What Country

I go to the temples now, the “Sacred Spaces,” that I came to do Important Research on, and albeit beautiful, they don’t heave at me the way they did when I arrived. The first few days in India and I drank them up like a man dying of exposure reaches for a recently issued wool blanket. When I first got to Ajanta, never mind that I hadn’t slept all night, my first order of business was a half hour rickshaw ride up to the View Point. The teary-eyed reverie over the photograph I’d longingly stared at for over a year in Providence, longing to be there, was right in front of me. Naturally my reverie was interrupted within forty-five seconds not by one, but five men trying to coerce me into looking at the tiny quartz and amethyst gems they’d chipped away in the jungle, or found while plowing their farm, actually pulling on my elbow. The best way to start a conversation with a tourist is, as every Indian knows, to ask “What country?” There are several variations on this question: “Your Country Name?” the well-educated, “Good Sir, may I ask your place of origin?” the use of the complex English word ‘from,’ “You Come From?” the more colloquial “You From?” et cetera. All pronounced as proper nouns strung together with no formal connection, like “Salt Lake City.”

When I got here I was on a mission. Now all I want to do is sleep. Read. Watch Indian TV. I long to be back in New York City where you have to be a raving lunatic wearing an enormous hot dog costume for someone to look at you, and even then ... God forbid talk to you. I imagine walking down the airy hallways of JFK, “Moving walkway – please step down,” glass and Christmas wreathes glinting. Perhaps stopping to use the bathroom, marvelling at how I can actually see my reflection in the clean blue tiles, and the suction on a flush reminds you of your airplane cabin losing pressure. All there is on TV are Christmas films, huge marble tiled expanses of shopping malls, Christmas shopping. Everyone bundled up in big coats, smiling through lipstick lips, big plastic bags! I haven’t seen a plastic bag bigger than my hand in months! Another marvel in American movies is the shininess of everyone’s car. Desperate House Wives drive sleek, seven-seater SUVs that look like they just drove out of the show room. No dust, no gravel, only impossible mazes of highways, uninterrupted asphalt.

Will I miss these people? What country? What country? Where are you going? The beauty of this place is perferated with unbroken accusatory stares, rickshaw-wallahs following you out of train stations, tailors looking up from their sewing machines, literally stopping what they’re doing to stare, children dropping their cricket bats, men calling across the street What country? What country? like they’d never seen a white person before. Maybe they’re confused. I do happen to share some resemblance to Matt Damon. Or like they just spotted the brand new model, Walking ATM­­. The stares happen in the most private moments. At the public urinal men lean over to see what a white guy’s looks like, at the cigarette stand men crowd around to see how much cash I’ve got in my wallet. I try to imagine what they imagine will happen if they talk to me, con me into looking up, even a glance at their shop will suffice­­­­—they’re out of their chair, awake, ready to sell. I imagine turning around, a huge grin on my face, “Oh, you have a rickshaw? Will you take me somewhere?” and reaching into my pockets and hurling fistfuls of 500 Rs. notes gleefully into the air­—better yet, American dollars. “No change! All for you!” I would shout.

The earliest train from Ahmedabad to Bhuj with any availability left Friday night at 2:10 AM; so I booked a ticket for the Kutch Express three days in advance. I left the restaurant that night in time to pack, giving myself enough time to leisurely take in Die Hard With A Vengeance, the only Die Hard film not set at Christmas. I paid my bill when I got to the hotel, before I packed; the night manager told me the Kutch Express is typically on time, and there’s no need to worry about getting out of the hotel, because there’s 24-hour reception. Departing the hotel, I woke up the two men sleeping on the floor in front of the door, and the boy removes a broom stick from the swinging door’s handle to ‘unlock’ it for me. Twenty-four hour reception. I left for the train station leaving myself loads of time to peruse the various chai stalls, the omelet stations that roam up and down the crowded concrete platforms. I arrived at the train station forty minutes before my train was meant to depart. The massive digital sign board flashed Gujerati, then Hindi, and finally English:

9302 Kutch Express – Delayed – Arrives 2:45 AM.

Okay, no problem. I order a Black Coffee 15 Rs. (distinguished from Coffee 7 Rs., Milk Coffee 10 Rs., and Espresso 20 Rs.) I have to wade through a sea—I’m not exaggerating—of sleeping people, which blanket the whole lobby. I sit on a cement divider in front of the train-station’s huge terminal, open to the street, smoking.

It’s not long before I’m approached by a beggar, with jet black, plaster-straight dirt-caked hair, wearing shorts and sandals that reveal dirt-caked feet. What country? Being two o’clock in the morning, I tell him, “Go away.”

“What do you mean Go Away?” He starts walking away, repeating Go Away under his breath, doubles back and advances on me. “This is MY country, not yours!” He vapidly gestures to the concrete divider I’m sitting on, “This is mine!

“You tell me Go Away!” his hand extended to me in fury, fingertips floating an inch above my forehead. Having heard the commotion, three police officers with standard-issue wooden batons advance on him from the lobby. Also having heard the commotion, half of the train station is now staring at the two of us (me, sitting, smoking, him standing, waving his arms). I motion to him to turn around, to alert him the police are coming; he doesn’t. In fact, his gaze doesn’t break from me even after the first baton slap to the back of his thigh. Now a car has stopped behind the divider, and its two (fat, rich, Hindu) drivers are standing and watching as well. The baret-wearing brown-uniformed police officer, flanked by two cohorts, has had enough and yanks the guy away by the collar. No one’s gaze has moved from me, sitting in what feels like an auditorium. The huge lobby, open to the street, is begun with a fleet of steps, not that dissimilar from an ampitheater; it’s certainly big enough. I’m on stage.

The two fat, rich, shiny-car owning Hindus approach me. What country?

Heavily shaken, my coffee cup and cigarette still in hand, feeling something in between guilt (Should I have just told him ‘USA’?) and a burrowing hatred of India and everything about it, wishing I was home Christmas shopping rather than sitting in a smelly train station strewn with hundreds of sleeping yatris (travellers), I reply, “Look, I’ve got half the train station staring at me, would you just leave me alone?”

It takes some serious convincing, but I manage to look tired enough and angry enough, muttering words like “nutcase” and “finenow,” for them to back into their car and drive off. On their way back, the police officer’s glance at me. I give them a half-namaste (right hand raised to forehead vertically) half-“Thank You” half-“Hey How’re You.” They give me a half-smile and a curt nod.

At 2:30 AM I’m a little nervous, so I don the standard Distressed Tourist face and approach a few railway officials on Platform No. 1, my ticket outstretched to them desperately. They assure me my train will depart before three, and that it’s leaving from Platform No. 3. So I head over there, taking my time to observe a chai-wallah in his element, boiling the milk, mixing the spices, all in a delicate martial art of hand movements, one’s he’s taken the last twenty years or more to master. I head up onto the “fly over,” the huge walkway perpendicular to the rail lines, and take the steps down to Platform No. 3 and 4.

There’s nothing on Platform No. 3, no one waiting, no train; only three guys sleeping on a haystack-sized pile of shipment bags. They tell me the train has already left.

Sure enough, back on Platform No. 1, a closer inspection of my ticket reveals that I’m travelling to Bhuj, not Mumbai, and was meant to get on the 9301 Kutch Express, which would obviously not be on the LED screen because it arrived and left on time, at 2:10 AM. It’s now 3 AM. The 9301 left on time. The 9302 is delayed. They tell me the next train to Bhuj departs at 6:10 AM.

After some commotion and being sent to three different windows, a man at Counter No. 22 helps me cancel my ticket to have a fifty percent refund (the IRP equivalent of two US dollars). I show him the number written on the back of my first and now useless ticket and ask him to book the train for me. He has me write out a slip, hands me a train ticket, 100 Rs., even gives me five 10 Rs. notes change so I can pay the rickshaw to get back to my hotel. They wake up, laboriously ‘unlock’ the door, wave me in, groaning. They hand me the key.

Back in my room, I discover the train ticket Counter No. 22 gave me is merely a receipt for having cancelled my last train ticket. The poor boy I woke up downstairs rings my doorbell. I open the door to discover he has the check-in book in hand; he wants me to reenter my Passport and Visa Number. I tell him “Go to sleep,” and close the door. The phone starts ringing. “You Check Out, New Entry, Now!” the man’s voice yells through the receiver.

“It’s three in the morning. I’ve already paid you for tonight. Goodnight.” I hang up the phone.

I can’t sleep. I get out my cell phone and set the alarm for 5 AM. 5 AM – get there at 5:30 AM – book the ticket – board the train – sleep. I still can’t sleep, I just keep hearing the crack of the police officer’s baton on the homeless man’s ass, and wonder if I’m an ugly American. I read my book under the dim florescent light and listen to the fan clinking against the hole in the styrofoam ceiling tile it sticks through.

I’m back at the train station at 5:30. This time my train really is late. The Deputy Station Manager tells me it should be here at 7. At 7 the Deputy Station Manager gets on his walky-talky, speaks a few words in Gujerati, and tells me the train will arrive at 7:30. This process continues for another three hours. Every half hour I walk to the Deputy Station Manager’s office (he’s the only guy who speaks decent English) and he tells me it will be here in a half hour. Then there’s confusion about platforms. “Platform No. 7,” he tells me at 8:00, but the Puri – Ahmedabad Express is sitting on Platform No. 7, and no one is going to Bhuj, so I trudge all the way back to his office on Platform No. 1. He tells me Platform No. 6, and the train will arrive at 8:30. Then 9. Let’s not even mention what it’s like going to the bathroom in the train station.

At 9:15 an anonymous (labelled only in Gujarati, which is very irregular for India) train arrives on Platform No. 6, and a ticket collector tells me this one is going to Bhuj. “Are there any berths in Sleeper Class available,” I ask, dreading the idea of sitting, packed like sardines in General Class. He replies, “Whole Train Available.” I laid down and didn’t wake up until we got to Bhuj at 4:00 PM., with the exception of being poked awake by the ticket collector, who wanted 380 Rs. ($10 US) to upgrade my ticket, the lunch man who wanted to know if I wanted a thali, and then again by the lunch man who wanted 30 Rs. (75 US cents) for the thali. And of course the precocious twin girls and their family sitting across from me, signing the theme from Om Shanti Om.

“Do you like Shao Khan?” all the little girls always ask me.

It doesn’t stop in India. The lunch man on the train wakes me up to ask me if I want food. Two in the morning at the train station: every time I walked toward the exit three guys would attach themselves to me “Where You Go? Hotel? Rickshaw?” I’m sorry, did a train just arrive? Or do you think I’ve been waiting around on Platform No. 7 since the last one got here?

Three in the morning, and Counter No. 14 won’t sell me a ticket even though he’s not working with anyone, I have to go to Counter No. 22, where there’s four guys trying to squeeze their faces into the small circular hole in the window to talk to the bored man on the other side, leaning back in his chair. No matter how Distressed Tourist you look, the cursory glance at your ticket—regardless how nice his suit is, or how well he can speak English—he still gives you the wrong information. There’s never a moment to let your guard down. Three in the morning, the hotel manager thinks he can get more money out of me, so he asks me to check in and reenter my numbers so he can ask me for another 300 Rs.; even if you can lock the door, they call your room phone. No escape.

I’m woken up at the end of the line, porters piling on the train, their heads wrapped in traditional scarves used to keep heavy luggage on their heads. These are old men. Swamped by rickshaws outside the station, there’s no time to think, you just pay. Always have them drop you off at a tourist site near the hotel – never the hotel itself. He drives me right up to the Aya Mahal (the Palace of Mirrors). It’s a 17^th century Romanesque cathedral made of sandstone and marble, flanked on every side by Moghul ruins, a 10^th century style Indian temple stands huddled in a corner of the grounds, and on the fourth edge of the scrubby garden, what looks like a 20^th century building stands, also in ruin. The combination of different architecture is dizzying, and so are the hundreds of pigeons circling overhead, cooing from the various rooftops of the cathedral. Ah yes, this is what we tourists suffer for, to see shit like this.

I walk outside and stumble across a huge lake, the sun setting in a perfect golden disc over the lake. To be blunt, I knew nothing about Bhuj before I arrived, I just came; I didn’t know there was a lake, or a cathedral, or anything else besides a train station, actually. I walk past four old men smoking ganga out of a small pipe, they smile amiably and offer me some, and I politely decline. A man introduces himself as Ganesham (he translates it to Black River in English) smiling broadly. They test my name, “Stee-pan,” “Stee-pun,” “St’pun.” I sit on the lake, marvelling at the amount of fish there are in it. This might be the first clean water I’ve come across in all of India. There’s a woman down the way throwing bits of bread to them, and they’re swarming around her; the lake is teeming with fish, rare fishing birds, women pulverizing their laundry on tiny ghats. The sun floods the scene brilliant orange, red. I’m overtired, stunned by the beauty of this tiny city I wasn’t anticipating, almost moved to tears.

Ganesham arrives behind me, smiles, and offers to take me for a spin on his bike. At first I decline, but when he says “Five minute, five minute, around lake, no right turn, only left,” I reluctantly accompany him to his bike. The city opens up, starts rushing past, the lake glinting in the sunlight, everyone laughing as we rush past, the traffic, Ganesham pointing out various temples and ancient buildings to me as we fly by. And that’s when the tears come. After all that, all the disinformation, all the aggression, people vying for my money like food stamp collection day during the Depression starts to fade away. This guy wants nothing more than to show me his home city, where he was born, where he grew up, where he’s lived his whole life, where tourists only recently discovered, the Capitol of the Kutch, Bhuj, a city so small not even India knows it. And it was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Ganesham’s guileless gesture.

It’s moments like these that can only happen in India.