| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 07 February 2005 |
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The producer was Chander
Sadanah for Sadanah Brothers. It was written by Lalit Mahajan, and action
was by Veery Devgan. No translation was given for the title. Ek is one
and Mark says this was EK HELLUVA HI RAASTA. It was probably a better film
for our not knowing Hindi. (We later found out the title would be
translated as ONE TRUE WAY.)
Then back to the room which incidentally is roach-infested but, hey,
the traveler must make allowances.
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The trip is rapidly ending. We went to Nirula's
Potpouri (their breakfast bar) and Mark ordered the only Indian food on the
menu, sambar vada. They didn't have it. No demand, Mark supposes. He
ordered an omelette. The food is nothing great and the prices a bit higher
than we're used to at this point, but breakfast places seem to be somewhat
limited.
Mark says, After breakfast we went for our New Delhi tour. Our first
stop was Delhi's own Jantar Mantar. You remember Jai Singh? He was the
quick-witted little raja who saved his throne by making a joke at the right
time. In Jaipur he had built a huge set of observational instruments for
astronomical and astrological observations. No? None of this rings a bell?
Well, why are you bothering to read this at all? It obviously isn't doing
you much good. Okay, go back and read about Jaipur again. I am wondering
if I should put a quiz at the end of each section. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Mmmm! Mmm! Pardon me, boy, is this the Chatt.... Oh, it looks like you're
back You might have said something. Okay, does that ring a bell now?
Well, Jai Singh built five of these observatories of which only Jaipur has
been decently maintained. The Delhi observatory is kind of in bad shape,
and is described as 'no longer working.' (Evelyn says that she doesn't
quite understand how a fixed sundial can stop working without, say, a major
orbital shift, but that's the claim.) At any rate, it looks like some sort
of post-Modern playground. These days that is what it is used for. On the
way out we saw the first of many snake charmers this day. A real tourist
pleaser. I figure the tourists come to India hoping to see snake charmers,
so people with little or no ties to the original snake charmers have rushed
in to fill the need, each with a cute little cobra. Rs20 to take their
pictures with their cobras. Evelyn asked me what they would do if you took
one's picture and didn't pay. 'Chase you with his snake, I guess.' The
snakes didn't look that threatening.
Back on the bus we kept missing the lecture about what we were passing
because the loudspeaker kept failing. (Evelyn supposes that was to
compensate for the fact it was the first air-conditioned bus we had the
entire trip.) But it still was a nice ride through New Delhi, even if we
didn't know what we were passing.
Our next destination was the Lakshmi Narayan Temple, built in 1938 by
the Indian industrialist family, the Birlas. (These are the same people who
built the Lakshmi Narayan Temple in Jaipur.) Not surprisingly, it is well-
preserved, although in yellow and white with red trim, it is considered
somewhat garish. Evelyn says, I guess in general it's okay for temples to
be brightly colored on the inside, but the outside is supposed to be more
sedate, relying on carvings instead of paint. I suppose by some standards a
carving of a man coupling with a horse is more sedate than yellow and red
paint. It's just another cultural difference. It is a temple to Lakshmi,
the goddess of wealth and prosperity (appropriately enough for the Birlas),
but it is also a temple to Vishnu, and has some nice pictures of Kali, some
interesting stone lions, and, at least when we visited, one Anne Martin of
England--our previous travel companion.
Not since Agra have we been accosted by so many vendors. They clearly
know which sights are on the tourist circuit (no surprise there) and swarm
around them. And the prices they ask! One vendor wanted Rs100 for a wire
figure like the one we had paid Rs5 for. (He claimed his was best
quality; Mark thought it was actually worse quality.)
New Delhi was designed to be a lot like Washington, D.C. There is a
long quadrangle called the Rajpath (Kingsway) with government buildings
designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker at one end and a memorial
arch at the other end. The latter bears the names of 85,000 Indians who
died in fighting for India. Lutyens and Baker were supposedly working
together but had a falling-out over the Battle of the Gradient. Lutyens
wanted the Viceregal Residence on a higher level than the flanking
Secretariat buildings, while Baker wanted it on the same level so that it
would gradually rise into view as you approached it. Baker won, but after
construction was underway, it was realized that what really happens is that
the Residence is visible from a distance, then as you approach it, it sinks
below the hill, then rises again. In retrospect, Lutyens was probably
right.
We stopped on the middle of the Rajpath, where New Delhi smoke and smog
obscured both the government buildings and the arch equally well. The air
nearly perpetually smells of smoke through much of the city. There were
lots of small fires in the street burning trash, perhaps to keep the
homeless warm at night.
Our next stop was the tomb of Humuyan. This is one of the buildings
claiming to be an inspiration for the Taj Mahal as if that was one of the
great accomplishments of Indian civilization and everybody else wants to
claim a piece of the credit. It is one more very expensive tomb building
done in red sandstone and filigree trellises on all the windows. Again a
would-be guide latched on to us and would not let go. Mark kept trying to
show him he had no interest in him, but the guide would not go away. Mark
even passed up a camera angle he would have discovered for himself but the
guide pointed out first. Mark didn't want him thinking that we were taking
advantage of him without paying and Mark wasn't going to pay him just
because we were two of the few people on the tour who did not look Indian.
Our next stop is sort of the realization of old Akbar's dream to glue
together other religions into one big religion. Delhi has a Baha'i temple.
The leaflet claims this is the seventh such in the world, but apparently
does not count the shrine in Haifa, which is the center of the religion.
(Evelyn noted that the leaflet in Hebrew was in color, while the one in
English was in black and white.) The temple actually is a much nicer
looking temple than the one temple in Haifa. The building pieces together
spherical sections to form the shape of a huge lotus. At its base are green
pools. It has a very pleasing look to it. Incredible numbers of people
were parading into the temple from about a dozen tour buses, a constant mob
because admission is probably free to the tour companies. The main hall
seems to be very spare in a modern sort of way--obviously expensive, or at
least not cheap, but lacking any images or ornate decorations to distract
the eye. One is supposed to meditate; there are no ceremonies or sermons.
Evelyn comments, however, that the constant stream of tourists walking
through is probably more of a distraction than any of those other things
would be. Mark says in his log, It was a very attractive construction
started on April 21, 1980--a Monday--and the building was dedicated on
December 24, 1986--a Wednesday. Why do I make a point of the days of the
week? Just practicing my mental trick of figuring days of the week.
This, by the way, is another religion in which one takes off one's
shoes to enter the house of worship. But here you put your shoes in a bag
before handing them in to the checkroom, almost as if the caste rules of the
Hindus had been adopted and touching shoes was unclean.
Just now the lotus is one of the three symbols you see a lot of in
India. The other two are the hand and the wheel. Elections are coming up
and these are the symbols for the three parties most active.
The final stop was the Qutb Minar complex. This, the highlight of the
New Delhi tour, is not in New Delhi at all, but south of it. It is,
however, geographically closer to New Delhi than to Old Delhi, hence its
inclusion here. (Also, without it, the New Delhi tour wouldn't have enough
sights to get people to take it.) The complex was started to celebrate the
conquest of North India by Islam in the 12th Century. Towering over the
complex is the tallest minaret in the world, the Qutb Minar, built about
1230. It is on the order of 250 feet (73 meters) high. It looks like a
huge cannon barrel and is considered the most remarkable pillar in the
world. At one point it was about thirty feet higher, but a possibly
offended Providence brought a shaking of the earth and the top fell off. At
least that is one interpretation.
The Insight guide describes the Qutb Minar as Delhi's Eiffel Tower,
its Big Ben, its Statue of Liberty, and perhaps in some sense it is, yet
the latter three are known the world over and Evelyn doubts that the Qutb
Minar has even a hundredth the recognition factor they do. Realizing that
this is merely another example of the decline of education, Evelyn says, I
suspect that the Taj Majal (in Agra) is Delhi's Eiffel Tower et al.
People used to be allowed to climb to the top of the Qutb Minar, but
this is no longer true. One book says this is due to the number of suicides
from the top; another says that a stampede during a school trip which
resulted in several deaths prompted the closure.
In the middle of the (never-completed) mosque is a 4th Century iron
pillar. The purity of the iron is a mystery. For about 1600 years the
column has refused to rust. It is claimed to be 99.97% pure iron, though
how so pure a column of iron could be erected in the 4th Century is a
mystery. It is also claimed that if you stand with your back to the pillar
and can reach back around it and make your hands touch, your wish will come
true. Most of the people trying this were unsuccessful, but for some reason
Evelyn was able to do this with little difficulty. She had a little help
from someone standing there who then asked for a tip.
As Mark was taking pictures, a bunch of teenage Sikhs walking behind
him said, Hello. Mark returned, Hello, and then seeing that they were
Sikhs added, Saht sri akul. Apparently this surprised and pleased them.
Everybody knows the English greeting, but apparently few Americans know the
proper way to greet a Sikh, or even how to recognize a Sikh. They returned
the greeting, but it seemed to Mark that they pronounced the middle word
shri. It was one of the good moments in India.
On the way out a hawker tried to sell Mark a little dial perpetual
calendar. Mark told him that he didn't need it; he could figure out any
date in his head and offered to tell the hawker what day of the week he was
born on. He thanked Mark and went away. I love math, Mark commented.
After the tour, we tried lunch at the Coconut Grove in the Ashok Yatri
Niwas Hotel, a restaurant inexplicably not mentioned in the Lonely Planet
guide. We tried Kerala food: Mark had stew on appams--sort of steamed rice
pancakes three-quarters of an inch thick in the center and like crepes at
the edges--and Evelyn had kaalan (a banana and yam dish) and coconut rice.
All this was only Rs160.
After that we hired an auto-rickshaw to take us to a movie theater that
had a holiday fantasy (CHANDRAMUKTI) for Diwali. Well, they replaced the
family film with a *** film, so we found another theater and saw DALAAL. We
had just been touring, so Mark still had his camera. As we were going in,
after we had bought our tickets, there was a sign that said no cameras.
We'd clearly been sightseeing and that was the reason for the camera, and
Mark hoped they would let him by. Ha! Ha! Cannot bring in camera. We
will put in a safe place. The theater didn't look like one that had a safe
place. Evelyn said, Let's go outside. She slipped the camera into her
backpack and put her spare shoes on top of it. No camera, Mark said. The
man at the door frisked him. Sure enough, no camera. He did find the
computer in Mark's pocket.
What is this?
Calculator, Mark replied.
He had Mark turn it on. He pressed the buttons and verified it was
real. He went on to the other pockets, then said, Okay. Then a woman
came up and started arguing with him. The word calculator was about all
we could understand, but the woman apparently was very upset that the
theater was letting tourists bring calculators into movie theaters. Before
the decision could be overturned, we slipped into the crowd, trying to
blend, and climbed the stairs to the balcony. DALAAL is sort of a MONGOOSE
DUNDEE. A big, strong country boy comes to the big city and becomes
involved with a bordello that he first thinks is a hotel. It starts as a
comedy and changes into an action film. The film just assumes that of
course the police torture suspects. We see it occasionally in our prison
films, but there it is social commentary. Police torture is a very negative
comment on our police. Mark is not so sure that what we saw had the same
meaning in India. He doesn't think the films are trying for social comment,
and they are much more portraying what is considered the general order of
things. The Odeon (a very Western name for a movie theater) is only a block
or two from the hotel. At least we didn't get hassled, though we passed
more than the usual number of men peeing on walls. Some use the
convenience--a small private wall and a drain--but this time one five feet
away was empty and men prefer just using any wall they can find. Just weeks
ago Mark was very disgusted to see one person doing this in downtown San
Francisco. Incidentally, the red stain of betel nut juice is equally
prevalent and more obvious.
We were back in the room by 7 PM and wrote. We had brought about six
pairs of batteries to keep Thing, the computer, running. That was a bit
overly cautious. The pair of batteries Mark had put in back in New Jersey
had lasted up to about forty-eight hours before the end of the trip. Well,
Mark had plenty of replacements. He might have brought less had he known
how small Thing's appetite really was (and also that we would be able to use
the adaptor we bought to plug Thing into the wall in the hotel rooms). Mark
said again, I was probably foolish to bring a pocket computer to India. I
had had the computer for three or four months and while some people I have
met said they never used theirs, I think those people lack imagination.
Through this trip, Thing has done currency conversions, and has maintained
and searched copies of correspondence from people with advice about India.
One program gives me a bar graph of how far through the trip we are. I have
written a short essay summarizing my attitude about India which is the
preface to this log. I composed this on my computer, which gives me the
opportunity to revise and update and polish this preface. All this revising
would be a mess on paper, but on the computer revisions are easy.
Occasionally when I am bored, I play the minesweep game. It also tracks and
records new vocabulary I have learned in Hindi. And I have mentioned it
tracks how far I should be in my log so I don't run out of notebook. And if
I do I'll just enter the log directly into the computer. It also kept
reassuring me that I'd have enough film. And also when making notes on
tours, my handwriting is horrible but typed notes are easily read. It was a
real dilemma at the beginning of the trip if I should bring Thing or not. I
strongly suspected bringing Thing was stupid move, but I brought it anyway.
It worked out well.
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Mark says we should be able to cover the morning
fairly quickly. We went to Nirula's for breakfast. Still no place to get
Indian breakfast noticeable around, so Mark got what they call their all-
American breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage. He is pretty sure
the sausages were lamb.
After breakfast we went to book the afternoon tour of Old Delhi. We
found it completely full for today, so booked it for Sunday instead. Evelyn
wanted to try some of the bookstores in the area. In fact, we discovered
they gave us access to some British books not available in the United States
at prices cheaper than they would be in Britain. We bought a lot more than
we expected to. Now we have to cart them home. At least there will be
plenty to read on the plane. Mark notes, We were there when they were
dusting the shop and literally flogging their books.
In spite of the access to British books, the bookstores here are pretty
depressing. The Oxford Bookshop, for example, has a selection of books
smaller than your average Waldenbooks or B. Dalton in a mall, and on a very
narrow range--India, applied sciences, self-help, and children's books seem
to form almost the entire stock. To someone used to the bookstores of New
York (or even Central New Jersey), it is amazing to find that a city of ten
million people is so bookstore-poor. It is possible that there are huge
only the Metropolitan Book Company (1 Nataji Subash Marg Darya Gang-2, 327-
--and that's just Manhattan.
We went back to the room to drop off the books and then headed out to
the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, cutting through the Palika Bazaar,
an underground shopping mall. When we climbed out again there were the
cobra charmers wanting us to pay to photograph them. Then we passed two
people who threw cow manure on Evelyn's shoe. They just walked on. A third
man looked on amazed. They just threw that, didn't they? he said. There
is a shoemaker here who can clean your shoe, he explained helpfully.
We got some gifts at the Central Cottage Industries Emporium. We would
not let two Indian girls cut in front of us in the payment line, so they
made sure to force their way in front of us in the merchandise pickup line.
Mark says, I keep reminding myself that I know a lot of very nice Indian
people. I cannot generalize, but India certainly has a higher percentage of
rude, greedy, and obnoxious people than just about any other country I have
experienced.
The way you do things in the Central Cottage Industries Emporium is
that you choose your merchandise and then take it and stand in line as
someone from that department tallies your bill. That takes five minutes.
You then take your slip and stand in a second line to pay for your
purchases. That takes about ten minutes. Then you get into a third line to
show the slip marked paid and pick up the merchandise. This can take up
to fifteen minutes. They seem to have a hard time finding the merchandise
that goes with the slip. One man who'd worked his way through the line,
presented his slip, and already waited a couple of minutes told a friend
that it shouldn't be more than another five minutes before he was done.
Another man who'd made purchases on multiple floors asked if all his
merchandise could be sent to the downstairs pickup window so he wouldn't
have to stand in line on multiple floors. The clerk responded, No, you
pick up right near where you pay. The man grimaced. It's a good system,
the clerk explained helpfully.
Once we were out of the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, we fought
our way past the hawkers waiting by the door. Look at this. I made it
myself, one said, trying to show Mark the same lion-shaped lock that three
other hawkers tried to show him that morning. Sure, it was a lie, but he
thought it might improve his chances of a sale. Salespeople lie to you
everywhere in the world, but it seems the threshold of possible gain is
lower here. There is little integrity. Mark writes, Good old even-
tempered Evelyn is getting to the end of her rope. When hawkers
persistently will not take no for an answer, she has started yelling at them
and even suggested she might use her cane on them. That last might be
partly my fault. I suggested jokingly that she could use the cane on the
next person who throws cow manure on her shoes. I have to say that this
reaction is very unusual for us, but in many ways India is the least
hospitable country we have ever visited (or heard of).
Back at the hotel we took a look at some of the books we'd bought and
saw that one had a very high regard for New Delhi's National Museum. We
didn't have much time to see it, but decided to go in spite of our previous
experience with museums in India. The museum was actually much nicer than
those we'd seen, though maybe it was just because it had a better
collection. The Insight Guide had a better description of the contents of
the museum than there appeared on the labels, even those in Hindi. Most
objects would be labeled only with the name of the people who made it and
the century. Mark chuckled at one piece labeled as being scenes from the
life of Buddha carved into it--in stone, as he remembers it, but it could
have been bronze--with scenes of the Buddha surrounded by women, all with
very big globular breasts. Mark claimed, This is sort of the Hollywood
version of the life of Buddha.
You start with artifacts of prehistoric people in India, then move on
to Indus Valley civilization, Mohenjo Doro and Harappa. You see wall
carvings, bronzes, and sculptures. There is another collection of central
Asian antiquities, collected by M. Aurel Stein, whose travelogue Evelyn
recently finished reading, and the inevitable miniature paintings. There
was a description of how figures are sculpted in bronze using lost wax
techniques. There was nothing we didn't know, but it was an explanation.
There was a special exhibit of Indian naval history which looked a lot
like an exhibit of British naval history. You see the naval uniforms, but
the dummies inside them look British. The centerpiece was a diorama showing
a naval battle with British and Indian ships. You see in three dimensions
the back end of a British ship and the rest of the ship is painted as part
of the background. But you see in 3-D all of three Indian ships ... uh,
boats. They actually look sort of like huge canoes. One had a head like a
Viking ship, but instead of a dragon's head it was a duck's head. It didn't
look formidable; it looked cute.
The museum is just off the Rajpath. We decided to take a leisurely
stroll to the Arch. The sun was just setting and we could feel mellow
except that every five minutes or so an auto-rickshaw driver would see us,
stop, and try to sell us his services.
I take you to Arch. Good pictures.
No, shokria, Mark would respond.
Get good pictures. After I take you to Connaught Place.
No! No! Shokria!
I give you ride.
No, thank you. We would rather walk.
You want pictures?
No! Go away!
Finally we would just ignore him and after a while he would go away.
Five minutes later another would see us and the battle would start again.
For a while we stopped and watched some large birds swooping and diving. As
we were getting toward the Arch, a tour bus showed up, obviously to
photograph the Arch at sunset. We walked a little faster to keep ahead.
That meant that the balloon sellers, the postcard sellers, and the cotton
candy sellers got to us first. One was sure we would buy a pack of pictures
of old New Delhi. After about a minute or more trying to shake him off,
Mark pointed in the direction we came from. Look. Big tour group. Lots
of money. He laughed, but saw Mark was telling the truth and ran off to
get some of that money.
Evelyn had read of an interesting restaurant in the exclusive hotel
Claridges. It is one of the poshest hotels in New Delhi and the auto-
rickshaw drivers don't seem to know where it is. Mark doesn't think many
people take auto-rickshaws there. Our first driver had never heard of it
and then wanted too much money so we let him go. The second one needed to
get instructions from another auto-rickshaw driver. We went with him, but
he needed directions again mid-trip. He asked some people on the street and
they couldn't help him. He then nearly drove past it, but Evelyn pointed it
out. It took us a while to even find the restaurant in the hotel. It was
actually outside and beside the hotel. We went and discovered it would not
open for another hour. We sat in their sitting room waiting for an hour.
An organist came in and played Western-like melodies, some with familiar
stretches. It took Mark a few minutes to realize these were familiar songs
from home since they were not coming out right. They seemed to be songs the
organist had heard once and was improvising from memory. Sometimes he would
play only one note where there were three in the original; sometimes a
five-note flourish would replace one or two notes in the original. It
became a challenge to identify what he was trying to play. After a while,
Mark could tell he was trying Never on Sunday or I Did It My Way, the
last singularly appropriate.
Dinner was a disappointment. Mark says he may be losing his taste for
meat, but Corbett's is a meat restaurant, and he thought the meat was salty
and over-spiced. The place is supposed to seem like a hunting camp from the
days of the Raj. Basically it is just in a tropical garden and there are
lots of animal noises from hidden loudspeakers. They claim that the
crocodile sometimes comes to the pond, but it is just a joke. Mark suspects
that with the exception of the guests, there is a much higher leg-to-animal
ratio at Corbett's than they would like you to believe. Mark had mutton.
When the time came for dessert the waiter came around.
Do you have kulfi? Mark asked.
No, sir. I am sorry. We have only Indian sweets.
What do you have?
We have gulab jaman or kulfi.
Okay, I'll have the kulfi, Mark conceded. He was willing to let it
go. Evelyn pointed out to Mark that he'd asked for kulfi to start with and
that the waiter didn't understand what he was saying. The kulfi was pretty
good, however.
On the way back to the hotel we got two mineral waters and struggled
with a vendor who wanted to sell us more things rather than giving Mark his
Rs20 change.
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This is our last day in India. We both feel sorry
the vacation is coming to an end. Evelyn said she was not sure why and Mark
said, Force of habit. We ate for the first time in Hotel 55, our hotel,
and also determined not to make the same mistake again. We talked to a
couple from Ottawa who do a lot of travel. Eight months of the year they
are in different countries. That doesn't sound too bad, actually. Mark's
amoeba and Evelyn's foot were acting up so we wrote for most of the morning.
At noon we checked out and had our luggage held for later pickup.
For lunch we each had an ice cream cone at Nirula's. It was a good
idea to put a Baskin-Robbins in New Delhi. Too bad it wasn't Baskin-Robbins
who did it. Just about as soon as we were out of it, an Indian started
hectoring us to go shopping where he wanted to take us. We got an auto-
rickshaw and he jumped in the narrow seat next to the Sikh driver and
continued to try to sell us on the idea of shopping. He had the Sikh stop
at what he claimed was the Central Cottage Industries Emporium but what was
clearly not.
You want to go in?
NO!
Now the Sikh spoke up and said, No problem, and drove off. Sikhs are
everywhere in India but more in New Delhi. Their population is centered in
the Punjab, however. Their religion is a cross between Hinduism and Islam.
We are pestered by a lot fewer Sikhs than we would expect for their numbers.
They seem to respect us more than most of the people we come in contact with
and the feeling is mutual. Their culture stresses avoidance of caste
discrimination, more emphasis on education, more of the work ethic.
Technical jobs and jobs requiring a lot of thought in India tend to have a
high proportion of Sikhs. Their success is resented but they clearly are
upwardly mobile for all the right reasons. The men do not cut their hair
but cover it with a turban. They wear wooden or ivory combs, they wear a
steel bracelet, and they are supposed to carry swords. They are also
expected to wear shorts though many do not. (Actually, they do, but they
wear them under their long pants.)
We got to the hotel about ninety minutes before our tour was about to
start. Mark went to the newstand. They had a decent selection of books but
none interested him. I asked the price on a roll of candy. Rs20. Forget
it. That little roll of candy wouldn't cost that much in the United States.
And the local hard candy is not as well made and usually sticks to the
wrapper.
Our tour started fifty minutes late due to the morning half of the tour
running long. This, we figured, meant the tour would go almost to 7 PM.
That might start to run us a bit late. Evelyn had asked about what time the
tour would get over and they said a little after 5 PM. That seemed to make
the tour way too short, only a little over two hours. How could they fit
all five sights listed in the Lonely Planet guide for this tour in two
hours?
Our first stop was at the Feroz Shah Kotla, the fortress palace of
Feroz Shah Tughlaq built in 1354. It supposedly has inside a forty-foot-
high sandstone pillar that lists Ashok's edicts. It now is in bad shape
because the stone was taken and used for building material for Old Delhi.
The guide said he would stop and we could take pictures from the road.
Suddenly Mark understood how our tour could be so short. This was not his
idea of including a sight. Or in his words, Gotcha! Mark says, India
is a country where you generally get what you pay for or know the reason why
not. It is just that too often it is the latter. And the reason is not
always convincing.
For example, our next sight (according to the Lonely Planet guide) was
supposed to be the Jamid Masjid. This is the largest mosque in India, built
by Shah Jahan from 1644 to 1658. It is red sandstone and white marble in
stripes and has room for 25,000 in its courtyard. It was pointed out from a
distance of a half a mile (a kilometer). In the ever-present Delhi smog, we
can just make out an outline. Don't we get a closer look? Mark asked our
guide later. No, traffic conditions do not allow it.
The tour had originally had five sights, but since we'd seen the Red
Fort already, only four were new. Two were just parks where famous people
had been cremated and two had real historic interest. The two we most
wanted to see we would see only from a distance. No wonder this tour was so
short.
We covered the Red Fort earlier, so will not cover it again. Seeing it
again was okay but not thrilling. Next we went to Shanti Vana, a small park
where Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and her sons Sanjay and Rajiv had been cremated.
About all you will see are waterfowl--geese, if we remember right.
Mark saw a teenager wearing a T-shirt with a big Mickey Mouse crudely
printed on it. You see in the Central Cottage Industries Emporium pieces of
brasswear with similar Mickey Mouse patterns crudely rendered. Some
American and European trademarks and copyrights seem to be respected here,
and some not. Nobody makes their own Coca-Cola here. At least not under
that name.
The Raj Ghat is a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi and was where he was
cremated. Mark writes, I don't know how they knew that piece of ground was
going to be a memorial to Gandhi when they chose it to cremate him. I guess
there was some sort of conspiracy. If you want to go in close you can take
off your shoes and walk through the memorial itself, or you can walk a ramp
and walk around the outside with your shoes on. We did the latter since it
seemed easier on Evelyn's foot.
That was it and it was one of the least interesting of our city tours.
It's interesting that the New Delhi tour includes the Qutb Minar, one of
the oldest sights in the area, and the Old Delhi includes the Shanti Vana
and Raj Ghat, two of the newest sights. It's all a question of geography.
At one point the tour bus stopped near a little girl sitting on a
corner. She was about five or six. She looked at Mark, which attracted his
attention. Then she stood up and started to walk to the bus. Mid-stride
she affected a limp and over to the bus she came to beg for rupees. She
clearly has to do better than that to be convincing.
After the tour we booked an auto-rickshaw to take us to see the Jamid
Masjid close up, then pick up our bags at Connaught Place, and finally to
take us to the Maurya Sheraton for dinner at the Bukhara Restaurant.
There is a large bazaar surrounding the mosque even up to the stairs.
There is smoke. There are goats tethered to the stairs of the mosque.
There are incredibly deformed beggars. Second only to--or perhaps tied
with--the burning ghat in Varanasi, this is the most atmospheric place in
India we found. It is exotic and very, very non-Western. It is a place
that could have shown up in a Sherlock Holmes story or a weirder Kipling
story. People laughed at us, but we did not understand why. There are a
fair collection of horror stories set in India and just at twilight this is
a perfect setting for one. You could almost believe there were Thugees out
there in the smoke scheming. We could go to the door but they would not let
us in. One person spoke some English and said we would have to wait fifteen
minutes for prayers to end. Ten minutes later he came over and said we
could not be allowed in. They probably allow tourists in only during the
day. We looked through the doorway and then headed back down the stairs to
the auto-rickshaw.
The driver had problems getting the auto-rickshaw started and twice had
to ask passersby to push it. On his way out he hit a woman who looked a
little startled but continued on. He took us to Connaught Place but not to
our hotel. He stopped first at a liquor store and said we had to pay him
Rs50 of the fare right then. He promised, unasked, not to drink while he
drives. He went out and came back with a bottle of whiskey, removed one
empty liquor bottle from the metal box that served as a glove compartment
and put that in a different box, and put the whiskey in the glove box. Then
he went to the hotel, hitting the arm of a pedestrian on the way. We picked
up our luggage and the driver took us to the Maurya Sheraton. This place
was fancy. It cost for one night more than we paid for ten. We had heard
the Bukhara Restaurant was pretty casual, but I think in our dusty clothing
we were pushing it. Mark had tandoori chicken; Evelyn had murg malai kabob.
It came to better than US$40. But it was our last night in India. Then we
sprang for an enclosed taxi to the airport.
We got to the airport something like four hours before the flight. The
guards apparently brandish full military machine guns. We had a fair number
of rupees left over. Mark let Evelyn rest her foot and went to find out
about airport taxes. Evelyn then walked around and said that the one shop
did have books. She suggested a P. G. Wodehouse that we had more than
enough rupees for. In fact, they also had a British edition of THE SUM OF
ALL FEARS by Tom Clancy. An airport employee (apparently--by his badge) sat
near us and asked to talk. And talk we did for about an hour about our view
of India, his view of the United States: Americans are good people. Very
honest. Very rich. But many young people have sex. This is a bad thing.
And are no marriages arranged? Well, that is not a direct quote, but it
was the sort of thing he was asking about. He had never heard we had many
homeless people in the United States and it surprised him very much. He
heard about welfare for the first time and independently re-invented the
concept of workfare on the spot. It is much better, he thought, for the
poor to work for money. Then they appreciate the money. Very
interesting, Mark says. I told just about social problems in the United
States and he is coming back at me with my own political philosophy as if it
is obvious. Is it my choice of the facts that lead to my own conclusions?
Is workfare more obvious than I thought? Do I take this as confirming my
viewpoint or only a mirror of my concerns?
Then we had to cut off the conversation because we had to check in. We
spent the last of our rupees on a book of travelers' tales and a British
edition of an Arthur C. Clarke Rama book. Mark counted and saw we had
about Rs30 left and asked the price of a roll of candy. Rs30. He figured
Mark would overpay just to get something for his rupees. Wrong. There were
two emigration lines for foreigners. We chose the short line and realized
too late that the guy going through the papers was taking about three or
four minutes per person. We were about halfway through the line when Mark
decided it still might be faster to get in the longer line. He did. He
went through about half of that line when Evelyn got to the front of our
original line. Mark got out of line to join her, but in that instant she
let a British family ahead of her because they had a flight coming right up.
There were five of them and they had passports from two different countries,
as well as some other special papers. While we waited at the head of the
first line, people four and five positions behind Mark on the second line
got processed. Evelyn's good deed had meant we had to spend another fifteen
minutes in line and had not actually done anything for the other family that
the airport would not have done anyway. Finally the world's most sluggish
immigration official got around to studying our passports and their stamps,
reading every line of the forms we'd filled in. Typing something at his
keyboard, searching for the proper key and then hitting it with his right
index finger, and waiting for a readout to come up on his screen, then
reading it very carefully. Finally he stamped our passports about six
minutes later. I don't know if he was being intentionally slow or it was
just his natural inefficiency.
We then waited for the security check. Now Evelyn had heard that only
on domestic flights did they have horrendous security. Wrong! Everything
out of pockets.
Remove all batteries. What is this?
Computer.
Remove batteries.
This scares Mark because he doesn't know how long the backup battery
will support memory. His guess is weeks, but who knows? (Actually, when we
got home we checked the manual and it said the back-up batteries were good
for several days.) Well, maybe he can get batteries from his suitcase. The
next guard says, Open suitcase. Everything gets opened, including the
night case and the laundry bag. Walkman batteries out. He found
everything that had batteries and the stash of spares--all confiscated.
Where is boarding pass? Suddenly Mark realized he was not sure what
pocket it went into after the first security check. And with the photo vest
he had lots of pockets. He searched again and again. Now he is sweating.
He looked back at the first guard, but he was checking more people through.
The second guard told Mark to take his suitcase a few feet away and search
it for his boarding pass. No go. Finally in desperation Mark asked the
first guard if he knew what happened to his boarding pass. It is over at
the X-ray machine with your batteries. God, what a system! Finally Mark
got through the whole line hoping Evelyn would have gotten through with some
batteries. Nope. So we settled down. Mark was worried about the memory in
the computer. He went back and tried to explain his computer needs
batteries or loses memory. You get batteries on other side with boarding
pass, the guard explained helpfully.
Can I put the computer with the batteries and put two in?
Just batteries.
Mark notes, No wonder nobody had seen portable computers in India!
These damn officious little bureaucrats make it a real pain to bring them
into the country. For an hour Mark sat and fretted about thing losing
everything in its memory. His one hope was that the flight was Lufthansa
and so the crew would be German and might understand that a computer might
lose memory without batteries.
After about forty-five minutes, Mark stopped fretting and read. They
handed out the boarding passes they had confiscated with the batteries.
People who did not remember their seat numbers were in serious shape.
Luckily we did remember. We don't know what happened to those who didn't.
When they called for boarding a huge mob stormed the door. Eventually
we got on the plane. Mark immediately pressed the help button, but the crew
was busy boarding people. And when they finished that, they started finding
passengers and giving them back their batteries. Oh, what a wonderful
sight!
A stewardess brought Mark his bag of batteries. Bless you, Mark
said.
Ja, and it's unbelievable why they take them.
But Mark knows why they take them. That is what they have been trained
to do. No questioning if it makes sense. No wondering if making it hard to
bring technology into India could be hurting the country. That is the job
they have been given. Besides, this way they get free batteries.
(Actually, we had originally thought some batteries were missing, but now we
think they were all there.) Change is bad. It brings insecurity. And
rethinking the process can bring change. Pointless battery confiscation was
our last grand gotcha of India. Now it too had passed.
November 1, 1993: It is amazing how comfortable the plane from Delhi
to Frankfurt feels. It is the same service we had on the way out, but you
come to want any cockroach-free toilets.
Dinner was not very good. It was skimpy and not very tasty.
Presumably it is a problem with their supplier in Delhi. But we were
dehydrated and they keep walking up and down the aisles offering orange
juice. The orange juice we got in India had a very weak flavor. Perhaps it
was watered down as one of our traveling companions suggested. This is a
good rich orange juice and is offered so often we eventually are refusing
it.
The in-flight movie was GUILTY AS SIN. Mark woke up from a nap halfway
into it and did not have any interest in seeing the other half. He almost
wishes that had run THE LUCONA AFFAIR again. That is a fairly intelligent
German film starring David Suchet and Jurgen Prochnow. An Indian woman to
his left in traditional clothing is passing the time reading Michael
Crichton's JURASSIC PARK.
Breakfast was chicken crepe. We guess it was breakfast. It tasted
better than dinner. We landed in Frankfurt and not surprisingly Evelyn just
wanted to rest her foot. That seems her only medical problem from the trip.
Mark is still coughing from a cold and just at the end of the trip got a
mild case of stomach distress, but nothing too bad. And we never were
actually victimized by crime.
Mark was in a small, silent battle of wills waiting for our plane. The
waiting area was full. It was hard to find a place to sit, but we finally
did. Opposite us was a tall, attractive woman who found the clues we saw
was probably Hungarian. She had a heavy purse taking up the chair on one
side of her while talking to a man on the other side. After about fifteen
minutes a timid-looking man asked her if the chair was taken and she said it
was. It irritated Mark that she would take up a chair with her purse when
people were standing. When somebody came along looking for a seat, Mark
would look her in the eye, look at the purse, then look at the person
standing. She saw him doing it too. Eventually a man with a cane asked for
the seat. She looked at Mark, then picked up her purse and put it in her
lap. It was a minor victory for decency.
Frankfurt security is more thorough than Air India. It also happens to
be a lot more respectful and a *lot* faster. They looked at film canisters.
They X-rayed Mark's photo vest and then knew exactly what they were looking
for. The process took maybe two minutes. Danke.
Of course, not everything was perfect. The wrong plane had pulled into
our gate, so they had to bus us to the plane. The bus, like a certain
rabbit, just kept going and going and going and going. Mark began to wonder
if the plane was in Stuttgart. Mark thinks the local radio ad says, Take
the *plane* to the plane.
This time we got an Airbus. The lunch was chicken with a fancy name,
but it also had smoked salmon, two nice pieces of cheese (one Camembert),and
plums with cinnamon cream. Evelyn got the vegetarian meal and it wasn't
nearly as good. The in-flight movie was BORN YESTERDAY, an updating of the
Judy Holliday/Broderick Crawford film. Mark says, They took the original
story and added a theme of 'trust your emotions,' a turning of the tables on
the bad guy, a reading of the Constitution to the 'Twelve Days of
Christmas,' some action and suspense, and a love story. The new film had
whitewalls, fins, flashing lights around the license plate, and a lawn-mower
engine. I'll take the original Cadillac classic version in black and white,
please.
They interrupted the film so you could look down and see the glaciers
of Greenland beneath the plane. Pretty dramatic.
What is amazing to Mark is how comfortable the plane feels. People
dread these long plane flights in little tiny seat spaces, but compared to
Indian first-class trains, and even more compared to their buses in which
we'd sit for seventeen hours, this flight is relaxing and pleasant.
Mark admits, I used to dread the end of vacations and I finally got
myself to point where I was neutral, but just getting around in India was
such an effort that this is the first major vacation that I actually can say
that it feels good to be going home. That is not intended as a slight
against India. (Although I have intentionally tried to be honest rather
than sparing the feelings of people who love India when I have written this
log. I have tried more for candor than discretion.) But I really want to
get home and start enjoying my usual lifestyle. I am getting to the point
where I appreciate the comforts of home.
[This is now two days after. Let us finish.] The plane landed about
4:15 PM. It was cold and gray in Newark. Customs was very quick, very
friendly. There was a passport check, but no interest shown in our luggage
at all. With uncharacteristically good timing, we got out of customs
withing twenty or thirty seconds of when Dale Skran arrived to pick us up.
Evelyn, who had not been sick the whole trip, was silent the whole way home
while Mark told Dale about the trip. (Usually Evelyn is the talkative one
and I am quiet.) As soon as we got home, Evelyn went into the house and
contributed her lunch to the New Jersey sewer system. The only food that
made her sick was on the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt.
Three of our four traps had killed mice. The whole thing was a sort of
downbeat discovery. There was no apparent damage from mice, so it probably
got them early on.
Evelyn's ankle seems to be improving. She did catch cold, and the cold
first manifested itself on the plane on the way home. Mark's digestion is
nearly normal. At this writing Evelyn has lost her voice. Mark is nearly
without jet lag. He will be a little tired in the evenings, but will stay
up until midnight and then sleep until about 7 AM, which is just about
right. Evelyn falls asleep about 9 PM and wakes up about 4 AM. Evelyn lost
about five pounds, Mark about seven. We were never the victims of crime.
Our expenses for this trip were as follows:
Lufthansa - $2510
Indian Airlines - 304
Pre-Trip Books - 100
Visas - 80
Film and Developing - 453
Hotels - 442
Train 80
Local Transportation - 87
Food - 225
Misc - 330
TOTAL - $4611
There is, of course, a certain irony to the fact that our film and
developing cost six times as much as our train travel, and in fact even more
than our hotels. Only the airfare was more. This trip cost slightly more
than our trip to southeast Asia, but that was a few years ago.
Mark concludes, Now let me be fair. This log is a record of what
happened, but we walked into this trip with our eyes open. We wanted an
alien culture and got the most alien culture we have ever seen in our
travels. We got a lot of experience and we got it cheaply. While this log
is in large part about the negative aspects, I must be fair. There were
lots of good and bad aspects to the trip. It may not be soon, but I suspect
we will return to India.
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