Impressions of North India

The high point of Delhi so far has been "Kake" Da Dhaba, the Punjabi diner in Connaught Place where we enjoyed a delicious, cheap, and questionably clean dinner. Mostly we are using Delhi as a base from which to explore other parts of North India.

We hired a car and driver to visit Agra and Jaipur. Aside from the Taj Mahal, which totally kicked ass, this leg of the trip was not very enjoyable. This region of India is so dependent on tourism that the pressure on travellers is overwhelming. It seems like everyone, from our driver onwards, gave us a hard sell about hiring a guide for the monuments or buying some local handicrafts. There are plenty of tourists here to rise to the bait, too. This experience has made me more conscious of how I must appear when I visit a place where I am obviously a foreigner (i.e. everywhere else in the world where I have travelled!). I would like to think I am not one of those consumerist tourists who objectifies the cultures I experience...but I probably am to some extent.

To be fair, we did have some good experiences. In Agra we stayed at an amazing place that made me love our travel agent for booking us such a good deal. For a reasonable amount in USD, we stayed at the Jaypee Palace, a 5-star hotel that is one of the best places I have ever stayed, right up there with the Royal Park Hotel in Tokyo or the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. Besides all the luxurious trappings, they have uniquely Indian features, such as monkeys on the premises. These monkeys are owned by Jaypee Palace and have been trained to scare away the wild monkeys. Hmmm...pitting creatures from the same family against each other so that another group can benefit--it appears that Indians have learned a lot from a few centuries under British control!

We also found the restaurant, Agra Hotel, that our family friends the Sarkars own. We had great Bengali food there and chatted with the very friendly owners.

A Long-Awaited Update

Since I last wrote, all sorts of things have happened, so let me work backwards.

We returned to Kolkata on a much nicer train than the one we took to Darjeeling. It was a 2-tier AC sleeper, which meant that we did not need to open the windows (and thereby admit mosquitoes into our cabin) and that we were provided with clean pillows, sheets, and blankets.

After a quick stop at my aunt's flat in Kalighat, we boarded an evening train for Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, directly west of West Bengal. My uncle and aunt (Jehtu and Jehtima in Bengali) live there. Jamshedpur is my dad's hometown. It is a company town, built and maintained by Tata Steel. There is a lot of pollution from the factory, but my dad noticed it had cleaned up a bit.

Unfortunately at this point, we waged a violent war with Indian cuisine, with the final score being Indian Intestinal Fauna:3, Bose Family: 0. My dad, Dev, and I were all laid low by stomach upsets. It only lasted 24 hours, but our stay in Jmashedpur was pretty much ruined. One high point, though, was that my dad took us to his school at the Ramakrishna mission. We took a picture of him in his old classroom.

We returned to Kolkata and spent the holiday weekend at my maternal grandfather's brother's house in Salt Lake, a suburb of Kolkata. Salt Lake is pretty well-to-do and even a little "bougie" (the slang term for bourgoisie) with a shopping mall that reminded me of the Grove on 3rd Street--yuck! The homes here are very modern and clean, but because Salt Lake is built on marshy ground, there are lots of mosquitoes.

My grandmother arranged a family reunion on Christmas evening. I met lots of relatives I had never known about. We had a great time. We slept in the house that night, on the third floor. Around 6:30 the next morning I woke up and noticed that the bed was shaking. Hmmm--isn't that what happens in L.A. when there is an earthquake? I forgot all about it until later that morning, when news came about the two big earthquakes in Indonesia and the Nicobar Islands. We watched TV all day for updates. Our trip will most likely not be affected because we will go to the Western coast of South India. One thing I noticed is that the newspapers here included pictures of corpses, which I do not expect to see in the US, where pictorials of death seem to be more of a taboo.

We left Monday for Delhi. I wish I could say we left Monday morning, as planned, but our flight was delayed 3 hours, so we did not actually take off until afternoon. We sat in the plane for an hour before we were told to disembark and proceed to the waiting area. Airplane delays are obviously commonplace in India because I noticed that there was an engraved sign reading "Delayed Flights Lounge."

I was underwhlemed by Delhi. Everything is relative, so perhaps I would have gained a different impression if we had first landed there. Instead, my first taste of India was Kolkata, which is SO in-your-face India that everything else seems a non sequitor. Relative to my initial impression of Indian via Kolkata, Delhi was clean, quiet, orderly, and very Westernized. Curbs on the sidewalks! CNG vehicles! Painted road lanes that drivers actually use! No horns! Could this really be India? I like Kolkata more.

Our stomachs seemed to have recovered. In Delhi we ate at a restaurant that my dad remembers from 30 years ago, "Kake" Da Dhaba. Dhabas are diners/truck stops that serve awesome North Indian food, albeit in less than ideal conditions. When my dad first visited this place, it was just a roadside stand with picnic tables under a tree. Now it is a three-story building in Connaught Place. The food was delicious if not completely hygienic, and the prices were negligible. The posted menu proudly proclaimed that the cooks used only "pure desi ghee," which will explain our heightened blood cholesterol levels.

We did not experience the tsunami that claimed so many lives in Tamil Nadu, but our trip to Agra and Rajasthan has almost crushed us under a tidal wave of shameless tourism! I can't wait to go to South India...more on that later, my time is almost up at the Jaipur Internet cafe.

Hill Station Blues

Darjeeling, the queen of the hill stations, is a bit slow apparently if I have to surf the Net daily for entertainment. I am sitting in a cafe called Fiesta something in their Internet area. The cafe is located in the Mall (rhymes with Cal, the nickname for UCBerkeley that I resent--it is not the only UC anymore!), the town square. There is a stage in the middle of the Mall, and tonight it has a mural of the Nativity painted in it, and the Darjeeling Christian Council is presenting their annual holiday pageant. I hear children singing ardently about Jesus; earlier they were praising his birth while dancing disco moves. I thought I could travel to India to escape silly Christmas celebrations, but apparently I was wrong.

We checked out of the Gymkhana this morning and moved into the New Elgin, almost right next door. The Gymkhana staff warned us there was no central heating, but we did not comprehend the implications of that statement until 1 am, when even three wool blankets were not enough to keep out the cold. Even the common dining area was not heated, and it got old fast to wear our overcoats and hats while eating breakfast parathas.

The New Elgin is a Raj-era heritage property. I rolled my eyes at the 60s-period portrait of Queen Elizabeth hanging in the hall. The best news about the New Elgin is that we have an electric heater in our room. The lounge also has a full bar, so we might enjoy a nightcap before our 4 am wakeup call for Tiger Hill.

I forgot to mention that our crazy jeep driver up to Darjeeling yesterday worried me because his rearview mirror was almost completely obscured by a photo of Aishwarya Rai's eyes that he had glued onto the glass. At first I was concerned that he would not be able to see approaching traffic whilst being hypnotized by Miss World's mesmerizing blue-green eyes (how is that possible for a South Indian?), but then I realized it was a moot point because he never used his rearview mirror! Also his sideview mirrors were both folded in so that he could pass cars on the narrow road. Hopefully tomorrow's jeep driver down to Siliguri will be OK. I have heard that drivers turn the engine off to save gas and coast down the hairpins. That should be exciting.

Dev mentioned that at the Internet cafe we visited yesterday, he saw some Nepali kids looking at porn. I imagine that Internet cafe managers are much like librarians in not monitoring their patrons' surfing habits. For instance, I notice here that there is both a statue of Ganesh, remover of obstacles, and a painting of Saraswati, goddess of learning, displayed behind the routers, but no god(dess) of filtering.

My father has pointed out how the Nepali people have been continuously exploited, first by the British and now by the Indians. In Darjeeling you can see them breaking their backs hauling bags of rice and carts of milk up the steep streets of the town. In the Gymkhana all the service staff are Nepali, and they did not look dressed for the cold in their light sweaters and sandals.

I was so excited to find ONE trashcan in this town, in the Mall, with a large sign proclaiming, "Your filth contaminates our health." I knew that the plastic bag of orange peels I threw inside would immediately be poured out into the street (to be combed through first by people and then by dogs for anything scavengable), but I liked that someone cared enough to pay lip service to the environment. My father's theory is that the lowest caste (untouchables) was traditionally forced to handle garbage, so everyone still thinks of litter as "not my problem." People just throw plastic and food trash into the street without looking. This really disturbs me.

On a lighter note, we met an awesome puppy today. We were walking down a steep hill to the train station, and we saw a cute white dog in front of his house. My dad stopped to make friends with the dog, and his owners, an older Nepali couple, came out to talk. They told my dad that the dog knew how to do "namaste," and he did! He stood on his hind legs and kind of touched his front paws together. His owners said he does it even better if you offer him meat. I also took photos of some kittens down the street from Mr. Namaste Paws.

Namaste from West Bengal

Here is an update on our adventures so far in India...

We arrived in Kolkata Friday afternoon after about 22 hours in the air from Los Angeles via Taipei and Bangkok. We all needed a bath and sleep, but it took a long time to get what we wanted. First, we arrived in the middle of Kolkata rush hour traffic. Visibility was already bad because of the intense pollution in the city, and it was only made crazier by the presence of all those cars, buses, autorickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, human rickshaws (the last in the country), pedestrians, cyclists, and animals. Our cab driver tried valiantly to drive us to our graves, I mean, to our aunt's apartment in South Kolkata, but unfortunately NO ONE in the car (my other two aunts) knew how to get there. We drove in a circle for about half an hour around the Kalighat metro station, asking numerous people if they knew where this particular street was. It ended up taking 2 hours to travel 15 miles! I must keep this in mind the next time I am stuck on the 101.

We were so happy to arrive at my aunt's apartment, only to learn that NO ONE knew how to turn on the hot-water geyser. In addition, there were no towels in the place. It took an hour to figure out how to get running hot water as well as procure towels. In that time we also learned that the phone was dead. There have been so many opportunities to keep an open mind and remain flexible. And they do not end in Kolkata!

By the way, I saw my grandmother (my first mom's mom) after 20 years, which was wonderful. She wants to have a party on Christmas day so that relatives who want to meet my father, brother, and me can come. I hate being the center of attention, of course, but it might be OK if my dad and Dev can deflect the spotlight. My grandmother also told me, "Aren't you here to get married?" After I screamed, "WHAT?" she explained that my two paternal aunts have been placing ads and arranging some meetings. Like I said in the earlier paragraph, I am trying to keep an open mind about the situation, and it is kind of funny in a way!

Saturday (yesterday) we determined to go to Darjeeling. I thought that because this is the low season to visit this hill station, it would be easy to purchase tickets on the Darjeeling Mail, the "fast" train that takes 8 hours. Nope--every seat, not just 1st class A/C sleeper (the best class) was sold out. My Sona Dida (who is a librarian!) arranged for alternate accommodations on another train. This one left Kolkata at 1:30 pm yesterday afternoon and pulled in to New Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling's closest railhead, at 5:30 am today. And we were in 2nd class non-A/C sleeper, which most middle-class Indians take. So even though our seats hurt from sitting on the same seat for 16 hours, we met lots of Indian people and experienced train culture like you would not believe.

Our berth companions were a father and daughter from Sillong in Assam. They traveled 300 miles to Kolkata to see a dentist for her braces. They were both extremely nice. The girl was really quiet, a little immature for her 16 years (especially compared to American teenagers), and ate tons of junk food on the train, which I guess makes the braces worthwhile.

There was lots of junk food to be bought on the train ride because of the numerous vendors who jump on board. Most vendors board and disembark at the stations, but some of them also jump off--dangerously--between stations when the train slows down slightly. They sell everything: roasted peanuts, Indian junk food (the Bengali version of bhel puri), sandesh and other sweets, samosas (shingara in Bengali), and lots of chai tea and coffee. In addition vendors hawk "gold" jewelry gauranteed for a year, cotton saris, plastic doodads, and books. The book vendor was great because of his huge variety of print offerings. He had poetry, literature, yoga, humor, even Feng Shui (which is, guess what, feng shui in Bengali).

There were also lots of mendicants, which I was kind of prepared for but shocked by nonetheless. Blind people and crippled people struggled along the train car aisle asking for money. Here no one is afraid to come up and touch you in order to ask for your sympathy and its monetary representation, which was pretty disturbing. The people who I found most interesting are the hermaphrodites or intersex people (hijra in Bengali). Traditionally they play music and dance for money, and one of their chief societal roles is to bless a newborn baby and be paid in return. My dad told me that there were no hijras to bless me when I was born in Delhi. One tried to bless me last night, though, 32 years late.

The drive up to Darjeeling was literally a cliffhanger. Our jeep driver has beaten out our two Kolkata taxi drivers for most fucking insane driver, mainly for attempting the same moves as the city cabbies but on a steep hairpin curve with no barrier on the cliff side. But we made it here! Darjeeling is pretty charming although there is plenty of the pollution that we have seen all over West Bengal. I still cannot get over the fact that people literally throw their trash out the window without a care. On the train we threw our dinner plates out the car window along with every other passenger. There is plenty of trash around Darjeeling, too, but the air quality is so much better than down in the city.

We are staying the the Gymkhana Club, a quaint lodge with NO central heating. We are trying to convince the apathetic hotel staff to light the wood fire in our room tonight, but it is low season here and they are trying to save money. Tomorrow we plan to wake up at 4am (I am used to it because of Darlene) to take a jeep up to Tiger Hill to see the sun rise over the Himalayas (or alternatively, to shiver in the fog with a cup of the local tea in hand), and it would be lovely if the room were warm.

The people in Darjeeling are mainly Nepali, and they are beautiful. They have Southeast Asian features with dark South Asian skin. The Nepali language is basically incomprehensible to me, but I am totally charmed when I hear them speak Bengali.

More news as it happens, all. Have a great holiday if you celebrate it, othewise, have a great day off!

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Darlene leads a happy cyberexistence on Catster--where she has more friends than I have on Friendster!--but aspires to be featured on My Cat Hates You.

"Dheere dheere gaauu.n..."

If I could speak Hindi, I would change this song lyric to "Dheere dheere I will blog..."

"Dheere dheere" means "slowly." The line comes from my current favorite Hindi film song, "Dheeme Dheeme" from Zubeidaa. I think Kavita Krishnamurthy is the playback singer. On-screen lipsynching--accompanied by silly dancing--is done by Karisma Kapoor, who I used to think was really funny-looking but now (ever since this song) I think is kind of cute in a funny-looking way. As for her sister Kareena...well, what do you think?

"Dheeme Dheeme" has also been translated into English by the fine folks at BollyWHAT?