Urson - Way out in India: Travels in a Curious Land

INDIA

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No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher.

Meryl Urson, 2015

Although none of the people or places described in this book is imaginary, occasionally the real names have not been used to protect the individuals privacy.

First published in 2015 by

Porcupine Press

PO Box 2756

Pinegowrie, 2123

South Africa

www.porcupinepress.co.za

ISBN: 978-928276-31-9

Kindle Edition

Produced by Porcupine Press

INDIA

Travels in a
Curious Land

MERYL URSON

To Arnie for journeying with me and to my wondering, wandering children.

Acknowledgements

In the writing of this book I have received so much support, firstly from my dear husband Arnie, who provided the most patient technical support to bolster my limited computer literacy. He also listened to my reading of passages, chuckled at the right moments and took the photographs, sitting with me indoors on sunny weekend afternoons, selecting the best ones for the book.

Thanks also to my children, the Vardi family and to my friends for their encouragement all the way, and of course thanks to the team at Porcupine Press, especially Gail Robbins and Clare-Rose Julius for their professionalism, commitment and warmth during the process.

Photographs by Arnold Urson

TAXI? HE SEEMED A decent chap, the driver, bobbling his head and wrapped up in the deep freeze of a Darjeeling winter. And the car was clearly solid and beloved.

How much to the airport, to the Embassy Airport Hotel, Friday?

He gave the fee.

Do you know where it is, the Embassy?

We took his half-moon head weave as a yes, and with the date and time on his card tucked into my woolly gloved palm, we plunged into Kungas for a bowl of steaming momos.

Wheeling back and forth down the Himalayan hairpin bends two days later, we smiled nauseously. These seventy kilometres would take three hours and more. The little car bumped along as valiantly as the drivers English while tea plantations, rowdy foliage and tidy villages all rolled by in a scroll of dust and colour.

A few minutes from the airport, amid the usual honking and tooting, the driver drew to a sedate sort of halt.

Driver geography conference, I whispered to a frowning Arnie.

Well, he hasnt got a GPS.

After a futile yell by our man to the nearest stationary colleague, the conference waxed gravely telephonic before the driver turned to us.

You said Embassy Hotel was at airport, he intoned, clicking the red phone button. Its back to Darjeeling more.

You said you know the place, Arnie countered.

I know the place now, but cannot take you there.

Why not? My voice wobbled a tad.

I have to take you to Darjeeling more. Put you on three-wheeler.

Three-wheeler? A squeak escaped me as a jumble of skinny legs and weathered faces pedalled triangularly by, powering passengers along in the chaos of cars and trucks. And then, oh then, there was our luggage to be lugged. I defaulted to pidgin English under pressure. How far Darjeeling more?

The driver waggled his head. I twitched my India twitch and gazed my India gaze, agitated, through the window.

Darjeeling More, a roadside sign responded, 7 km.

What is Darjeeling More? I ventured.

A Johnson.

Right.

At the junction another bawl from the front seat summoned a tuk-tuk for us, with its driver bellowing back, spitting and reluctant to transport us to the elusive Embassy for less than his monthly salary because the price would include an engine.

A fee finally fixed, the luggage was loaded into the rickshaw and we puttered back the way wed come, ploughing into the clogged and colourful little lanes of Siliguri, the town eighteen kilometres from the airport. Down a particular lane the driver stopped suddenly for no apparent reason, until above a hole in a wall a sign appeared: Embassy Hotel. Outside in the street the locals gathered to gawk at us as we tiptoed over a large pile of mud, surely laced, from the aroma, with something less fragrant.

I cant do this, I mumbled, but Arnie didnt hear me. Too many cycle rickshaws were honking their enematic horns that sucked and squawked like donkeys smoking cigarettes.

But then two steps away beyond the Embassys glass doors, as India does at times, she turned a hundred and eighty degrees, engulfing us in a modest hall of marble quiet, orderly, cool with a duo of saris rustling behind the front desk.

Welcome to the Embassy, the receptionists smiled with that crinkly radiance that crumples resistance. And bobbled their heads just to make sure.

IF YOURE serious about exploring India, expect a few rides like this one and adventures contained in such pursuits as road crossing. Its not for the faint-hearted, this country. Its too kaleidoscopic and contrary for our ingrained systems of order. But if its adventure youre after, colour, food so delicious it will wrench grunts from you in public, people so sweet that a conversation will taste like kulfi; if its a surprise several times an hour and the kind of endearing simplicity embodied in treadle sewing machines and bicycle bells that go tring, then pack your bags not too heavily, though. You never know when you might end up on a three-wheeler of one kind or another.

And when people ask you why on earth youd spend your time wandering the land of crowds and garbage, youll probably just shrug and giggle maybe even waggle your head; because why would you spend your holidays eating curried everything for breakfast and enduring high-intensity jostling when you could be sprawled out on a beach without hawkers or skiing sanitised mountain slopes?

Ask anyone why theyd visit India, and those who didnt run for cover at the first leper tapping on their legs for alms, will generally smile in a wistful way and cross over to incoherence. So what is it that draws those who love it back to its chaotic bosom?

The first thing is that it is otherwise. That is the last thing, too, and almost everything in between. So many aspects of it are totally foreign to Westerners, from the pavements that we understand are for walking on, which traders clog in cross-legged oblivion; to toilets that we understand as polite porcelain chairs. Quite reconfigured in India to two footholds straddling the depths, they reconfigure us, crouching and cursing and realising with disarming suddenness that weve taken our conveniences for granted.

And this is the crux of the matter. When everything is unfamiliar, air, water, food, shelter and everything else, we wake up. I mean, we WAKE UP. Senses are primed. Whats that strange smell? Whats that man bleating for? (Calm down, hes only calling his scrap metal wares, wheeling his barrow along). Look at the pink on that sari! Its making my teeth chatter. And, hey, is that guy seriously going to eat that dosa all on his own? Oh, God, hes crushing it to death with his hand. Wheres the cutlery and why is a goat browsing on the pot plants outside the restaurant?

At every turn there are moments like these. After just a few of them the brain starts dancing, and the head starts spinning and, because of that, youd better watch out when you cross a road.

I FELL IN love with India vicariously, via tales of a dear friends long sojourns there from Kashmir to Goa, from palm-thatched beach huts through long train journeys to Himalayan beauty.