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Running Home (Pt.3)
My bodyguards followed their orders and allowed no one to talk to me. Including themselves. From Hardwar to Lucknow, a journey of 15 hours, they kept their prisoners on a tight leash, taking turns at dozing, sometimes whispering, occasionally sharing bidis. Up on the top tier, I was left alone. Neither uttered a word to me.
When the train pulled into Lucknow, our party clanged and shuffled its way across a platform or two until one of the cops pointed at a train. “That one will take you to Pratapgarh,” he said.
With their duty done, they turned their detainees around once more and left me to my own devices.
An empty train in India is a rare thing. The one I boarded was oven hot and completely quiet. I had the feeling of entering a long steel church. There was a similar air of hope and faith that the train would soon start moving. A handful of passengers lay stretched out here and there, prostrate before the Sun god. I found a window seat on the shady side of the compartment and waited.
Eventually, the train did pull away from the station and onto the dry, scrabbly plain of central UP. I squinted into the wavy horizon. Though it must have been close to 45 degrees, I relished the way the heat burned the monsoon chill out of my bones.
The slow swaying and jolting of the carriages comforted me. I lost myself in the clacking of the rails. I was excited now. Just a couple more hours to go and I’d be home.
I must have nodded off for I was woken by someone tapping my shoulder. In front of me stood a Sikh ticket inspector in a navy blue blazer with worn cuffs. He had his hand outstretched and asked me to show him my ticket.
“I don’t have one.”
Perhaps because a representative of the Indian government itself had deposited me, Special Delivery, on this train my fear was gone.
‘Why?”
“My money was stolen and the Railway Police told me to take this train. My mother is sick in Allahabad and I’m going there.” The further I travelled the longer my opening line became.
The Ticket Inspector eyed me quietly for a minute. As he did, my courage wilted. The same panic I had felt after the Russians had laughed me out of the compound, rushed through me. I was sure the moment of my arrest had arrived.
“You do one thing,” he said after a while. “Just before we enter Pratapgarh Station, the train will stop. You alight there and walk to the city. There will be no issue of ticket-shicket.”
I nodded my assent somewhat incredulously. How was it that a man charged with enforcing the rules was advising me on the best way to break them?
Several minutes later the train did roll to a stop about 200 metres from the station. I, along with what seemed like every other passenger on the train, hopped onto the hot earth and scampered out of the railway premises through a hole in a symbolic fence standing bent and rusty 5 metres from the highway.
I’ll never forget that sardarji.
**
Pratapgarh is a small district town famous for not much. Its main role is as a rail junction and transport hub. I entered a chowk bustling with activity. People were streaming up and down the road toward the station. Buses and Tempos, India’s awkward three wheeler taxis that ferried people to remote villages off the main highway, stood three deep on both sides of the road.
Touts shouted out destinations of nearby towns and villages. Hawkers shouted the prices of their fruit and peanuts. Horns blasted incessantly. Loudspeakers attached to trees blasted Lata Mangeshkar and Rafi songs.
“Illaahabad, Illaahabad. Illahabaaad! Hey kid, why not go with us?”
A man with sweat dripping from his nose and ears and with a soiled handkerchief around his neck motioned me in his direction.
He was standing by a taxi. I couldn’t afford a taxi. I was looking for a bus. I couldn’t afford a bus either but somehow catching a free ride on the latter seemed more feasible than in a taxi.
‘Where you going?”
“Allahabad.”
“Come on. I have one seat left, Rs. 12 is all. Come on, quickly, right over here.”
He pulled me towards the Ambassador.
“I don’t have 12 rupees.”
“No problem, how much do you have?”
“None. But if you stop on Stanley Rd, across from Beli Hospital I can get you some.”
“Done,” he said. “Sit down, here.”
He pulled open a creaky door and shoved me into the back seat. I joined five other adults. Across their laps they carried a charpai, a country rope-bed that had been partially disassembled to fit into the auto. None of them could move from the weight of the wooden legs and the tangle of rope. I squeezed in as best I could, holding the door shut with my arm.
In the front seat sat another four adults. Not one of them was the driver. With his taxi now full the driver began to insinuate himself little by little behind the wheel. After some wiggling and numerous requests for reconfigurations in the passenger’s sitting arrangements, he was able to reach both feet to the pedals. His back was mostly resting against the front door which caused him to maneuver the wheel with distinct awkwardness. As if he was puppet with broken arms.
Somehow, by stretching and nudging the gear shift with the very tips of his fingers, the driver got us rolling down the highway. Inconceivably, in every little bazaar we passed through he shouted out loudly, “Illahabad. Kacheri chowk savari. Jaldi aa!” as if he were the only one in the car. Luckily, no one took up his offer and an hour and a half later just as the hottest sun of the day was turning into cool evening, we stopped in front of Allahabad Bible Seminary.
Before I managed to tell the driver to wait while I got Rs 12 from my parents, the car lurched and sputtered down the Grand Trunk Road.
48 hours after leaving Mussoorie I walked into the shady compound of home.
**
My parents were expecting me. Mr. Kapadia had called to inform them that while the school didn’t know my exact whereabouts, “I suspect he’s on his way to you.”
I spent a week at home. When my folks grilled me about what had caused me to take such a drastic step I didn’t know what to say. For the entire journey I had operated on the principle of forward motion. I didn’t doubt my feeling that I needed to be home and had spent no time analyzing why I had bolted.
I had no words to express the oppression I felt inside. The monsoon, the mist, the mountains, the Bible Club, the school, the cold had all worked to make me feel agitated and disconnected. Out of sorts.
My sister Beckie had graduated that summer and gone to the States for college. I was the last of my siblings, so perhaps I felt alone and vulnerable. Without an older brother or sister as a reference point boarding school seemed more scary and hostile. All I knew for sure was that I had an overwhelming but inarticulate need for home.
After a week my dad put me back on the train. “We told Mr Kapadia that he has our agreement to punish you in whatever manner the school decides.”
It was matter-of-fact statement. I didn’t care. My inner battery was recharged.
When I got back to Mussoorie I felt strong and connected. And heroic. People that I had admired or been intimidated by looked at me in awe. “Rabe, you actually ran away! Far out!”
I don’t know if anyone followed my example but for a brief moment I considered myself a trailblazer.
Mr Kapadia informed me that I would be gated for 10 days. No extra curricular activity and straight home after school. I was to serve my sentence in the home of the Harpers, whose son Phil, was a classmate. Mrs Harper, a vivacious, larger-than-life, extremely liberal minded woman welcomed me with love, a no-nonsense attitude and French Toast for breakfast.
“If you ever want to run away again,” Mr Kapadia told me when it was all said and done, “just come to me. We’ll have a talk. If you want a cigarette I’ll let you smoke in my house. Just don’t frighten everyone by disappearing!”
The circle is Complete
We’ve completed the circle. We Americans have gone out into the world, seen what we’ve seen, come rushing back home slammed the door shut and fitted out the house with surveillance cameras, automatic machine guns, potbellied camo boys with tattoos that scream like John Prine’s* waitress, “Make America Great Again”, a moat slithering with crocodiles and snakes and a steel wall.
We are ugly Americans again. Led by Mr. Uggers himself, DJT. His Pestilence is assisted by a black shirted, Seig Heiling immigrant who fled Apartheid not because he opposed it but apparently because he sensed the USA’s soil was more fertile for such diabolic Dogebags** as he.
They say JFK read the novel The Ugly American and felt shame. Soon afterwards he announced the Peace Corps. And created USAID. Not so every child in Asia could have cotton candy every morning but because he and his bros believed the USA could win friends by being decent.
Now his nephew sparks outbreaks of measles in small Pacific Island states.
We’ve completed the circle. We Americans are ugly again.
* His 1972 song, Rocky Mountain Time, goes:
I walked in the restaurant
For something to do
The waitress yelled at me
So did the food
**A brilliant turn of phrase from Jon Favreau, former speech writer for Obama, who coined it to describe the youngsters tearing down the Republic.
Running Home (Pt. 2)
The Russians were easy to find. I heard their tipsy, vodka-soaked laughter coming from a shady part of the compound. Four or five of them were sitting on adjacent porches of their apartments, their fleshy faces flushed red with heat and drink.
As I approached, silence fell.
I smiled, hoping it would break the ice. It didn’t.
They stared at me, obviously perplexed and irritated that I had interrupted their lunch break. One of the women whispered something to her friend.
“Excuse me,” I began.
By now I had my tale-of-woe down pat. I told them my mother was ill and I needed some money. “I need to get to Allahabad, about 700 kilometers from here,”
“No. No money,” one of them said.
A couple others joined in the chorus. “No money. Go away.” A man with huge arms and angry eyes said it louder than the others. With real authority.
Having spent 8 years in boarding school I knew a lost cause when I met one. I turned back toward the gate.
But I was dying of thirst. With a drinking gesture I said, “Could I have some water?”
This second request really set them off. Amidst the general clamor of, “No water. Go!’, one of the men made a move towards me. He didn’t follow me but I didn’t have a the courage to turn back and check until I was several meters down the path I had come up just a couple minutes earlier. When I did turn they were still tense. They glared at me but as I retreated the laughing resumed.
A mali was sitting in the shade on his haunches watering a guava tree. He beckoned me over.
He held up the hose for me to drink. He didn’t say much and I didn’t offer anything. I have no doubt he had been watching the scene play out from a distance. I sensed it was one he himself was familiar with. I took his kindness as an act of solidarity.
The thought of a 10 km ride back to Hardwar in the midday sun depressed me, especially as I was no richer for my effort. I was too spent to formulate my next move, but I knew I needed to be in town where there existed at least the potential of assistance.
I must have looked miserable pedaling along the highway because out of nowhere a man appeared. He had well oiled, wavy hair that glistened in the sun. He wore narrow legged pants and a plaid yellow shirt. I can’t remember how it happened but he successfully commandeered my bike, sat me on the rear carrier and began cycling toward Hardwar.
Despite the heat, we got a bit of breeze going which cooled my cheeks slightly. I vaguely remember the Stranger talking to me but can’t recollect about what. Before I knew it we were back at the Station. He dropped me at the cyclewala and even paid the outstanding balance. Then with a nod of his head he disappeared as unexpectedly as he’d appeared.
**
I retreated to the relative comfort of the 1st class Waiting Room. I dozed on a rattan lounge chair with extendable arms that doubled as leg rests, one of the distinctive artifacts of railway waiting halls in those days. But I was hungry. And more than a little anxious about how I was going to make the next leg of the journey.
A middle class family were the only others in the Waiting Room. The patriarch reclined on a rattan chair like mine, staring blankly at a ceiling fan that swayed as it whirred. From time to time he lifted his buttocks and farted. But other than that, he didn’t move.
He may have been oblivious to me but I had been watching him for some time. After one of his farts I cleared my throat and in my best Hindi launched into conversation. I learned they had come to Hardwar on yatra (pilgrimage) and were now heading back home. I asked him about his business (the nature of which I’ve forgotten) and may have said a nice thing or two about his young child.
As a conversationalist he was unenthusiastic.
“My mother is ill,” I offered, hoping to pique his interest.
He may have nodded, but if he did, it was ever so slightly.
“I need to get home. To Allahabad. But I have no money.”
“Why do you not have money?”
“I was robbed,” I found my mouth saying. I couldn’t believe it. But I was in the water now, so I had to keep paddling.
“This morning on the way from Dehra Dun, it was very crowded in the bogie and when I got here I realized someone had stolen my money.”
He looked at me skeptically.
“Could you provide me with Rs. 20, so I could get a ticket? My mother is very ill.”
“You must report to the Railway Police, if you have been a victim of theft.”
As far as he was concerned the conversation was over. The spinning fan captured his attention once more. I felt foolish but let a decent interval pass before shuffling out of the Waiting Room.
**
Once again, 24 hours after the first occasion, I entered the office of an Indian Railways bureaucrat. I had mulled over what the farting businessman had said. He was absolutely correct in his observation that the Police needed to be notified in the event of a crime. But in this case there had been no crime committed so fronting up to the Police would not be the smartest tactic. On the other hand, I was clean out of options.
The Railway Police office was shabbier than the Station Master’s in Dehra Dun. The man behind the desk had a pot belly and sweat stains all over his khaki uniform. His closely shaved head sported a choti, the little tuft of hair that identified him as a high caste Hindu. Unlike the Station Master his face lit up when I stood in front of his desk.
“Kya baat hai, baba?” he asked. What is it, lad?
Though he addressed me in Hindi he clearly didn’t expect me to respond in kind.
“Meri ma bimaar hai, aur mere paas ticket ka kiraya nahi hai,” I said, laying down the by now firm foundation of my story.
“Arey! Hindi bolte!” His belly jiggled with delight. “Ay shabaash!”
Before I could continue with my dishonest story he shot a series of questions at me in an attempt to come to grips with the fact that a white kid could speak Hindi.
I told him about me. I was American. I studied in Mussoorie. I was born in India. Rajesh Khanna was a good actor, yes.
Whereas the Station Master in Dehra Dun had instantly linked Woodstock School and my being in his office to funny business, this jolly man didn’t give a stuff. Indeed, he was hooting to a couple of underlings about what a spectacular thing I was.
Somehow in the midst of this excitement I managed to explain my dilemma: 700 kms. No money. Sickly mother.
Before I knew it he grabbed my wrist and dragged me out of his office. A couple of minutes later we were seated at an open air dhaba that sold tea and fast food to the throngs around the station.
He instructed the dhabawala to give me a plate of curry and a few chapatis. “This fellow is American but born in India! It’s true. And he speaks spasht Hindi! Just listen.” He could hardly contain himself.
Though my mouth was full (this was my first food in nearly 36 hours) I knew this was price I had to pay for my dinner. A small crowd had appeared; rather the endless crowd of passersby stopped for a moment to look at me. It was my cue.
I restated in Hindi what I had told the Policeman a few minutes earlier, that I was American, born in India, lived in Allahabad but studied in Mussoorie.
People marveled and exclaimed. The Policeman couldn’t have beamed wider had I been his son. He ordered my plate to be filled. I ate up. He continued to hold court but eventually passersby grew bored and the rhythm of the bazaar returned to normal.
The Police Inspector led me back to his office. I was grateful for the meal but had no idea how I was going to make it home.
He pressed a buzzer on his desk which immediately produced an underling. The underling was sent forth to find others and after several minutes returned with two colleagues who carried rifles and bulleted shoulder straps. They noisily pushed a pair of prisoners into the office in front of them. With their legs and wrists in irons the prisoners shuffled and clanged like cheap robots.
The inspector didn’t move from his desk and in a loud voice told the newly arrived cops that they were to include me in their party. They were on official duty, transporting criminals from Hardwar to the state capital, Lucknow. “You take this boy with you to Lucknow but do not let anyone, and I mean anyone, speak with him.”
With that, the chubby Police Inspector himself walked me to a train and bade me bon voyage. I was on my way at last. Still with no ticket but a pair of personal armed guards.
Running Home (pt 1)
When I was 15 I ran away.
Like most teenagers, I had a fantasy about running away from home. I was going to escape and ride my push bike 2500 km to the tip of India. I was going to live a life free of adult authority along the Grand Trunk road. I was going to go far away.
But when the moment came to make a dash, I ran straight home.
**
The Himalayan monsoon that year seemed to have no end. The rains had come early and weeks went by without a glimpse of blue sky. By mid-July, my heart was aching for some warmth and a flat horizon
Mussoorie, the hill station where I attended boarding school, was hemmed in with a brittle, misty fog that pricked your skin like needles. Every tree dripped. The narrow dirt trails we navigated around the hillside had turned into rivelets of mud.
One Sunday the claustrophobia was particularly intense. The dampness of the trees, clouds and earth had soaked into every pore of my body. I couldn’t get warm and I couldn’t shake the restlessness that had been building up for days.
I and a few friends had spent the weekend in the basement of a friend’s house at the top of a prominent hill in town. On Sunday afternoon, the crowd I hung with attended Bible Club–two hours of singing, praying and Bible teaching mixed with ping pong, homemade cakes and pretty girls.
That Sunday I sat glumly to one side, resentlng the endless rendition of “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man”, coming from a keen group of devotees in the main room. Tim Buehler’s electric guitar had been a novelty the previous year. Today it grated my nerves. I wanted to be away. To be far from this place and be by myself. I pushed my way through my friends to the door which I closed quietly behind me.
And then I began to run.
My mind was blank but my body took control. I sprinted up the dirt path to the chukkar, a concrete motor road that ran around the top of the hill. Within seconds, almost with every step, a plan developed in my mind. Ten minutes of jogging got me to Dr Olsen’s place. I charged into the basement and rifled through the pockets of whosever jeans I could find. I fished out three rupees from one pair. With my sleeping roll under my arm, I half marched, half ran down the chakkar toward town.
My heart beat madly. I was exhilarated by my decision though I was not yet sure what it was. I was heading for the bazaar but I didn’t dare think too much about it.
One of the rules of school was that students were not allowed in Mussoorie town, one of India’s most famous tourist destinations, alone and without the permission of a parent or staff member, except on Saturdays. I knew if I met anyone remotely connected with the hierarchy of the school–staff, staff’s spouse, school karmachari or friend of a staff member–I could be legitimately questioned about my presence in town. If I had no written notice on me I would be forced to return.
I made it down Mullingar Hill, a ski slope of a road that wound through Landour, unnoticed. A few shop keepers eyed me with some surprise as I passed by but none tried to stop me.
My biggest fear was meeting Mr Kapadia, the In-Charge of Hostel, the highschool boys residential hall where I lived. In addition to being a strict disciplinarian, Mr K was known to be a raconteur who often went drinking of an evening with his Rotary buddies. What if he approached, gambolling home slightly tipsy?
While my eyes flitted like a criminal’s ahead, to the side and even back, searching for a familiar face, I realized that this was the first time I had actually been in the bazaar on a non-Saturday. The worn familiarity of the alleys and shops had been replaced by a hostile feeling, as if a friend had turned against me. I breathed deep and kept going.
At Thukral’s Photo Studio I sensed victory. It was now only a 5 minute walk to the bus stand. That was the first destination in my half baked plan. What I would do once there I hadn’t yet figured out.
I approached the ticket cubicle of the UP State Roadways Transport Service and shoved my three rupee notes across the counter. A man gave me 75 paise in change along with a ticket. He nodded at the appropriate bus. It was empty. Not wanting to take a chance I lay down on the seats and waited for the bus to start. Not many people were travelling that evening and once we started swaying around the hairpin bends I sat up. For the first time in weeks I felt myself relax.
**
The bus deposited me at the Dehra Dun Railway station. I knew now that my soul was taking me home to Allahabad, 860 kilometers to the east, but how I was to make the journey remained a mystery. My buying power, all of 75 paise, was limited to 3 cups of tea.
Without much thought (my body still operated as an independent agent) I marched into the Station Master’s office on the main platform. The room was long, orderly and brightly lit by neon tubes that hummed like a swarm of bees.
A uniformed official sat behind a desk surrounded by phones and stacks of papers. He looked up as I came in. I opened my mouth. What came out surprised me. “My mother is sick and I need to return to Allahabad, urgently. I have no money for tonight’s train.”
He surveyed me for a moment. “You are a student of Woodstock School?”
I nodded.
“Does Mr Kapadia know you are here?”
The mention of the name sent a shiver though my body. I must have mumbled something but can’t recall what. I seemed a stranger to myself.
He reached for a phone and dialled a number. The game was up. I froze. After a minute he put the phone down and said there was no answer. I backed out of his office. He may or may not have called the Much Feared Kapadia, but he didn’t pursue me.
With Plan A foiled I was fresh out of plans. I paced up and down the platform struggling to keep my panic under check. I knew if I could make it to Hardwar, a couple three hours down the track I’d feel safer. I knew someone there, or at least had a name and a face, if no address. Hardwar was that much further into the Indian plain. And that much farther away from the horrid imprisoning hills. But a certain distance had to be traversed yet. I bought a cup of tea and squatted down to contemplate the dilemma.
The night came up quickly. Tube lights flickered on. I was getting hungry but needed to hold on to my meagre resources, now just half a rupee. Some trains came and others went. I watched them as years later I would watch planes high in the sky and wish I was on them. The beast within me was restless again. He didn’t like this hanging about. I kept walking the platform, crossing the footbridges and back again.
“Where you headed,” a coolie asked me as I shuffled by. He was on his haunches, cupping a bidi in his fist. I squatted next to him and mumbled, “Hardwar.”
“That one leaves tomorrow morning, eight o’clock,” he said indicating a dark chain of carriages.
I would have shared his bidi if he had asked. I usually smoked Four Square when my friends and I were in our secret tea shops in Mussoorie. I wanted smoke in my lungs at that moment. Heat and fire to match my restless anger. He didn’t offer me the bidi but he did yell at a nearby chai wala to give me a clay matka of tea and a nice, soft, cellophane-wrapped tea bun.
I slurped the tea, gratefully. As I chewed, the coolie and I chatted. He asked where I was from, who my father was and what sort of service he did. I admired the brass identity badge on his arm with a number that certified his official status as a porter. He treated me as if I was his nephew, not a stranger. After a while, when our conversation slowed he showed me where to lay out my sleeping bag on the platform. “In the morning, the bogie you want will stop right here.”
During our chat he had assured me that I shouldn’t worry about not having a ticket. “Do you think all these people have tickets?” His tone indicated what the answer was. “Just don’t jump into a reserved bogie and no one will even look at you.”
The following morning the platform was chaos. As I rolled up my gear my coolie friend appeared amidst the melee. He told me to follow him, then elbowed and abused his way to the carriage. He sat me down by a window. Before he disappeared he smiled at me.
The train started to roll. This was electrifying. Traversing India by train, perhaps because I did it so little and mostly on holidays, was always a thrill. As the carriages lurched and swayed through the ancient Siwalik range I couldn’t have cared less that I had no money, had not eaten a meal in 24 hours and had no address for my friend in the rather large and rather holy pilgrim city of Hardwar, just a couple hours in the future. The sound, the motion and the hot breeze generated by the coal fueled engine had my heart racing. This was very illegal and very fun.
Around mid-morning we pulled into Hardwar. First hurdle was to get past the official who stood at the exit collecting tickets. One option was to press into the crowd and attempt to squeeze through unnoticed. But with a white face, this was a risky stategy. Instead, I held back until the exiting throng had dissipated and the TC with his pockets full of little cardboard tickets, retired to his fan cooled office. With the coast clear I quickly stepped out of the gate and into the heat.
My plan, such as it was, was to rent a cycle for the day, and seek out a church where I was certain I’d find someone who knew my friend, a recently graduated seminarian from the college where my Dad was principal. In such a predominantly Hindu town as Hardwar, I figured there would be no more than a handful of churches and that they would stick out like sore thumbs. Everyone would know where to find them.
Near the station I found a hire shop and rented an Atlas bike for Rs 1. I gave the man my remaining change and promised the remainder upon return. As I swung my leg onto the seat I asked him where the church was. He shrugged and went back to work. I quickly realized that people came to Harwar to vist a handful of monumental Hindu holy spots and left. Churches were not on anybody’s menu of interesting places.
A passerby called out to me and asked with a twist of his fingers where I was going? “I’m looking for a church to find a friend.”
He acted as if he wasn’t listening but then said, “You’ll find your kind in Jalalabad, at the BHEL compound.”
“Christians?” I said, sounding like a young Vasco da Gama.
Again he shrugged. “Russians. They run that place. Go there they will help you.” He moved away into the crowd.
This was great news. White people. Russians, sure, but white folks nonetheless. I headed toward Jalalabad and after cycling for some time asked a man how far it was. “8 kms,” he said.
My heart quivered. 8 kilometeres?!
The sun was high. My legs felt like they were swelling inside my jeans. Still, the Russians were my only hope. I pushed on and perhaps half an hour later sighted the huge Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited complex. Tall brick walls with electrified barbed wire skirted a massive industrial estate. Yet the gate was unattended so I wheeled myself in.
A way into India
I’ve been trying to write about India all my life.
And failing.
Over the weekend I began to organise my old drafts and re-drafts of things I’ve written since 1980. It appears that I’m a frustrated memoirist. Certainly, a bit of a narcissist too. There were several drafts of a piece I wrote about Varanasi which I think I ultimately did (unsuccessfully) submit for publication. I remember struggling with that, trying to understand what I actually wanted to say about the city. What to include, what to leave out. Most versions were a mix of the travel section of your weekend paper, heart-felt expressions of my love for the city and passages which sounded as if they had been written by an AI bot decades before the stuff was even thought of. All in all, it is awful.
Of course, Varanasi is the kind of place that even the most sensitive or knowledgeable of writers struggle to write about. It is one of those subjects that exists in history, in imagination, in the spiritual realm, on the map, in art and in philosophy. It is as big a subject as any in this world. So, I take my failure to capture it as inevitable.
There were lots of other much shorter pieces too. One, on an obscure south Indian puja. Several recollected conversations with people along the way. A bunch of false starts and dead ends on my two hometowns of Mussoorie and Allahabad.
What tied them all together was my inability to find the right voice to express what I wanted to say about India. Sure, I was learning a craft and had little command over my thoughts, let alone the words to describe those ideas. But there were other things in the way. Inarticulate passion & emotion which derailed things almost immediately. But more than anything the subject itself—India–seemed to block my path.
India is a country and a state of mind that people tend to love or hate. Even if you haven’t been, you’ve probably got an opinion about it. It is the ultimate in exotic. It is the place where ‘everyone everyday is steeped in spirituality,’ and where everyone wears ‘colouful, garish, brightly hued clothing’ where the bazars are jammed with ‘teeming humanity and mountains of red, yellow and black spices that amaze the casual visitor’. Where the ‘extremes of human experience’ reveal themselves against a background of ‘fabled monuments and ancient temples built by long dead dynasties’.
Heat and dust.
It’s creative writing 101 crossed with National Geographic.
India ‘overwhelms the senses’, ‘drowns one in ‘sensory overload’. India is romantic. An enigma. A land of gurus and maharajas and the world’s best cricket players. It is pastiche and projection.
It is cliche.
Speaking of National Geographic, that fine publication’s contribution to this way of looking at the world is immense. As a budding photographer my favorite subject was India (and within India it was Varanasi). For years the National Geographic approach to visualising India, epitomized by Steve McCurry, was what I emulated. I wanted to capture the best close-up portraits of Indian faces. I wanted to capture the Himalayas, grand and snowcapped and the temples silhouetted at dusk. I did get lucky from time to time but never came within a mile of McCurry or Raghubir Singh who seemed to have such a knack for uncovering those shots.
Raghubir Singh himself grew so fed up with this approach that he devoted an entire book to looking at his country with a new eye. It’s called A Way Into India. I highly recommend you go to the library or your bookstore and check it out. In essence he used the iconic Indian car, the Hindustan Ambassador, as a lens to see his country with fresh eyes. And in the process, all those noble portraits, disappeared. What he revealed were glimpses of things every other photographer dismissed as irrelevant or ugly. Details or scenes that are often hard to decipher. It gave his photography new life and has cemented his place in the pantheon of great modern photographers.
All this is to say I’m still struggling with how to write about and visualise India. It bugs he hell out of me and frustrates me. I should be able to do this, I say to myself. Why can’t I get beyond the ‘garish saris’ and ‘wizened old sadhus’? The closest I’ve come is by letting Indians I meet along the way, speak to me in their own words. In this blog you’ll find several such conversations. I try not to embellish them or add my judgements to them. Just let them speak about their Indian experience.
But that is still not what I’m searching for. I want to tell my story. I’m searching for a way into India that is true to both my experience and to the subject, Mother India.
A note on the image at the top of this post. An advertisement (could have been from a calendar or a biscuit tin) for the Sassoon commercial house. The Sassoons were Baghdadi Jews who landed in India in 1830 and went on to become a leading pillar of that city’s economic and cultural heritage. The image is a cultural melange of scripts and symbols, recognisable to Indians and foreigners. The scripts mostly transcribe the family name. Sir Jacob Sassoon was the third or fourth generation to run the business. As the image depicts, he expanded operations to Karachi (now Pakistan) and Shanghai. The family, like so many of Bombay’s elite families was involved in the opium, tea, silver racket that financed the rise of the English empire. More on that in the future.
Top Songs from Pakistan and India
One Kalashnikov + two Kalashnikovs.
In 1996 I visited Afghanistan and Pakistan for an Australian NGO. The Taliban had just captured Kabul a fortnight earlier and thrust, very momentarily, the plight of everyday Afghans back into the international media’s spotlight. Given the current state of Truskland I think these voices are worth revisiting.
He was as new to town as I.
“I came here from Kabul the day before last. My name is Hashim.” He wore a hesitant smile and a blue waistcoat. He had been watching me walk up through the gardens and toward the street. “Will you make my photo?” he asked.
He posed with his arms across his chest and gazed away from the camera with a cinematic expression. I took his picture and asked what had brought him to Mazar-e-Sharif.
“My father told me to get of of Kabul as the Taliban are capturing all young me to fight. I’ll go back when my father tells me. I am staying in a hotel as I have no relatives in Mazar. Its very expensive. All day I sat here watch people in the garden. I sit and think but I try not to think of my family. We had a shoe factory in Kabul. But when the mujahideen came to power they stole everything. Now I am jobless. In Kabul I study English and also kung-fu. But now everything is closed. I don’t go out because it is too dangerous. I am Turkoman. The Taliban are against us. And the Tajiks and Hazaras.
“I saw Najibullah hanging in the street. It made me sad. None of these groups are Muslims. They only kill anyone who doesn’t agree with them. ‘Grow a beard!’ ‘Wear a hat!’ ‘Don’t go outside!” And if you disagree to grow a beard it is the end. For the last 5 years I have seen these people. They are not Muslim.
“See that man there, singing. He’s gone mad. I’ll go mad, too. I sit here everyday. I want to get out of here, to Germany or to an English speaking country but its too expensive.”
*****
“How is my English? I have been studying for two years but most foreigners do not like to speak with me. Why is that? One time I asked a foreign man what time it was. He told me, ‘Sharp 4 o’clock!’ That was that. He said no more to me.” Khaililullah spoke excellent English. He was a northern-Pashtun–dark, almost Indian in appearance. But he had born north of Mazar and had recently returned from over 10 years as a refugee in Pakistan.
“I teach English. In Monkey Lane. Will you come and visit our class?” I told him I would come but not today. Today I was interested in visiting the shrine of Ali, the grand blue-tiled mosque around which this desert town spills. I told Khalilullah how much I admired the mosque and its color. “You’re lucky to live so close to such a beautiful building.”
“By the grace of God we have a good leader. General Dostum. He used to be a communist but now he prays five times a day–he’s very good. And powerful. The Taliban are the trouble. They want to keep girls from school And this forcing men to pray in the mosque five times a day. Even our Prophet Mohammad himself only prayed 4 times a day sometimes So who are they to force us?
“Of course. There were excesses in Najib’s time. He gave too much freedom and too quickly. Especially to women. This corrupted us. Women went about barefoot–without shoes and wore nothing at all on their heads. According to Islam, a woman’s head should be covered. But not completely hidden. Both the Taliban and Najib are wrong. God save us from that much freedom. On the other hand under Najib, women and girls were educated and worked. That was good. So he was not entirely bad.”
Najibullah felt that the public hanging of Najibullah was inevitable. In his mind it was a justice of sorts for having allowed women to go barefoot and to be judges. But what he told me next I heard many times during my visit.
“Before they killed him they ordered him to sign his own release papers. He refused. He had denounced communism and discovered patriotism. He did not feel he had to confess to any crimes. But I know from an accurate source that he had memorised the entire Quran. But he refused to sign the papers confessing to anything. So they killed him. But in that, he was right. All Afghans respect Najibullah now. He wasn’t afraid to die. He was a true Afghan.”
When I visit Khalilullah’s school a few days later he refused to discuss anything except English and non-political subjects. “What do you call this?” he asked me, pointing to a shelf. He made not of my response, “A mantel.”
He and his fellow students discussed music and literature as if nothing was wrong with their country. The school had 600 students, women and men, learning English every day. “We want to prepare ourselves for the future. Today you must have knowledge of two things, English and computers, if you want to succeed.”
Jamil was adamant. “What do you believe will happen to Afghanistan?” Before I could respond he went on. “We are fanatics. This is no way to bring universal peace anywhere. And there is no way our people will talk. No way they can win in fighting either. I don’t know what will happen. This fighting will continue. All I know is that I will go to English class and then I’ll go home. Tomorrow? God only knows. Who sees beyond today? We are ready for anything though. My father is not a commander. We are civilians. We want peace and normality. Things like sports and music. My name is Jamil. It means beautiful. We want to help ourselves by learning English but our pronunciation is all bad. What do you think?”
*****
*****
“Welcome! Just have a look, no need to buy.”
The huge bearded Afghan stood beckoning to me from the doorway of his carpet shop in Peshawar’s Khyber bazar. It was a typical sales pitch but it soon changed when I enquired about the man who owned the shop next door. He was the son of a friend from Melbourne.
“You want to see Hamid?” he glared at me.
I nodded.
“Communisti!” The word hissed out of mouth like air leaving a tyre. His companions in the shop immediately turneds toward me and smiled sheepishly.
“Hamid is no good man. He is a foreigner. And communist. He supported Russians and speaks their language.” The man stumbled about for words to express his dissatisfaction with his neighbor. He spoke broken English and felt limited in what he could say.
“Communists. Uzbeks. Hazaras. Very bad.” He made a gesture with his finger slicing across his neck. “They are not Afghans. They are Angrez!”
I asked what he meant by calling Uzbeks and Hazaras, the most Mongol-featured of Afghans, Englishmen.
“He means they are foreigners. They have come to Afghanistan only recently. They are not true Afghans. We Pashtuns are real Afghans. The others are not. They are so small in number, not like us. Pashtuns are 60% of Afghan people. The others are only few. Miniorities, you know.” This man who spoke better English wouldn’t tell me his name but he did identify himself as working as a ‘spokesman’ for the Taliban office in Peshawar. “I know very well the Taliban. They are very good. They are against Communism and foreign domination.
“You see, we are refugees in Pakistan. It is not good for us to say that we want to control Pakistani politics of government. This is not our right. We should only sit quietly and do our business. It is not right for us to force our desires on the Pakistani public. And so it is with Uzbeks and Tajiks–though Tajiks are not so bad. But Uzbeks and Hazaras. They are refugees, not true Afghans. They came only in the last 40 years and now they want to dominate the whole country. But it is for us Pashtuns to control Afghanistan. This is our country. Uzbeks should return to Uzbekistan and Tajiks to Tajikistan. Why should they stay in Afghanistan?”
The bearded carpet seller broke in again. It is very dangerous here these days. Every day the Shi’a are attacking Sunnis. We must kill the Shi’a.”
Most Hazara Afghans, the poorest and historically most discriminated against of all Afghan minority groups, are Shi’a.
The TV in the shop began broadcasting an old Pakistani film romance. The men ignore me and lay down on the carpets in front of the TV. A woman danced through a rose and fountain garden to a lively folks tune. The men smiled as they watch the star dance.
I didn’t bother to ask them about the Taliban’s attitude toward women.
*****
The next day I had tea with an Afghan refugee family. They had come to Pakistan after the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992. They were secular, non-Pashtun Afghans. Educated abroad and middle class. For four and a half years they had lived in Peshawar.
The matriarch of the family, Hafeeza (not her real name) has lost a husband, two sons and two daughters. Her husband, a senior figure in the PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan), the Soviet-backed party that ruled Afghanistan from 1978-1992, was assassinated in 1989. Her eldest son and daughter were kidnapped in 1992 by triumphant and vengeful mujahidin in Kabul. “I have no idea why they were taken from me. These people hate everyone…especially people who they consider communists or Russians.
“My eldest daughter was a doctor. Since the day of her marriage I have not seen her. She may be dead. Or she may be living secretly someplace. But I’m sure she is dead because even if she was in Mazar or overseas she would contact me.”
Hafeeza had been the principal of a large school in Kabul. In Peshawar she had tried to get a job as a teacher but had been turned from every door, called a communist and foreigner. “I have even tried to have young children come here to our house for tutorials but parents forbid their children from attending because they believe I will teach them wrong things.”
She smiled ironically. Another member of the family took over. “In the schools here in Peshawar, which are controlled and run by the mujahidin and Taliban, Afghan children are taught to kill people like us.”
She puled out a text book which looked like any normal grade-school primer. Poorly drawn figures and large simple sentences filled each page. Instead of apples and kitten the lessons used AK-47s as object lessons. 1 Kalashnikov plus 2 Kalashnikovs equals how many Kalashnikovs? On the following page, a similar arithmetic problem used grenades.
“What will happen to our children? What is the future of our country if they are taught such things? They are taught to hate and kill. Their masters in school teach them that if they kill 3 Communists or kafirs they will become ghazi. No wonder they hate us. Our lives are in danger. We cannot get work and we are afraid to move about in the streets.” Hafeeza broke down.
The other family member told me, “Just six weeks ago, her only remaining son was kidnapped here in Shaheen town. He was going to an English class be he never returned. He had been threatened and warned by some bearded people a few times, ‘we know who your rather was. You are a communist and Russian.’ Hafeeza asked him not to go out but he was young and wanted to learn something. But now he’s gone and I’m sure he’s dead.”
Hafeeza stared blankly at the floor. Her only remaining child, a 19 year old daughter, comforted her mother, though she herself was in tears. “They do not go out at all these days. They are afraid after what happened. Who will protect us? We are not communists and we are not Russians. Our fault is we are not Pashtun and we oppose the Taliban. For this they want to kill us.”
The family has siblings and parents in Melbourne. But their repeated attempts to get visas to come to Australia have failed.
My Desi Heart: Intro
I was born in India in 1957. The youngest of four siblings in an American missionary family from small town North Dakota and Minnesota. We were evangelicals. Conservative in a Protestant theology heavily influenced by the Holiness movement of the 19th century. Small sect Methodism that believed all sinners could be completely ‘sanctified’ or perfect, in their lifetimes. Among other things of course.
I was born in the southern Tamil temple city of Madurai but we lived 850 kilometers northwest in a Kanarese speaking area of what is now the Indian state of Karnataka. Dad’s employer, the Oriental Missionary Society or OMS, had established a bible training college in the town of Gadag, famous for producing one of classical Indian music’s noblest performers, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, and a lively printing industry.
Dad taught theology and related subjects to young Christian men and women from the surrounding areas. He regularly preached at outdoor revival meetings with his colleagues and students. Mom helped out wherever she was needed, sometimes as the bookkeeper for the college, sometimes she would join the pastors’ wives in their rural evangelizing campaigns but mostly she raised us kids.
They had landed in Bombay after a long voyage across several oceans from New York in February 1952. They were appointed to join another American family, The Davises, who had two boys round about the same age as my two brothers, and a jolly, tubby spinster from Baltimore, Mary Ella Taylor.
Mike my oldest brother was 5. Gregg, next up was 3. My sister Rebecca would arrive 3 years later, in 1955 and I brought up the rear in ‘57. There is a good case to be made that another sister was stillborn before I came along.
We lived on the campus of the Karnataka Bible Seminary, whose red brick buildings dated back several decades. It was well shaded at least in the front part and served as a safe, walled but sprawling little world for me to explore as a kid.
We were generally happy and normal. Among our subcultured circle of missionaries anyway. In fact, compared with the Davises, mom and dad were liberal youngsters, which did cause ongoing friction between them over the years. As is the wont of every child what they see in their homes they project onto the entire Universe. There was nothing different about us. We all believed broadly the same things about the Bible and God and Jesus. We shared a barebone existence with few physical comforts. It was simple, filled with good food, devotions, trips to exotic places like the temples of Hampi, Shravanabelagola and the beaches of Karwar. Of course, “we” in these instances refers to other OMS missionaries or white folk in India more broadly.
It was impossible not to notice that most everyone else around us and among us did not believe these things. But then, that was the whole point of our landing up in rural southern India. To try to get as many of them as possible to come over to our team. A spiritual kabaddi match.
Only recently have I begun to distance myself from the lived experience of my childhood. To look at it not from within but from a distance of 60 year; and from the outside. How did this rural, poor family from Minnesota end up in the villages of central India, speaking strange tongues and eating strange food? Why? What was going on in India at the time? And how did being surrounded by religion and spirituality, in the home or everywhere you went in India, and speaking Kanarese simultaneously as fluidly as English and having Indian friends to whom I was closer than to my brothers who were away in boarding school?
What does /did this niche childhood-–Minnesota, Holiness Methodists, missionaries, newly Independent India, bilingual communication–influence who I am today?
This is about that.
India has been an indivisible aspect of my life since 10 July 1957. At times some have found it irritating and maddening. Others have seen it as fascinating and exotic. Most just shrug, especially now in this tiny world we live in, in the 2020s.
My connection to India is something I’ve always loved but haven’t known how to incorporate into my story. Or stories. It depended on the audience of course, as all stories do. My wives have felt threatened by India which is so easy to love in comparison with a real complex woman. So, there is shame and protection mixed in with my love of India. I’m sure many, including myself, thought I would outgrow my romantic childhood when I became an adult and that its influence would settle into a manageable and quaint curry now and then and perhaps one grand tour with the family when the kids are old enough to enjoy an adventure.
But it hasn’t happened that way. The older I got the more attached and fascinated by and in love with the place I become. I chose to study Hindi rather than Latin or French in high school. At the University of Minnesota, I jumped from majoring in Anthropology and Journalism and English before settling on South Asian Studies and History. I studied Urdu as well as Hindi. I spent a year after university studying in Lahore Pakistan. I was thinking of doing a PhD on one of the most important figures in modern South Asian Islam, Maulana Maududi. But then I got a job with the UN in Islamabad and began a career that took me around the world. India faded into the background for those years but never died.
I began blogs about South Asian music and wrote a novel set in Pakistan. I read books on the caste system, Tamil anti-Brahmanism, Aurangzeb and the film industry, travelled and photographed across India whenever I could, did an ongoing deep dive into south Asian music and film and wrote a weekly column on the subject for an Indian online paper. I was asked to write a history of the Pakistani movie industry and now I’m thinking of leading tours to the sub-continent.
India is not fading away like it was supposed to.
Many of my kind (Missionary Kids from India and Pakistan) break into song when asked by Indians to explain ourselves.
Mera juta hai Japani
Yeh Patloon Englstani
Sar pe lal topi Russi
Phir bhi dil hai hindustani
(I wear Japanese shoes and English trousers, The red hat on my head is Russian but still my heart is Indian)
It’s a hackneyed trope but does capture the essence.
My first blog I named, the Washerman’s Dog which is the English version of another famous Indian aphorism: na ghar ka na ghat ka, dhobi ka kuta (neither of the ghat nor the home, the washerman’s dog)
Both sets of lyrics resonate with me. I do feel homeless in a way, neither from here nor there. But also completely blended in with India.
Hence, it seems appropriate to name this column, My Desi Heart. A place where I’ll explore the story of my love-affair with the sub-continent.
The Silent One
After a breakfast of cold TBJ (toast butter jam) at one of the several ‘hippie cafes’ that line the narrow tarmac road running along Puri’s beachfront, I walked down to the station to buy a newspaper. When I arrived, I was informed that as today is the day after Republic Day there are no papers.
On my way back to the café I stopped to observe a sadhu who was holding court outside a colourfully decorated, low-ceilinged temple not far from the entrance to the station.
He was toking up when I arrived. The chilam was offered to me but I declined. A group of rickshaw walas and assorted young men squatted in a semi circle near him. Each drew deep on the pipe as it made the rounds.
I asked them if they weren’t afraid that the police would round them up.
This has been purchased under a government license. No problem.
A man with rotting teeth told me that smoking hash was essential to the people’s daily existence. Some people eat paan, others smoke ganja, some like bhang, others charas. Its all for digestion of the food. It is necessary.
I reply that I get paranoid when I smoke it.
They all laugh. Their tired red eyes remain motionless while their faces move in different ways. Like all addicts, they agree that moderation is the attitude to be employed. But they exclude themselves from their own advice with a shrug of the shoulders.
I am told the sadhu has not spoken for 12 years.
He has four more to go before his vow is complete.
I wonder if he will still remember how to form words after 16 years of silence.
He communicates through gestures and a penetrating gaze but cracks an engaging smile once in a while. His sidekick, also a sanyasi, seems to have sworn the opposite vow: to talk as much as he can in as short a space as possible.
He interprets the silent one’s flailing arms and pointing fingers. He details their recent past and spells out their future intentions. (They are headed to Nepal, next). The sidekick tells of fabulous bright silver coins and good charas in Kashmir.
We sleep wherever we find a spot. A sanyasi has no home.
Do you travel by foot, I ask.
He laughs. No. No. No. We are sanyasis. We go by train. Whoever has heard of a sadhu paying for his travel?
As I leave, the silent one pinches some ashes from his smoldering fire and signals that I should smear some on my forehead, which I do.
Sidekick then rattles, Now swallow the rest.
I hesitate but do he says. I walk away with a gritty taste in my mouth.
This piece was written in January 1989 while on a holiday in eastern India. The image is called ‘Mussoorie baba’ It is NOT a portrait of the Silent One of Puri, but of a wanderer I met in the hill station , Mussoorie, where I did my pre-university education in a storied boarding school. Such men could be classified as sadhus or sanyasis but are more endearingly referred to as baba. The former terms have a spiritual connotation; that one’s wandering is part of one’s spiritual practice. Baba on the other hand is a more generic term for men who amble around the countryside with no precise motive or destination. It is also sometimes used to refer to young boys. I was referred to as Nate baba, while growing up, by many older Indians.
The photo was one of the first of mine to be published by a company in the Twin Cities that published brochures for churches!
Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits 