| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 07 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
This is the first day we have seen the sun set below the horizon.
Previously the best we could do we see it sink into a haze of pollution. In
the dark there's nothing to see out the train windows except the occasional
light or fire. Because the lights on the train dim when we stop, reading is
difficult.
Mark describes what he is seeing: We are in some place called
Kishangarh just after sunset. The train has stopped along the side of the
track. We see two very dark-skinned women walking, one in a bright red
sari, one in bright yellow. There is a public water fountain, a squarish
slab, tiled, with a trough on either side. An old man wrapped in a white
cloth is filling a bucket there. Beside him is another man wrapped in a
cloth with a shirt over it that goes halfway down his calf. He wears a
bright orange turban maybe three times as wide as his head. The houses are
boxes with flat level roofs. A group of men sit cross-legged in a circle on
the train platform, talking. The brightest lights that can be seen are over
the track. A wall in the background was good and straight at one time, but
now there are gaps and breeches where stones have fallen out of the mortar.
This is what I see from the window of the train at 6:27 PM on a Tuesday
evening, just after Sunday in a town called Kishangarh.
In Kishangarh the sky looked the color of a rare steak. But it is
getting gray and not red, as if the steak is grilling in the heat of the
night. The air coming in the window is already not as hot. Brushy trees
rush by the window and there still is just enough light behind the trees to
see there's a dry brown field. (Mark's writing is hard to read because of
the rhythmic shaking of the train.) Still no stars--the sky is still just
a bit too light. I see the gray-blue outline of hills in the distance and
some little points of light on the hills. Occasionally we pass a small
station and somebody blows a whistle. It must be a signal not to stop.
Maybe this is a mail run.
Now the lights in the distance are almost all in one flat line. That
must be a town. We are slowing at a platform. This time there is nobody on
the platform. There are houses and porches and children on the porch of the
low house come out to see the train. On the wall in the house is a bright
red piece of cloth. This is Magar or Madar. We can catch only a flash of
the sign between tanker cars on the next track. I think it is Madar. Yes,
another sign tell us it is. It is 6:54 PM in Madar and people are in their
houses.
Now there are some stars out. As yet not many. Odd burning smells
are in the air. We don't know if that is industrial pollution or home
cooking fires. We do see a pot and a fire under it in one house.
We have just pulled into Ajmer. That's funny, because Ajmer is not on
this line. We guessed wrong on the English couple. They are Irish and
jet-lagged. We made some conversation and lent them some of our reference
books.
Dinner was a little greasy, but not bad overall considering. It was a
vegetable thali, a bit spicy. Better than we would have expected for food
on a train. They tell us if we are only late and not a lot slower than we
expected, we are almost two-thirds done with this train ride. We still will
get into Jodhpur at 1 AM. We hope to get some sleep on the train to make up
for what we will be losing at the end. Of course, the guy who brought the
food keeps waking people up to find out if they want food or water. And it
may be a little hot to sleep. There are four fans in this compartment, but
they are Indian-style fans. They have scythe-like blades, not wide ones.
That makes them take less power, but they also don't move very much air.
We stopped for a good half hour in Marwar Junction. That was the
setting of a scene in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. It wasn't too glamorous
then and it still isn't. There are a lot of very persistent boys in their
early teens out selling drinks at nearly midnight. It turns out the train
is going a circuitous route. No, it wasn't supposed to go through Ajmer,
but it did. Why? Some of the people on the platform told us they are
changing the gauge on the railroad and re-routing the trains while they do
it. Instead of going direct to Jodhpur, we are making a giant S through
Ajmer, Beawar, Marwar, Pali, and Luni. The people didn't think we would get
in until 3 AM. Perhaps that is Luck of Leeper again and perhaps it is just
India.
Mark decided to go ahead and pretend to be a spy novelist: Anyway,
these guys who we had assumed were hawkers got some excitement for their
pains. They got to talk to a Canadian spy novelist. Me. If I told them I
was the CEO of IBM they would have been bored. But a spy novelist with a
film that played in Delhi and Bombay--now that was something. No, I didn't
write about the same spy each time. They mentioned there had been some
terrorism and I said maybe I could use that in the book. They said I should
go to Kashmir and I said I wrote about dangerous situations, I didn't live
them. It turned out they were passengers from another train and they were
so fascinated talking to me they had to jump to get on their train as it
started to pull out. But they had a good time at Marwar Junction. They got
pulled into a fantasy. That is just what a good spy novelist would do for
them. So I don't feel too bad.
What I do feel bad about is that an hour or so earlier I am pretty
sure what I heard was the train hitting a dog, he concludes.
It is now 1:34 AM and the train that was supposed to arrive three hours
ago continues into the night. Mark got some sleep and a whole bunch of
mosquito bites. Mark says India is mis-named and dubbed it Gotchaland,
the land of unending gotchas. He says, The lateness of the train is a
gotcha; the mosquitos are a different gotcha. Even the tea sellers are a
gotcha. You have to close your door and lose the ventilation if you want to
sleep. Otherwise they come into your compartment and wake you up to ask you
if you want tea. When the Irish couple were sleeping earlier the sellers
did that. Evelyn tried to stop one but he was no fool. A sleeping
passenger buys no tea. Leave the door unlocked and it's gotcha. We have
been to deserts, we have been to the Amazon, but this is the most hostile
environment we have yet visited.
Well, we got in better than Mark was thinking. It was just one minute
before 2 AM. At 2 AM, even the railway station is quiet, though there are
still a lot of people sleeping on the floor and a few auto-rickshaw drivers.
We asked one to take us to the Ardash Niwas Hotel. The driver told us it
was two-minutes' walk away. He gave us directions and when we were not sure
how far it was down the street, he drove up in his auto-rickshaw and pointed
it out. He said he would wait in case we could not get a room--he knew a
good hotel. Still, he didn't ask for a tip for pointing out the hotel, and
since this was the first non-greedy rickshaw driver we had encountered, we
weren't sure how to react. By this point, we're suspicious of everyone.
The hotel had no record of our reservation, but did have a room. The
room has its problems: no soap, no toilet paper, no towels, the toilet does
not flush. They said they could move us in the morning, but said we might
just want to sleep now. How true! Mark put on the television, a good
television this time, about six channels. The last hotel had only one and
it was almost all Hindi. Locals will know it as Doordarshan. Evelyn took a
quick shower and we went to bed. About 3 AM we realized neither of us was
sleeping and we put the BBC on television, turned the brightness to black,
and went to sleep listening to a documentary on computers.
|
We didn't know if they wanted to move us to a room
where the toilet works or to fix the toilet. At the desk they said they
would fix the toilet. It remains to be seen, we guess. We will be pleased
if they do fix the toilet.
Breakfast for Mark was an omelette with onions (Mark doesn't care for
onions in omelettes), buttered toast, and juice. Evelyn had porridge which
she did not eat much of because it was gummy. There were three quick power
failures during breakfast.
After breakfast we went to book the train out. First we went to the
station, but the booking office turned out to be in a separate building a
ways down the road. (There is supposed to be a foreign tourist quota office
in the main station, but it didn't seem like that was the place to start.)
There was a man by the door who may have been a baksheesh man or may have
worked for the booking office. He tried to fill out forms for us, but we
insisted on filling out our own. When we got into line he insisted that
Evelyn could push her way to the front, cutting in front of the ten people
in front of us. It's ladies first in my country! he said. Two women from
Norway told us that they had tried that, but couldn't get in. Evelyn tried,
but could not push in. Then we saw an Indian woman do it. Apparently to
take advantage to this concession to the frailty of women, you must be
assertive, aggressive, and able to shout down all opposition. Armed with
this information and her natural talents, Evelyn was able to get our tickets
in a couple of minutes. Mark says, Somehow it seems sexist and unfair, but
in India people seem to take every advantage they can.
This task concluded--and it was the most time-consuming reservation
yet--out next stop was the bus station to get a bus to Osian, a small town
thirty-five miles (fifty-five kilometers) north of Jodhpur known for its old
Jain temples. On the way we saw a billboard showing a woman with a washing
machine. The sign said, Oneida celebrates Women's Liberation. Mark
wonders how many women in India are liberated.
Mark says, Somehow that reminds me of one of my college stories. I
was in the Honors Program. There was a lounge that was set aside for Honors
students to get together and talk or study between classes. One day
Dr. Emerson bought a bulletin board for the lounge. (Everett Emerson ran
the Honors Program at the University of Massachusetts in those days.)
Anyway, one day he put up a new bulletin board in the lounge. Someone came
along and put in thumbtacks in a six- or seven-inch-high symbol of the
female--the circle and the cross--actually I have heard it is supposed to
represent a mirror and a comb. The female symbol stayed up for a few days
and that was fine. Then apparently somebody could not stand the tension
that people would not realize it was a political statement. They drew with
a pen a fist inside the circle, marring the new bulletin board for life. I
didn't think that vandalism spoke well for the cause and I put a note on the
board saying so. Someone, probably the vandal, wrote, 'Bulletin boards are
many, but truly liberated women are few.' My response, of course,
is, 'Horses are few but horses' asses are many.'
The way to get to Osian, according to the Lonely Planet guide, is a
public bus which takes two hours each way. The Lonely Planet guide, by the
way, is what makes what we're doing possible. Not only does it describe all
the major attractions of a city, but it tells you how to get to them. Most
guide books seem to assume you will be taking taxis or renting a car; the
Lonely Planet guide tells you about buses, trains, and other public transit.
It does describe auto-rickshaws and such, but those are usually cheaper than
buses back home. It also tells you how to get from city to city and how
long it will take.
The bus station was harder to figure out than the railway stations have
been. |
|
| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
