I left Calcutta three days ago, but this street memory has stayed with me:
As I stood on a sidewalk with my post-lunch chai, just a stone's throw from New Market, a temporarily out-of-work rickshaw-puller approaches me, asks me to let him take me somewhere. I decline, he suddenly transforms into a beggar. "No work, no one here today, no one. [see previous post about Calcutta's city-wide strike, which was the day of this memory.] Hungry, I am hungry. Hungry, give two chapatis, two chapatis," he says.
I decline. He persists, I decline again. (A few weeks after I arrived in India I resolved, not entirely successfully, to give money only to NGOs and temples that provide social services.)
A dog approaches, the man pulls its front legs up, makes the fairly hefty and incredibly docile street creature vertical. The rickshaw puller/beggar begins to dance with the dog; I stifle laughter while declining to pay for the performance I never saw coming.
The man spies a middle-aged tourist couple aproaching down the street, and walks with the vertical dog until he's in full view, directly in their path. The dog dance begins again: the white woman sees the odd couple, raises her camera in delight, begins capturing the synthesized exotic experience. She is completely oblivious to the transaction that has just begun, of which she is the integral part. She and her husband walk by the rickshaw puller/beggar/freelance dog dancer, the dancer turns, asks to see the picture, and then, of course, begins asking for rupees. Instead, he receives the woman's boxed leftovers from lunch.
The dog-dancer sits down on the curb next to me, cracks open his winnings. Basmati rice, a curry. Lunch, paid for with a stray dog who probably sauntered off to find his own lunch in a pile of garbage. The compliant creature, as far as I could tell, was never reimbursed for his services.
Calcutta slept Thursday, the peaceful (and only partially willing) victim of West Bengal's state-wide bandh, a sort of all-inclusive super-strike which closed nearly everything: shops, buses, trains, trams, taxis, museums, offices. Not even the subterranean tracks of the (surprisingly excellent) Metro stirred beneath the streets, which lay conspicuously empty.
And so, pedestrians and cricket fanatics (i.e., every male aged 5-25) claimed central Calcutta's crumbling post-colonial byways. It was perfect for my usual aimless wanderings. Well, not entirely aimless: I plodded, after a 90-minute mid-day nap, across the cricket-thronged maidan (central park) toward Fort William, the still-garrisoned 18th-century pile the British East India Company built to protect itself, before it was the undisputed master of the subcontinent.
I steered north instead, skirting ignored, weedy old statues until I stood below Shahid Minar (built by the British and originally called Ochterlony's Monument, it commemorated Mr. O's gallant imperial efforts in Nepal; now renamed, it's another bizarre example of the constant absurd renaming that goes on in India to try to wipe away the colonial legacy).
Then, to the epicenter of the amplified voice I first heard near my guesthouse as an old wrinkled man cleaned and shined my dusty shoes: Hundreds gathered before a stage, a caste of political characters booming about, I presume, the justice of their bandh's cause: the city rightfully slept, I imagined them intoning, forgoing profit (or just subsistence) for the grand principle of combating the evil Tata steel/auto company's desire to turn some West Bengali agricultural land into a big manufacturing center.
But the principle of the bandh was totally beside the point to me Thursday: I enjoyed it, but not because I thought its cause was righteous: I just loved the marvelous, unnatural calm of the usually frenetic city. Calcutta's streets became their complete opposite: peace, quiet, no buses/taxis/tram/commuters filling it; in short, exactly what Indian cities never are: manageable and ruled by pedestrians.
I walked slowly with my camera between the errant pitches of giddy cricket-playing boys. Nothing to do but nothing: read Rushdie's Midnight's Children, eat a late, slow lunch, soak in the atmosphere of my guesthouse's courtyard.
The bandh may be stupid and counterproductive in the long run, but it's obviously unproductive in a strictly economic sense. The rickshaw drivers (and pullers; Calcutta has plenty of rickshaws drawn by walking, barefoot men) sat despondently; there were no workers and shoppers to ferry about. As the oddly accent-less Punjabi man at a restaurant told me, after I paid him for my lunch:
"The same people who elect these people are hurt by it (the bandh)." When I asked him if he thought the strike would achieve its aim (give the farmers back their land, or compensate them adequately), he said, in a perfectly cryptic way: "I don't follow politics."
Whatever the outcome, it was the miracle of all miracles: for one day, peace reigned throughout an Indian city, that normal purveyor of absolute chaos.
Amazingly, Calcutta strikes me as even more alive than Delhi and Bombay. I didn't think this was possible, but there's a good reason for the feeling: the protests. As soon as I stepped out of the grandiosity of Howrah Railway Station, my eyes met a phalanx of young (all male) Muslim protesters heading to the ferry across the River Hooghly, which is exactly where I happened to be heading.
Their chanting was impressively disciplined, but I have no idea what they were saying. It was so funny: as we shared the 15-minute taxi ride across the brackish mess that is the Hooghly, all the guys were quiet and relaxed, as if they were enjoying an unexpected holiday (and perhaps they were, if they got out of school?)...Later, after I checked into a guesthouse, I found myself walking through thousands of Muslims convening on the Esplanade, one of Calcutta's central parks. Speakers blared Arabic (or was it Bengali?), and trucks full of chanting men careened around the city's roundabouts.
Today's paper said 15,000 people were there, gathered in support of a government quota system for Muslims in government (a "quota system" is essentially like the US's affirmative action), and protesting against the forced taking of agricultural land outside of the city for industrial development.
But that's not all the political activity around here: There's talk of a general strike throughout the city on Thursday (protesting the land-taking issue), and I'm told a West Bengal Member of Parliament is actually on a hunger strike because of the issue. And on top of the massive rally I witnessed yesterday, I've walked by two other random, unrelated street protests in the city.
All of this is very interesting to me because India has slowly revealed itself (to me) to be both more and less democratic than the current state of American democracy. That may sound bizarre, and it's kind of misleading, but I can't think of a better way of putting it. This is a country where electoral politics and criminality seem to go hand in hand. A chief minister (of the national government, no less) was convicted of murder a few weeks ago, making the usual corruption/bribery charges so many officials are faced with seem paltry. Imagine a sitting U.S. Senator, or a member of president's cabinet, actually convicted of murder in the US! Of course, the murder conviction was a bit unusual, even for Indian politics. But you get the idea: the basic democratic and governmental machinery of this country is a bit...on the rotten side.
But alongside this rotten corruption, and perhaps even within in it (more on that in a second), there is incredibly vibrant, democratic energy everywhere: I see it in the many protests I've witnessed; an incredible array of newspapers around the country, which, if the English ones are any indication, are feisty, opinionated and independent; and the slow rise of the scheduled caste (the Untouchables) from total poverty and obscurity to electoral strength and parliament. There is a palpable mood of action, a mood that I've found sadly lacking in the US for, well, my whole life.
And so when a low-caste politician cheats his way (with bribes, gangs, even guns) into power, his constituency forgives him, because he's the first man (or woman) to actually represent them. It doesn't matter if he's corrupt to the core and doesn't do any material good for his constituency: he's valued for what he symbolizes (which, in the case of low-caste politicians, is essentially revenge for centuries of oppression), not what he actually accomplishes.
All of this is to say: India is a very messy, very interesting democracy. It's the largest one on earth, and one of the most dysfunctional (but then, perhaps all young democracies are dsyfunctional). I've felt that more here in Calcutta in just two days than I have anywhere else in India, for some random reason. Some people (like George Bush) might say that India is a prime example of how Democracy with a capital 'D' is on a grand march around the world to liberate humanity. Maybe. But I think its relative success here is a bit more down-to-earth: India is so diverse, full of so many languages and religions and histories, that only a democracy can let people breath. The only real alternative is pure force and brutality, which the British, regrettably, were remarkably good at wielding.
Nothing makes me dwell on the impermanence of all matter like a funeral pyre. Here in Varanasi, death lines the Ganges River, wrapped bodies wait in somber line for fire to fully release them from the endless karmic cycle of rebirth. Die in Varanasi, and you achieve instant salvation: Can any city claim a greater power?
Last night, as men tended the wood-fueled fires, and the bodies, I realized I was staring not only my own death in the face, but my life. I stared - the macabre, beautiful scene mesmerizing, bells and music giving background pulse - and thought restlessly: I am nothing but a clever assembly of matter, my sanity requires an illusional identity. The world was without me, and will be without me.
And then, my mind staring even closer: just where is that body going? Last night, this city, blaring its rituals, seemed to scream: Everywhere.
Yes, death is at the heart of this city. Varanasi is the symbolic heart of Hinduism, and by my reckoning death - and how to escape it - is at the heart of every religion. So the city turns death into life: Founded by the God Shiva, it's called the City of Light. Death becomes liberation, and as the bodies burn, young men play cricket on the ghats, water buffalos and cows ick their way through trash, touts try to get my money and children beg.
Life, in other words, very much goes on in its normal Indian way. But with its intense proximity to death, it takes on a new potency. Varanasi is India cubed.
The old cliche says: necessity is the Mother of Invention. India offers a variation on this theme: necessity is the mother of all sales pitches.
Indians, it seems, are born entrepreneurs, their instincts incredibly capitalistic. They can fill any demand - even those you didn't know you had - with supply. Case in point in Khajuraho a few days ago: I wandered into a dark Jain temple, trying to adjust my eyes to its sandstone carvings. (No electricity, as there was none when the temple was carved in the 10th century.) A man appears with a flashlight, giving me just what I needed to illuminate the outer walls of the inner sanctum. I was all alone, and the ancient rock glowed with mysterious power.
I gladly gave the man 20 rupees. The price for these sorts of unexpected but useful services in religious contexts is always "As you like, sir," which is such a great discreet way of cloaking business transactions. Sort of like a mandatory donation.
I've never tried my hand (err, eyes) at birding before, but I decided to give it a go last Saturday in Keoladeo National Park, a World Heritage site that attracts hardcore birders from around the world. Simply put, this place - in the very eastern tip of Rajasthan - is bird mecca. 370 different species have been recorded there; it bills itself as "Bird Paradise." Species with great names like "Siberian crane" stop in Keoladeo for a spell while migrating north and south. British Viceroys used to kill thousands of our flightful, feathered friends in single days in what was then a shooting reserve. (A plaque recorded the Shah of Iran's 1965 visit to the park; he killed a measly 500 or so).
So, I have to admit, I found myself strangely excited to watch exotic birds do their thing. It's not that I have anything against them (although I am jealous they can fly), it's just that Massachusetts birds never really caught imagination. The most exotic is a cardinal, at least that I've ever seen, and even they're not all that special. The main thing, though, was that birds are not maharaja palaces, forts, temples or tombs. India has many of these things, and lately they've felt fairly redundant.
So I rented a bicycle and binoculars, bought a grossly inflated foreign tourist ticket, and headed inside, only to immediately do battle with a bicycle rental guy who has a contract with the park. Screaming "Not allowed! Not allowed!" he actually attacked me and my bike, locked the back wheel and promptly hid the key. I was stuck. The supervisor on duty agreed with the wild-eyed rental man. I got a government-approved machine (I later learned this is an illegal racket that goes on when the park director is away) and headed inside.
Later that day, my guesthouse manager, an amateur naturalist, would tell me that this year's drought was the worst in 100 years. In short, Keoladeo has no water, and no water means no birds. Of course, this being India, there's always beautiful, exotic stuff around, and I still managed to have a few "I can't believe that's a wild bird" moments. Parrots, Indian cranes, a very sombre looking eagle. Not once did I have the desire to shoot them.
I spent seven hours in the park, manged to fall asleep, read plenty of Bill Bryson's excellent A Brief History of Nearly Everything, and learned with absolute certainty that serious birders, especially serious birders that come all the way from Europe, are the nicest people in the world. This should not be surprising. They want nothing more than to stand quietly with binoculars and watch little creatures fly about. That is their paradise. I decided that although I'll never be a passionate birder, I should hang out with birders more.
I also decided that I should not tempt the appetite of tigers. I was in a very remote part of the park, completely alone (that is, in terms of people), when a methodical, rhythmic noise began to emanate from a thick grove of brambles and trees. Intrigued, I moved closer, peering in with my binoculars. The source was clearly a mammal and not a bird, was on the ground, and was breaking branches and twigs to either move through the area or build something.
I consulted my trusty park brochure's "Mammals" section. Bull, cattle, deer, boars, mongoose, porcupines...nothing to worry about..."A lone leopard was seen in 1988 inside the park feeding mainly on cattle..." Okay, no problem. And then: "Since 2000 a tigress has been seen inside the park, mainly restricted to the Koladhar area of the park. It feeds mainly on spotted deer, Sambhar, and feral cattle." I read the word "mainly" again. I checked my map and discovered that, lo and behold, I was standing squarely in the Koladhar section of the park. I got on my bicycle and left.
Long-term travel in India (say, more than two weeks) annoyingly exemplifies the Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy: everything runs down. Including myself. But after two weeks I've kicked the cold I caught somewhere in Rajasthan (which is, ironically, mostly desert), Montezuma has ceased to seek his revenge, and the intermittent but persistent middle-of-the-night wheezing & coughing has nearly subsided. Occasionally, a very small part of me wants to go home for a week, and then return for these final 17 days.
Thankfully, meeting the Taj Mahal puts all these bodily gripes into quick perspective. And it seems to have healed me. Calling the Taj Mahal a building is like calling the ocean "wet" - it's true enough, but does absolutely nothing to capture its elusive beauty. I stared at the Taj for three and a half hours Thursday, beginning at dawn, and decided it was more beautiful than any other man-made structure and probably the closest thing to architectural perfection in the world.
The thing about the Taj is that it's far more beautiful than you can possibly imagine through photographs. You think you've seen it in photographs, and of course you have, but you haven't - you haven't seen it all. The only word for it, really, is sublime. It's perfectly proportioned, perfectly elegant, and its soul (the reasons it was built in the 17th century by Mr. Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor, a bummed-out widower) is the perfect blend of Love, God and Ego. It towers, but never overpowers and tries to frighten you into submission. Instead, you submit immediately and willingly.
At first, as I failed to wrap my mind around why it's so perfect, I decided I couldn't because my head was playing post-modern tricks on me: you know, I've seen it in so many photos that I can't really look at it, I'm not able to actually encounter it with fresh eyes, blah blah blah. But by the time I left, still trying to "eff its ineffability" (as a former professor of mine might say), I had no choice but to believe that the Taj's perfection is so elusive that it fell right through my brain. Or maybe its a property of perfection itself (if you believe it really can exist): it is so rare that when you do stumble on it, your mind is so unaccustomed to it and surprised that it slips away. Or maybe I just need to talk to some architects.
That's enough Taj gushing. The really great thing is it's just one of four UNESCO World Heritage sites I've visited in the last three days. I love India. In case it isn't obvious, I am barely blogging about anything I'm seeing. No time.
