| INDIA |
| Haven't done a whole helluva lot today besides eating breakfast -- an egg, tomato and cheese boojia, which turned out to simply be an omelet with the eggs scrambled -- and writing about the last couple of days. I did, however, venture down to the lobby where I saw one of the New Zealand chicks again. We talked for a minute or so before the old man who works here asked her to come with him to the room. I guess they had moved rooms. She said, "I'll be right back," so I waited to resume our conversation, but instead I was treated to the old man's life story. At first I was put off as all he was saying at first was how he doesn't make much money and he's been waiting for the owner to replace him but the replacements haven't worked out. But then he mentioned that he was actually from Burma, and had come to Benares 31 years ago to attend his sister's wedding. As his father had recently passed on and he was left with no parents, he felt it was important to be here for that. But then he was never able to leave, and is now a bitter old man lamenting the fact that he had his father and brother's money in Burma, but now has nothing. I appreciated his story. It seems everyone here probably has a story like that. Indeed, probably most everyone in the world. At 6pm our friend Alok from the train is going to pick us up from here. As you can't drive directly to the ghats, I guess he's going to park and walk to come get us. Then he's going to take us to get train tickets before we go to his home for dinner. I'm not eager to leave the idyllic riverside to go back into the traffic-infested mess. But it will be wonderful to meet another Indian family.
And indeed it was! A couple of hours before Alok came by to pick us up, Tamarack, Crissy and I were sitting on top of Mishra's and Crissy said, "You know, I don't trust this guy. Who would come all the way out to our guest house, put us in a car, drive us to the train station and then to his home? I don't like it." And I said, "But
it's not any different from the families we met in Delhi." Later on, Crissy had to admit that she was wrong. She simply couldn't fathom that someone who had just met us on the train could be so kind. And it wasn't only that he invited us to dinner. It was in the middle of a family reunion! Gathered together for the first time in two and a half years were four generations of his family. None of us could imagine a family in the U.S. involving four strangers to their get-together, when everything is already hectic. But there we were, meeting all these great people. We were picked up in an Ambassador that was upholstered in brown and black prints that had tigers on them. As Alok is wise enough not to drive, he had a driver -- who was about 15! I would have been scared but thrilled to be driving these crazy streets at that age. Such responsibility! We got to the train station while it was still light and left when it was dark. It was a crazy scene out there at night, with drums and chanting off to the side, and auto-rickshaws that had yet to turn their lights on zooming past. As far as the tickets, Tam and Chris got theirs, but me and Megan only succeeded in securing a ride to Satna, where we'll stay the night, then take a bus to Khajuraho for the temples carved with erotic scenes, then a bus to Agra for the Taj. We were unable to get a train to Amritsar, as they were either all booked or didn't have the class we wanted. We'll probably have to stay seven hours overnight in Delhi on the way, which pisses me off as a) I really don't want to go back to Delhi, and b) I don't want to have to go out of the train station just to come right back. Alok and Tam said there are sleeping compartments at the station which only cost a few dollars, but that sounds awful. But I don't think we'll have a choice. I hope this leg of the journey all works out, as Khajuraho, Agra and Amritsar are all my selections, which Megan is nice enough to be going to with me. After that, I won't have a thing left on my to-do list for India! But if we do get stranded or hassled, I'll have wished we hadn't gone.
When we arrived at Alok's, we were served glasses of Coke and a plate of potato chips while we were introduced to his sisters Noopur and Neeja, his oldest daughter Ashi, niece Anushi and father. Megan made sure to take down everyone's names in her little book ("This is our group secretary," I said) before distributing some of the blue light LEDs that we bought to give to children of people that we meet. The girls then proceeded to try and blind each other, and Tam and Cris. For some reason they weren't zapping me or Megan. We moved to another room where there was a swamp cooler for a bit, and then to the roof, where we watched fireworks that were presumably from a wedding, and some had cigarettes. Although Alok smoked on the train, he turned down a cigarette while on the roof as he said he doesn't smoke or drink around his parents. We said it was the same for Americans. Then it was time for dinner. The food was magnificent. Since Megan had showed Alok her recipe from Anand's family on the train, there was Kaldi, and also some wonderful veg curry (well, it was veg everything), a plate of sliced cucumber, tomatoes, onions, carrots, radishes and chilies, and this spicy goulash of cilantro, onion and chilies that Crissy correctly identified as tasting Mexican. Plus there was a "sweet" of squishy balls of milk seasoned with saffron and cardamom in milk that was very tasty. After dinner we were brought in to see Alok's youngest, a girl of a year and a half, who was asleep in a bed. He showed us video from earlier in the afternoon of her dancing, saying, "Anytime there is music she dances." And we also saw his wedding pictures, which were on the wall in that room. Finally, we got everyone together for a group picture, as is the American way. He asked if we wanted to stay longer, but we felt he should have time with his family. So we said good-bye to everybody, with the girls yelling, "Boi-boi!" and being very silly and funny. Downstairs we got into a different car, an SUV. There was also a guard standing next to the SUV with a shotgun. We asked later why there was a guard, and Alok said his father, being the president of one of the three universities in Varanasi, is an important man. I guess so! Alok walked us to the mouth of the labyrinth, offering to walk us all the way, but we said we could find our way. And indeed, Tamarack lead the way unerringly. Back at the guest
house, Tam prepared two joints with the hash that the Italian gave us
at Mishra's -- one for himself because he said he might be sick and
contagious, and one for me and Crissy. While Tam said the next day that
he got pretty baked, I felt nothing. But it was just as well as I needed
to sleep to get up for the sunrise.
email:
ryan[at]monkeyduck[dot]com
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