Understanding India (Intro to a travelogue)

Why this presumptuous title

Understanding India. Wouldn’t you say that sounds a bit like Understanding Love. Way too ambitious an aspiration.

But what the heck – look at it this way: If we start, we’ll get somewhere; if we don’t, well, we haven’t even started. So, however cheeky it may sound, I am out to understand India. Because understanding India is an extension of knowing my own self. A bit like recognizing parts of ourself in extended family. Everything we are must come from somewhere. So this is an attempt to know better my own self through exploring the region I come from.

Single and footloose, and in my mid-30s, there are questions I am seeking answers for.
In a society in transition, is marriage, on which our society is based, still going strong or is it crumbling as we are seeing more and more in the metros. On the economy front, the IIM types and techies are making millions. Cars are growing bigger and bigger. Suddenly, the great Indian middle class has wealth it had never imagined before. On the other hand, farmer suicides tell a different story, as do malnutrition deaths among children not far from India’s business capital, Mumbai.

Ramdev is all over television and art of living is the new saviour. Lot more people can be seen doing yoga and pranayama in the mornings in neighbourhood parks. Does this indicate a new revival. Middle-aged people who never learnt yoga before are now taking to it like fish to water – with desperation.

A Bangalore-based infotech company has put India on the world map, changed the way the Indian worker is seen in the West. A music composer from Chennai, a tennis star from Hyderabad, a chess grandmaster from Chennai – young Indians are giving us reason to be proud of our ability to be among the best in the world. And yet, at the same time, I find myself in suburban Kanpur meeting a group of slum women. In the mid-afternoon sun we are surrounded by more flies than I have ever seen before. Later in the day, I ask some women from another basti what they do for a living. They look at each other, share a moment’s silence before saying they brew local liquor. Somebody tells me there is so much crime and violence in their basti even the police is terrified to go there. Meanwhile, our host in Kanpur, a doctor turned administrator, waxes eloquent on the skills of awadhi cuisine to his chamchas on a working afternoon.

I wonder – what makes some of us reach for the sky, others so dreamless. The doc gives me a clue: The leader’s will determines the change. My quest begins by hitting the road – travelling by the sea along the great Indian peninsular. Then returning. Then travelling some more. Two years of extensive travel in India. The first leg self-financed, the second on work. The first gave me the luxury to be the wanderer taking off in whatever direction I chose; the second opened doors to the non-citizens: men, women, children who remain otherwise invisible otherwise. Women in sex work, injecting drug users, sexual minorities.

So I’m presenting here what I learnt: Good, bad, indifferent – here is what it is. I have to say it because otherwise it’s a debt weighing down heavily on me. I feel guilty of theft. It has taken me more than two years to put this down. What took me so long. Perhaps it was the feeling Ken Folliet describes so powerfully: ‘An art student seeking to paint a fresco’ – being so overwhelmed by the scale of the vision that making a beginning seemed so difficult. Also, it seemed as though the journey kept continuing – new truths being revealed every day; changing perspectives.

So briefly, what did I learn:

That we are a beautiful country of beautiful people. People are kind to strangers. Although we like a bit of reference, else there is initial suspicion . It feels safe to travel anywhere in India unlike what one has heard of most other places in the world today. Walking on a road I never felt scared, alone, threatened in any way – be it Imphal, Rameshwaram, Cochin or Dwarka. There was just one instance when local women in island country Diu advised me not to take a road by the sea one evening as it’s a long empty stretch. Anywhere and everywhere else, I ventured without the smallest mishap. Says a lot for a country as vast as India, where as they say pani and vani (water and dialect) changes every few miles.

By and large, there is great respect for women, more so for working women. Which meant that when I was travelling on my own I always said I was travelling on work. Many people asked me later – if travelling alone in India is safe for a woman. My experience has been be careful, lie a bit, and you should be fine. Lying is important because a woman travelling alone is an oddity, travelling on a holiday is plain weird. So I always put forth an officious demeanour.

I discovered soon enough it’s not a good idea to disclose I’m single. Travelling from Puri to Vizag on a train with a young married Marwari couple, the man couldn’t hide his surprise – how is it possible he wanted to know, that an able-bodied, able-mind woman is not married. He couldn’t hide his shock and never for a moment did it occur to him that in doing so he was being rude.

Everyone likes normal regular people who haven’t broken any code. What we cannot understand we are afraid of. The married woman we know will return back home to family and kids soon enough; the unmarried woman seems to have ‘the recklessness of the suicide bomber’ – we can never tell what’s on her mind. Also, there is the added trouble that people seem to think single means available making it that much more difficult to ward off strange men. In fact, a male friend, veteran traveler, even suggested to me before I head out – buy yourself shiny red bangles – it always helps.

So I learnt quickly to say the lines. It was an exercise in imagination to cook up names of husband and children; what husband does etc. I quickly learnt that it helped to say I have sons (not one but two), that husband is in the Army (well connected, networked – don’t take any panga), children are under 10 but not toddlers (else you have to be a witch to take off leaving small kids at home). Learning as we go what impresses people most; refining the art constantly. On the west coast – in Gujarat – people didn’t ask me if I was married, they simply assumed I was. On the ferry from Dwarka to the island of Beth Dwarka, a young couple with a small child said – how come you are traveling alone. I said I had come to Ahmedabad on work, decided to come to Dwarka ‘because not often we get the opportunity’. Unspoken is that the merit of a tirthyatra is for the benefit of the entire family. Great Indian middle class loves the pilgrim.

The only place I resisted lying on single status was with the pandas at the Puri temple. But I didn’t tell the truth either so despite them urging that the service was free I said I don’t want my visit recorded. So be it. Suddenly worried about future generations getting all confused with family history.

People are kind – they go all out to help a woman traveler. I remember hitting Karwar, west coast, Karnataka, without a hotel reservation. Karwar is an awesome 3-hour bus ride from Goa. Karnataka tourism has put out these fabulous ads with lines like ‘but for Karwar we wouldn’t have had the national anthem’, ‘the sands here inspired Tagore to pen his first play’ etc. All very bewitching and unsuspecting people fall for it. Not that the sea is not awesome – it is; and the shells larger than what one has seen anywhere else.

But, here’s the catch: There are no decent hotels on offer. One would imagine that a town by the sea will have hotel rooms looking out to the sea. I was disappointed. Lonely Planet in hand, I checked out the first hotel. Firstly, no sea view, no nothing. The more expensive rooms were okay – so I asked to have a look at the cheaper rooms. They led me through a narrow corridor on the first floor on the other side of the hotel. One of the doors was open. A board outside announced services of a palmist! I glance inside to see the fortune teller – pot bellied middle aged male, ochre robes beads, tilak and all. And I beat a hasty retreat. Strange men in strange robes as neighbours will not do. It doesn’t help that the room the boy shows me sheets with holes in them.

So, I leave my bags there, tell them I’ll be back soon, take some reccos from them where I can get a sea facing room and off I go, hopping into the first auto I see. Enter Karnataka and the language of signboards changes suddenly from English to Kannada. Men wear kumkum, women wear the orange flower in the hair, the bus has a puja with bright yellow flowers, the lungi appears. I see a non-descript building, I cannot read the board but I can tell it is a govt building. The auto man tells me it’s the PWD guest house. So we go have a chat. Yes, rooms are available – Rs 100 per day, but you must get persmission from the PWD office in town. The auto guy takes me willingly. About 11 am in the morning, the all male-office is surprised to see a female unescorted visitor. I tell them my request. First, they are bewildered. Then, they say its election time, so they are expecting guests, they need to check. A flurry of activity. Phone calls are made. A young man asks me to write an application. I do that. Couple of minutes later, he calls the guest house and I have a room.

I thought about it: The men could have said no, we don’t have room – too bad. But they made so much effort to see if it was possible to get me a room. Something like – a woman lands at your door seeking shelter – we cannot turn her away. With my metro mindset I would probably have done that if I was in their place. But they didn’t. When I reach the guest house I find the auto guy doesn’t overcharge for taking him on a spin around town, and the guest house has given me its best room.

Travel makes you see that rules change in different cultures. Paul Theroux wisdom in Journey by the Sea says the unwritten rule of bed and breakfast is to make yourself scarce during the day. You are infringing on someone else’s space, after all. In Goa, one of the only two halts during my solo journey I stayed with friends, my host Jayantbhai a 50-ish IITian, Konkani tells me on the breakfast table – return home for lunch. As most Goans, he comes home for lunch and siesta. Guided by Paul Theroux and his wisdom from travelling in UK, I want to decline but I am afraid that might sound rude. So I mumble something vague and as lunch approaches send him a text to say – sorry cant make it, am on the other end of town. Later in the evening I come to know Vrindatai, his lovely wife, had made a Konkani meal specially for me and was disappointed I couldn’t make it.

The golden rule then is that there are no rules. Travel teaches us high awareness. Arrive at a generalization and it gets turned on its head that very moment. I had just spent a week travelling in Tamil Nadu – Kanyakumari, Rameshwaram, Madurai. It had been a month on the road and this was my last leg. Judgement proclaimed: Tamilians are unfriendly, loud, noisy, inefficient. Maybe it was just the exhaustion speaking. As I was about to check out from the state tourism guest house in Madurai, the receptionist said you get a day’s stay free. She made me sign, made the effort to save my 500 bucks, a lot of money for a backpacker.

I didn’t ask for the discount, she made sure I get it. My turn to be extremely grateful, more so because a middle-aged very ordinary looking woman on her daily job has just forced me to re-think lofty opinions.