Saturday, July 30, 2005

A tearful adieu

Border crossings are not always a fun day out. As a traveller, it's one of the rare moments when you actually need to be organised, and land crossings often take an inordinate amount of time. My last exit from India was into Bangladesh, and of it I retain no fond memories of the Indian Customs Service. 'Rude bastards' was how I would describe them, all this time later.
Still, India to Pakistan was a breeze; in fact, a little dull.

Where I expected milling, shrieking, disorganised crowds, dust, dirt and general pandemonium, I was faced with efficiency that you just don't expect on the subcontinent. Funny, that. During four months I had approached every civil servant with a sense of subservient dread, but here they are happy for you to leave and scan your passport before you have the opportunity to admit to yourself how much you're going to miss the place.

Then I got emotional. Being a long-term tragic single, I have few attachments and no-one to love. Instead, I fall head over heels for peoples and panoramas, and India is a place, for all of its absurdity, that really makes me feel good about myself. Unlike the Western obsession with careers, fashion, impersonal technology and the latest in everything, India certainly skips to its own beat in its own time. No-one in India really cares for all the shite we fill and end our lives with in the West. I like it a lot and admit to having a few tears in my eyes when I walked through no-man's land and into Pakistan.

The Singaporean accompanying me was appalled at my public display. Still, I've always considered the Chinese as expressive as ice and as appealing as a movie starring Nicole Kidman. I wiped my tears and silently thanked India for another four months of uninterrupted insanity.
And just let me tell you, Pakistan made an indelible first impression.

No cow. Bovine-free, a good thing. As simple as that. Lahore, a quick bus ride from the border town of Wagah, is free of excrement. This is no insignificant change when your nostrils have been violently assaulted for the last few months and your face constantly attacked by flies mistaking it for a pile of dung. Pollution and traffic remain as chaotic as I expected, but to breathe easily and deeply has made me immediately attracted to the young Islamic Republic.

I checked into a hotel full of sullen Japanese and dope-smoking Europeans, and crashed onto the bed. I flicked through my book, 'The Idea of Pakistan', and at present, I believe it to be a very fine idea indeed.

Salaam walekum Pakistan!

Friday, July 29, 2005

Hangin' with the posse

I've been befriended (read: adopted) by four Punjabi lads. Indians think it's tragic that anyone would travel alone for such a long time. I either have no friends or no life. Travelling solo doesn't arouse suspicion, but to them it just appears sad and lonesome. Gagan, Rajan, Nimesh and the other one have taken me under their wing.

They have shown me the sights. They have treated me to delicious meals in dhabas all over town. Dal makani and channa masala could quite well be the most delicious and fattening food eaten on the entire trip. I am happy and sated.

Sikhs are known to be a hospitable people. It is their custom to welcome the pilgrim, the traveller, the filthy backpacker. If you let them, they would keep you company every moment of the day and night. The guys knock constantly on my hotel door - for sightseeing, to join them at dinner, yet another photo opportunity.

These particular Punjabis may be the most avid skirt-chasers in in the world. As the native English speaker, I was the bait (or is it the hook?) Each time we approached a foreign woman I was prodded and encouraged to enter into conversation. You can imagine how successful was our approach.

I tried to explain the shortcomings of the technique. No woman aged approximately twenty-two and standing next to her boyfriend is going to exchange frivolities with me and my posse, four of whom were ogling as if she originated from another world. Nor is drooling is seen as polite body language in the West.

Despite (obvious) repeated failures, their spirits did not dampen. I tried to explain that Western girls and boys no longer talk with each other. Someone invented something called SMS and now people have reduced themselves to communicating as if they really did live on opposite sides of the planet. They smiled eagerly at me and produced mobile phones for inspection. I groaned.
I'll give them this much - they don't discourage easily. Tenacious and unfaltering. Women might choose another adjective. The only female who did look at us simultaneously attempted to turn us to stone. The boys kept smiling. Any attention was a step in the right direction.

Punjabis are also incredibly fashion conscious. The boys were always dressed as if for a model shoot. I generally looked like the man who might move props about the set and then clean the room after everyone else had left for the day. A change of clothes occured every few hours. Photos were taken. Another change of garments. More photos. They wore sunglasses at night, and had the shiniest hair I've ever seen.

I had a wondeful time with them. And, much as they might hunt in packs and be the bane of any solo Western female traveller, they made me feel very welcome and were true friends to me. They were honest and refreshingly sincere. They didn't smoke, didn't drink, and were still virgins at 24. Do we still have these kind of people in the West?

My favourite people to date on the trip. I'll be leaving the country with a smile on my face.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Administrative tasks (it felt like a day at work)

When dealing with administration, I score 8 out of 10. I know well how to complete forms, am patient in queues, highly organised. I always carry a notebook, pens, a small stapler. My alter ego embraces paper and ink.

However, not today. I obtained my Pakistan visa, no sweat. A simple procedure, I merely had to visit the Australian Embassy to procure a Letter of Introduction, a piece of paper to give to the Pakis so that they might believe me to be the person that my passport already says I am.
A nice surprise, the Australian and Pakistani Embassies face each other. No need for physical exertion. I held back the homesickness in the air-conditioned office of my fellow compatriots, paid for and took my letter, and crossed the street. Only six metres of bitumen separate the neat and tidy from the dirty and dishevelled. It's that clear cut. On the 'Australian' side of the road the footpath is neat and tidy. The massive white residences of Australian diplomats sit in a leafy enclosure surrounded by high iron fencing.

The Pakistani Embassy is a walled fortress, the footpath littered with people and discarded papers - the disorganistation of the developing world. And you don't apply from within the complex itself, you stick your head through a hole on the perimeter wall. Still, service was friendly and efficient - I had the visa in 24 hours.

Iran has proved a little more troublesome. Some distance from the diplomatic enclave (perhaps to confirm its separateness from the rest of the world), I was anticipating uniforms, razor wire and a intrusive full body search. Instead I breezed through the door and sat watching televsion in the waiting room ... Can't say that I'm looking to Iranian cuisine as demonstrated by the woman wearing a black tent on the National station. It all looked a bit like beige mush.

I handed over my duplicate application form, the usual copies of passport and visas, the Letter of Introduction and passport photos. I was told I needed to wait ten days. A ten day wait for a seven day transit visa. Bollocks to that. I'm going straight to Pakistan and will try my luck from the Iran Embassy in Islamabad. The idea of spending further time in Dehli is not a healthy train of thought for me at this point of my life.

I also need $US. This is because (I've read and have been told) American Express travellers cheques are not accepted in the Islamic Republic, and you cannot withdraw cash from an ATM with your card if issued by an non-Iranian bank. So I get to carry a whole wad of notes with me. With prior experiences of theft you can imagine how much I look forward to this ...

If a journey to Iran means taking the greenback, the you can count on Indian authorities to make this a tooth-grinding undertaking. The National Bank of India has 'rules', some organic regulations that varied on my three visits to the Amex Office.

You can purchase $US if you are leaving India; I proffered my air ticket.

'My next flight is from Cairo, so you can see I'm leaving the country.'

'But when?'

'Here is my train ticket to Amritsar tomorrow. From there I'll take a rickshaw to the border.'

'How can we be sure?' [Return to opening line of dialogue]

Next, you can purchase only the equivalent amount of what you can prove you encashed in the country. Por ejemplo, if you cashed $1000, you can buy back the equivalent provided you kept the ridiculous receipts for each transaction. Who keeps pieces of paper like that?

... Back in my room, I kissed my image in the mirror after discovering encashment certificates for Rs 34000, easily enough to buy the amount I needed. It pays to hoard useless bit of trash. I also found a long-forgotten toothbrush and some safety pins, so things were obviously looking up.

In my absence, the Amex Office had decided that even if I went to Amritsar they couldn't be certain I would leave the country. And me? I wasn't certain the staff in this office would see the close of the day. Ashamedly, I exploded. I used some strong language. Months and months of having to deal with most petty bureaucracy in the world made me lucid and viscious. The staff didn't appreciate this. But what did I care? I, not them, now had to visit the black market in search of currency from a country I do not even plan to visit.

America, stop being a pain in the arse to every single country who does not share your sense of immoral warfare and rampant consumerism. If you could just get along with people who think differently than you, my travels would be a lot easier. I could use my traveller cheques, for one. Besides, we don't all want to go shopping and watch Oprah Winfrey. Your American lifestyle, as you portray it to the rest of the world, sucks big time. I've had it with you and your embargoes. You, you and your barbeque can piss off.

And as for India, you and your petty rules and regulations are the laughing stock of the world. Grow up.

Umm, I think that counts as a rant.

This, being India, it is often easier to flout than follow the rules. It took 14.675 seconds to find someone who could provide me with the cash I needed. We moved off the street and into a laneway. He ushered me into a little back office where we played with his pocket calculator until we fixed a price. I handed over the entire sum of cash that was to see me through the next six to eight weeks. My main man moved off behind a curtain and disappeared into the street. In my head, much time passed.

Karma (or is it dharma?) I swore in the office and now I'll be prostituting my cashless body across the continent to make it to my next flight in Egypt. I imagined brigands in Baluchistan offering me a free ride, then selling me at an elevated price on the exclusive white slave market. I would be captured by some unglamorous and unknown off-shoot of a guerilla organisation, made to cook for them, finally ending my life with my head in one corner of a room and my body in the other.

Luckily, the man returned before I could expand on my strangely attractive visions. He handed me the cash, we had tea together, and he invited me at least ten times to exchange some more money. I declined politely, safe in the knowledge I possess enough liquid to buy a flock of goats, three pretty wives, and a new enamel-coated squat toilet. Plenty enough to get me to Istanbul.

Inshallah, I'm off to the Punjab.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I think there might be drugs around here

McLeod Ganj is unique. Home to the Dalai Lama in exile, thousands of Tibetan refugees and a gentler species of Indian, the town attracts a mulitude of backpackers. Everyone is on a search. Everyone is engaged in the struggle for the freedom of the Tibetan homeland, empowering Tibetan refugees with basic English phrases.

So many people practising yoga. So many people radiating bliss. So many people clearly smoking much weed.

The town is perched on the slopes of a verdant valley, and maroon-cloaked monks peacefully go about their business among the Indian-owned souvenir shops and restaurants serving the backpacker community. I go about my own business. Which consists in watching other Western tourists. Fashion-challenged cooler-than-you people provide a bottomless supply of free entertainment. I get to laugh a lot. Which is my favourite sort of therapy ...

It's a travellers' 'scene'. It's all very Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman; you can appreciate that a lot of effort has gone into the making of the characters in their setting, but something still rankles, something still nags. It doesn't quite fit.

Take Pippi Longstocking seated opposite me in the Japanese restaurant. An attractive woman with the English rose complexion that looks even better in a cold climate, she has cultivated a look that requires detailed knowledge of the Von Trapp Family singers. Pigtails are cute on little girls, and we expect them on people named Heidi and Gretel, but, seriously, come on ... She is dressed, or more truthfully, swathed, in a gargantuan shawl that gives her the shape of a lazy sack of turnips. She is such a vision of beige that I'm unsure where she finishes and the rattan chair begins.

Most brilliant is her facial expression, the consequence of studied tranquility and perhaps limited intelligence. Faraway, dreamy eyes. A mind drowned in Valium, or submerged in peace? Who knows? She reads 'The Tibetan Book on Death and Dying'. Very original ... It's all a little bit too recherche, n'est-ce pas?

When she upsets the entire contents of a freshly arrived bowl of miso soup into her lap, she gazes about as if in religious ecstasy. What? Hot liquid scalds, woman. Please, give me a sign of life, some reflex movement. Scream. At least search hurriedly for a napkin. She is Michelangelo's Pieta. Serene, unnerving. And apparently made of stone.

Still, I'm not criticising. I still dress like my mother chooses my outfits (just joking Mum). So I fit in well here, and have participated in some of the most challenging conversations on the journey. I'm always intrigued by those on a quest. I had a huge debate-cum-argument with a young Amercian girl who droned on and on about the genocide of American Indians in the 18th and 19th centuries. It wasn't so much her reasoning I disliked, but she kept calling me 'dude'. Every sentence commenced, 'Dude, you know ...' I really wanted to slap her but doubted it would bring her out of that Simpson-esque stupidity that appears to have infiltrated all North Americans under thirty years of age.

I am in my mid-thirties. I do not want to be called 'dude' by someone half my age who sounds like she just stepped out of the usual trash US TV crap that Australian stations continue to purchase. I'm quite happy for her and her type to exist on screen, she's easily switched off. I have no desire to discover these people are real human beings.

So, anyway dude, the Dalai Lama is in town and everyone's attending his daily readings and talks. I haven't been, but it's only because I'm too ignorant of what this entails. I know little of the Tibetan people's struggle, and don't feel right taking the place of someone who is genuinely interested in the cause and in becoming enlightened. I'm not really in search of some higher mode of thinking - I guess I'm a bit lazy in that respect.

McLeod Gaj is a good place. It rains a lot. The landscape is magnificent and dramatic. I have seen snow for the first time in many years. Travellers are open, friendly and relaxed. No one hurries or moves fast. The streets are too narrow to allow much traffic, and my hotel is situated down down in the valley a light of 147 steps from the main road. I sleep well. The air is fresh and clean.
Many travellers stay for extended periods of time. Which is what I would also liked to have done if only I had been more organised ...

So now I have to return to Delhi. Yep, Delhi.

Think of he naughtiest, baddest word you know. If you scream it out loud, you're getting close to how I actually feel.

Monday, July 25, 2005

I guess if you can't write anything nice ...

The capital of India. I'm been sitting here for ten minutes trying to think of its positive aspects. It has history. The throng on the street exudes vitality and a wild, frenetic energy. But best to remain sincere about the place ...

When you stroll about Paris, you cannot but remark its elegance and its beauty. Paris makes me want to give up my Australian citizenship and become French. It is the supreme city, and for me it will probably always remain without an equal. It's gorgeous and full of fabulous French people.
Delhi has another effect on me. Perhaps it is the mind-numbing and inescapable traffic congestion. The screeching idiotic touts who try to draw you into each and every shop. And the filth, oh, the filth.

The result of listening to an endless cacophony of blasting horns is that your shoulders meet with your ears, your neck muscles ache with tension. Why sound your horn when the traffic moves no-where? But it's not that. After several hours in this place you get wise, and construct a mental barrier that blocks the din of traffic and people. After several days, you are walk about in silence. Quite a feat, but one required to survive here.

Nope, it's the paralysing and unholy alliance of unchecked pollution, heat and desperate ugliness. Dhaka is also a screaming dungheap, but it has colour and movement and friendly Bangladeshis to recommend it. So too with rotten egg Bangkok. Even Los Angeles, a city in which architectural hideousness is spread more widely than anywhere else on Earth, can still pull you into its charm. But not Delhi. Nope. Nothing to be done. The capital city of the world's rising industrial and nuclear power is an national embarassment. It's a bloody disgrace.

I know I'm a man of simple, inflammatory remarks, but in Delhi I walk about asking myself 'How did it get to this, how can people be so uncaring, so neglectful, so lacking in aesthetic ideals'? The place makes me downcast. Infrastructure is poor. Pollution is everywhere and of every type. There is loads of money is this town, but what the Hell are the authorities spending it on? Quite obviously, not anything that will raise the living standards of the working classes. The enitre city looks exhausted.

If Dehli is a family size Cadbury Snack bar, then you need to cast aside the Turkish Delight and that horrid green minty one and just get stuck into the rest. Like the carcinogenic colorings of the mock-Pineapple and -Strawberry segements, Dehli can have dangerous allure. It's just not that good for you, and you need to consume it in small quantities. And to draw the analogy to its tawdry conclusion, Dehli-ites are also a bit like a Snack bar: brown on the outside and rather sickly in the middle ... don't taste too much too often, and, like ingredient listings on the packet, don't believe much that they say. This is where all 'the lying and cheating peoples' of India congregate.

But I like Delhi's 'regular' inhabitants, those not dealing with the tourist. I respect them and almost admire them for managing to survive in such a hostile environment. You would certainly need great internal strentgh and a solid constitution. Sure, I'm not thinking of the diplomatic enclave or of the rich; in any city these folk cocoon themselves into air-conditioning and chauffered cars, withdrawing from the unsavoury and the unpalatable. The common man on the streets of Delhi has my respect, I would not (want to) survive here.

However, I do love the bleak nightscape form the rooftop restaurant of my hotel. The transition from the real to the fantastical has always been an easy one for me, and if you've seen and remembered the opening shots of 'Bladerunner', then you'll understand the euphoria I feel in this murky nocturnal vision of the imagined future. I'm transfixed by the polluted twilight and flickering lights. It's all very exciting. It really is the city in which you can imagine Deckard arriving; through the filth and the rain, into a metropolis of innumerable retrobates (and replicants).

And maybe I look like Harrison Ford, if you squint really, really hard.

If we don't all start being a lot kinder to this planet, perhaps Delhi is the future that awaits us. In a science fiction movie this enchants me, but in my everyday existence I'm appalled that such places even exist.

Just too damn ugly.

1 out of 10, and that's only because it reminds me of my favourite movie.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Encore une fois ...

Once more I return to Bombay.

I have my new credit card. With many thanks to the wonderfully friendly staff of the Australian Consulate, I finally collected the replacement. The piece of plastic that will enable me to take the next part of the journey. Unfortunately, you can neither cash Amex travellers cheques in Iran, nor is the ATM network connected to the global system. But in these countries, where there's a will, there's a way. I'm just playing safe and making sure I have back-up. Don't wanna be caught with out it ... you get the picture.

I've decided to lodge a claim with the insurance company, and hopefully be compensated for the stolen camera. Other than that, it has been a very quiet visit to Mumbai. I simply organised my ticket to Delhi and hung out at hostel, chatting with others and realising that I'm very close to saying goodbye to India and heading into a new country.

I'm becoming a little excited about Pakistan. I'm ready for a change.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Ajanta and Allora

The temples of Angkor may have met their equal.

Within a hundred or so kilmeters of the rather uninteresting town of Aurangabad lies the cave temlpes of Ajanta and Ellora. And they have to be seen to be believed. Like those at Badami, the caves were carved straight into the rock. But here the stone carvers had reached the zenith of their powers - one temple, known as Kalidasha, is staggering both in size and undertaking. It is an entire free standing temple carved out of the mountian and it's the size of a large cathedral. The workers simply started chiseling away at the top of the rock, and worked their way down. No need for scaffolding. There must have been few work-related accidents since there was simply no place to fall.

Unfortunately, I'm too tired to write much today ...

But I spent six hours roaming the cave temples at Allora, and another day exploring those in Ajanta. I took a guide for both tours, but was so fatigues that it would have been a much smarter idea to have stretched the visits over a greater period of time. Too late now.

The temples are of all sizes, some with light decoration, others with a profusion of ornamentation. And three major faiths are represented here - Hindu, Buddhist and Jain. A World Heritage site, I recommend a visit if you happen to come this way.

Friday, July 22, 2005

A day at the museum

For those of you who care, the bump on my head is receding.

Better than this, today I visted the Salar Jung Museum, a collection so vast that I've just returned to the hotel after seven hours exploring the galleries of a single building. I've had to rethink my views on Indians and museums, since prior to this visit I've always thought it a poor mix. They tend to stuff a whole bunch of items into dark corners and ill-lit cabinets, let the dust settle, then permit building and exhibits to fall into disrepair. So today is a pleasant change.
Salar Jung, adviser to a Nizam of Hyderabad, was an avid collector. And he must have had his hands on some serious cash. It's fairly well known that the Nizam was the world's wealthiest man for some time. His Golconda mines ensured he could swan about on gold caparisoned elephants and rely on a staff of thousands. So I guess this guy, being on the payroll, was rolling in it too.

My favourite display was the illuminated manuscripts. Only several hundred of the fifty thousand volumes in the collection are on show. What is there is in beautiful calligraphy - Arabic, Persian and Urdu, some on vellum dating back to the ninth century. The workmanship is astounding.

Hyderabad, according to history writers and guide books, was once a city of palaces. Today no more. It's your typical Indian town filled with dust and bad smells. But it has friendly people, great food, and restored my faith in Indians and museums.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Bijapur

A suitcase fell from the luggage rack and came down on my head. I have a black eye, a small cut on my hairline, and a bump on my head. I don't look mean and sexy. I look as though I've been beaten up. Still, passengers on the bus felt sorry for me and I gleefully munched on their give-aways for the remaining hours on the bus journey.

Bijapur's main attraction is Gol Gumbaz, a rather silly-sounding name for the mausoleum of a long-dead Muslim ruler, whose name I've forgotten to record. It's a massive structure, inelegant and bulky, but possessing one redeeming feature: the world's second largest dome. Measuring 38 metres in diameter, you access the whispering gallery via steps in the eight storey diagonal towers at each corner of the building.

If you talk to the wall, it will provide you with an echo ten times over. As you do, I shouted a few choice words at it. Pathetic. You ask yourself, 'what should I say?', and all you can think of is rude words. Why do I think this kind of thing is still amusing? In any case, my only other company at this height was a group of adolescent males; I'm confident they weren't muttering lines from the Koran ... and it was them, not me, who got a stiff telling off from the guard.
A good city for exploring on foot, I visited Bijapur's other attraction, the Ibrahim Rousa, a sixteenth century mosque-cum-mausoleum, and a bit of a taste for the Islamic architecture that awaits me in countries yet to be seen.

Best of all, the town has an important Muslim population. This means I can find and feast on meat easier than in other places. Scanning the menu, I went for a Meat Lover's Meal. Half a tandoori chicken and half a chilli chicken. I ate some salad to stay healthy. As I looked out over the rooftops and watched a few cows battle it out over the refuse, I gorged myself on flesh. My mouth burned for half an hour after, and I belched pure joy.

I'm slowly returning to my carnivorous ways. I like my veggies,, and this country is the greatest in the world for a vegetarian. But after months of spicy slush, I needed to sink my teeth into a dead animal. I feel better for it.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Badami

Badami is the type of town I like. It has only one main street (you cannot get lost), and within one hundred metres of the bus station you can locate a decent guesthouse and a good selection of restaurants. Food and board aside, the reason to see Badami is to marvel at the caves cut into the hill.

You climb fifty steps and before you is an entire temple carved out of solid rock. It is sculpture in reverse and inside out. There was no guide avaiable to take me through the place, so I'm a little ignorant about how the stone carvers achieved their fabulous work.

A space larger than the average Australian two-storey home carved out of a mountain. Very impressive. I can't really describe it. I'm unable to compare it with anything else I've seen to date, except for a couple of small temples in Mamallapuram. The artisans didn't build up from the ground, they just chipped away at the side of the massive rock face, moving inwards and creating doorways, lintels, brackets, celing and floor panels, all without a trace of mortar. Not a single join.

It reminded me of building sand castles as a kid. After finally collecting enough shells to decorate the fortified wall, you decide to add crenellations. These collapse. Unperturbed, you begin to build a little bridge over the moat, and as you excavate the hole to allow the water to flow, this collapses too. A touch irked, you commence a tunnel through the castle's ground floor. The entire structure breaks down. Exasperated, you also smash your sister's sand castle and return to collecting washed up jellyfish.

Actually, not sure where I was going with that ... lost my train of thought. I'm blaming it on the elevated concentration of heavy metals in the atmosphere.

There are four caves in Badami with varying degreees of decoration. They overlook an enormous green tank the size of a the Sydney Cricket Ground where women go about the daily chore of washing clothes. A few temples lie scattered about the base of the artificial lake. But guess what? I spot a fort on the other side of the hill.

I never tire of forts. This one was in a state of disrepair, but has the saving grace of a dramatic setting. You need to climb through a succession of narrow chasms, the rock face towering high above you with enough room for perhaps two people to walk side by side. Down for a bit, then through a doorway in the rock, down again to a clearing. Up a rocky outcrop, and the fort is yours to behold. It's good to be the king ...

The architect who designed this little number stronghold has my respect. He created all this without the help of Lego models; quite an achievement. It's just a shame that I was up here all alone (as usual) with no one to play with. I felt a little silly running about the place by meself - it's very hard to be the emperor, soldier and prisoner all at the same time.

Luckily a few imaginary friends came to my rescue. We had a great afternoon.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Hubli to Hospet to Hampi

I'm tiring of the larger towns. Mangalore is off the list. For me, they are less cities and places of civilisation that an agglomeration of ordure. Without exception, the large Indian town is polluted. For the time being, I'm down-sizing (now there's a term I loathe).

Time to see Hampi, sine qua non, I am yet to come of age as a backpacker. My third visit to the subcontinent and I am still yet to visit the seat of the former Vijayanagar kingdom, the last great Hindu empire and mythical home to Hanuman, a major player in the Ramayana.

Getting there was like sitting through a reality TV show. Excruciatingly dull and painful. On the train, loads of people in close proximity. But we just had nothing interesting to say, possibly no common tongue. I took an overnight express from Mysore to Hubli, and fell off the platform at 05h00.

Three and a half hours later, I shook off the rigor mortis and boarded a passenger train that took five and a half hours to cover 138 kilometres. Trying to keep me entertained, a gaggle of Muslim women draped in black tents took it in turns to slap every child within reach. Strangely frightening. I gave extra points to the woman sprawled across the bench, who, at one point, slapped me across the legs when you she missed a/her child. The whole carriage erupted with laughter.

I have great legs. Why wouldn't a woman want to touch them? No reason for such mirth.
Tired as I was, I wept inwardly and for some reason, began to sing 'Care for Kids'. Anyone who remembers this song must be over 30 and Australian, and I hope you have it stuck in your head for the next three hours, like I did.

[It was just like that taxi driver in Mumbai. When his taxi reversed, you got a few bars of Britney Spears' - 'Oops ... I did it again'. He moved backwards unnecessarily several times. I think he did this to antagonise me].

When I arrived in Hospet I was still half an hour from Hampi. I negotiated half-heartedly with a rickshaw driver and let him live out his Michael Schumacher fantasy while I dozed off completely. Good man that he was, he deposited me at the door of a cheap hotel. I slept for a few hours, and awoke to find myself covered in familiar looking red welts. Made mental note to self: mosquito net is not sheet, use appropriately in future.

Hampi is beautiful. For the first time I cursed the little bugger who stole my camera. Not gifted enough to describe this place in writing, it might be a good idea to check it out on the Internet. A landscape of boulders and giant rocks, the tiny village is dwarfed by the magnificent Shiva temple. Ruins of temples and other buildings litter the surroundings. It's the first place I've been since Angkor that deserves the epithet 'magic'.

Out in the main street, a broad avenue lined with colonnades, I met a young rabble of kids. Jiri, Santosh, Imran, Devaraja, Chidananda, Santu and Prakash soon roped me into a game of cricket. Not sure what position I played, but they christened me Adam Gilchrist (think it might be the ears). As an Australian, I could do no wrong in the game.

It was great fun playing among the ruins, though I wasn't keen on collecting the ball when it ended up in the runnels brimming with the ubiquitous Indian dark 'liquid'. Other than this, Hampi is remarkably clean and tidy. Unusually so. We finished the seventh series as the sun fell, and somehow I had promised to buy new bats and balls for the entire team.

I spent a number of very peaceful days here, riding my bicycle among the banana plantations, fighting off mosquitoes and visiting the numerous, varied ruins. Hampi is extraordinary, and I hope to return one day. Especially since I am major sponsor of the recently-formed under 10s Hampi Cricket Team, Karnataka Division. I'm so proud of them.

Hubli to Hospet to Hampi

I'm tiring of the larger towns. Mangalore is off the list. For me, they are less cities and places of civilisation that an agglomeration of ordure. Without exception, the large Indian town is polluted. For the time being, I'm down-sizing (now there's a term I loathe).

Time to see Hampi, sine qua non, I am yet to come of age as a backpacker. My third visit to the subcontinent and I am still yet to visit the seat of the former Vijayanagar kingdom, the last great Hindu empire and mythical home to Hanuman, a major player in the Ramayana.

Getting there was like sitting through a reality TV show. Excruciatingly dull and painful. On the train, loads of people in close proximity. But we just had nothing interesting to say, possibly no common tongue. I took an overnight express from Mysore to Hubli, and fell off the platform at 05h00.

Three and a half hours later, I shook off the rigor mortis and boarded a passenger train that took five and a half hours to cover 138 kilometres. Trying to keep me entertained, a gaggle of Muslim women draped in black tents took it in turns to slap every child within reach. Strangely frightening. I gave extra points to the woman sprawled across the bench, who, at one point, slapped me across the legs when you she missed a/her child. The whole carriage erupted with laughter.

I have great legs. Why wouldn't a woman want to touch them? No reason for such mirth.
Tired as I was, I wept inwardly and for some reason, began to sing 'Care for Kids'. Anyone who remembers this song must be over 30 and Australian, and I hope you have it stuck in your head for the next three hours, like I did.

[It was just like that taxi driver in Mumbai. When his taxi reversed, you got a few bars of Britney Spears' - 'Oops ... I did it again'. He moved backwards unnecessarily several times. I think he did this to antagonise me].

When I arrived in Hospet I was still half an hour from Hampi. I negotiated half-heartedly with a rickshaw driver and let him live out his Michael Schumacher fantasy while I dozed off completely. Good man that he was, he deposited me at the door of a cheap hotel. I slept for a few hours, and awoke to find myself covered in familiar looking red welts. Made mental note to self: mosquito net is not sheet, use appropriately in future.

Hampi is beautiful. For the first time I cursed the little bugger who stole my camera. Not gifted enough to describe this place in writing, it might be a good idea to check it out on the Internet. A landscape of boulders and giant rocks, the tiny village is dwarfed by the magnificent Shiva temple. Ruins of temples and other buildings litter the surroundings. It's the first place I've been since Angkor that deserves the epithet 'magic'.

Out in the main street, a broad avenue lined with colonnades, I met a young rabble of kids. Jiri, Santosh, Imran, Devaraja, Chidananda, Santu and Prakash soon roped me into a game of cricket. Not sure what position I played, but they christened me Adam Gilchrist (think it might be the ears). As an Australian, I could do no wrong in the game.

It was great fun playing among the ruins, though I wasn't keen on collecting the ball when it ended up in the runnels brimming with the ubiquitous Indian dark 'liquid'. Other than this, Hampi is remarkably clean and tidy. Unusually so. We finished the seventh series as the sun fell, and somehow I had promised to buy new bats and balls for the entire team.

I spent a number of very peaceful days here, riding my bicycle among the banana plantations, fighting off mosquitoes and visiting the numerous, varied ruins. Hampi is extraordinary, and I hope to return one day. Especially since I am major sponsor of the recently-formed under 10s Hampi Cricket Team, Karnataka Division. I'm so proud of them.

Monday, July 18, 2005

A lack of taste

I had planned to visit Kochi and Kozhikode in Kerala, but despairing of a long wait at the station, I boarded the bus to Mysore.

This city is the site of a particularly over-the-top palace. The Maharajah had it built in the first years of the twentieth century. Designed by an Englishman. Constructed with materials imported from across the planet. It may well be the epitome of European opulence combined with the boldest of Indo-Saracenic. It's bizarre. It's tacky.

The exterior is a riot of arches, turrets, covered walkways. The interiors of certain rooms reminded me of the Palacio Real in Madrid. This is not a good thing. Many rooms are based around the colours of the peacock. Which, naturally, look great on the bird. Not so good on the walls of the reception hall. It is Versailles on the cheap, but I think Imelda Marcos would approve. Indians do not believe in the old adage 'less is more'. There is no such thing as a 'surface' in India. Pleasant enough to look at once in a lifetime; living in it would produce a permanent migraine. I think Italians might like it here though; it resembles the some of their more outrageous baroque churches. Three otherwise bored guards attempted to exchange piles of Australian twenty cent pieces with me. Sure, just what I need. I politely declined. They didn't like that so much.

Another building on the grounds promised a peek at the Maharajahs personal possessions. With reticence, I entered. Indians do not do museums well. Bit I was not disappointed. I may have been the only visitor this century. It was pure Caravaggio claro-oscuro. Nice in a painting, less rewarding when you are trying to make out what you are staring at. Is that a full set of European armour? A wax replica of the Maharajah? In fact, it's a guard asleep on his feet. Why can't they ever get the light right? It's either over zealous flickering neon tubes or a thirty watt bulb for an entire stadium.

Hilarious. Every guard I encountered in the dusty twilight of the building was dozing. Rip Van Winkle, caretaker of the Crown Jewels. To play silly buggers, I climbed over a roped-off display and relaxed on a solid silver chaise-lounge. It felt very decadent, very fin-de-siecle. The attendant didn't budge. I though perhaps he might be dead. I delved into my notebook, only to be rudely interrupted a few moments later by curmudgeonly North Americans. They stared disapprovingly at my lounging in a verboten area. I stared disapprovingly back at their outfits, all Bermudas and Aloha shirts. I pretended not to speak English, sucked my cheeks in and tried to look French. I think it worked. The Aloha shirts withdrew. The attendant still didn't budge. I think he was dead.

Sated with tasteless displays of wealth (the Palace, not the North Americans), I ambled about the market and purchased scissors of the 'finest quality.' Yes, I'm sure they are. You see, in a moment of pique, the searing heat and rotting coconut oil in my hair got to me, and despairingly, I had raced to the barber's. After almost two years of almost uninterrupted growth, I cracked. It had taken a very long time to pass the bouffant stage, and several more months until I stopped looking like a 70s German porn star. But looking like a cross between Davids Hasselhoff and Lee Roth had taken its toll, and it might have been a good idea to have at least washed my hair more than once in four months.

Like the hairdresser said, 'Your head smell very bad, hair very dirty'. 'Yeah, well, I'm not paying you $1.10 for your nasty comments, so just get on with the job at hand'. I now sport a No. 2 crew cut. I fear I might resemble Rove. This is not a good thing.

I look healthier, less sleazy. But the grey hairs are back, hence the finest quality scissors. Long hair had disguised the little bastards, but now I was going to have to battle with them. As anyone turning grey knows, grey hair grows faster, and perpendicular to your scalp. Along with shampoo the hairdresser had also suggested a henna dye. If you saw some of the follicle fiascos plying the streets of India, you'd wisely say no.

Henna comes from a plant. It turns black at first, but then fades quickly to russet-brown. There are countless men in Indian towns sporting orangey-rust hairdos and beards, with ample grey re-growth. It's the Indian version of the Mediterranean comb over. It's a big fashion faux-pas. I'm sticking with the grey hairs, even if I need a few weeks with my finest quality scissors before I resign myself to it.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

The monsoon cometh.

Rain. Water. Finally, the clouds building up these last two weeks dumped the first of the precious monsoon rains. The heat turned humid, the skies darkened and the heavens opened. The dusty streets became waterways, the downpour creating rivers carrying an endless parade of garbage and detritus. And the water level rose quickly. In the time it took to walk the kilometre from the Madurai train station to a hotel, I was ankle-deep in a turbid chocolate broth. Lovely.

I climbed the steps to the hotel and brought a small water feature with me. My room was depressingly small and dreary; tired as I was, I wanted to visit the much venerated temple of this city.

Madurai is the classic south Indian temple town. The town itself lives and breathes within the walls of the complex. Far removed from the tranquility of Christian and Islamic places of devotion, the Hindu temple is less sanctum sanctorum and more over-populated bazaar. It is pandemonium. In some way, it reminds me of a shopping mall on Saturday afternoon, all colour and movement.

After pondering the significance of a giant aviary full of resplendent noisy green parrots, I admired the small shrine to the left and wondered whether the chrome, gold and silver laminate had been inspired by some bad 70s schlock romance starring Joan Collins.

I peered nervously at the Lotus Pond to my right. In India, any body of water makes me nervous.

[It has to be said. Water in India is a tricky business. The Ganges at Varanasi, holiest among the holy, is a putrefying mélange of fetidness. You meet the odd Westerner who has bathed in it. Why? Clearly these people are desperately seeking credibility within the backpacker scene. Perhaps by wallowing in this quagmire will they obtain the requisite number of points and be admitted to the League of the Cool.

Test your own traveller credibility rating. Take a bucket. Defecate and urinate. Add the remnants of bin juice from the garbage can. Spit and gob several times into the bucket, try to add something large and dead. Rotting vegetables or those cold cuts in the fridge are a good start. Run a bath, add the bucket-concentrate. Mix. Dive in, fully clothed.

If you remain in the bath for longer than five minutes, you are way, way cool. But I still wouldn't admire you. And you'd be pretty unlikely to get a pash from me either]

Anyway, I slid past the lurid green lotus-less Lotus Pond and down a dark corridor. A few people sat worshipping sculptures with couple of extra heads and limbs; one woman was supine before an orange-stained Ganesh. I arrived at what I had come to see - the Thousand Pillared Hall.
The entrance fee was one rupee (I mean, why bother?) I sprang up the steps and stood amazed. The structure is magnificent, there are literally a thousand carved pillars (but you'd expect that from the name), some plain, others alive with gods and demons. The path to the main shrine is stunning, and you can well imagine the power it has over the believer.

However, someone saw fit to install a museum here. Among rows of silent stone columns sits the saddest exhibition of nonsense I've seen for some time. A collection of bronze deities languish in dusty plastic display cabinets; poorly lit scenes illustrate some story in thousands of miniature paintings. It's like trying to watch a movie when the tall guy sitting in front of you won't stop fidgeting. You spend your entire time angling for a better view, but leave a little irritated. Still, the temple is wonderful, and it's only a matter of time before most of the exhibits collapse into a pile.

I walked among the stalls of the temple selling every type of religious artifact. Talismans, beads, offerings for the gods. Everything orange and gold. Sandalwood and incense. But I wouldn't like to be the temple elephant. His keeper called me over for a blessing and an offering. The poor animal. His ears, trunk and forehead are decorated in gaudy floral and organic patterns. Imagine his dismay at the monthly Pachyderm Piss-Up. His mates with proper jobs in the rice fields and jungle would have a field day. Let's face it; you are the Tammy Baker of the elephant world.
I decided to look for a bird's eye view of the complex. Out in the street I entered a Kashmiri Emporium. Never heard of it? The Kashmiri Emporium is to Indian travellers what fried food is to people in the north of England - you want to avoid it, but you are faced with it three times a day. The shop is a vast depot of every imaginable item from the subcontinent. From a half-inch soapstone replica of the Taj Mahal to an original hand carved mahogany folding screen with mother-of-pearl inlay, you can get it here.

It is, quite simply, the nec plus ultra of gift shopping. Backgammon and chess sets, jewellery that would please Ivana Trump, enough bonbonieri for any Greek, Italian or Turk wedding. Need a three hundred square foot Afghan carpet? A life size statue of a dancing Shiva? Tibetan prayer bowls? A pregnancy test kit from some Proto-historic Indus settlement? It's on the shelf. American Express is, naturally, accepted, and your goods arrive home faster than you, via DHL. Possibly in better condition.

I like Kashmiris. They are generally Muslim and [if this sounds racist, it's not meant to], they make a pleasant change from the niggling immaturity of most Hindu males. Muslims, in my opinion, are a more serious people, and I can relate to that. You can have an interesting conversation with them. This particular young Kashmiri, Gavoor, took me up seven flights of steps for a view of the temple. It had started to rain, but Gavoor wanted to talk.
He was twenty three, far too handsome for his own good, but with sad eyes. He was far from home (at least three days on the train), missed his family and girlfriend, and didn't like the dirty Hindu temple and town. He worked every day of the week for twelve hours. And he was going bald.

He seemed sadder still when he learned of my marital status.

'Man is not perfect without woman' [Yep, I'm sensing the flow of this conversation already ...]

'It's OK, really. I quite like my life.'

'I recommend marriage and children.'

'Do you want to get married?'

'No.'

'Well then.'

'But I have to get married. Man is not perfect without ...'

We had gone full circle and I could feel but little sympathy for him. What is it about kids in their twenties? You look your best, you have few responsibilities, and you worry about a few hairs falling out. I have grey hair and wrinkles. I cannot be empathetic.

I left Gavoor contemplating his weary existence and receding hairline, and promised to return tomorrow to purchase something glittery and in bright colours.

Out in the street I was accosted twice. My first assailant was an inebriated wretch, barely a man. He lunged at me like the Canterbury Bulldogs at the local girls' school sports day. The next ten or so minutes were painful. Sidesh told me many times over that he was a tailor. He reeked; of sweat, of dampness. Yesterday's drink leached from his pores; today's from his breath. It was an unwelcome guided tour in a mist of Johnnie Walker. I eventually made it back to the hotel, spouting outrageous lies. 'Of course I'll come tomorrow and let you make me an outfit'. Don't know why I didn't suggest it earlier. The thought of him measuring my inner leg is too much to bear.

Still, no sooner that repulsing the repulsive, a corpulent figure almost flattened me with his motorcycle.

'Vous etes francais'.

'Non'. [I just look miserable at the moment because I'm over it today]

'Mais alors, tu parles francais'.

A very Louis Bunuel moment. And one of the odder evenings of my life. Within an hour I had visited his travel agency, met his brother, collected his laundry from a neighbouring shop while he padlocked the office, and sat in a restaurant munching idlys, puri and dosa.

The conversation flowed easily for a while, we talked about this and that; at least we shared a certain francophilia. He showed me his poems in French. He was disappointed with my poor German. Barely noticeable at first, he grew agitated, turning sullen at moments, silent, staring at the far wall of the room. I'd resume the conversation, pick up where we had left off, or perhaps start a new train of thought. In stages, he became morose. A bit spooky. He seemed to be sulking, brooding over something. Maybe it was my new haircut. I've known people to get jealous over my hair.

It had been a rather singular day. I was tired. The forlorn Francophile requested the bill, and the exhausted Australian paid it. It was a quiet ride back on his motorcycle to the hotel. On parting, he handed me the latest review of 'The Indian Society of French Studies'.

Laying in bed, I pondered the 'Teaching of French in Pondicherry since the 1950s', and wondered at what point in my life it had all gone horribly weird.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Polysyllabic unpronouncablity

The south of the country prefers long words. Far from the urban centres of Mumbai, Delhi and Jaipur, the further you head south, the higher the possibility you can not pronounce the name of the town you are visiting. Mamallapuram, Chidabaram, Thiruvanathapuram. Today I am in Thiruchirapalli. But I can't say that.

Next there are the languages of the south. Tamil dominates, and it is beyond my understanding how anyone could master this tongue as a second language. Vanakkan (Hello) seems easy enough, but 'When does the next bus arrive' demands 'Eppozhutu atutta perunta varum.' I cannot memorise this. Who can?

To make things more interesting for the traveller, few signs are in English and few people speak the language of the colonisers well enough for more than very basic communication. However, Southerners are a particularly friendly bunch, and to make youself understood, you need but master one thing: the Indian head wobble.

While Australians - and the British are to blame for this - are as animated as a lump of plasticene, Indians have somehow inherited distinctly Mediterranean characteristics. They cannot whisper. They prefer to shout. They point profusely, wildly gesticulating like lunatics. When speaking, you must do the side-to-side head wobble and intermittently utter the nasal 'aah'. Try it for yourself.

With your neighbour, in your best Indian persona, ask for directions to a hotel. See, easy. I bet you even said something along the lines of 'Can you please be telling me ..' And it works. I've mastered it.

Long ago I dispensed with such verbal caresses as 'Excuse me' or 'Please'. They are as pointless and unproductive in India as waiting in a queue. Just as you need to push your way to the Information and Ticket-cum-Full Time Refund Counter [sic] at the train station to be served before late next year, a bullish approach to linguistic intercourse is mandatory.

Study the two examples below (between myself and shopkeeper at bus stand), noting subtle differences.

Case 1

'Where is the Hotel Diamond?'

'Ah'

'Hotel Diamond?'

'Ah' [Produces packet of Marlboro Lights]

'No. Hotel Diamond.'

'Ah'

Case 2

'Where is the Hotel Diamond?' [Head wobbling and left-handed palm-flipping action]

'Ah' [Enthusiastic wobbling of head]

'Hotel Diamond?'[Exaggerated head wobble]

'Ah' [Emphatic head wobble, displaying packet of Marlboro Lights]

'No. Hotel Diamond' [Involuntary jerking of entire cranium]

'Ah' [Single head wobble combined with outstretched arm pointing to mass of seething traffic]

The system is eons old and highly effective. It opens doors.

On my (forever hopeful) way to the (possibly imaginary) Hotel Diamond, I was lucky enough to step ankle-deep into an open sewer-cum-repulsive-collection of muck. Why I was wearing socks with my sandals that day was beyond me, but I kicked off whatever sludge clung to my right foot, and checked the rising bile in my throat.

After a few more moments of congratulating myself on another successful communication barrier broken by a former language student, I slumped into my room at the Hotel Anand.

Unfortunately, I've still no idea where the Hotel Diamond is located.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Touched

Pondy, as the locals call it, it a two hour bus journey from Mamallapuram, and a former French colony. Unlike other locales across Asia claiming Gallic ancestry, Pondicherry certainly looks the part. It boasts a Hôtel de Ville, a few Jesuit-inspired cathedrals, and tree-lined avenues with architecture that transports you to 'le Midi'. As a native of Adelaide, a carefully planned city of right angles and parks, I felt an immediate connection to the colonial planners of Pondy who saw fit to design their city that I might navigate it sans map. I was able to find my way around easily enough, acquiring a room for the night proved a little more irksome.

The Surya Swastika Guesthouse and a few others in the neighbourhood were booked out. The marriage of a prominent person was scheduled that evening, and with the Indian practice of inviting every man, and cow to partake of the festivities, lodging was going to be scarce.
Recognising my plight, I smoked a couple of ciggies and realised that only one creature could help me. The rickshaw driver. Omnipresent on the subcontinent, the rickshaw-wallah is perceived by me as a necessary evil used as seldom as possible. They sum up the least tolerable aspects of travelling. I long ago resigned myself to their cheating, lying and fraudulent business practices. They are good for only two things. The first is that as a lone male traveller, they can supply you with any manner and quantity of illicit substances. Secondly, some speak passable English - all know the phrase, 'You want hashish?' - and to be fair, they are the only people around who know exactly where to find you a vacant hotel room. My driver whisked me off through the streets to the Park Guest House for a hefty sum. I threw in a generous tip for not offering me drugs.

The Hotel is part of the Sri Aurobindo ashram. No smoking, no drinking of alcohol. No eating of meat. The gates close at 10:30 pm. The room was vast, clean, and from the balcony I could see small waves crashing onto the shore lined with coconut palms. A quick shower and I went out for a look around. A promenade along the foreshore, I turned inland and marvelled at the number of bookshops. Temptation was too great.

I purchased four new books, and wondered how I was going to pack them into my luggage along with the thirteen currently in my possession. I obviously have issues with books, and can rarely bring myself to discard them. The usual practice is to swap tomes with other travellers. But there are no other travellers in the south of India, or at least, it's been some time since I crossed one. The only Westerner I've spoken with of late was a fellow Australian who boasted that he hadn't read a book in ten years. I think it was more likely ten years since his last trip to a dentist, but I kept my mouth shut.

Excited with my new purchases, I put the groaning backpack out of my mind and strolled into the building next door. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Mass was about to commence. I took my place in the pew and hoped that I didn't stand out as a Protestant heretic.
Mass was off to a riveting start. Some taped music wafted through loudspeakers, fans hummed above my head. The church was a huge affair. Built in the medieval French style, the Indians have added a dash of colour. From the cupola hang enormous swathes of gold and white ribbon. A multi-coloured heraldic banner lined the nave and transept, and to the right of the altar sits a massive Byzantine icon of Virgin Mary with Jesus, in vivid poster paint.

A splash of gold. A lot of emerald green. A lot of chartreuse. Mountains of pink and blue tulle adorned statues of the saints. Perhaps not subtle, but considerably more inviting than the stark beige brick edifice I worshipped in as a child. Catholicism has a touch of frivolous glamour, at least to us puritans. I also like that fact that Mass includes vigorous exercise. As a youngster in church, I used to fall asleep either pondering the possibilities of Lego or novel ways to taunt my sisters, but here my time was more profitably used. Sitting, standing, sitting, kneeling, standing, sitting. No time for idle thoughts, and quite a good cardio-vascular workout. The service was conducted entirely in Tamil (except for the words 'empower me' uttered sporadically by the Father). I hummed along merrily to hymns, and hoped that, should the organist break in to 'When the Saints Go Marching In', I would outdo them all. It wasn't to be, but after Mass finished and the crowd filtered out the church, the priest came over for a chat.

'Are you Christian?'

'Yes, Father.'

'You had your hat on during Mass.'

Bugger.

'Sorry, I forgot. You see, it's always ...'

'Who is your patron saint?'

Thinking caps on ...

'Christopher. Patron saint of travellers.'

'Do you want to go to confession?'

The crunch. Confession is not something I've ever done. It didn't exist at the suburban Church of Christ I knew as a child, and my only understanding I have of it comes from observing tele-movies about the impoverished bog Irish.

'Yes.'

At least I knew how to start.

'Forgive me father for I have sinned.'

'Yes'

The floodgates opened. I don't by any measure consider myself a bad person, but what a relief to unload a whole bunch of stuff onto a complete stranger. Of course, I'm not going to detail them all here, but Father Peter took them all in his stride, and seemed to agree with me that rickshaw drivers, on the whole, are heretics doomed to the eternal fires of Hell.

Given enough time, it's amazing what you can dig up. I told him how badly I used to treat my sisters, charging them money to borrow my tape-recorder. I'm fairly sure I didn't share my Lego with them either. And I used to cheat at Monopoly when playing with my then six year old younger sister. I'm not sure he realized that these sins were twenty-five years in the past, but he seemed to think also that Lego was a marvellous invention.

We slid from confession to therapy. I recounted a few appalling things I did in my twenties, exorcised some long held thoughts about my own father (small 'f'), and rattled on about my inexplicable enmity toward junk food and indolence. I finished with a small tirade about my inability to express emotion - he disagreed and thought I had plenty of interesting emotions.
He doled out some homework and sent me back to the altar, where, for the first time in living memory, I kneeled down and prayed. Not sure I how got myself in this position (not the kneeling, that was easy enough), but it actually felt very good. I prayed for half an hour and in some way felt a lot lighter when I stood up.

I wandered back to the ashram and sat on the balcony. On the lawn below, a twenty-something neophyte of Sri Aurobindo dressed in flowing white cottons entertained me with an eclectic mix of jazz ballet, chanting, and violent aerobic movements. As a lapsed Protestant sitting in an ashram after attending Catholic mass, I smile beatifically.

India is a marvellous place. They might stare at you for wearing shorts, but you can believe in whatever you want. As long as you possess faith in something, you'll fit in quite nicely.

Monday, June 06, 2005

De profundis

India, combined with my abundant stupidity, can make for an interesting day.

After a couple of hours scrawling postcards and aerogrammes for family and friends, I headed out into the scorching heat of Mamallapuram in search of shade, sea breeze, a quiet spot to finish my novel. My path took me through seventh century carvings of the Pallava dynasty to a tranquil, deserted temple cut into a towering monolith of granite. Hanuman monkeys were my only companions, going about their business in the branches of enormous neem trees. Few people passed my way, and I was left to enjoy the final chapters of my book, now and then pausing to look up and exchange a few words with various characters - sellers of cucumbers, mangoes, beads and trinkets.

Novel finished, I walked slowly down the sloping rockface and headed towards the bus stand, stopping at a drink stall-cum-stationery shop to purchase new pens. Here I made the error of placing my notebook and digital camera on a pile of books to my right while browsing among journals and text pads. Transaction completed, and of course, camera no-where to be seen.
Disappointed? Yes. Four hundred irreplaceable shots from the previous 1200 kilometres of towns and cities: the beaches of Goa, the teeming crowds of Bangalore, markets in Chennai and the numerous temples, carvings and people of Mamallapuram. Gone.

I sighed. It was 40 degrees. Under my synthetic shirt a sweat-soaked singlet clung to my skin. Flying insects were at their most manic and dust clogged my mouth, nose, nostrils. Judging the looks of those around me, I believe I entered a type of trance - foaming at the mouth, incoherent babbling, eyes rolled back until only whites showed in the sockets. Possessed by neither demon nor deity, indeed, possessing only the maximum amount of idiocy ever doled out to an individual, I couldn't accept that I had allowed Robbery No. 2 on this journey to take place.

I have travelled enough to avoid this kind of thing. My ineptitude today was suddenly making the contestants of Big Brother appear as interesting, sentient beings.

I expelled the demons and tried to make it clear to the concerned onlookers I blamed no-one for the incident. This is a very small neighbourhood and many of the town's inhabitants know me either by sight or name, in particular those with businesses around the vicinity of the bus stand. My thrice daily glass of rose milk and cigarette purchases are with Krishna on the southern end of the square, I drink chai with Praveen and his avuncular mates next door, eat my daily fill from the inappropriately named Hotel Deluxe. Rickshaw drivers have established a love-hate relationship with me, and from between their parked vehicles I buy luscious diesel-infused mangoes from a toothless sari-clad crone each morning.

Until now, I was certain the only thing they knew about me was my age and my unmarried status. It wouldn't take long until they knew the story of the disappearing camera. I didn't want them to think me mid-thirties, unmarried ... and stupid. And I have no intention of reversing my hereto successful integration programme. I was relieved when the shop owner himself suggested I take my grievance to the police.

Law enforcement officers of the third world are reputed to be corrupt and ineffectual, brutally wielding their batons over the impoverished mass. I wasn't quite ready to face Indian bureaucracy at this hour and so sat under the rattling ceiling fans of the Hotel Deluxe and ate my biryani silently. A masochist at heart, I spent twenty minutes ruminating over the sad collection of chapters that constitute the book of my life. Eventually aroused from this unproductive self-indulgence by a goat, I paused to wonder if he would be on the tomorrow's menu, paid for lunch, and headed 500 metres north.

A large man with a respectfully sized paunch interrupted his text message to inquire. I briefly recounted a few facts; he wobbled his head from side to side in the Indian manner, and after a pregnant pause, instructed me to enter the building.

The station was dark and cavernous. It took a few moments to adjust my eyes. A blackboard attached to the wall of the entrance hall enumerated the yearly failures and successes of the Mamallapuram District Police Force. Murder on the wane since 1996, traffic infringements increasing. Armed robbery seems frightfully common in such a small, peaceful district. It was only as I scanned the 'Percentage of Stolen Goods Recovered' column that I came to the notice of a man laying on a wooden bench, his enormous bushy moustache meeting his thick black glass frames - think Mr Pickwick cross-dressing with Buddy Holly.

'Yes?'

'I need to report a stolen camera.'

'Why?'

I explained what I could without breaking into broken English. During the story he lay there, silent and immobile. Like a parent recounting a Grimm Brothers' tale, I wondered whether the layabout had actually gone to sleep. Still now I remain unsure, as it was another voice from behind the desk who commanded, 'Sit.'

Where? There were no other chairs around except that in the lock-up cell, presumably locked. I didn't fancy sharing the bench with Slumbering Walrus Man. I did, however, think about sitting on his head. Resigned to standing, I gave full attention to a man who seemed rather too occupied for my liking with carbon paper and small red rubber bands. I watched forlornly as trickles of sweat raced down Mr Perumal's temples, seeping into the dampness of his grimy shirt collar.
Grime was the theme of the station's inner sanctum. Walls were lined with rusty metal and shabbily-fabricated wooden shelves, brackets and joints straining under the weight of bulky, tattered ledgers. Spines and covers frayed and darkened by the handling of countless grubby hands. The concrete floor was home to burgeoning flotsam and jetsam left behind by ten thousand footsteps. Skirting boards black, and dirt working its way up, lighter now, until meeting the chipped and flaking whitewash of the walls. A collection of ham radios, amplifiers and tuners nestled beneath a bird's nest of wiring and slurry of dust.

'I need to report a stolen camera.'

'Come back 5:30. You see Inspector.'

And at 5:30,

'Come back 6:30. Inspector not here. Too much troubles today.'

At 6:45 the Inspector of Police was barking down his mobile. He was a tall imposing man with dyed hair, a toothbrush moustache and too many gold rings on sausage fingers. He didn't look like the south Indian type - his skin was too light and he seemed too arrogant. He tapped his enormous paunch while looking over his frameless spectacles and down his nose at me. I decided to hate him straight away; I thought it would save time.

He barked, 'Inside.'

He followed and directed me to his office, brightly over-lit by fluorescence that turned the space into a sea of pastel. In the luminosity his skin took on the hue of damp mushroom. His face was slightly marked from the pox and a line of sweat beads danced on his moustache which now looked pencilled on. He was the archetype Indian police officer, and I'd already encountered him in a hundred Bollywood movies while being shunted around the country on night buses.
'If you lose your camera, you should not leave it around.' His wisdom had me enthralled. I decided not to comment on his abuses of conditional phrases in the English language, and waited for him to continue. He didn't seem to be awaiting a response from me.

And I got Hamlet's Polonius.

On and on he went, a great rambling monologue. In a life absent of positive male role models, this was not one of the species I would be looking up to either. From the obvious 'You should not be leaving your items alone', to the more surreal 'If not coming from the thief, then where?', to the ridiculous 'I am thinking you not having the camera here', my mouth was agape.
He had received the story of my woes second-hand from a flunkey, but I hadn't been allowed to speak.

I wanted to yell,' Listen here you trumped-up, pig-eyed sack of shit. You might think yourself important among this band of illiterate ill-kempt subordinates who undoubtedly grovel at your feet each time you bellow some preposterously ludicrous turn of phrase, but personally, I couldn't give a flying turd.'

But managed to utter that I needed a report.

He shouted something in Tamil and a young, smartly dressed officer appeared.

'Go.' Our conversation had come to a close.

Out in the street, I discovered that Detective Rajuman spoke little English. With my complete lack of Tamil, we headed in silence to the scene of the crime. Towards the end of Raja St, I pointed out the shop where my camera had disappeared.

I felt bad. I didn't want the Detective to interrogate innocent people. I just wanted a report to make a valid insurance claim. He interviewed every one at the scene, even those absent at three thirty that afternoon. The shopkeeper, salesman, neighbouring shopkeeper and a suspicious, malodorous herd of goats were all questioned in turn. Voices rose and fell. I floundered. Not once was I asked to speak, and in true Indian fashion, a crowd formed, faces turning sporadically to impress upon me the disturbance I had created.

I had given my contact details to the shop owner as soon as I learnt of the camera's disappearance. This was now produced for examination. The crowd regrouped, more tightly this time, and I imagined amongst the throng a graphologist had metamorphosed and my poor handwriting was betraying me as a lying upstart. Nope. After roughing up the sales boy, the Detective had had enough. We returned to the station.

I sat in the Inspector's office waiting for more illuminating tripe to spew forth.

'The shopkeeper is telling me that you didn't have a camera.' [Quelle goddamn surprise]

'Yes I am having one.'

'You will petition me...' [wait for it] '... You are writing all facts, camera, name, details. You write that you leave shop. When you coming back, camera is gone.'

'Petition me.' Who do you think you are? The Mughal Emperor?

Truth. Justice. The Indian Way.

Sadly, this is not a joke. As the possibility of a valid insurance claim leapt to its untimely death, I adopted my role in the farce and fled to an Internet cafe, set upon writing the truth imbued with a massive fat lie. At least the Inspector could now downgrade the incident from one of 'stolen property' to 'valuables left unattended in a public place'. I wondered briefly if the shop owner was in cahoots with the pigs, but know now through our learned friends of 'The monk who sold his Ferrari' that I cannot allow myself even just one negative thought. It would take napalm to eradicate these ones ...

Presently I returned, and at some unforeseen moment passed from the natural, ordered world into the nebulous ether of illogical malevolence and mystical nonsense. I played the role avec brillo.

The Inspector was done with me. I shunted Sleeping Walrus from the bench. He awoke with a start, saw the wild look in the crazy foreigner's eye, and slunk away, deprived of his government-sanctioned sleep. In his place came another menial, toothless and in homespun cotton. He took my statement, and for fifteen minutes was a captive audience to my six lines of skillfully composed English, no doubt admiring gravity of tone and clarity of thought. At least someone appreciates my writing.

I looked about. All this paper. IT files, GC.K.CD files. Arms and Records Register, the Duty Register. The Village Roster and Government Property Register. Group Office and Visiting and Inspection Book. Gun License and Registration Books, Arms Deposit Ledger. Arms Distribution Ledger. The paperless office in the subcontinent is still some years away. As is a society without guns.

Then solemnly, 'Your good name?'

'What?'

'Your good name?'

My good name is twice written on the paper you hold now, the very one which I am about to snatch from your good hands and cram into your goddamn throat until you meet your next reincarnation, buddy.

'James Heywood.'

'Your country?'

And on it went. The following minutes were tinged with violent thoughts, primarily because I had long ago met Blind Rage and was now glancing flirtatiously at her cousin, Psychotic Behaviour. I lost myself in this hot, stinking, filthy place, let it engulf me. I immersed in the subcontinental concoction of the absurd, the illogical, the meaninglessness of it all.
Question and answer time over, Mr No Teeth & White Pants handed me form number 23 stamped by the Sub Inspector of Police, E1 Mamallapuram P.S. I have to return tomorrow to collect the official certificate.

As I walked back to the entrance I took a parting glance at the blackboard brimming with statistics. The percentage of 'Recovered Stolen Property' was low in any given year. And the chance of leaving this country with my sanity appeared slimmer yet.
I exited the building and passed Inspector and Detective Rajuman smoking in the dusty courtyard.

'Thanks for your help, guys' I uttered without a second thought.

I moved slowly back to my hotel room, shuffling in my ill-fitting sandals, hoping to regain my sanity.

Unfortunately, along with my camera, it appears to have absconded permanently.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Assertive action

The hotter is gets, the more inclined I am spend to spend greater amounts on transport. With the promise of air-conditioning, a reclining cushioned seat and ample legroom, I purchased a ticket with Messieurs Sri Balaji Travels and promised to return at eight o'clock the following morning to take seat number 11a on the Bangalore-Chennai express-deluxe coach.

I arrived at the appointed place just twenty minutes late, after a couple of cups of sweet milky tea. There is no point arriving on time for anything in this country. Except trains, which have the habit of departing on time but arriving late. After forty-five minutes more and a few more teas, I was fidgeting. Mr Balaji sensed my concern.

'Bus one hour late.'

'Umm, yep, I figured as much.'

'You want breakfast?'

After the hour had passed, I stood up, took my nose out of my new novel and went over for question time.

'When is bus coming?' [I possess the ludicrous habit of speaking in broken English to Indians].

'Soon.'

'What time?'

'You want breakfast?'

At some point a young urchin brushed past me and handed a crumpled ticket to Mr Balaji. The latter inspected it, returned it, and promptly asked to see my own. This he did not return. He told me to follow the grubby kid who would escort me to my bus.

'You told me to come here. Bus pick up from here, no?'

'You follow him now.'

'I don't have a ticket. You have it.'

'Possible. You follow him.'

Something was wrong. I didn't like this.

As we crossed the street and into the bowels of the bus station, I worked out what was going on. I took the ticket out of the urchin's hands, and asked him where my bus was.

'Ten o'clock.'

'This is my ticket? I had bus for eight o'clock. Where is bus?'

He pointed, as all Indians do in response to such a question, in a general direction away from both of us. Briefly, I imagined what would happened if I pummelled his head into the nearby concrete pylon until he was but a bleeding pulp. Then I imagined life inside an Indian prison. I'm sure the food's not that good.

Examining the ticket, I noticed that it was issued by the State Transit Authority, was for a different bus number and seat number. At least it appeared to be bound for Chennai.

The price marked on this ticket was one third what I had passed over to Mr Balaji. Too tired to argue with the kid, I sent him off with a disparaging look and peered around for the bus that would take me to my destination. When I evenutally discovered it, and its delapidated state, I immediately found the resolve to pay a quick return visit to Balaji and Co.

I wanted a cushioned luxury-express experience and I was getting rust and battered metal.
I stayed calm. Very Zen.

'What the ...?'

'Bus cancelled.'

'Why didn't you tell me that? I was sitting here for almost two hours.'

'Bus will leave at ten.'

'Ummm, look at price.'He glanced, though he was about to learn something new, and smiled, like this was acceptable and ordinary behaviour when dealing with people.

'No problem, bus at ten.' My patience expired.

I requested that he return the difference of the cost of the two tickets, since the vehicle I was to travel on did not resemble the one on the poster on the office wall, the one I had expected.
Mr Balaji gave me a big white smile. I gave him a dark withering scowl with a vague hint of menace.

Along came the 'others'. Indians involved in the tourism industry speak bad English until there's a discussion over cash. Suddenly they become fluent. They operate in groups.

Laughing at the pettiness of it all, and with a slight mania in my tone, I peppered my insults with good humour and told them that they would all burn in Hell if they didn't return my cash now. It was comic. I shouted 'You criminals, you bad people' a few times at the top of my voice from the front of the store, until they were throwing banknotes at me to move on.

Can you believe it? I made a profit. In India.

I cross the street, gave the excess cash to a beggar who must have thought I was the nicest young man in town, and hopped on the next bus to Madras.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Natalie Portman is crap.

There's money in Bangalore. A thriving metropolis in the south of the country, this place is home to India's IT industry and feels like a boomtown. With a population of about six million, all out on the street at any given time, the difference to other major cities is striking.

I stayed in the area near the bus stands, railway station, and city market - you're always bound to see a lot more in these parts of any town.

The Volga restaurant was across the road from my hotel, though I searched in vain on the menu and walls for a hint of Russia. No cabbage and no pictures of Catherine the Great. With the piped tunes of Enya swimming through the place, I settled on a briyani and for the first time in a while I got to eat with my fingers. Love that.

A pure delight. Coming from a culture that actively discourages eating with your hands and feet and instead invented three stupid implements that require you to put metal in your mouth, I admit to loving nothing more than feeding my face with my hands. Of course, it does take some getting used to; rice is the hardest of any foodstuff to get in your gob, whether you use knife and fork, spoon or chopsticks. Once you've tried eating with your hands, you get addicted, it's a liberating experience. Remember trying to balance potato and peas on the back of your fork? Stupid. Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, being left-handed, I'm sensitive to guidebooks that warble on during opening chapters about local customs. Indians, like Bangladeshis and possibly Pakistanis, use the right hand for eating and the left for ablutions. Since I can accomplish very little with my right hand, I searched around, worried that I might be attracting attention of other diners who noticed my eating with my pooing hand. The only diner who caught my eye let out a belch so loud and spat a small chicken bone onto his plate: he obviously had other things to concern himself with than my failure to observe riutal.

I washed down dinner with a coffee, only my second since I left Australia almost three months ago. The buzz was fantastic. I was transported immediately back to my daily ritual to the cafe across from where I worked, chatting away with my mate as we grabbed a fat sugar-laden latte and dodged traffic to cross the madness of the Pacific Highway and up the lift to my workplace. I felt an iota of homesickness. But then I got over that.

I left Enya to carry on nonsensically in Gaelic and stepped out into the heat of the city. With my propensity to hanker on about the weather, I'll try to keep it short.

WHERE IS THE MONSOON?

Resisting the desire to strip completely and hope the Times of India would skillfully act as both reading material and underpants to my nether parts, I remained stoic and, after two months of this, I really should be a little more used to temperatures that are more at home with Miele kitchen appliances than with supple human flesh.

Bangalore had footpaths. One of them allowed me to walk fifty-three consecutive steps without once having to adjust my sandals, increase or decrease the width of my gait, or even look down to check that I was not going to step on animal, vegetable or mineral. Traffic lights are operational, and more surprisingly, there appears to be some sort of order to the traffic. Streets are lined with shady trees ... it all helped me to withstand the heat a bit more.

But of course, perhaps in the process of modernisation, other things had fallen by the wayside. MG Road, the middle class shopping strip, could be any bland mall in the world. Thousands of people busily consuming more useless crap to fill their wardrobes, closets and garages. Western brands are prominent here, though why buy the real thing when fake is available (in a larger number of colours) around the corner, and at a fraction of the cost?

I found a couple of very well stocked bookstores. Brilliant. After the trial of a second reading of 'The monk who sold his Ferrari' (yep, I'm still working on it), it was very exciting to lose myself among the shelves. Picked up a couple of travel novels and selection of books by a south Indian writer, R.K. Narayan. He wrote in the 1930s and a couple of Indians I've met have recommended his novels. Looking forward to a couple of days sitting in a hammock somewhere ...

Bu the highlight of the day was yet to arrive ...

Star Wars has just been released! I was very, very excited and couldn't believe my luck; the next session was commencing in twenty minutes. I purchased my ticket, a couple of spicy samosas and something claiming to be a cocktail fruit juice, and worked my way up five flights of stairs to the auditorium.

As a child, I was the first and only in my neighborhood to have Star Wars wallpaper, though my mother refused to allow it on all four walls of the room. Now I was going to be one of the first (but not only) in India to see Anakin head over to the Dark side.

George, you did another great job (Lucas, not Bush). Thank God Senator Palapatine turned out to be the Lord of the Siths. Quite frankly that ridiculous affected speech impediment was more than I could handle. Yoda provided me with a number of laughs; watching a two foot green critter battle using his light-sabre against Sen Palp/Lord Sith in the Imperial Senate was a huge giggle. Special effects, as always, astounding.

And at least we know why Anakin eventually moved to the Dark Side. Not sure if it was the script or simply the poorest, most unconvincing acting performance the world's witnessed in some time. I'd definitely choose a life of swanning about the Death Star, Imperial Storm Troopers and a double-ended light sabre over the rest of my time spent with that wet blanket of a woman.

Never, ever give Natalie Portman another acting role. She is rubbish.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Physical activity

After a gruelling train ride through the hazy heat of the plains, I returned to Mumbai with both the expectation of finding my new credit card and with the hope of gaining a ticket to catch up with Nick and Leah in Goa before they left the country.

I was exhausted. When the attendant at the Mumbai Central Station Ticket Reservation Centre delivered the sad news that the foreign tourist quota was full for the next four days, I gave up immediately on feeling sand between my toes. I returned to the Salvation Army Hostel and slept almost soundly while taxis drove by as though as the foot of my bed.

When I awoke I met Kurt, a Dutch traveller who shared valuable information about travelling to Pakistan and Iran. He laughed at my prospects of entering Iran; according to him Australians are not currently welcome. But he couldn't answer my next obvious question. Why? All he knew was that the Australian with whom he travelled through Yemen had been unable to obtain an Iranian visa.

Acknowledging an Australian is probably persona non grata in the eyes of various Muslim bureaucrats across the planet, I fail to see what Iran in particular would have against our government. I'm hoping that the refusal of the visa was just an isolated incident that is common in this part of the world where the same question to the same person twice within thirty seconds yields a different response.

Bureaucracy in the Third World can crush a man and leave him weeping. Sure, it's also irritating in the Western World, but without the mind-achingly number of ludicrously ill-printed forms that hinder your every move. Entering a hotel in India on a tourist visa is akin to writing a novella.

When you arrive at any hotel in the world, all you want is to be taken to your room. Here you must twice complete a recent autobiography. And the question that annoys me the most? 'What is your next destination?' Leading not to temptation and thus the response 'None of your goddamn business', I usually opt for a planet in the solar system. 'Mars' or 'Saturn' draw as scant attention as if I wrote 'Calcutta'. So I remain optimistic about the visa. I will simply take a pen, photos and some extra cash for bribes.

Anyway, Kurt had a map of Mumbai. North of the city was marked in large letters 'Go Karting'. Well, sure, I felt like a bit of go-karting. I've already complained of my inability to stay fit while travelling. And if go-karting can't offer the cardiovascular improvements of a run through Sydney's Eastern suburbs, it might provide the adrenalin rush I wanted.

We took a bus from the hostel to Churchgate station and then a train for an hour. Suburban train rides in Mumbai provide their own heart-racing palpitations, and when we arrived I wasn't sure that go-karting was going to be able to compete with the feeling that you have when you alight a suburban train wagon. Happy to be alive. And let's face it, if Mumbai's sixteen million residents can cope with travelling in an amount of space normally reserved for a small rodent, then so can I.

We took the obligatory auto-rickshaw ride to the Go-Karting stadium, a short tour through affluent suburbs of the worst taste. India now has money, but with it has come tasteless and crass materialism, the distinct impression that they're spending their cash only on what glitters. Colossal apartment buildings erupt from the foothills - some over forty stories in height and topped with the most ridiculous expressions of neo-classicism. Imagine the Governor Phillip Tower in Sydney with large pseudo-Corinthian columns and perhaps a Byzantine dome topping the structure. Maybe a stylised Acropolis atop the new World Tower in George St? Think Las Vegas casino architects recreating Elizabeth Bay high-density housing, and you have some idea of what is being constructed here.

The waiver we needed to sign before donning our helmet had some interesting clauses. To note: any part of a Sikh's hair, which may become entangled with either the motor or any other part of the go-kart, may be permanently cut in the instance where damage either to the person or the vehicle or both is to be avoided. Permanently cut? It also required any Sikh to remove his turban before being allowed to drive a go-kart (I imagine the helmet is otherwise impossible to wear), and this would lead to arguments in a country that loves to bicker as much as India.
On the circuit and loving every second of it, Kust overtook me twice. Those of you who have played passenger to my driver will fully appreciate that this was of no concern to me. I'm happy just to remember where to find the ignition switch and to discover that I don't accelerate when I mean to depress the clutch. Kurt thought my dubious driving skills hilarious, and when we received the print-out of our individual performances after completing the laps, I admit to feeling a little pathetic.

I've always been a crap driver. I don't enjoy it and don't see why I should have to do it when someone else always has a car. You can't read when you drive - eating, talking and sleeping are generally discouraged. It's just another activity designed to complicate our life and keep us from doing something constructive. You hear people complain all the time about being stuck in traffic jams. Use public transport and read a book. It's not like anyone has ever said to you 'I had a really interesting drive to work yesterday morning, the brakes worked like a charm'.
Still, it was quite humiliating to find that I was the slowest driver on the course all day ...

Monday, May 02, 2005

Sex. Not that I'm getting any of it.

The temples of Khajuraho were constructed some time during the tenth to twelth centuries, and of the orignal eighty-odd structures, twenty two survive today. Scholars claim that the excellent condition of the temples is the result of being built far from anywhere (yep, I got that feeling from the bus ride). As such, when the Islamic marauders came, they didn't spot the temples and thus couldn't destroy the sculptures. So now I get to see them too.

The sculptured details in stone cover every conceivable surface of the temples. People going about their everyday business - bathing, talking, caressing, reading a letter, fornicating with a horse. That kind of thing.

Sure, sex isn't the only sculptural theme on the temples. But it is certainly the one that attracts the most attention (well, most of my attention). There appear to be two theories regarding the erotica. One is that this was part of daily life, and that in a less repressed time the temples would been a life's mode d'emploi for pilgrims and visitors. The second theory is that the temples were consecrated for a deity whose name now escapes me, but who was a sleazy type and would never allow the temples to be destroyed and so remove his source of pleasure.

I cannot imagine a time when Indians weren't sexually repressed, so theory one is out the door. But all Indian men are sleazy and obsessed with sex - like a thirteen year old who has just discovered the Internet. My vote's for theory number two.

Khajuraho is astounding, and beyond my crassness I really wish I had the kind of faith that could make me believe that God exists. The dedication that goes into Indian temples (like European cathedrals) takes a understanding or acceptance of the unknown that I cannot possess. But I've had my dose of temples and forts.

Time for a return journey. Really looking forward to that ...

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

'Fraid so... another fort town.

Can't seem to get enough of massive stone architecture. Not sure if it says anything about me. I love the sheer size of forts, the energy and the labour that went into these structures. And then of course there's the history; of battles lost and won, of riding out on a horse with a seriously illegal weapon and slaughtering the foe. Decapitation. Amputation. Laceration. We may have healthcare, refrigeration and aluminium foil, but something tells me that life as a Mughal warrior would have provided an existence more thrilling than life in the 21 century.

I love the thought of being able to kill someone who pissed you off, all under the protection of the emperor. Armed with a massive steel sword replete with gold hilt, I could make mincemeat of most Sydney shop assistants in the time it takes to print a receipt. The Queen Victoria Building could be depopulated within an hour, and I would ride triumphant on my white steed through George St, wearing a necklace hung with the severed heads of dour sales staff. Still, I digress ...
but if anyone wants to get me a Christmas present this year, I know what I want. I spotted a massive silver mace-cum-axe in the amoury of Bikaner palace, and think it's just what I'm after.
Anyway, Leah and Nick have less than two weeks remaining until they head to the land of the rising sun. They wanted to chill and head to the beach, so I alighted from the train after only two hours and bid them courage as they faced the next two twenty hour journeys to Goa. Yep, forty hours until they get to have a shower. And a swim.

I arrived in Gwalior by midday. Hot enough to melt the soles of my sandals, but only a short walk across the bridge to find a hotel. Showered and feeling slightly cleaner, I made a mental note to do some laundry at some point in the foreseeable future, and headed out on foot to the fort.

Like those in Jodhpur and Chittor, the fortifications of Gwalior literally rise up out of the rock. Towering above the town, it was a three kilometre traipse though the filth and rubbish and ruminating animals. Too many poo-munching pigs for my liking. I'm completely off pork again. Personally, I have nothing against any critter that likes to eat faeces. There must be some nutritional value, or they wouldn't indulge so frequently. In any case, most animals are a little strange on the subcontinent. Cows appear to swallow only newspaper and discarded plastic bags, dogs eat nothing at all, and the pigs find nourishment in shit. Sorry, off on another tangent again.
The fort, as per my expectations, rocked. Through the main gates lies Man Singh palace, which to my excitement was used as a state prison during the Mughal period. You don't see enough dungeons in India. Then again, as per my notes above, I'm not sure they take many prisoners. Down a couple of stone spiral staircases, I began to feel a little spooked as the poor lighting became even poorer. And began to flicker. It was cool and hard to see, but I arrived in some kind of chamber, in the middle of which was a large colonnade with tether rings suspended from columns and the ceiling. My imagination ran wild. It's easy to picture the unfortunate beings tortured while strung up, spied on through numerous peepholes positioned in the ceiling. Brilliant stuff.

Of course, fifteen minutes later, when I was lost and still somewhere in the entrails of the building, the wonderment wore off and I felt the need to resurface. At every turn I took a wrong turn. The light at the end of the tunnel was usually a cavity that looked straight down the sheer cliff onto the city below. No joy there. I finally heard a few mumbling voices and scampered off towards them, arriving upon some attendants laying down on the job. Not sure what it is about Indians, but it appears to me that if you're lucky enough to secure a job as ticket collector at a museum, bank clerk or a position at the train reservation counter, sloth is the most important qualification for the job. These guys have it in abundance.

Adjusting my vision to the glaring light of the early afternoon, I literally walked into a couple of young chaps, Ashok and Sanjay. They had made the journey to Gwalior from Bhopal ealier in the day, and were to attend wedding festivities for a Jain friend that evening. We strolled among the other ruins and chatted for over an hour. They recommended that I try marriage and children. I said I preferred the idea of eternal torture in the just-visited Man Singh palace dungeon.

After a very long and enjoyable afternoon in Gwalior, I headed wearliy to my hotel, stopping for a Pepsi and staring at the tireless poo-munching porcines. Filthy buggers. Although I stayed in a dormitory, there was no-one else in the room. I positioned the air cooler right next to my feet, and slept soundly until five fifteen in the morning, when India awoke and cleared it collective throat, and gobbed onto the street. Filthy buggers.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Will someone make one of these for me when I die? I doubt it.

If you had to select one image that conjures up the beauty of this country, what would it be?
It's huge, it's fat, it's made of an immense quantity of white marble, and it's mindblowing, as much for its size as for the sheer work required to create it. And of course, for those of you who have feelings, it must mean something too that it is a memorial built for a dead woman by his grieving husband.

The Taj Mahal is astounding, and amid the filth and degredation of India it is a majestic reminder of what this country achieved in earlier times. Twenty years in the making requiring the labour of some twenty thousand men, the scale and beauty of this monument is probably without comparison. Entering the gate is akin to walking into an oasis. Gardens. Birds singing.

Cleanliness.

It's fabulous.

The sight is serene, it gives you goosebumps and your heart almost melts. You wish you were sitting here with that special someone and enjoying the moment, instead of it being just you, your water bottle and your foul smelling sandals. Still, Lady Di came here by herself, and ... right, I'll move on from that analogy.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves, though of course no image can truly capture the intense majesty of this building. From afar it so ... white. Up close you marvel at the intricate work of coloured stones inlaid in marble, the arabic calligraphy that lines the recesses, the statuesque minarets that elegantly frame the entire scene. It's like nothing else on the planet.

Walking around it makes you feel somehow more relaxed, you indulge in a little self-reflection and you think that maybe it is possible that you could love someone so much that you too would build such a monument if you had the cash. Personally, I think I'd use Lego. Infinitely cheaper, and you can smash it to bits if you change your mind.

I love it. More so the second time around.