To Hellholes and Back Page 15

  “Belu, I’m sorry, but a team of camels couldn’t drag us into your car. And by ‘us’ I specifically mean ‘Joyce.’”

  After half an hour of negotiation, Belu finally allows me to fire him for a second time. Adding salt to the wound, we don’t even let him drive us to the station, flagging down a cab off the street instead. From the train, I call Ajay to tell him what’s happened.

  “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Belu,” I say in the hedging way of the habitual apologizer. “Seriously, I think the guy was sort of insane. I feel badly about leaving him out here, but we just couldn’t carry on with him behind the wheel.”

  “You must get off of this guilt trip and stop apologizing,” Ajay demands. “You are the aggrieved party here. This man has besmirched the good name of the driving profession. Not to mention my own. Now please get on with your travels and think of this sorry excuse for a man no more.”

  I hang up feeling better. India’s caste system comes in for a lot of criticism, but it must be noted that there’s nothing quite like upper-crust sensibility and boarding-school English to help you leave the social troglodytes in your wake.

  Over the following weeks Joyce and I cover enough ground to, if not entirely forget about Belu, at least keep the possibility of his return at bay. Our next stop is the “lake city” of Udaipur. Touted in guidebooks and on Web sites as “the Venice of India,” Udaipur will be touted in this book as an example of why not to trust travel writers. “The most disappointing schlep on the subcontinent” would be a better slogan for this dried-up organ.

  Rather than a glittering tourist jewel, the “most romantic city in India” turns out to be a two-bit claustrophobic dump overflowing with the usual brigade of death-or-glory merchants pushing spoon rings, watercolor prints, and a few million other trinkets nobody wants. Teeming with the usual multitudes, all of whom appear content to pass the time of day clogging the sidewalks and streets, Udaipur calls to mind the immortal words of The Simpsons’ Apu contemplating the possibility of having children: “Well, perhaps it is time. I have noticed that America is dangerously underpopulated.”

  In Jaipur—where those nine synchronized bombs killed sixty-three—our guesthouse is clean and comfortable and run by a woman who radiates more warmth than a tray of breakfast muffins. The other resident Indians, however, prove it’s not just the underclass that’s ready to jump all over you in India.

  After dinner I get into a political discussion with a local magazine journalist and a retired Indian professor of economics. The journalist, a tubby, smiley guy with round spectacles named Rama, clings violently to the notion that the CIA’s covert omnipotence is the cause of every problem in the world, as well as a controlling force behind everyone in the Middle East from Afghan poppy farmers to twelve-year-old Palestinian terrorists. His stridency puts me in the awkward position of once again defending a government whose actions I’m normally happy to bash like a piñata.

  “The whole world is united in its hatred of the United States,” Rama giddily informs me.

  “Just wait until China is running the world,” I say.

  “China isn’t taking any shit from you Americans anymore,” Rama says.

  I ask him what he means by this, and he refers to America’s alleged accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.

  “Even if that was intentional, which no one knows for sure, how did the Chinese respond?” I ask him.

  “They sent a firm message letting you guys know that you’re not the only ones on the block.”

  “A firm message. That’s your definition of ‘not taking any shit’?”

  “The Chinese have missiles in space aimed at the United States.” Rama jabs the air, his pudgy fingers representing nuclear warheads raining terror on America.

  “Belgrade was ten years ago,” I say. “Now China needs the United States as much as the United States needs China. Without America’s unprotected markets, China’s economic miracle can’t continue. India’s, either, for that matter. Nuclear annihilation makes no sense for anyone other than rogue terrorists. Even North Korea doesn’t want it.”

  “America is a country whose ruin is awaited by the world and will be cheered by millions.”

  Punit, the retired university professor, blathers in the same vein. I acknowledge a number of his anti-America points as being at least partially valid, then ask him, “If you were in charge, how would you fix the situation in the Middle East and Iraq?”

  “The Americans still haven’t learned their lesson,” he replies. “They’ve fought another Vietnam in Iraq.”

  “Fine, but forget America for a minute. What should happen now? How can problems in the Middle East best be resolved from an Indian point of view?”

  “The U.S. created Bin Laden. It supported him. It propped up Musharraf in Pakistan. It intentionally foments violence among the Palestinians.”

  “Granted. But are Pakistan and Palestine and Saudi Arabia so weak that they bear no responsibility for what happens in their own countries?”

  “Look up your facts. U.S. money supports all of this terrorism. Bush started it.”

  “Get a few more beers in me and I might join you in a chorus of ‘Bush the Great Satan.’ But you can’t be serious suggesting that Islamic terrorism doesn’t predate Bush.”

  “The problem with you Americans is that you need to be taught your lessons.”

  I suppose confirmation that the United States isn’t the only country with a sizable population of dumbshit zealots immune to political nuance should be comforting, but arguing with idiots is as frustrating in India as it is in Indiana. Rama and Punit are like mirror images of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The politics are reversed, but the same insatiable hatred blinds the pursuit of rational perspective. After talking with these two supposed intellectuals, I know as little about India’s regional ambitions as I did before I met them.

  The sacred city of Varanasi on the Ganges River had been the biggest source of my pretrip worries. Its filth is legendary among world travelers—back home, India-travel veterans had advised Joyce and me to pack pairs of “Varanasi shoes,” throwaways that would become so dung-encrusted in the befouled streets that they could simply be tossed when we left town. The nurse at the travel clinic had involuntarily flinched when she saw Varanasi on my itinerary. With no further consultation, she scribbled “Imodium” and an antibiotic called “Azithromycin” on her note pad.

  On the day we arrive, the local paper runs a front-page story reporting that two young men have been arrested trying to sneak twenty-four hundred detonators into Varanasi. There’s also an op-ed piece about the American and British governments’ recent travel advisories urging their citizens to avoid large sections of India. As I’ve previously noted, these exaggerated State Department advisories are most often written in the hysterical hand of ass-covering government bureaucrats issuing blanket pronouncements that will allow them to say, “I told you so” in response to any calamitous act of God, man, or Muslim. But they also give offense to foreign nationals around the world, and the aforementioned op-ed writer is understandably annoyed that these official warnings undermine the upbeat image India wishes to project to travelers and investors. He writes a nice piece, but somewhat working against his argument is a story on the same page bearing the headline, “Smash and Grab: Gurkhas and Gujjars areunited by the language of violence.”

  Despite the Gurkhas, Gujjars, and twenty-four hundred detonators, nothing explodes during our stay. For sheer fright value, Varanasi proves anticlimactic. It’s no more dirty, crowded, or overwhelming than any other large Indian city.

  Not that it’s disappointing. Perhaps more than any other city on the planet, Varanasi reveals a fresh jaw-dropper around every corner: a naked child in a doorway; a steaming cow flop in front of a diamond shop; a tumble-down shelter serving as a home for ten; a lungful of woody incense; an explosion of gold, red, purple, and indigo fabric; a bearded mystic crawling on his knees; the pentatonic notes o
f a sitar raga; a limbless beggar; a shrine devoted to a monkey deity; an apartment entryway overflowing with bangles and flash, yet another self-contained universe of beliefs and superstitions and misery and coping. Every year, thousands of Westerners come to Varanasi in search of personal enlightenment, but the place is such a chaotic mess that the only way you could find yourself here is by accident. I may not ever return but if I do it’ll be with extra memory for my camera, not an extra pair of shoes.

  It turns out the only thing to be afraid of in Varanasi is the water. Described by the Economist as “a cloudy brown soup of excrement and industrial effluent,” the slow-moving Ganges River is the one attraction that lives up to the hyperbole.

  The product of factory sludge, raw sewage, and thirty thousand human corpses disposed of in its waters every year, the Ganges at Varanasi is a gusher of modern sins. According to world health standards quoted in that Economist story, 500 fecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters of water is considered safe; in the Ganges near Varanasi, 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria have been measured. This being India, the toxic count naturally does nothing to discourage sixty thousand Hindu devotees from performing ablutions in the chocolatey Ganges cesspool each day. Submerged in the noxious mix, they lather, swim, play, and even guzzle with devotional relish. Shockingly, dysentery, polio, typhoid, and other waterborne ailments are common along the river.

  The question most often asked by foreigners in Varanasi is: If the Ganges is so sacred, why do Indians treat it like a toilet? I put the matter to almost every local I meet, but the only reasonable explanation comes from an attractive, well-dressed woman named Neelima, a video production manager from Delhi working in Varanasi as part of a documentary crew.

  “The river, like Hinduism, is all-inclusive,” Neelima tells me. “Just because it’s religious doesn’t mean other things are excluded from it. In the Ganges, the entire cycle of life and death is celebrated. In the Hindu view, everything in the world is connected to religion. Even pollution. Why are these people drinking this water? Because it’s from the Ganga Mother who encompasses all life and excludes nothing, good or bad.”

  If she doesn’t convince me to go for a spiritually replenishing backstroke in Mother Ganga, I do appreciate Neelima’s insight. But I still worry about the butt coffee drifting down the river on its way to its sacred destiny mingling with the water that will be used to rinse the vegetables in the restaurant where Joyce and I will be crossing our fingers and eating lentils and spinach curry tonight.

  For the visitor, going to Varanasi and not floating down the Ganges and visiting the ghats (large sets of concrete stairs that allow pilgrims easy access to the river) is like going to Amsterdam and not smoking hash. Like going to Oktoberfest in Munich and not stepping in someone’s vomit. Like going to Salt Lake City and not visiting Temple Square. So, on a rainy, slate gray morning, Joyce and I do like hundreds of thousands before us and hire a private rowboat for a tour.

  The most well known of Varanasi’s hundred or so ghats is Manikarnika Ghat, a cremation site where Hindu corpses are burned around the clock, every day of the year, sending fountains of white smoke flying into the air. It feels awkward to be a visitor in a place reserved for the intimate acts of strangers—like accidentally stepping into your friend’s parents’ bedroom when you were a kid—but I hop out of the boat as soon as we get to Manikarnika. Just off the dock, I walk past part of an arm sticking out of a bed of peacefully crackling embers, its skeletal fingers clawing at the air. (Even in death with the outstretched hand!) I move closer to the arm, and my eyes begin picking out other parts of the body. Scapula. Ribs. Pelvis. The Ganges isn’t particularly sacred to me, but it’s hard not to be moved when you stumble upon a group of mourners chanting around a human skull, its empty eye sockets carefully pointed toward the river and sunless dawn.

  After I walk past my fill of skeleton parts, I’m asked for a donation. The wood used to burn the bodies is expensive, and families who haul their dead here usually need help with costs. I hand over ten dollars’ worth of rupees.

  The man who has taken it upon himself to guide me through the ghat—you don’t ask for these hangers on in India, they simply appear and refuse to go away—begins chiding me for being such a tightwad. Twenty dollars is the standard offering, he tells me.

  “Twenty dollars guarantees your good karma,” he says with a smile that isn’t all that different from those of the guys being burned.

  “Really? Twenty dollars for good karma? Who calculated that? What if I visit an orphanage? Or a mosque? Still twenty dollars? Or is it a sliding scale?” I know my smart-mouthing is a little unseemly given the surroundings, but this guy is a real barracuda and I can’t resist a stupid argument with anyone claiming to represent God’s accounting department.

  “Good sir, ten dollars is nothing.”

  “Then give it back if you don’t want it.”

  Travelers incite the scorn of Indian beggars more often than you’d think. Give a kid five rupees and she’ll practically spit on your shoes while telling you that five rupees isn’t good enough for a Nepalese whore. Give ten and you’ll be badgered for twenty. Give twenty and you’ll be called a Jew for not giving fifty.

  The most interesting encounter I had of this type in Africa came in the Congo, where an able-bodied teenager approached me with a look of beseeching hunger on his face. Having just bought a small bag of popcorn, I decided to simply give the kid the bag. Without blinking, he grabbed the bag, shoved it into his back pocket, then stuck his hand back out and gave me the same imploring look. In India, I experience some version of this transaction almost every day.

  At Manikarnika Ghat, my volunteer guide continues hounding me for an extra tenner all the way back to the boat. I end up caving and giving him another five. Don’t believe a word you hear about the passive embrace of Hinduism—at least not as practiced by the believers who take you to see the charred skulls on the riverbank of the Ganges at dawn.

  The only thing more exasperating than the Indian escort you don’t want is the Indian escort you can’t find. Reservations, scheduled pickups, and phone confirmations are close to meaningless in the Indian service industry. Moreover, the theoretical nature of punctuality in India would embarrass Hawaii.

  The worst of our many hard-luck experiences with the native attitude toward professional commitment begins at the train station in the large and typically frenetic city of Jodhpur. Joyce and I arrive at 11 p.m. for an arranged transit to a desert resort in a small town called Rohet Garh. I scour the station for a smiling man carrying a placard bearing my name; alas, no placard, to say nothing of smiling faces, are to be found in Jodhpur. After twenty or thirty unanswered calls to the resort—there’s nothing like two dozen unanswered calls and your ride not showing up at an Indian train station late at night to make you wish you were at home watching The Daily Show with the electric blanket turned up to eight—we step outside the station to find a battlefield of forty or fifty homeless men settled in for the night, sprawled on the pavement like reenactors simulating a WWI mustard gas attack.

  “No taxi this time, sir.” One of the stricken forms stirs and debriefs me on the situation. “Now all taxi on strike. Big trouble here. One taxi driver attacked, so now is no taxi.”

  The homeless guy turns out to be right. Just this afternoon, a strike has been called after a fatal double stabbing involving rival factions of taxi and autorickshaw drivers. Mere feet from where I stand, two passengers were knifed to death and two others seriously injured in a fit of rage that erupted when an autorickshaw collided with a taxi while both raced for the same fare in front of the station. The upbraided autorickshaw driver called in a few of his colleagues who, unbelievably, ended up attacking the would-be passengers for siding with the taxi driver in the ensuing argument. To protest this latest episode of territorial passion, the cabbies have gone on strike, leaving hapless out-of-towners such as Joyce and me to take our chances on the assistance of assorted knife-wielding (so it seems)
rickshaw hard cases. This in lieu of what was supposed to be a comfortable forty-five-minute ride into the outlying desert via one of the SUVs from our high-end resort’s gleaming fleet of luxury vehicles.

  The desperation among the motley clutch of agro autorickshaw drivers is twice as ferocious as anything we’ve yet encountered, including Belu and the craziest cousin he could dredge up. The one who gets to me first grabs my arm and begins pulling me to his rickshaw. He’s hairy and fat, with a shedding moustache and jowly face, like that mug shot of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the white T-shirt with the stretched-out neck and six-day beard of ass hair. I’d sooner trust an injured wolverine. I make an excuse and tear away from his grasp.

  Joyce and I scurry through the parking lot with both hands on our luggage. From the uncombed pack, a young guy with a friendly face, narrow limbs, and pussy-tickler moustache emerges. His name is Vinod and he informs me that he is at our service in every way.

  “We’re going to Rohet Garh,” I say.

  “On autorickshaw impossible,” Vinod says. “Too far. Need taxi.”

  “But there are no taxis.”

  “Yes.”

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reappears and begins arguing loudly with Vinod. The conversation is easy to follow. Khalid saw us first. We’re his fare. Vinod rejects the accusation of claim jumping. Three or four other drivers bear in to watch the argument, hands fidgeting ominously in their pockets. One has a seeping neck wound. Someone smells of urine. The intensity escalates like a grass fire. Correctly sensing that Joyce and I are about to bolt like startled deer for the relative sanity of the station, Vinod grabs me by the arm.

  “Come on, no problem,” he says. “I take you Rohet Garh.”

  Khalid looks ready to disembowel us all, but we follow Vinod across a lot. We turn a corner and walk down an unlit side street.