I think they're on to me. This whole nation is conspiring to prevent me from posting on this blog. Though I am now spared the many hours of toil on my yet-to-be-published travel writings that usually preceded getting anything done on this blog, I keep running into unexpected difficulties. Mainly, it's tough to type up a post when the entire eastern half of the country is facing an electricity crisis. ...They'll stop at nothing to suppress me.
Orissa was the worst offender, outstripping Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal in its precision-timed blackouts aimed against my noble endeavors. But to be fair, Orissa was probably just a bit prudishly embarrassed that I was about to post dirty pictures of it online. I'm basically third-party sexting an entire administrative unit of the Indian Union.
I went to Konark, which is the one thing that captured enough of my interest in that state to convince me to get off the East Coast Railway for a day or two. Konark is the location of a massive semi-ruined temple of the sun-god Arka (elsewhere known as Surya). There's a rather amazing story concerning the temple's latter-day discover. Apparently, the entire soaring edifice was for several hundred years lost under an enormous sand dune until a party of inquisitive Brits decided to dig it up and found one of the best-preserved ancient temples in all of India. I don't buy it. The thing is just way to big for people to stroll past for hundreds of years in a not-that-sandy area without asking themselves "Hey, what's up with that sand dune?"
I think it went something like this: The problem wasn't sand. As soon as you call it 'dust', the riddle is solved. Over the centuries, the "untouchable" sweepers charged with keeping the temple clear of dust did as all Indian sweepers do, and swept that dust off just next to the temple. As years and years of wind blew more sand from the beach towards the temple, nobody actually ever got rid of the dust that was actually there, allowing the sacred plaza to silt up like any Indian storefront. It got so bad that the temple was eventually completely buried and worship was abandoned. One day, many centuries later, some Brits came by and said to eachother "Eh, Nigel, wot's that conspicuous pile of sand?" "Oi don't know, 'arry, let's ask one of these primitive chaps." When the locals informed them it was an ancient temple, they decided "Well, bugger me, let's dig it up then!" and called in a class of English maids from a local domestic servants' finishing school to sweep it all up with little feather whisks into proper dustpans and take the dirt somewhere else. Voila, a temple is revealed, and before you know it some English gents have themselves a knighthood and a pleasant estate near some tea fields with cool weather and a modest endowment of native coolies.
I do, however, imagine that the little English maids that unearthed the structure had quite a time maintaining their composure in the face of the...native improprieties that they discovered. Suffice to say, Ghostface Buddha's photo gallery is no longer PG-rated. You see, Konark is not only a sun temple but also a monumental gallery of large and small erotic sculptures. Even the frank depictions of foreplay would have raised some eyebrows, forget about the threesomes.
The temple now is a bit of a humorous spectacle thanks to the number of picnicking families. I was quite impressed with the parents' ability to select an innocuous facade to stand against for family photos without having to examine the smaller carvings too closely. Soon after I got to the temple, a guide approached me and offered the usual proclamations that without expert guidance I would remain wholly ignorant of the significance of the temple art, and thus leave disappointed and no wiser for my troubles. Usually I just roll my eyes and say something like "Yeah, I would have no idea that that sculpture over there is Durga engaged in combat with the demon Mahavitsu as the gods Gahesh and Karkiteya watch on, recognizing in the noble warrior goddess an emanation of their mother, wife of Shiva." In this case, I was able to just smirk and tell the seven-toothed middle-aged sap "Trust me, buddy, based on what I've seen so far I'm probably the greater expert here."
Some of the sculptures are life-size depictions of unbridled, passionate, no-holds-barred fuckin' in a variety of positions so defiantly acrobatic that the couples involved are at a very high risk of sexually-transmitted concussion. Then again, lots of them are just dragons trampling on elephants. The general message of the sexual sculptures is that lying down, under the covers, with the lights off is uncouth. They also seem to hold the opinion that sex is best enjoyed outdoors, up against a tree, or at least in the shade. Anyone who would deny this is clearly a barbarian. The height of culture, it appears, is to have one's enormous member serviced by 2-3 ladies unburdened by gravitational force or any scruples relating to having nuts swinging against their chins. And who are we to question the wisdom of the ancients? Scripture has spoken.
Mar 31, 2010
I'm The Lord Jagannath, Bitch
On my rapid advance northwards I entered the state of Orissa, and just in time. Shortly after I boarded a train out of the city, Hyderabad erupted into religious riots and federal troops have been sent in to impose a curfew and maintain order. Nobody seems to be quite sure why it started, but the current theory is that it was closely linked to large numbers of young men coming out of that afternoon's Secondary School Certificate exams at the same time as a quarrel erupted between Hindus and Muslims concerning...*sigh* the color of flags to be flown on the streets this Tuesday. When I passed through, the old city was bedecked in countless little strings of predictably green Muslim banners, but the Hindus felt entitled to replace them all with saffron banners to celebrate Hanuman's birthday. Fortunately, I am now in Kolkata, where all we have to worry about is a bizarre scandal involving a half-assed government coverup concerning the ownership of a property where five dozen people just died in a fire. Let's just talk about Orissa.
Orissa is not part of South India but isn't really quite part of North India either. People refer to it as part of "the East", which is typically defined as also including the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. One notices immediately upon looking at a map that these states do not cover the entire eastern half of India, and in fact don't even include any of India's seven easternmost states. Like all cultural regions, it is somewhat arbitrarily defined, and when you say 'East India', what you really mean is 'the shitty parts'. This region is almost entirely an expanse of impoverished rural districts populated by "Tribals" (to use the local term). The whole region suffers from a lack of infrastructure, shamefully incompetent governance, and (unsurprisingly) is the center of India's Naxal rebels.
The Naxals are a weak and loosely organized, yet very tenacious movement of Maoist guerillas who openly or secretly control large swaths of the countryside and its villages. As I write this, the conflict is escalating as the Naxals react to the hardline rhetoric many of the political parties have been adopting. The government is hellbent on capturing the bands responsible for last week's railway attacks and is allegedly pursuing small groups including key rebel leaders through the forests of Bengal, Jharkhand, and Orissa. There isn't a whole lot of controversy about this fight. The human rights activists are pleading not to blow it into a full-scale war say that the Naxals are mostly humble, aggrieved peasants and don't pose any real menace to the state, but this appeal is falling on mostly deaf ears. I for one generally agree with them, but there has been a troubling rise in the execution of "government informants". War, however, is a Bad Thing, and the ill-conceived and half-assedly concealed government offensive is bound to only drive the rebels to greater acts of violence.
I finally alighted from my miserable train in the capital city of Bhubaneshwar to find that once again I had narrowly avoided chaos, but this time it was chaos I would have liked to be there for. The previous day, all of the city's autorickshaw drivers went on strike protesting... *ssssiiiiiggghhhhh again* the proposed establishment of a city bus network. They claimed, correctly, that having buses would hurt their business and suggested the very reasonable compromise of having buses routed only to places that nobody wants to go. The city's response seems to have been "Fuck your business", as the whole point of getting buses was to spare people the expense of hiring rickshaws in the first place. I would have liked to have been there, because by all reports if anyone pulled up to me on the street and hassled me for business, the rest of the rickshaw drivers would have flipped his tuk-tuk and beaten him with shoes for trying to break the strike.
As it turned out, the strike was now over and everyone was free to pester me, drawing up alongside and shouting "Sir, sit here! Sight seen tour! Bhubaneshwar city of temples! More than 500 temples!" I raised an eyebrow at this. "500 huh? Which is the good one?" "....there are many temples..." "Yeah, that's what I thought. Take me to the bus stand."
When I got where I actually wanted to be, the holy city of Puri, I was pleased to hear that there was only one temple anyone cares about, which meant it should at least be interesting. Puri is the eastern of the cardinal direction temples in India. In the middle of the old town some distance from the beach is the temple of Lord Jagannath, perhaps the world's most silly-looking god. Jagannath is now considered a form of Vishnu as "Lord of the Universe". The Hindu religion all too readily reveals the fact that it just absorbs other cults' gods as a matter of convenience and calls them aspects of the gods the mainstream already likes. While the religious art in general adheres to pretty rigid iconography that keeps Vishnu and his like looking more or less the same everywhere you go, they can't do anything about the appearance of the ancient idols from weird pre-Brahmanical subsumed religions. Somehow nobody seems to mind that when Vishnu assumes the form of Lord of the Universe, he becomes a black-faced, goggle-eyed midget with no legs and little silly hands without any arms. Jagannath bears an uncanny resemblance to a South Park character, suggesting particularly a plotline where Cartman would infiltrate a minstrel show. For once I gladly bought up some of the religious kitsch on sale outside the temple and am now the proud owner of several Lord Jagannath commemorative plastic plates.
Puri is best known for its massive cart-pulling festival in which millions of people come to see some very large carts be pulled. In fact, the English word "Juggernaut" derives from these Jagannath carts and English mens' astonishment at crazed Hindus throwing themselves under the wheels of the unstoppable carts believing they'll go straight to heaven. While I was glad to not be here at the same time as a few million Indians and anything slightly dangerous, I must say Puri was a touch boring without the risk of being bulldozed by a giant cart transporting an Alabama slaveholder's cartoon depiction of a black midget.
The one thing that enlivened my stroll in the temple area was running into a strange fellow named Ajit. He said to me "Ajit means 'unconquered'...but what is the true meaning?" I had to confess I did not know. He then informed me that my name (which he somehow took to be something not even remotely similar to my name) meant "like breathing, like air." "Hare Krishna Hare Ram Hai Vishnu Hai Shiv" he said, touching me on the shoulder and adding "I am a religious leader." Oh, good.
"Tell me, what is your feeling?" He asked. I couldn't stop myself.
"I don't know. I feel something...like the Truth is there, but I cannot know it fully..."
"YES! INDEED! Please sit! Tell me, your belief, you believe in the Jeezoo?"
".....No...."
"Ahhh, no, no! The Jeezoo Christ!"
"No."
"But you are Chreeshian?"
"No."
"A Mussalman?"
"No."
"But you know the Jeezoo?"
"Yes."
"The Jeezoo he is the one religion like the Krishna like Buddhi...
"All people know that the God is Truth. They think they have many religion but ha! They worship same God!"
"Yes! Yes!"
"And all religions share one great truth..."
"Come, come with me. I can show you the Truth."
"I know the Truth."
Eyes squinting..."And what Truth is this?"
"They're all the same shit."
".......Ok fine, you are not wanting Truth, young man."
"Nope."
"Maybe you are wanting....things?"
"Oh THINGS, please continue."
"You wanting....mountain grass?" wink, wink.
"But I cannot carry enough grass for my garden!"
"No, mountain grass...mari....oh. No want. You leave now."
I was thus made a persona non grata in the one religious order that could have shown me the Universal Truth, which is really what I was trying to accomplish. I also became a persona non grata at my hotel, where my attempts to weasel out of extra fees by leaning on my established friendliness with the cute manager girl led the rest of the staff to frenziedly report by walkie-talkie that I was hitting on the owner's daughter.
You win some, you lose some.
Except I got her number. GFB never lose some.
Orissa is not part of South India but isn't really quite part of North India either. People refer to it as part of "the East", which is typically defined as also including the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. One notices immediately upon looking at a map that these states do not cover the entire eastern half of India, and in fact don't even include any of India's seven easternmost states. Like all cultural regions, it is somewhat arbitrarily defined, and when you say 'East India', what you really mean is 'the shitty parts'. This region is almost entirely an expanse of impoverished rural districts populated by "Tribals" (to use the local term). The whole region suffers from a lack of infrastructure, shamefully incompetent governance, and (unsurprisingly) is the center of India's Naxal rebels.
The Naxals are a weak and loosely organized, yet very tenacious movement of Maoist guerillas who openly or secretly control large swaths of the countryside and its villages. As I write this, the conflict is escalating as the Naxals react to the hardline rhetoric many of the political parties have been adopting. The government is hellbent on capturing the bands responsible for last week's railway attacks and is allegedly pursuing small groups including key rebel leaders through the forests of Bengal, Jharkhand, and Orissa. There isn't a whole lot of controversy about this fight. The human rights activists are pleading not to blow it into a full-scale war say that the Naxals are mostly humble, aggrieved peasants and don't pose any real menace to the state, but this appeal is falling on mostly deaf ears. I for one generally agree with them, but there has been a troubling rise in the execution of "government informants". War, however, is a Bad Thing, and the ill-conceived and half-assedly concealed government offensive is bound to only drive the rebels to greater acts of violence.
I finally alighted from my miserable train in the capital city of Bhubaneshwar to find that once again I had narrowly avoided chaos, but this time it was chaos I would have liked to be there for. The previous day, all of the city's autorickshaw drivers went on strike protesting... *ssssiiiiiggghhhhh again* the proposed establishment of a city bus network. They claimed, correctly, that having buses would hurt their business and suggested the very reasonable compromise of having buses routed only to places that nobody wants to go. The city's response seems to have been "Fuck your business", as the whole point of getting buses was to spare people the expense of hiring rickshaws in the first place. I would have liked to have been there, because by all reports if anyone pulled up to me on the street and hassled me for business, the rest of the rickshaw drivers would have flipped his tuk-tuk and beaten him with shoes for trying to break the strike.
As it turned out, the strike was now over and everyone was free to pester me, drawing up alongside and shouting "Sir, sit here! Sight seen tour! Bhubaneshwar city of temples! More than 500 temples!" I raised an eyebrow at this. "500 huh? Which is the good one?" "....there are many temples..." "Yeah, that's what I thought. Take me to the bus stand."
When I got where I actually wanted to be, the holy city of Puri, I was pleased to hear that there was only one temple anyone cares about, which meant it should at least be interesting. Puri is the eastern of the cardinal direction temples in India. In the middle of the old town some distance from the beach is the temple of Lord Jagannath, perhaps the world's most silly-looking god. Jagannath is now considered a form of Vishnu as "Lord of the Universe". The Hindu religion all too readily reveals the fact that it just absorbs other cults' gods as a matter of convenience and calls them aspects of the gods the mainstream already likes. While the religious art in general adheres to pretty rigid iconography that keeps Vishnu and his like looking more or less the same everywhere you go, they can't do anything about the appearance of the ancient idols from weird pre-Brahmanical subsumed religions. Somehow nobody seems to mind that when Vishnu assumes the form of Lord of the Universe, he becomes a black-faced, goggle-eyed midget with no legs and little silly hands without any arms. Jagannath bears an uncanny resemblance to a South Park character, suggesting particularly a plotline where Cartman would infiltrate a minstrel show. For once I gladly bought up some of the religious kitsch on sale outside the temple and am now the proud owner of several Lord Jagannath commemorative plastic plates.
Puri is best known for its massive cart-pulling festival in which millions of people come to see some very large carts be pulled. In fact, the English word "Juggernaut" derives from these Jagannath carts and English mens' astonishment at crazed Hindus throwing themselves under the wheels of the unstoppable carts believing they'll go straight to heaven. While I was glad to not be here at the same time as a few million Indians and anything slightly dangerous, I must say Puri was a touch boring without the risk of being bulldozed by a giant cart transporting an Alabama slaveholder's cartoon depiction of a black midget.
The one thing that enlivened my stroll in the temple area was running into a strange fellow named Ajit. He said to me "Ajit means 'unconquered'...but what is the true meaning?" I had to confess I did not know. He then informed me that my name (which he somehow took to be something not even remotely similar to my name) meant "like breathing, like air." "Hare Krishna Hare Ram Hai Vishnu Hai Shiv" he said, touching me on the shoulder and adding "I am a religious leader." Oh, good.
"Tell me, what is your feeling?" He asked. I couldn't stop myself.
"I don't know. I feel something...like the Truth is there, but I cannot know it fully..."
"YES! INDEED! Please sit! Tell me, your belief, you believe in the Jeezoo?"
".....No...."
"Ahhh, no, no! The Jeezoo Christ!"
"No."
"But you are Chreeshian?"
"No."
"A Mussalman?"
"No."
"But you know the Jeezoo?"
"Yes."
"The Jeezoo he is the one religion like the Krishna like Buddhi...
"All people know that the God is Truth. They think they have many religion but ha! They worship same God!"
"Yes! Yes!"
"And all religions share one great truth..."
"Come, come with me. I can show you the Truth."
"I know the Truth."
Eyes squinting..."And what Truth is this?"
"They're all the same shit."
".......Ok fine, you are not wanting Truth, young man."
"Nope."
"Maybe you are wanting....things?"
"Oh THINGS, please continue."
"You wanting....mountain grass?" wink, wink.
"But I cannot carry enough grass for my garden!"
"No, mountain grass...mari....oh. No want. You leave now."
I was thus made a persona non grata in the one religious order that could have shown me the Universal Truth, which is really what I was trying to accomplish. I also became a persona non grata at my hotel, where my attempts to weasel out of extra fees by leaning on my established friendliness with the cute manager girl led the rest of the staff to frenziedly report by walkie-talkie that I was hitting on the owner's daughter.
You win some, you lose some.
Except I got her number. GFB never lose some.
Mar 29, 2010
Hyderabad To The Hyderabone
Hyderabad is one of the largest cities in India. It has a population of over 8 million people, 5 million of whom are at any given time about to run you over with a motorcycle. It should almost go without saying that as a large Indian city, Hyderabad must be completely insane, and it is. While it may be one of the most successful cities in the country thanks to its massive software industry (a.k.a. Cyberabad) and some attempt has been made to run it like a proper urban area, you still have to proceed through the streets seizing upon gaps in the murderous traffic that exist for fleeting periods of time that last shorter than a hummingbird's handjob. The local solution is to have a small army of traffic police who at least prevent disaster at intersections by waving their hands about and looking intimidatingly at anyone with the nerve to creep forwards out of turn. Where there are no cops, it's an utter anarchy of bikes and buses hurtling towards packs of pedestrians scurrying across the lane like a set of highly-evolved bowling balls. When the Indian people around are cursing and wheezing in terror as they run, you know it's pretty bad. I tried to conceive of a way to contain the chaos, but could do no better than inventing a cumbersome blockade made of a giant counterweighted beam with an unbroken chain of live cows strapped to it. This, at least, would make people stop but would present certain practical difficulties, like how to make sure the cows only poop when they're on the ground. Progress is not a vocation for the easily daunted.
But enough griping about urban India. Same shit, different sewer.
One of the first things one notices about Hyderabad while not competing in the devil's decathlon is that a large portion of the population are Muslims. This goes back all the way to the age of those tediously belligerent Deccan Sultanates, a tradition that continues to this day in the person of the incredibly conceited Nizams of Hyderabad, who haven't noticed that they stopped being a semi-independent state 63 years ago. Nevertheless, considerable energy is expended reminding the visitor of such facts as that the Nizam was the only Indian prince entitled to a 21-gun salute in all realms of the British Empire (19-gun princes, obviously, are bitches), and that the Kohinoor diamond, with which everyone in India is obsessed, came from here. Less energy is expended reminding everyone that said diamond got passed around the warring powers of 19th-century India like a stripper at an NFL team's Super Bowl victory party and is now sitting exhausted, used, and suspiciously still in the Crown Jewels in London and nobody's quite sure how much cocaine she just had.
The upshot of monomaniacal royals with garish wealth is that centuries later we get to enjoy all the cool shit they build and softly applaud them for having the noble inspiration to commission themselves expensive palaces. The old city, where a good third of the population seems to be comprised to shuffling black sacks with feet, is full of such delightfully pointless monuments. By far the greatest of its edifices, surpassing the usual gamut of mosques and palaces, is a...thing...called the Charminar, or "Four Minarets", a giant triumphal arch/mosque/tower doodad that soars dramatically out of the heart of the city between eight other massive street-spanning arches, just because. All around the Charminar is the sheer insanity of a thriving sprawl of 17th century bazaars with 21st century traffic running down the middle. Thousands of women, mostly in burkhas, swarm around between shops and carts examining what I sincerely hope is the world's largest concentration of bangles. If there exists a place on Earth with more bangles than old Hyderabad, it's time to reconsider the creative priorities of the human race. I don't even know what they're going to do with all those bangles. They're wearing burkhas. They could be banglin' from head to toe and nobody but their husbands would ever know that the odd look of discomfort one detects through their eye-slits is because they're waddling down the road like an otter trapped in a slinky.
On the fringes of Hyderabad, out between the newest residential constructions, is the older, ruined city of Golconda. This may come as a shock, but there is a Very Historic Castle. And tombs. I don't think I ever need to see a castle or tomb again. But I wondered, as I meandered about the enormous yet uninspiring graves, what would the bloodthirstily pious sultans of old say if they knew that a visit to Golconda and the tombs of their forefathers was now primarily an excuse for the young people of Hyderabad to meet and (by the Prophet's beard, such words are to me like poison at the feast of Eid!)...cuddle?
I spent much of my last day in Hyderabad on a worthless quest to look at its celebrated lake and their new giant Buddha statue, and it sucked. I was at least expecting the statue itself to be good since they went to the great trouble and expense of fishing it out of the lake after the barge carrying it sank (even prophets are at the mercy of deathly incompetent transportation in this country). Anyways, whichever latter-day Michelangelo that directed its post-dunking installation on the lake forgot the minor detail of standing it so that it faces the brand-spanking new park they built to view it from. I shall never know if the Buddha maintained his zen-filled countenance in the face of a sinking ship.
The morning after this pointless endeavor I set out on a venture that I knew was going to suck from the outset. Little did I know that I was in for a hot, bumpy ride on the tranny train all...night...long.
Let me rephrase that.
I had booked myself a 23-hour train journey way up the east coast on a ticket that made no guarantee I would get more than half a sleeping berth. I knew deep down that all the reassurances I found from travelers online that such tickets usually turn out alright would be comprehensively wrong, and that the train would arrive at my destination probably about the same time as the neighboring piece of the Earth's crust. I was relieved when I got on to find that the train was surprisingly empty, save for a few passengers, an entire parade of differently-differently-abled beggars, and a family of mice licking at the edible footprints left in the crusty deposits of spilled lentil curry. I was awoken from my morning nap once by a mouse scurrying up my backpack and over my feet, and countless other times by prodding mendicants. Sleep is one of the few things that Indians don't consider sacred. You will be woken up at any time of day or night to be asked for money, informed that the bus-driver is stopping to take a leak, or asked if you would like any tea delivered to your hotel room. "Oh yes, I would love some tea. I'm feeling a bit groggy SINCE YOU JUST WOKE ME UP, ASSHOLE." I have a theory that by some divine intervention of an irritating minor Hindu god dwelling in a shrine next to an IT firm in Hyderabad or Bangalore, every time you 'poke' someone on Facebook it is transmuted into an actual poke to be suffered by an innocent person somewhere in India.
I was half-conscious, in that turbulent state of disturbed sleep when I became aware of the sound of clapping drawing nearer and nearer in the carriage. Oh great, I thought, hear comes some idiot with his one-stringed fiddle and insect-covered baby sister to sing some godawful tune and look maudlin until I pay him five rupees not to start anew with his tambourine. I was therefore surprised, though I probably would have been surprised under any circumstances, to be prodded awake by a clique of clapping trannies.
When I say "trannies", I'm not entirely sure if they were technically transvestites, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, or something else. They define the categories differently over here. In any event, I noticed the juxtaposition of saris and square jaws. This is one of those things that many people evidently find much more magical than I do. Entire forests have been felled to print the numerous books written about the "invisible lives" of the puzzling caste of people who are, for lack of a more coherent definition, sexually different. One of the things they are best known for is showing up at people's weddings, sometimes invited for an arcane blessing but usually on the tip-offs of informers, and then proceeding to dance around until the host gets the message that if some money isn't delivered soon the wedding-guests will be treated to an extended glimpse of what's under those skirts. Invisible lives indeed. But wide-eyed Westerners of the sentimental type just can't seem to stop writing books about them as if they were just discovered after thousands of years evolving in a sealed-off cave. I, for one, upon my first extended encounter with them, was merely irritated and gestured that they should move on, preferably without clapping. I've lived in Amsterdam. You'll have to do a lot more than just put on a lady's dress to impress me.
As night fell and the train reached the coast, the carriage was suddenly inundated by passengers well beyond capacity. The transvestite troupe had dissapeared, but I was faced with the much more unpleasant situation of having to spend the entire night bent up in a half-sized bed which I was sharing head-to-foot with a complete stranger whose little toe was growing out of the top of his foot halfway back to the ankle and periodically threatened to insert itself up my nostril.
It was a hard, bumpy ride on the tranny train, all night long.
In the morning we entered Orissa, the poorest state in all of India, which is to say that it is very, very poor. I was particularly concerned the train would crawl through here hopelessly slow because Orissa and its neighboring states have spent the last week or so having their rail lines blown to pieces in a coordinated Naxalite Maoist offensive against the government. As soon as we crossed the state border, all the passengers abruptly abandoned the train in the town of Brahmapur, which I looked up later and found to have no touristic, religious, or transport-link significance. They just wanted to get off the train immediately, probably because they weren't in the mood for a repeat of the other day's dramatic bombing/derailment in Bihar. The vacancy was almost immediately filled by large groups of Orissan peasants on their way to business in the city on the morning express. For them, as they had boarded just before dawn, it was a day train rather than a sleeper, and they wasted no time in poking at me to demand I cede the quarter-bed I had just finished painfully ossifying in. Then, with the influx of new passengers, came a new (and I must say even less inspired) march of the clapping trannies.
Only a few more hours to the end, I thought. And that's when shit got really weird. The train arrived five minutes early.
But enough griping about urban India. Same shit, different sewer.
One of the first things one notices about Hyderabad while not competing in the devil's decathlon is that a large portion of the population are Muslims. This goes back all the way to the age of those tediously belligerent Deccan Sultanates, a tradition that continues to this day in the person of the incredibly conceited Nizams of Hyderabad, who haven't noticed that they stopped being a semi-independent state 63 years ago. Nevertheless, considerable energy is expended reminding the visitor of such facts as that the Nizam was the only Indian prince entitled to a 21-gun salute in all realms of the British Empire (19-gun princes, obviously, are bitches), and that the Kohinoor diamond, with which everyone in India is obsessed, came from here. Less energy is expended reminding everyone that said diamond got passed around the warring powers of 19th-century India like a stripper at an NFL team's Super Bowl victory party and is now sitting exhausted, used, and suspiciously still in the Crown Jewels in London and nobody's quite sure how much cocaine she just had.
The upshot of monomaniacal royals with garish wealth is that centuries later we get to enjoy all the cool shit they build and softly applaud them for having the noble inspiration to commission themselves expensive palaces. The old city, where a good third of the population seems to be comprised to shuffling black sacks with feet, is full of such delightfully pointless monuments. By far the greatest of its edifices, surpassing the usual gamut of mosques and palaces, is a...thing...called the Charminar, or "Four Minarets", a giant triumphal arch/mosque/tower doodad that soars dramatically out of the heart of the city between eight other massive street-spanning arches, just because. All around the Charminar is the sheer insanity of a thriving sprawl of 17th century bazaars with 21st century traffic running down the middle. Thousands of women, mostly in burkhas, swarm around between shops and carts examining what I sincerely hope is the world's largest concentration of bangles. If there exists a place on Earth with more bangles than old Hyderabad, it's time to reconsider the creative priorities of the human race. I don't even know what they're going to do with all those bangles. They're wearing burkhas. They could be banglin' from head to toe and nobody but their husbands would ever know that the odd look of discomfort one detects through their eye-slits is because they're waddling down the road like an otter trapped in a slinky.
On the fringes of Hyderabad, out between the newest residential constructions, is the older, ruined city of Golconda. This may come as a shock, but there is a Very Historic Castle. And tombs. I don't think I ever need to see a castle or tomb again. But I wondered, as I meandered about the enormous yet uninspiring graves, what would the bloodthirstily pious sultans of old say if they knew that a visit to Golconda and the tombs of their forefathers was now primarily an excuse for the young people of Hyderabad to meet and (by the Prophet's beard, such words are to me like poison at the feast of Eid!)...cuddle?
I spent much of my last day in Hyderabad on a worthless quest to look at its celebrated lake and their new giant Buddha statue, and it sucked. I was at least expecting the statue itself to be good since they went to the great trouble and expense of fishing it out of the lake after the barge carrying it sank (even prophets are at the mercy of deathly incompetent transportation in this country). Anyways, whichever latter-day Michelangelo that directed its post-dunking installation on the lake forgot the minor detail of standing it so that it faces the brand-spanking new park they built to view it from. I shall never know if the Buddha maintained his zen-filled countenance in the face of a sinking ship.
The morning after this pointless endeavor I set out on a venture that I knew was going to suck from the outset. Little did I know that I was in for a hot, bumpy ride on the tranny train all...night...long.
Let me rephrase that.
I had booked myself a 23-hour train journey way up the east coast on a ticket that made no guarantee I would get more than half a sleeping berth. I knew deep down that all the reassurances I found from travelers online that such tickets usually turn out alright would be comprehensively wrong, and that the train would arrive at my destination probably about the same time as the neighboring piece of the Earth's crust. I was relieved when I got on to find that the train was surprisingly empty, save for a few passengers, an entire parade of differently-differently-abled beggars, and a family of mice licking at the edible footprints left in the crusty deposits of spilled lentil curry. I was awoken from my morning nap once by a mouse scurrying up my backpack and over my feet, and countless other times by prodding mendicants. Sleep is one of the few things that Indians don't consider sacred. You will be woken up at any time of day or night to be asked for money, informed that the bus-driver is stopping to take a leak, or asked if you would like any tea delivered to your hotel room. "Oh yes, I would love some tea. I'm feeling a bit groggy SINCE YOU JUST WOKE ME UP, ASSHOLE." I have a theory that by some divine intervention of an irritating minor Hindu god dwelling in a shrine next to an IT firm in Hyderabad or Bangalore, every time you 'poke' someone on Facebook it is transmuted into an actual poke to be suffered by an innocent person somewhere in India.
I was half-conscious, in that turbulent state of disturbed sleep when I became aware of the sound of clapping drawing nearer and nearer in the carriage. Oh great, I thought, hear comes some idiot with his one-stringed fiddle and insect-covered baby sister to sing some godawful tune and look maudlin until I pay him five rupees not to start anew with his tambourine. I was therefore surprised, though I probably would have been surprised under any circumstances, to be prodded awake by a clique of clapping trannies.
When I say "trannies", I'm not entirely sure if they were technically transvestites, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, or something else. They define the categories differently over here. In any event, I noticed the juxtaposition of saris and square jaws. This is one of those things that many people evidently find much more magical than I do. Entire forests have been felled to print the numerous books written about the "invisible lives" of the puzzling caste of people who are, for lack of a more coherent definition, sexually different. One of the things they are best known for is showing up at people's weddings, sometimes invited for an arcane blessing but usually on the tip-offs of informers, and then proceeding to dance around until the host gets the message that if some money isn't delivered soon the wedding-guests will be treated to an extended glimpse of what's under those skirts. Invisible lives indeed. But wide-eyed Westerners of the sentimental type just can't seem to stop writing books about them as if they were just discovered after thousands of years evolving in a sealed-off cave. I, for one, upon my first extended encounter with them, was merely irritated and gestured that they should move on, preferably without clapping. I've lived in Amsterdam. You'll have to do a lot more than just put on a lady's dress to impress me.
As night fell and the train reached the coast, the carriage was suddenly inundated by passengers well beyond capacity. The transvestite troupe had dissapeared, but I was faced with the much more unpleasant situation of having to spend the entire night bent up in a half-sized bed which I was sharing head-to-foot with a complete stranger whose little toe was growing out of the top of his foot halfway back to the ankle and periodically threatened to insert itself up my nostril.
It was a hard, bumpy ride on the tranny train, all night long.
In the morning we entered Orissa, the poorest state in all of India, which is to say that it is very, very poor. I was particularly concerned the train would crawl through here hopelessly slow because Orissa and its neighboring states have spent the last week or so having their rail lines blown to pieces in a coordinated Naxalite Maoist offensive against the government. As soon as we crossed the state border, all the passengers abruptly abandoned the train in the town of Brahmapur, which I looked up later and found to have no touristic, religious, or transport-link significance. They just wanted to get off the train immediately, probably because they weren't in the mood for a repeat of the other day's dramatic bombing/derailment in Bihar. The vacancy was almost immediately filled by large groups of Orissan peasants on their way to business in the city on the morning express. For them, as they had boarded just before dawn, it was a day train rather than a sleeper, and they wasted no time in poking at me to demand I cede the quarter-bed I had just finished painfully ossifying in. Then, with the influx of new passengers, came a new (and I must say even less inspired) march of the clapping trannies.
Only a few more hours to the end, I thought. And that's when shit got really weird. The train arrived five minutes early.
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