The Moslem men woke, made their way to the mosque or kneeled in their courtyards, rolled out mats and began the call.
Mohammed a rasulila. Mohammed is the prophet of God—in the first light of dawn no one could be offended. That’s the secret of the earliest hours—there’s no religion, no conviction.
Hindus made their toilet, then stepped into their gardens to evacuate nostrils, lungs. Om Nama Shivaya. The name of God is Shiva.
In the Christian grave yard, a worker arrived, blowing into his hands, his thin body bundled into a sweater vest and wool shawl, his feet at odds, bare but for rubber sandals.
Then the call to prayer intensified, voices lifting into the thinning sky, floating out over Delhi, over the dirty buildings, the alleys crowded with garbage, sleeping cows, rooting pigs. A dirge of sorts, to the unaccustomed ear. Or a madrigal in half notes and minor keys.
Crows rustled, rose and settled on the wall of the graveyard. The worker stamped cold from his feet, took up his shovel and walked into the rows of graves, some disarranged by time, others vandalized. Some headstones had crumbled, returning to dust, same as the bones they once guarded. Others still stood stiff and formal, oblivious to India’s penchant for decay, for the ruinous and organic forces which grip all of life into death.
And dawn, too, came like death, with stealth, unforeseeable and impossible to say exactly when it arrived. In which precise moment the atmosphere turned from night to day—even the most astute observer couldn’t tell. Dawn drifted in, astride the mists and wisps of smoke from cooking fires, from factories, from trash heaps burning and exhaust from the knot of vehicles already forcing themselves into the city streets.
Dawn came with no pretension, drafting off the lories that rolled all night across India, baring down on Delhi by morning.
It was like that.
The prayers ended, not at once, but nearly. The crows flapped and settled again, a woman threw a pan of water into the open sewer, and another woman set her bare-bottomed son to squat over that same running gutter. The worker in the cemetery reached the bare patch of earth, lifted his shovel and began his day’s toil.
(image from www.airpaharganj.com)
Ami woke three hours later to the sounds of chanting floating through her cracked window. She rose from the hard bed and peered out. Pigeons swooped over the domed mosque from where the singing emanated. Below, a lone figure tended the cemetery plot of a Christian church. Crows pecked at the dry earth. A skinny dog ran by, tail between legs. Ami noticed that her breath came out steamy against the cold morning—maybe even colder than the night—and she shivered despite the layers of clothes she’d piled on.
But it’s beautiful, she told herself. This is India. The chanting intensified, reaching out to Allah. Ami pushed the window open a little farther and gazed out. The lone figure in the cemetery looked heavenward, as if moved by the singing, and then lifted his sarong and squatted.
Ami ducked back inside, giving the man his privacy, though he didn’t seem to care. She lay in bed and tried to think about her day. What to do. She hadn’t really thought about that. She’d envisioned arriving, having a big breakfast, doing a little shopping, then hopping a train to somewhere. The Taj Mahal, the Kama Sutra temples—weren’t there so many places she’d wished always dreamed of visiting? Shouldn’t she go to the Ganges, or to Sarnath, or maybe to a camel fair… Suddenly it all seemed terrifically improbable.
Flipping onto her stomach, Ami grabbed the guidebook and looked at a map of Paharganj. It looked simple enough—a sort of crescent-shaped area emanating from the railway station. Already she’d solved one problem—where to catch the train. Maybe she should do that first—settle her ticket to Rajasthan. She flipped through the Rajasthan section of the book, taking in names of cities in the desert state. Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Pushkar. She put her finger on Pushkar and mentally selected it.
That settled, she slid off the bed, grabbed her toiletries and padded into the bathroom. It had a rickety European toilet and a shower with no stall. The water simply splashed all over the white-tiled room, eventually running down a central drain.
And it was cold.
After giving up on the water ever heating, Ami took a quick sponge bath and dressed in the same cargo pants and sneakers she’d worn the day before, pulling the fleece jacket over a fresh t-shirt. She felt dowdy, especially after her encounter with Celeste, but held out hope for a colorful outfit to be purchased in the market. With that thought in mind, Ami strapped on her money belt, unzipped the daypack from her luggage, and locked her door behind her.
“Your friend, she is already leaving,” announced the boy behind the counter. He was dressed in pressed slacks, a button down shirt and a sweater vest, and looked slightly older than Ami had thought the night before. Perhaps twenty or twenty-one.
“She checked out?”
“No, she is going to breakfast. Just around the corner, you will see her.” He opened the door and leaned out, pointing to the end of the alley.
Ami nodded, trying to return his bright smile, then followed the sparse directions. There was, of course, no sign of Celeste, but the market was fairly quiet. There were a few back packers out, wandering down the streets. Ami stepped over a pile of cow dung, then eased around the cow that had, no doubt left the mess. Men were huddled, squatting, around a makeshift chai stall under a sprawling tree.
“One chai?” Ami asked, holding up a single finger, then trying her Hindi, “Ek chai?”
The man, crouched by the fire, gave her a long look, nodded. He lifted a kettle from the gas burner and poured steaming water into a pot, adding a pinch of tea. Then sugar, then milk from a metal pitcher. Finally, he poured the dark brew into a thick glass and handed it to Ami. She lifted the hot glass to her lips and sipped, while the squatting men, each wrapped with a wool shawl, watched.
It was good, better than she’d expected. How to say “one more”? She gestured, pointing to the empty glass, and a full one was handed to her.
“How much? Rupees?”
“Four rupees,” the man answered.
She handed over the money and the empty glass, making the Namaste sign with folded hands. The man bowed his head, too, and returned to his tea.
A little further into the market, Ami passed a crowded café. Backpackers spilled into the street, eating banana pancakes, eggs and drinking steaming mugs of chai. As she peered in to the dark and dingy interior, Ami caught Celeste’s eye, and Celeste waved her in.
The table was already crowded, but everyone wriggled around to make room for Ami. “Have a bite,” Celeste pointed to the menu, which offered several variations of the western breakfast:
1 egg fry-toast-butter-jam
porridge-toast-butter-jam
2 egg fry-toast-butter-jam
and so on. The odd thing was that the prices changed depending on the order of the food. Toast-jam-butter was a rupee more than toast-butter-jam. Ami smiled. “What about samosas?” she asked, craving an Indian breakfast.
“You’ll get sick of that after a while,” one of the guys at the table, dreadlocked, and dressed in a long kurta announced.
“Really? How long have you been in India?”
“Don’t know. About six months.” His accent was British.
Instead of revealing that she wouldn’t be traveling long enough to get sick of the food, Ami busied herself ordering samosas and a mango lassi—no ice, you know, ice? No ice!—from the waiter, who wore a greasy undershirt and a sarong.
“So, what’s your plan?” Celeste asked, leaning across her own plate of egg-fry and toast-butter-jam. “We’re all heading south to an ashram. Auraville, you know it?”
Ami had heard of it. A sort-of spiritual community inhabited mostly by westerners. “I’m going to the train station to buy a ticket to Pushkar,” she announced, hoping she sounded sure of herself among the band of road-weary travelers.
“Righteous place,” a guy with long, dark hair spoke up. “I just came from there. Lived around the lake nearly a month—lots of cheap rooms. You can live on two-hundred rupees a day if you eat the thali plates.”
Ami did the math in her head. That was less than $5. She had no intention of eeking by on five bucks, risking intestinal disease from bad food and sleeping in lice-infested flops. But she smiled. “Sounds great.”
“Problem is,” the guy continued, picking toast crumbs from his beard, “it’s hard to catch a train right now. It’s the Mela, you know?”
Ami shook her head. She didn’t know.
“Kumba Mela,” Celeste spoke up. “I just found out, too. Apparently, it’s a pilgrimage to the Ganges that happens every twelve years—a really big deal. The whole country’s on the move. The trains are booked for weeks, and don’t even try to get near Allahabad.”
Ami looked down at her fingers.
“That’s why we all decided to head south,” Celeste continued. “We all met here this morning and figured the best plan is to get away from the Ganges. Should be more mellow in Pondicherry.”
Ami wondered if she’d ever been that fluid, that able to meet people and make plans on the spot. She hadn’t thought of any of these obstacles.
Celeste’s gang of hippies and would-be Sadhus chatted away while Ami nibbled her samosas in silence. When she finished, she left a twenty-rupee note on the table and slipped away, waving over her shoulder to Celeste, who was braiding the hair of the woman beside her.
There was nothing to do but try to get a ticket anyway, and hope the hippy was wrong.
Dev woke late in the morning, stretched out on his narrow bed and wiped sleep from his eyes. The other drivers had already left, busy on jobs, picking up tourists and taking them to see the sights in Delhi.
Main Bazaar, madam. You buy nice Pashmina shawl. I take you to my uncle’s shop—very nice shop, good price.
Dev shook the thought out of his head. Sometimes it got old, the same tired lines over and over. Like a dance he’d grown tired of, but still had to dance. He threw his legs over the edge of the bed and rolled out, barefoot, onto the cold concrete floor. He hopped on one foot, then the other, gathering his pants from where they folded on a chair, and slid them on. He’d go by his sister’s house, see about staying with her a few days until he got another job, and leave his laundry with the dhobi wallah.
Someone had left a bar of pungent Chandrika soap on the sink. Dev washed his face and hands, then wetted his hair and slicked it back with a comb. He shaved, using a disposable razor, and examined his reflection turning right and left, looking for defects.
“It’s important to be neat and tidy at all times,” the boss was always saying. He required all drivers to wear short hair and a clean shave, or a trimmed moustache—except for the Sikhs, who were allowed their top knots, turbans and rolled beards. The boss always wore a suit and neck tie, a practice Dev was glad he didn’t have to endure. Maybe someday, when he owned his own travel agency, his own fleet of cars. But not now when his job was driving through the thick of the heat, racing across Rajasthan at midday.
Heat. Dev smiled to himself, thinking of summer in the middle of winter. He repacked his small bag and left the room, locking the door behind him.
(image from www.kumuka.com)
The main bazaar was passable, but barely. By late morning, the streets were crowded with every sort of person, conducting every sort of business. Portly men smoothed their vests over their prolific stomachs, haggling over bidis, expensive watches, sets of bracelets for their daughters. Women in wildly patterned saris sought out the best bunches of carrots, potatoes, bags of basmati rice. Old grandmothers shuffled past teenagers lounging on their motor scooters. Boys combed and recombed their glistening hair, posing like movie stars or wrapping their arms around other boys, cuddling against each other the way they weren’t allowed, but longed to, with girls.
Hawkers sold everything from lengths of sari silk, intricately carved sandalwood sculptures and packets of bindis, to the socks women wore with their sandals—the big toe held in a separate compartment—and industrial strength bras and panties. And all the peddlers were men, of course. Even the bra seller. He looked out over his wares as if he was oblivious to the rows of high-waisted white panties spread across his cart, twirling the ends of his moustache between his thumb and index finger.
Ami ducked into the first travel agency she came to.
“Madam, yes, your friend is telling the truth,” the man behind the desk informed her, looking up from his computer. His hair was neatly combed, his moustache trimmed, and her wore a tie with his crisp, white shirt. He made Ami feel at ease, even as he offered the bad news. “I can make you a train reservation for next week. Maybe you will stay in Delhi and see the sights.”
“No, it’s too cold,” she whined. “I expected India to be warm this time of year.”
“It’s most unusual, this cold spell,” he answered agreeably. “But this will pass in a week, maybe two.”
“I’m only in India for three weeks,” Ami admitted. “I was hoping to see some of the countryside. Rajasthan.”
The man nodded empathetically.
“Maybe I can take a bus?”
“Bus is not leaving today. Maybe in two days you can reserve a seat on the bus.” He typed into his computer.
Ami slumped back in her chair and felt slightly ill. Already the trip was too difficult.
“One thing, Madam. Maybe you would like to hire a driver?”
“A driver?”
“Yes, a private car. The driver will take you to Rajasthan. To every place you wish to visit. The driver will also find nice hotels for you.”
“I have a guide book,” Ami said defensively. Weren’t drivers for old people? Did she look old?
“Yes, then you will suggest a nice hotel and the driver will take you there. No carrying your luggage, no worrying with trains or busses.”
Ami had to admit it sounded sort of nice.
“How much?” she asked.
“For all of Rajasthan—Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Udaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Ajmer—also two nights camel safari for you…” The man smiled and wrote a figure on a piece of paper, sliding it across the desk to her. “One week’s rate,” he said slyly.
Ami glanced at it, and her heart sunk. She shook her head. “Too much.”
“Okay, Madam.” The easy smile beneath the moustache. “Tell me your budget.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted helplessly. “I hadn’t thought of it. I was planning to take the train.”
“Yes, madam. Tell me, what sort of accommodations do you like? Five star hotel?”
She shook her head. Couldn’t he just look at her, one day in India and already disheveled, and know she wasn’t staying in the Taj Hotel? “Budget accommodations, I guess.”
“Maybe five hundred rupees a night? A nice room with bath?”
She nodded. That sounded good. No lice.
He scratched his head, took out his calculator, and devised a new figure. The number was still large, but as Ami looked at it she felt a certain sense of relief flooding her.
“Only one night on the camel safari,” she said. “And are you sure the driver is safe? I’ve heard drivers in India are…”
“Yes madam.” The man smiled. “Some drivers are crazy. This one is a very good man. He is driving with no accidents for ten years. Perfect record.” He amended the figure and typed it into the computer. “I am only needing a credit card number and your reservation will be complete.”
Ami dug her MasterCard out of her money belt, arranged to meet the driver later that afternoon for a tour of Delhi—a trial run, really—and gratefully put her trip into the hands of someone else. Things suddenly looked brighter.
(image from www.cache.virtualtourist.com)
Celeste packed her bags at Hotel Vivek, yanked an extra thick sweater over her head and silently praised herself for her foresight in not ditching the woolen garment in Thailand. The guy she’d been with at the time had taken one look at the bulky item popping out of the top of her pack, and rolled his eyes. She wasn’t high maintenance, though. She wasn’t like those fresh-faced yoga groupies, flocking to India for twelve day retreats with gurus of questionable repute.
No, Celeste knew how to take care of herself. And she knew a thing or two about travel. Two years on the road, traveling first on a round-the-world ticket and now just on what ever whim possessed her.
Outwardly she made a point of scoffing at the spiritual seekers she crossed paths with. What did they know about spirituality? Obviously nothing if they thought they could absorb that, the very heart of a culture, on a two-week trip. But inside she sometimes envied them, their comfortable lives and their sense of wonder at encountering the discomforts of traveling.
For her, there was only moving. Only that in-between feeling. Dirty hair, dirt under the nails, the ever-present vague discomfort of intestinal upset. In truth, she was looking forward to hanging out at Auroville for a little while. Maybe she’d get her own place to stay. Maybe she could chill for a couple months, even longer. There was no rush to get anywhere anymore.
Celeste closed the door to her room and stopped off at Ami’s door, knocking lightly and waiting for a response. None came. She waited another minute, then continued her way toward the reception desk. Ami was hard for her to figure—not that they’d really spent any time together, but Celeste liked to think of herself as a good judge of character.
The thing about Ami was she presented no particular agenda, which was troublesome. She wasn’t a yoga groupie, a spiritual seeker or a back packer. She was too straight to fall into the hippie traveler category, and too alone to be any sort of student or cultural tourist.
Maybe she’s doing research, Celeste finally decided. Anyway, she’ll be fine. It’s not like I can help out everyone I meet who’s out in the world for the first time, right? She returned her key to the desk clerk, who turned away from his Bollywood flick with a flash of white teeth.
“Madam is checking out?”
“Yep. I’m heading south.”
“Your friend, too?” He pointed at the stairs down which Celeste had just dragged her bags.
“No, she has some other plans.”
“Okay, I should say good bye for you?”
“Yes, can you?” She smiled and gave him a twenty-rupee tip, then swung her pack onto her shoulder and pushed her way out into the alley, navigating back to the café where her new friends were waiting.
(image from www.travelblog.org)
By mid-day, Delhi was thick in smog. A ghastly, noxious choking gas that burned the nostrils and made the eyes run. Travelers returned from India with tales of picking black nuggets of crusted snot from their nostrils at the end of a day in Delhi. Those who lived there protected themselves as best they could, some wearing surgeons masks or mouth and nose coverings fashioned from bits of flannel. Others, caught off guard, wrapped the edge of a scarf or sari across their faces.
Traffic seemed like utter madness to the untrained eye—all those vehicles converging without the aid of western stoplights. At the roundabouts, lorries, motor scooters and bicycle rickshaws swarmed together, and then, God willing, separated again and went on their way. All executed, of course, with an obscene amount of horn blowing, because the Indian horn is not so much a warning device as a turn signal. When one vehicle comes along side another and is preparing to pass, the horn is blown vigorously. Never mind frayed nerves, or the mind-numbing noise pollution. That’s how it was done.
To the trained eye, however, the same scene was not so much chaos as an intricate dance. A snake, of sorts. That’s how the traffic moved—like a snake, undulating and weaving. One only had to let go of focus, relax, and give into the motion. Then the vehicles danced, swayed, flowed together and apart.
And if a person, a traveler, learned to flow with the traffic in that way, learned to see it as a serpentine ballet instead of a disorderly nightmare, then one began to unravel the secret of being in India.
But few travelers grasped that concept, especially on the first trip.
Instead, it was white knuckles all the way to the temple, and then the maniacal gauntlet from the car through the throng of beggars and touts to the door of the temple. Then, sweet relief inside the gates as serenity descended with the wafting clouds of Nag Champa.
Walled away from the noise and hurry of Delhi, a palace here, a fort, a shrine, a temple through which devout Hindus shuffle their bare feet against the cool tiled floor. Plump women with grey-streaked hair pulled back from their stern faces as they glide toward an alter with a coin or a blossom. Their barrel-chested husbands offering sweets to a sadhu, receiving the blessing on bended knees, rising and rejoining their wives as they’ve always done—as they’ll continue to do.
In the crowd, here and there, a few gangly tourists make feeble attempts to blend in, to appear, if not religious, at least stoic. The wives steal disdainful looks from the corners of their eyes. Hairy white legs in shorts. Disgraceful. And the foreign women, sloppy in jeans, wrinkled t-shirts, their hair disheveled. What would they think, one woman wonders, smoothing her shawl across her ample bosom, if we came to their country and visited their churches in our dirtiest clothes? She slides on, picking up her chant on her prayer beads.
But there is sanctuary. The travelers feel it through their thick socks as they skim along the floor. They breath in lungs full of the incense-scented air and train their eyes on the praying sadhus swathed in orange robes, on the gold-leaf mosaics and the garishly painted idols of Rama and Sita. They force the images into their minds so that they might carry some piece of the journey home with them. Outside of the temple, on a marble veranda, a girl looks up and spies a bright green parrot in a tree.
She’s a million miles from anything remotely familiar, and something inside her is singing.
He wasn’t what she’d expected—which seemed about right. Ten years of perfect driving, the tour guide had promised, which, in Ami’s mind, added up to a man her father’s age. A portly, comfortable man, perhaps a Sikh with a tightly wound turban and a kindly smile. A man in a Mister Rogers-type cardigan with a jolly laugh.
But the man sitting on the hood of the black Ambassador outside the tourist office was none of those things. He was young, to start. Not a teenager, but certainly not a middle aged man made wise by life’s experience. He was wearing a fleece jacket, much like Ami’s, and a pair of track shoes with his khaki slacks. And he was frowning slightly. As she approached, she noticed a deep line between his eye brows, the sort of crease that comes from worry.
Damn it, she thought, then put on her best face and extended her hand. “Hello.”
“Madam Ami,” he answered, pumping her hand, still frowning. He pronounced her name Ah-mee.
“It’s Ay-mee,” she corrected.
“Sorry, Madam. Ay-mee,” he repeated, looking worried. “I am called Devesh.”
“Devesh,” she repeated dutifully.
“You may call me Dev,” he said shyly. “Many people are calling me Dev.”
“Okay.” She slid into the back seat, and he jogged around to the driver’s door, hopping in.
“I am giving you tour of Delhi?” he asked over his shoulder.
She nodded. At least she’d get an idea for his driving skills. If he did anything crazy, she’d return to the tourist office first thing in the morning.
But Dev proved to be a competent driver, maneuvering the complex and apparently random Delhi traffic with the ease of a pro. He delivered her safely to the India Gate, the Red Fort, Jama Masjid and finally back to her hotel.
“Madam, what is your good name?” he asked, turning around in his seat to face her.
“My good name?”
“Yes, your proper name.”
“It’s Ami,” she replied, confused.
“This is not your pet name?”
She understood then. “No, it’s my proper name. You can call me Ami. Many people are calling me Ami,” she said with a smile. “Will you pick me up at this hotel in the morning?”
“Yes,” he answered, with no trace of a smile. “We must be leaving early. Six o’clock.”
“Six?” She was alarmed.
“Okay, okay. Seven o’clock.” He turned back, ending the conversation, and flipped on the battery-powered plastic shrine on his dashboard. All around the glow-in-the-dark figure of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of prosperity, garish red and green lights began blinking like a Christmas flea market.
There was no way to respond to that, so Ami slid out of the car and watched as Dev pulled away.
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