A 2017 Tale From My Time in India
Quick Note: This is a very raw approach that I took a lot while on the road last trip. It’s written in a very flow-of-thought style that I haven’t been doing much on this trip. After reading it, though, I might have to make an effort to bring the Notes From The Road style entries back. I’m kind of digging how candid it is.
Delhi
A fine coating of dust covers the city.
Dented metal detectors covered in tarp greeted us along with armed guards on our way into a train station. Some had holstered pistols on their hip. Others slung automatic guns with a leather strap behind their backs.
Swinging guns make me uneasy no matter how many times I see them.
Darren: “I’ve never seen a slum this… Slummy before.”
People stand on crumbling, half-built balconies as husbands take off sweaty shirts after work, sisters futilely beat dust from draped blankets and old men slump over in splintering wicker chairs smoking pearl white cigarettes. I remember someone telling me how tame Delhi is and think I must have imagined it.
A mess of orangish red brick and healthy tree leaves splits off into trails here and there. People huddle in the shade beside the squat structures and I realize I’m looking at a slum. The hundred some buildings all looked somewhere between condemned and recently demolished. I think of a tiny Bagan in the middle of Delhi, fresh after a devastating earthquake. Blue and white tarp kept in place by broken bricks serve as roofs for so many houses. Scattered trash paints the ground and decaying houses rainbow in bits – a spattering of torn plastic breathing dirty life into a neighborhood on life support.
A rat peaks out from the shadows of a hole filled with newspaper. The newspaper shifts and rustles.
The smell of piss comes from somewhere specific or everywhere
I really can’t tell. I notice a couple slabs of granite serve as a makeshift urinal.
An older gentleman delicately examines a young man’s arm in his hands at a roadside tattoo stand. This is probably the last place I’d get a job like that done.
A car backfires and I flinch a lot less than I thought I would.
If you don’t have a gun cocked and loaded pointed in front of you, people WILL cut in line. That or you can just hug the person ahead of you.
Indian bus drivers are miracle workers. Not a person on this earth can convince me otherwise.
Delhi Population: 18 million
A crow balances itself with jagged black feet on the corner of a plastic white bucket. It dips its head in the water, wets its beak and rights itself – a full-body movement that makes me think of the cheap toy. How strong its stomach must be.
Ladies frisking booth at the entrance of a mall.
Everything seems to be coming apart in Delhi. There is no “new” here. Only old and older. Outdated or ancient.
Stacked bamboo piles high in a dead end alley between two houses.
Tour Countries Represented By Travelers In Our Tour Group: Malta, Germany, Malaysia, Scotland, Argentina, Britain, Canada.
Jesus Christ, Ganesh, Hanuman and Sun Wukong. Tiles with the gods faces shine on the side of a gritty building. They put gods on the walls to stop people from pissing on them.
We walk down a side street filled with downed trees. A murder of cranky crows are kings of their own trash pile kingdom – cawing through beaks left open in petty despotism.
Hawks circle the city sky – black specs scanning mountains of rubbish for the rare bits of edible debris. It’s a seemingly impossible task.
The top of a white spire is big enough to fit five people comfortably but fits 25 in a way that is decidedly not that. Why do I have to be big?
Walking up the curling cramped staircase of the Mosque’s spire felt like forever. The climbing, uneven red rock stairs make me think the building was cut right out of a mountain. Rugged and raw in some parts.
Fruit carts pulled by small horses sit on the leftmost highway lane and produce balances in piles on its flat back.
Chaos is a force of nature in Delhi just as strong as gravity or the deathly smell emanating from a pile of rusty, rotten assorted rubbish.
Lungar Sikh temples feeding a neverending line of hungry people are national epidemics waiting to happen but obscenely beautiful in their own right. Gigantic ladles dripping with yellow gooey food lean upside down on metal vats big enough to bathe in. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of these were used for that at one point.
Kites (big black eagle-like birds) surround areas around the red fort and soar for great distances with a single beat of their wings. A local meat market draws crowds of them as they cast large shadows that slide across diminishing sidewalk and dust-covered roads.
Road To Agra
Humpback water buffalo wade through waves of pigeons in a parking lot below a highway underpass. Sluggish steps sending ripples of birds from the hot cement and into the sky.
Roadside welders balance with bare feet on a red metal structure on the side of the road. A purple button up shirt and frayed pants casually flick back the occasional white spark.
Hut covered in elephant ears plants.
A small black bird with a light purplish blue lining its wings flies over lush farmland.
Groups of shirtless boys prance about brown fields kicking up dirt in circles as the sun heads for the horizon
A boy in a tank top and pair of white headphones does push-ups on the surface of a cinder block beside a dirt mound. His movement is deliberate and the heat must be overwhelming. Another boy miles down and in a tank top not unlike the other boy’s jogs down a desert yellow road stamped flat with tire tracks. Yet another, slightly older, boy in a tank top does dips on the shoulder of the highway and a woman with a bag exploding with greenery and the size of five heads sits on top of her. She steadies the impressive mass with one arm.
A man in an ivory white getup holds a cane in the crossing of his arms as he squats atop a dry, crumbling hill. He looks out into his swaying grass and wraps of white cloth flicker and flap over his bones.
Ejaz(Name of our City walk guide)
Father is a preacher. Father beat him after he was unable to learn the Quran. Took a two day train ride into Delhi. Taught by social workers. Studies Political science at University of Delhi. Made money by collecting plastic bottles and selling them back to businesses. Diploma of travel. Wants to be a tour guide for G Adventures for his dream job. From Jharkhand. After 5 years he contacted his family.
A lone water buffalo walks alone down a side road like it’s getting to an appointment.
Groups of boys sit in a circle on top of a squat countryside building.
A pheasant is chased off of the roof of a hut built of sticks. Its long tail flaps to the beat of its wings and disappears in the branches of a nearby tree.
Going at a steady pace along a farm field side road, a mother, father and son end the day with a family drive. The son drives intently staring down the road, handle bars tight in both hands and shoulders back. The father leans back relaxed and the mother sits on the back both legs to one side and admiring a field of still green grass. An orange blue sky signals the setting sun.
Taj Mahal
A frail dog stops in front of me and I can feel the heat coming off of it as I examine prominent hip bones. It’s almost nothing but bones, patchy fur and a couple of floppy ears – the only happy aspect about it. It still bounces when it walks away though.
Tiny birds above the Taj Mahal flutter their wings in bursts, zig zagging back and forth overhead. When they’re reach a certain height they remind me of butterflies against the freshly bright blue sky.
Clouds seemed to roll around the red mosque, a perfect view poked through the sky straight up to heaven or something like it.
An immaculate mausoleum in a dust-covered country shines bright and proud in the wide eyes of travelers the world over. Wet gecko green, lava rock red and angel wing white rule over the world wonder. Aged in parts but only more impossibly beautiful because of it. Built for a dead wife and always bringing life to look at her dark, solemn, fake grave. Sunlight slips through ornately shaped holes in shafts, falling on the shaded marble of the tomb.
Skulking stray dogs, creeping monkey gangs, skittish chipmunks and birds of all shapes and colors share space with picture snappers and make it seem that even the animal kingdom is drawn to the grandiose dome. A hawk leans into the curve of the dome and catches heaven just right under its wings, spiraling around the snowy globe before resting on it dead center. A throne fit for gods and dead men. Pigeons roost on mosque ledges and spatter the grounds another shade of white. Cardboard catches the droppings that it can. Monkeys sit like the armed men beneath them, warm, red stone supporting them both.
The structure is considered a wonder and I don’t have to think much on it to see why. The quiet confidence of a loving husband hangs in the air with the birds, cradling wonder and ingenuity in the palms of marble arches.
It’s a pristine monument no doubt. A jewel in the middle of a dusty country. But it trades a personality born from unkempt authenticity for immaculate devotion. A trade off where I’m unable to choose a preference.
A river slips past the back of the Tan Mahal and shirtless locals splash about just out of earshot.
Road to Agra
Intricate chisel work shows just how much care went into Agra Fort’s construction. Red sandstone fills the vision and is only cut out in two from the sharpness of a blue sky.
One jewel could feed the world for seven days and was 23% of the country’s wealth
Agra
A lot of the stores all look the same. Medical stores,
A mother dog jaunts down a concrete median and her teats swing from side to side with each paw fall. She smiles as her tongue spills out the side of her mouth and she carries herself aloofly down the intersection, above the crusty chaos beneath her.
Water buffaloes lazily hoof their way down roads packed with people, cars, dogs and debris. Rivers of commuters bend around them and they seem to be the one true authority of the streets. Complacent kings letting life flow around them. Despite this, a stray buffalo inches toward a roadside stand and sniffs itself under the shade of a tent and open food. “Hey!” Says the owner sitting cross legged, interrupting a conversation between himself and an older man wearing a white button up with a worn out collar. The button up shifts on the man’s shoulders, exposing his neck as he watches the animal lumber away from the stall slightly faster than its normal snail’s pace.
Hand-sized bats echo squeaks off the red sandstone of a dead emperor’s retired sleeping chambers. The stiff smell of guano hangs in the air with them and varying shades of darkness either conceals or gives away their hiding places.
A pea green pool is framed by burgundy stone and the black silhouettes of dragonflies dart above the surface.
Jaipur
We drive down the street and pass souls on the sidewalk one by one. First, a man with his head wrapped in bandages rolls himself in a plastic bag blanket , five feet away another with his flannel shirt back to us arcs a golden stream into a mixture or grass and trash and in another five a pair of street dogs pant as they rest their weary bodies on their hips, paw’s claws skitter and click over brick.
An amber fort in the mountains is stringed in place with walls that crawl over and into a rolling terrain. Elephants with somber expressions step heavily through an arched palace door greater than the broken elephants themselves. One stops and waterfalls urine onto the ground getting the attention of a nearby guard. Pale white tourists sit atop the animals and their frail bodies sway as they examine something they cannot understand.
A weathered courtyard teems with the noises of many cultures and I try to imagine just what the energy felt like hundreds of years ago. Indian tour guides speak English, Spanish and a multitude of tongues I can’t understand.
A hall of ornate mirrors was built by an emperor for his wife. He wanted her beauty visible from anywhere inside and while groups of tourists tilt their heads and “awwwww”, I can’t help but feel it’s a bit creepy.
Smells of North India:
-Earthy, warm smells -Decaying smells, rust, rot -The occasional incense stand -Urine, waste
A small monkey eats something stringy and drops it to the sidewalk below. It slides down a drain pipe and a store owner greets it with a handful of food. A bamboo exoskeleton hugging a clay-colored cluster of shops is a playground city for a community of monkeys clashing with the owners of open windows. A boy in an orange tank top no older than ten chases a clumsy baby away from his house but never swings the rod he holds menacingly above his head. Cars, tuk tuks, buses and bicycles carry on with the same old cacophony below. It’s a Jackson Pollock painted with warm-colored spices in burlap sacks, jockeying traffic, sleeping dogs, cheeky monkeys and swaths of wanderers filling in the negative spaces between. It’s impossible to find one mini sitcom to focus on when their all so bright and loud.
Chola Batura spicy peanuts
Everyone’s just kind of cool with everyone in India. Do what you want, just stay out of the way. I asked our guide what word he thinks of when he thinks India and he almost immediately says “population”.
Schadenfreude- (German) the joy about the damage. Laughing at someone else’s folly or pain.
Mitt bniedem mitt fehma- (Maltese) 100 people, 100 opinions -Maltese saying
Sawarda
Girl (Pooja) wanted us to take pictures of her biology homework. Notebook with a glued on newspaper cover showing a woman with a bright pearly smile.
A veiled woman walks a couple of goats out of her house and mutters something to herself as she sees them past the threshold.
Black water buffalo with curled horns pick up their heads and freeze when an unfamiliar face comes too close. They stare swords at us and give a look that embodies pure distrust. “Do something. I DARE you.”
White-robed men escort groups of goats between square patches of farmland as the last minutes of sunlight trickle down mountains in the background.
A rooftop fire burns black smoke into the side of a brick building and a couple sits around the flames. A dimly lit tshirt barely stands out from the shadows and the fire’s light fails to reach the man’s face face. They paid squats, arms in front of them, in the merging of two bare walls. Hundreds of chirping birds in trees bid the sun goodbye as the tops of houses fade into darkness together. A cool, grassy breeze spreads over dirt, dung and dust and greets my nose with a sweet smell.
The moon is a pumpkin low in the sky shifting behind invisible clouds. Disappearing and reappearing, inching itself heavenward, transitioning itself to alabaster the closer it gets to gods.
Bats whip in and out of precious little light, dipping back into the shadows to hunt the chirping bugs surrounding our hotel fort.
Cow dung and dewy grass fill the air with earthy aromas.
Gokeldam Society, Sawarda
“Ram Ram” is hello in villages
5,000 to 6,000 people
Mainly Hindu, but also Jainism and Muslim
Some children commute one hour to go to school in Jaipur
8 schools in Sawarda
Farming town
People are in bed by 8 or 9, wake up at 4 and dinner at 6 or 7.
A jeep lets out an unbalanced belch of a honk after the driver touches a pair of bare wires together.
Sawarda(Morning)
Old men reading newspaper outside shops on concrete seats.
Pigeons on spire watching sunset
Ramaa & Seeta
Aisgod & Kusi & Monmonshurman & Vigay laxMi
On The Road Back To Delhi
Four women in flowing scarlet garbs squat in a field surrounded by ankle high grass and grazing water buffalo. With closed hands and the red of their dresses blowing over soft green grass, the women chat amongst themselves and I imagine long pauses in the conversation to admire tranquility.
Small brown birds with orange beaks hop around with open mouths on the street in front of a busy tollway. They bounce under and around cars looking for scraps of fallen food from vendors who navigate between the streams of cars looking to sell his wares to hungry commuters.
A roadside grove is home for countless monkeys, some of which spill out into a side road mingling with water buffalo and bicycles. One monkey sits on the edge of a concrete cylinder filled with water and swishes left and right playfully.
Twenty feet off the highway and into a field, a man is squatting with clasps hands above his head and head down. It looks like a prayer.
Three tall slender white birds stand beside a hardy buffalo and the four graze on earth by their feet. Perfect opposites.
Pancaked cow pies bake by the hundreds on stone panels covering a sewage drain and used tires stacked 12 high heat up alongside them.
A man with a great white beard lays back down on a shaded section of sidewalk with one leg bent, knee facing the sky and foot flat on the ground. His other leg crosses and rests on top of his knee and as our tour bus pulls forward, I notice the man is wearing no pants or underwear. The German tourist in front of me jerks his head back slightly in surprise and giggle. He looks back at me and says “well that was a bit shocking.” a bit stunned.
A juvenile water buffalo runs its throat up and down a tree trunk and I imagine how therapeutic the sound must be. Slow, constant, rhythmic – a deep, scratching lullaby for flies.
This entry was posted in Photo Dump, Vagrant Tales