This entry is greatly overdue! I arrived safely home to English soil on Wednesday (12th) morning at around 9am, reeking of curry! I hadn’t realised that the rich smells of Delhi dust and spices rub off on you (as Ruth and my mother noticed on the journey home from the airport) and they stuck with me for some hours after my return. Like fading echoes of that fantastically exuberant country. I now miss it terribly! It has actually taken some time to settle back into the swing of western life which greeted me as quite an unexpected culture shock. It’s obviously not nearly so severe as on my first arrival in India; but I certainly felt the gravity of how very different the rhythm of life is in this country. It took a little readjusting.
Well I survived the arduous railway expedition to the very southern extremity of India and I am glad to say it was better than I could have hoped. That is despite having to endure some encroaching “best friends”, a bomb scare and being groped by a eunuch (a slightly disturbing experience)! Other than these few incidents, the train was comfortable and very entertaining. I was aboard the Karnataka Express which rolled out of New Delhi Station at about 9:15pm on Friday the 31st August bound for Bangalore. Due to arrive there a gruelling 42 hours later! During the night time the train was thankfully quiet and it wasn’t hard to sleep. Having said that, it was crowded as those who had no bunk reservation (the ever so slightly cheaper option) lay strewn along the filthy floor wherever there was room. I, however, had a reserved bunk which, although basic (no sheets or pillows provided) was quite comfortable. The train carriage was split into open compartments along a corridor, each with 8 bunks. The windows were unglazed and with bars across them allowing for a breeze which made up for the lack of air-conditioning. As for the doors, they may as well have been nonexistent since they were wide open for much of the journey. As I had come to expect when travelling in India, it was not difficult to keep myself occupied as the hours (and the vast, often featureless landscape) drifted by. The only problem was that a lot of the time I was the subject of fascinated attention by others in the carriage who would, when not pestering me with questions (using me as a punching bag for practicing their English), sit and stare at me for hours! I found myself during much of the daytime squashed uncomfortably into the corner of my bunk with a group of 4 “very good friends” who did succeed in making the travel slightly miserable at times. My only escape was to walk up the carriage and sit by the open door; which became my favourite pastime! From there I could lean my head out as far as I dared and enjoy the refreshing sights and smells of the passing landscape which was, although often very flat, nonetheless exotic and interesting to my eyes. And on occasion it was breathtaking as we passed great boulders, mountains and rivers.
During the daytime there was a constant stream of people wandering down the train which kept the environment abuzz with activity. They were mostly beggars, sweepers and a variety of salesmen but every so often elaborately dressed eunuchs would come clapping and singing who would humiliate and even grope you if you didn’t give them money. Let’s just say that I found this out the unpleasant way! The eunuchs in India are quite a sad story really. They are social outcasts who spend their lives dressed in women’s clothing and gain an income from begging in this degrading manner. They do, however, have a firmly accepted place in society and are expected at weddings and births where people certainly feel inclined to give them money. I am unclear about this but I think that it has something to do with the Hindu tradition. Certainly I gather that if a boy is born they come to expect greater donations than if it is a girl. Perhaps it is considered good luck; I really don’t know. They also work in groups which operate only within their somehow agreed territory; the boarders of which are not to be trespassed by eunuchs of other groups. They are quite a mystery to me and perhaps the most striking feature of Indian culture that I experienced.
Anyway, at great length I arrived in Bangalore for my sadly brief stay in India’s “Garden City”. Bangalore has perhaps the best climate of any major city in India, rested atop the southern end of the Deccan plateau at an altitude of 2000m. As a result, despite being well within the tropics, it enjoys pleasantly cooler weather even than the northern plains. On the Monday morning I met with a man called Benson; a friend of Dr Chris Gnanakan’s who spent the entire day showing me around the city on his motorbike whilst Chris was lecturing. I had such a fantastic day that I didn’t want it to end knowing that I had to leave early the next morning. I learned that Benson was founder of a very recent charity (having begun in 2004) working in the slums in Bangalore. After seeing much of the city, he then took me to see the slums and in the evening to a small bible study; one of several that he holds for slum dwellers. At the very least I will return to India to see him again since there is clearly a lot more that I can do to help a charity that has, thus far, not even considered the possibility of foreign volunteers. He was very keen on the idea of my returning to work with him next year and I certainly hope to do so. In the evening I then met with Chris and was treated to a meal at a restaurant with him and his family before driving to their house on the SAIACS campus where I spent the night. I regretted having arranged for such a short stay in Bangalore (arriving on Sunday and leaving on Tuesday seems longer on paper!). I hope that next time I can at least have the chance to see the SAIACS campus in daylight since my train the next morning left at 6:30am and I had to leave before dawn! I was treated with such kindness. Chris insisted on compensating for the days expenses and Benson even collected me the next morning and drove me to the station.
So all of a sudden I was back on the railways for another thrilling 12 hour train journey down to Cochin in Kerala. Just off the southern tip of India on the coast of the Arabian Sea. For scenery, this journey had a lot more to offer. Kerala is like nowhere else in India with its high forested mountains and extraordinary backwaters amid forests of coconut palms. Despite this I was a little disheartened on my arrival. I had arranged to meet the relatives of Sheeja (an Asha worker in Maya Puri) at the station and assumed that, since they had been provided with my train details, they would know when to expect my arrival. Unfortunately they had no idea when my train was going to arrive and I missed them altogether. To make matters worse, I also hadn’t had the presence of mind to write down a phone number for them. I waited for 2 hours or so and then, since it was getting late, flagged down an auto and went to Fort Cochin where I found a cheap guesthouse for the night. Despite initially relishing the relative peace and tranquillity of this quaint island (Cochin is spread across several) with it’s British style architecture and large Chinese fishing nets along the coast, my heart sunk at the thought of having to stay there for the rest of the week. For all its charm, it is plagued with tourists and everything is grossly overpriced. Nearly every other shop was an internet café! The next day, after exploring my surroundings, I resolved to find an STD (public phone) and ring Asha HQ to see if they could send me a number for Sheeja’s relatives. At length I got hold of Sheeja herself and contact details for her relatives and after a few baffling telephone conversations (the language spoken being Malayalam which is nothing like Hindi or English) set off into the blue with an address in mitt and a rough idea of the vague direction I should be heading. Oh the ecstasy of returning to blissful chaos! Very soon after heading off I found myself quite out of the tourist realm and into real everyday India. I could tell because all of a sudden I became the focus of curious attention from locals. For instance, on the crazy bus I was inevitably obliged to board, the school children were pointing at me (with some subtlety) and waving at friends out of the window to show off the white man they had found. The trip consisted of a bustled ferry crossing followed by a long jungle bus ride and finally, after I had at long last met with Sheeja’s relatives, an exciting car journey to their house on the backwaters.
The house was big! Like much of Kerala, it was nestled among a forest of tall coconut palms and exotic jungle greenery. At the end of their road, narrow strips of land separated channels of water and rice fields along the bank of a broad river; the picturesque Chinese fishing nets extending their delicate structures like spiders legs into the flowing water. I very soon became village sahib and attracted a gathering of curious locals wherever I went. I was treated like a king and they fed me so well that I spent much of the time uncomfortably bloated! Delicious curry, rice and chapattis were served for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I was fed coconut, sweets, cakes and bananas for snacks in between. It was quite hard to say no to their hospitality (partly because I didn’t know the Malayalam word for it!). The women of the household would cook and at meal times would never eat with the men. In fact I never saw the women actually eating. They would stand beside the table with a ladle in hand and dish up vast quantities of food at the slightest hint of a request. Sometimes, to my despair, I would be absolutely full to the brim as it was and suddenly faced with yet another mountain of rice which of course could not be eaten without yet more curry! Also, all of the food was eaten without cutlery which did take some getting used to.
It was a very grass and roots experience for me. Everything we ate was very fresh and very local produce. I spent some wonderful afternoons fishing for crabs and tiny tropical fish which were then served in curry (to my great satisfaction) within hours of being caught. We fished with makeshift rods and a couple of times with a net that took a good deal more skill; having to be balanced across the shoulders and arm and flung into the water with a graceful pirouette (having said that, my attempts could not truthfully be described as graceful!). One morning, Angush (Sheeja’s cousin who spent most of the time with me being the most fluent in English) told me we were going somewhere. I followed him; quite ignorant of his intentions. It turned out that he was inviting me to come with him down the road to the duck farm, a few minutes walk away. As we arrived, he gave me that curiously unnerving smile that Indians tend to give foreigners just before something really shocking is about to happen. A man approached us, presumably the farmer. In one hand he held a live duck by the neck and in the other a sharp pocket knife. “He is kill it!” Angush unnecessarily informed me. Before I really had a chance to process this statement, the farmer proceeded to the bow of a boat, beached nearby, and messily removed the ducks head! As you might have guessed, barely 3 hour later it was diced duck curry we were enjoying for lunch! For cultural experience during my stay in India, my week spent in Kerala was a wonderful highlight and I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to live in a family home in such an extraordinary place. I expect that someday I shall return since the family promised me a personal tour round all of Kerala if I were to return for a month on my next visit. They also said I could bring a friend along next time … interested?
So this will conclude my India journal; I hope those who have been reading it have enjoyed doing so. Of course there were many things that I did not include in the entries. Some because I didn’t feel I could do them justice. Some were too personal to share. A particularly profound aspect, thus far missing in the journal, was that of my spiritual experience. It was too deep and personal to do it justice, or make sense of it in writing suffice to say that I have never experienced intimacy so rich nor deserts so dry as in India (metaphorically speaking). Also verses such as Jesus’ words in John 12:8 “For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me” begin to make a lot more sense there.
If anyone is even considering a visit to Asha (or India in general) I can’t recommend it enough. It was, although it sounds cheesy to say, I truly life changing experience for me. You may be hard pressed to shut me up about India for the foreseeable future!
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