port in India. At the station we picked up an entire work shift of men in woolen hats and sweaters, with fat guts but muscular arms, dignified graying mustaches and weary eyes. They were, and could only be, dockworkers; stevedores. I too was tired and desperately wanted to get off the bus. I figured I could easily book a room in one of its many hotels and finish my trip in the morning. Then I saw the hotels, with their shoddy construction along the highway and neon signs advertising names like "The Grand" and "Hotel Flamingo", the sort of places that, if entered, I would leave the next morning with guilt and a rash.
The rest of the ride was punctuated by dark and dreary towns in the desert where the working men of Kandla made their abodes amongst piles of concrete blocks and a handful of chai stalls catering to workers going to and from the port every day. Finally we arrived in Bhuj at I forget what ungodly hour, and I learned that Jens was named Jens (not Hanselkraut, as I had been secretly thinking of him), and after some dispute between ourselves and then with an incompetent rickshaw-wallah we settled on a guesthouse. We booked rooms. I was hungry and tired, so much so that I willingly agreed to pay 42 rupees for five slices of bread and a package of sliced 'American' cheese from the hotel fridge. The rooms (to be fair, they cost about $2.15 a night) were like prison cells, but I was happy to accept. I locked myself in and slept in my solitary prison, nobody watching.
I was at Mt. Abu bus station, where a white-robed Brahma Kumaris cultist was loitering, using her excellent English to distribute patently false information about bus schedules out of Mt. Abu. So began my day. The ticket salesman was little better. I walked up to his window and said "I'd like a ticket to Palanpur." . "There is bus in eight minutes, yellow bus coming" he replied. "Excellent, one ticket please," I said, expecting to be sold a ticket. "One minute sir," he replied, and turned his attention to a paper bowl of spiced chickpeas siting on his desk. I stood, waiting. He noticed me still standing there."Five minutes, sir, five minutes." Let me get this straight, my bus is leaving now in four minutes and I am to wait five minutes so that this man can finish his peas before selling me a ticket. This is the level of customer service you can expect from Indian government enterprises that offer its employees no prospect of collecting baksheesh.
After five minutes he wiped his mouth, turned to me, and did not sell me a ticket but said, "This green bus here leaves in ten minutes, you buy ticket at that booth."
"How were the peas?" I asked with exaggerated enthusiasm
"Not peas, dal," he said.
"Dal was good?"
"Yes, very good."
"Glad to hear it," I said, clapping, and walked to the green bus. It left in twenty minutes.
The man sitting behind me on the bus was a German professor on sabbatical. I found out some 14 hours later that his name was Jens. It would be. Turns out he also was making the lengthy journey to Bhuj. Usually I have a policy against just talking to the other Westerners I meet on the bus, as I feel that is probably a little racist, and because most tourists I meet are dreadfully boring. It's rarely two minutes before they ask some variant of "Have you been to Agra yet? Isn't the Taj Mahal amazing?" I made an exception on this occasion though as we were both embarking blindly on a 500-kilometer trip through a state with a different language and potentially requiring up to 5 distinct bus transfers, for which we had not a single timetable, and could result in us being stranded in a desert in the wee hours of the night. It was wise to join forces. Though a valuable resource, I soon found his company tiresome, and his terribly German attitude towards disorder almost impossible to placate.
The bus's first stop was at the town of Abu Road. Here the bus stopped in the station for almost an hour before continuing. After this hour, and after the passengers had all squeezed in, the bus started its engine, rolled forwards, and made a left turn directly into the repair yard. Fully loaded with waiting passengers, the bus rolled over a repair pit and workers began hammering on the fuselage and performing maintenance on the gearbox. I heard an electrical humming and saw flashes of light. Though I am mostly inured now to the Indian way of doing things, the realization of what was happening almost made my head explode.
Allow me to make abundantly clear how terribly conceived Indian bus services are: after an hour idle at the station, when all the passengers were finally on the bus, at this very time, and not before, when, let me repeat, the bus was sitting idle for an hour, it was scheduled for the bus to undergo some welding.
We sat and they welded. I spoke to the Indian next to me. "Good thing we didn't miss the bus. We'd have to wait for them to build the next one." This remark was translated into Hindi and spread like wildfire, much to the consternation of the conductor who made his way to my seat to make a very stiff apology. A brief argument about the (in my view) absurdity of the situation ensued and I let slip a number of profanities which made me seem much angrier than I actually was, and resulted in most of the bus staring at me for the remainder of the hour-long ride to Palanpur. Being stared at was to become a recurring feature of the day.
We crossed the border into Gujarat and arrived at Palanpur. I noticed immediately that Gujarat was different from Rajasthan. While Rajasthan has a reputation for general backwardness, Gujarat is one of the most prosperous parts of India. Even in this rather anonymous town the buildings had a bit of a modern shine to them. The roads were superb. All day, even in the remote desert of Kutch, we traveled on divided highways that were almost up to Western standards. Everywhere were the signs of thriving industry, and though busy and chaotic, Gujarat seemed to be moving forwards faster than it was moving back.
Jens and I got off and began making inquiries on how to get to Bhuj. To our relief we discovered that in two hours a bus would take us all the way there, arriving late at night but requiring no transfers in forlorn desert villages. Jens went to buy food and I seated myself near the platform and waited. Huge mistake.
I busied myself attempting to learn Gujarati numbers and alphabet. Though quite similar to Hindi, some of the letters were completely foreign to me, and the numbers were essentially random squiggles. I figured them out, then sank into deep concentration memorizing them from the pages of my notebook. The space around me suddenly seemed full of shadows, and I looked up to discover that I was completely surrounded by a swarm of Indian men. I had about a two foot radius of personal space, beyond which were ranks upon ranks of gawking Gujaratis. Men in the back, five rows deep, stood on benches to get a better view. The faces of short men and children poked out from under the arms and between the torsos of people in the front rows. As usual, those closest to me were the wise-asses, and began asking me all sorts of questions. Hearing me speak caused the audience to grow even larger, until nearly the entire bus station, well over a hundred people were all engrossed in my answers and pressed in a tight circle around me like the audience of a cockfight, causing passersby to become curious as well, until I saw people leaving their business on the street to come see what was so interesting at the bus station. A bus station is the worst place to be a spectacle, because even when some people get bored or catch a bus and leave, there is always a constant stream of replacements.
Few of them spoke English, and my captive conversation with the jokers in front was constantly interrupted by heads forcing their way through the crowd to ask the few questions they could muster. "What is your country? Your name?" and so on, time after time. While most Indian men seem intent on prying into Westerners' sex lives, Gujaratis have another fascination: alcohol. Gujarat, despite its modernity, is a dry state. The only reason Gujarat being trapped in 1919 isn't completely appalling is because the rest of India is trapped in about 1873. Anyways, the predictable result of alcohol being completely forbidden is that everyone seems to be obsessed with it. I have long held that Prohibition is a sure way to pervert the soul. "You are liking English wine?" they kept asking. 'English wine' in India means 'liquor'. It took me a while at first to learn this, and I was initially confused by the number of English Wine Shops I saw around, figuring that only Indians with their self-defeating obsession with all things English would be the only people on Earth capable of swallowing the swill wine produced in England. Then I realized this meant not English wine, but actually Indian whiskey, which I have refused to personally sample, but am told by other travelers is just as bad.
I tried to at least make the attention useful. The more helpful among them offered me travel information which I knew to be misinformed. I tried to steer them into teaching me some basics of the Gujarati language. "You don't speak Gujarati?" They asked, perplexed. "No, I speak Spanish and English. I also am learning some Hindi."
"Hindi language but not Gujarati?" The crowd grew more and more puzzled and made a great stir. "Why don't you speak Gujarati?" they asked in all seriousness. The ever-growing and encroaching crowd had begun to stress me. I had already been a spectacle for over an hour and had gracefully responded to the constant barrage of uninvited interrogation but this was too much.
"BECAUSE NOBODY SPEAKS GUJARATI" I snapped "EVEN INDIAN PEOPLE DON'T SPEAK GUJARATI. DO YOU SPEAK FUCKING NORWEGIAN? NO, AND I DON'T SPEAK GUJARATI. WHY SHOULD I? WHO THE FUCK LEARNS GUJARATI?"
Taken rather aback, "Indian people do speak Gujarati" they insisted.
"No, only you people speak Gujarati, because you are from Gujarat."
One person volunteered "Every Indian person I am knowing speaks Gujarati. Very few people in India speaking full Hindi."
I just grasped my head in my hands.
I assure you, dear reader, that everything in this post, including what I am about to relate, actually happened and has not been the least bit embellished.
The situation I was sitting in was like being in the eye of a hurricane, I thought. My own mostly calm demeanor only served to highlight the great tempest around me. At least I have my two feet of empty space, I thought, though I neglected to consider the consequences of having what I thought was the benefit of open air above me. As I mentioned, there were over a hundred people forming rings around me, rendering me not unlike a bulls-eye, which I was about to become. As I responded to some inane question or another (I believe it may have been from some smartass trying to be funny by asking if I shave my pubic hair), I noticed a chunky yellow something appear on my backpack. I looked up just in time to see a group of birds in the ceiling fan above me, and a second lump of bird shit fall directly onto my shoulder.
If a bird had shat on me, I would have been annoyed, but to have a bird shit on me and only me at this moment as I was surrounded by a hundred other viable targets tipped me over the edge. Struggling to contain my fury, I got up, and made my way over to Jens (who had returned largely unnoticed due to the attention centered on me) to consult about our escape. We had another hour to endure. The crowd followed me, and Jens proved less capable of coping than I was. He started gesticulating at at the crowd with his hands. "Please open ze window", he pleaded while making a parting gesture. "OPEN ZE WINDOW PLEASE". Two or three Indians would grasp his meaning and oblige, only to have the gap filled by others in a matter or moments. "WINDOW. HELLO. YES. ZE WINDOW OPEN. OPEN WINDOW." I just started laughing at Jens and at how hopeless it was as I also began to seriously question if I could take another hour of this myself without completely cracking.
Just then a man in a sweater barged his way through the crowd and identified himself as being in charge, and ordered us to follow him. At first I thought he was another person trying to help us with mistaken information, but Jens immediately followed. I slowly gathered my luggage and followed as well. Ahead of me I saw Jens in a small office down a dark hallway, and two Indian men pushing a crowd of gawking Indians out the door. They held it a sliver open, and began shouting at me to come as well, waving urgently as I noticed the crowd slowly start to regroup, focus, and shuffle in my direction. I know this scene. I have watched many zombie movies, and this is the part where I have to fight my way into the door at the last second without getting bitten, lest my erstwhile companions give me up for lost and board the door shut, leaving me to my fate among the living dead. As soon as I squeezed my pack through the entrance, the station master and his deputies dead-bolted the door shut. This seemed to finally deter the crowd, who figured they would see no more of us before their buses came.
The station master apologized profusely and offered us the most services and comfort he could muster, placing phone calls around Gujarat and ordering bus conductors and ticket officials across the state to see to it personally that we had a comfortable ride to Bhuj. One deputy braved the zombies to bring us chai. A few undead gathered behind the station to gaze at us through the barred window, but I felt secure in the knowledge that they couldn't get in and would easily be repulsed by a sharp metal object through the brain if they started trying to pull the bars out.
When our bus finally arrived in the afternoon, the entire station staff assembled to form a protective cordon and escort us out of the station master's office. The one image that flashed through my mind now was not from a zombie movie, but rather the infamous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald under police escort from the Dallas police station. I scanned about nervously for an Indian Jack Ruby.
They were waiting for us but we were successfully loaded onto the bus, where two men were guarding spaces for us to sit and place our luggage. Finally, I thought, now all we have to do is sit for eight hours until we get there. If only this were so.
For most of the eight hours I did actually just sit there. There were no close brushes with death, as the wide, well-paved, divided Gujarati highways were quite safe. The exception was whenever the bus needed to make a right turn. Indian bus drivers have not yet come to terms with the concept of highway exit ramps and underpasses. "Exit on the left? But we are turning right," they say to themselves, bringing the bus to a halt not at the actual exit but at a gap in the highway divider and steering the bus carefully through the narrow space so that they might drive headlong the wrong way through traffic on the expressway until they can exit on the right and go the wrong way down the on-ramp. Nevertheless, the ride was generally quite boring and very long. The terrain grew flatter and flatter, sandier and sandier, and I questioned why I was choosing to go into a desert again. We carried on well through the night.
There was a man on the bus with a serious physical abnormality. He was extremely short, not quite a dwarf, but only chest-high, and he walked with great difficulty. He also had a strange squinting expression from his tiny, recessed eyes which I took to be evidence of some genetic disorder. At about 8 o'clock, he began stumbling up the bus aisle and seated himself next to me. He settled a bit, then spoke to me in English. "I am one hundred percent blind" was the first thing he said. Then how did he find me??? Good God, I thought, he can find white people by scent. He then asked the first two customary questions (where are you from? what's your name?) before rolling up his trousers. My goodness. This man - a kind and gentle man, I must say - this man's soul may have been created by Almighty God, but his legs were created by M.C. Escher. They looked more like question marks than limbs. He spoke his fifth sentence "thirty six fractures." Jesus fucking Christ. By now the entire bus was staring aghast as the foreigner and the 'freak' spoke to each other. I did my utmost to be gracious and friendly while the man's young helper (a relative?) came over to take photographs of the two of us sitting together. Even the Indians clearly thought that something deeply strange was happening and looked on, literally with their mouths hanging, as I held a pleasant conversation with this friendly man as he wiggled his crooked legs about, very glad that he was too blind to see that I was deeply nervous about my own conduct as everyone watched. More photographs were taken and one passenger took it upon himself to translate our conversation for the rest of the bus. There was much whispering and I believe that ultimately people were impressed by my handling of the situation, and were especially relieved that I discussed his legs to the man's satisfaction until he rolled his trousers back down.
Eventually, the blind man exhausted his English and we couldn't talk any more. He began fumbling with his phone, turned the volume all the way up, and began playing a song. As a blind man perhaps he had greater developed his hearing and enjoyed music a lot I thought. The song sounded very Indian until I recognized it was Western, Danish in fact. This song is the most popular Western song in India because if the lyrics (which the Indians seem to enjoy greatly) were in Hindi it would be indistinguishable sonically from mainstream Hindi pop. That song (and remember, I have sworn I am not making any of this up) was Barbie Girl.
Though he had lost interest, nobody else had, and the rest of the bus continued to stare at me for a long time, perhaps to see how I would react at having the cripple continue to sit next to me for an extended period playing Barbie Girl. Eventually, most of them turned away, leaving only a very attractive girl in the seat ahead and across from me continuing to shamelessly stare. Very well, I thought, two can play that game. Me and the girl stared directly at each other for over three hours.
I don't think I've ever been so sexually frustrated in my entire life, and yes, I do remember middle school.
Late, late at night we suddenly came across a huge number of Tata trucks coming the other way out of the desert. A few minutes later I realized we were stopping by Kandla, which despite being in the middle of a wasteland is the busiest port in India. At the station we picked up an entire work shift of men in woolen hats and sweaters, with fat guts but muscular arms, dignified graying mustaches and weary eyes. They were, and could only be, dockworkers; stevedores. I too was tired and desperately wanted to get off the bus. I figured I could easily book a room in one of its many hotels and finish my trip in the morning. Then I saw the hotels, with their shoddy construction along the highway and neon signs advertising names like "The Grand" and "Hotel Flamingo", the sort of places that, if entered, I would leave the next morning with guilt and a rash.
The rest of the ride was punctuated by dark and dreary towns in the desert where the working men of Kandla made their abodes amongst piles of concrete blocks and a handful of chai stalls catering to workers going to and from the port every day. Finally we arrived in Bhuj at I forget what ungodly hour, and I learned that Jens was named Jens (not Hanselkraut, as I had been secretly thinking of him), and after some dispute between ourselves and then with an incompetent rickshaw-wallah we settled on a guesthouse. We booked rooms. I was hungry and tired, so much so that I willingly agreed to pay 42 rupees for five slices of bread and a package of sliced 'American' cheese from the hotel fridge. The rooms (to be fair, they cost about $2.15 a night) were like prison cells, but I was happy to accept. I locked myself in and slept in my solitary prison, nobody watching.
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