The people of Bodh Gaya

We decided that our spiritual journey through India could not be complete until we visited Bodh Gaya, the little berg where Siddhartha attained enlightenment some 2550 years ago. I would like to introduce you to some of the people we encountered while there.

The Gollum:

Within one block of our horrendously mosquito infested guest house we caught a hanger-oner. He was a scruffy man with mussed up hair and pale eyes and a bright teal windbreaker that puffed out his little frame. I made the mistake of smiling at him when our eyes met and like a little barnacle he was along for the ride.

“Where are you going? Brothers?”

We told him in the least committal way possible that we were going to catch a bus northward to Kathmandu and find some food, then we put our heads down and sought refuge in a little Tibetan restaurant. He was waiting for us out front after our meal and tried to coax us down the road to the bus stands. We didn’t really respond to his questions which sounded more like the whimpers of a child seeking attention than a full grown man. “Oh you must see this, my brothers, and then you should see this, my brothers”.

He kept trying to be our guide through the town despite our best efforts to lose him with lack of interest and ceaseless meandering. We walked up to the main square with him 5 paces ahead, looking back every few steps to assure us that he knew the way. The whole town is no more than 2 kilometers by 1 kilometer and getting lost on the main roads would be impossible. We needed no guide, but still he lingered, my brothers, my brothers. It wasn’t until we left the main temple after some 4 or 5 hours of peaceful introspection that we, upon realizing that he was still waiting for us, told him firmly that we didn’t want a guide and he needed to bug off. He did.

The Baba:

The main temple, Mahabodhi Temple, which sits on the grounds where the Buddha had been for 7 weeks, was the epicenter of the town. I sat and just soaked it all in for a couple hours. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was built around 250 B.C. and it’s huge, towering over 50 meters high. The restoration/preservation work is remarkable and the presence of devoted Buddhists repeatedly prostrating towards it from all sides generates an amazing energy.

I walked around the perimeter of the building and found the Bodhi tree nestled on the far side, its branches spidering out in every direction. This tree was a sapling grown from a tree in Sri Lanka, which was a sapling grown from the original Bodhi tree that the Buddha gazed at, unblinking, for a week. I sat in the shade that it provided and studied the faces of the meditating monks all around me. A sense of complete tranquility washed over me and I could feel the pulse of the place reverberating through my body. I sat in peace and reflected on other holy moments I have experienced: the rising of the hunter’s moon at the ranch and Philip Glass echoing through the redwood forests of California and the many scattered instances where existence has clicked briefly into focus. I was planted firmly in the present moment surrounded by an infinite expanse of potential times and spaces in every direction. It felt like the center of it all, here under this fig tree, in the southern part of the Indian state of Bihar, in the year 2008, inside my own body and mind.

I began to walk in slow thoughtful circles around the temple grounds, breathing deeply, when I caught the eyes of a man about my age feeding biscuits to the mangy dogs here and there. He took up stride next to me and asked me where I was from. -Texas. I was not in the mood for conversation, but he went into an endless tirade of words. He would ask me some lofty question, pause to catch his breath, and then continue the stream of consciousness flow before I could think to respond.

He claimed to be a leader and a listener and with wild-eyes exclaimed, “I am not a follower, never a follower, i don’t believe in religions, i want to be a destroyer of religions, here, look, i wear every sign of faith around my neck, every faith. Are you spiritual?” He was dangling his many chains in my face sporting crosses, stars of David, the pentagram, the Hindi swastika, the lotus blossom, the yin-yang, you name it, he had covered just about everything.

All the while the words hit my ears, some sticking briefly before being swept away by the next 15 in rapid-fire succession. Something about a girlfriend from Texas who gave him the fancy cell phone he periodically checked. A couple days later in a cafe, he joined us at our table, uninvited, and proudly proclaimed after a few minutes of sporadic thoughts, that he had never once kissed a girl. He was 24 and he had plenty of chances to. “I’ve had beautiful girls sitting before me completely naked, but I just ran away.”

I didn’t trust his ideas. He told me that India was beautiful, but the people of India were not because they were not trustworthy (he was of course an Indian himself). The many many many beautiful, caring Indians I have come across disproved that ugly generalization. He didn’t believe in science and wanted to destroy it too, but that didn’t stop him from explaining karma with “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” or carrying around a huge tome of science fiction stories, which he even read passages from later that day to make some point to Jacob, who was cornered in his serene solitude.

He is faithful only to humanity, or I guess you would call it Humanity because he embraces it with the excited energy of a religious zealot. There needs to be a revolution, in his opinion, to flush religions and dogmas from the Earth and he fully intends to be the catalyst, rendering all the chains around his neck meaningless.

Sandeep:

The children of Bodh Gaya are different from every kid I’ve met here in India (save the brilliant little Sikh at the Golden Temple) in that they want conversation, not cash. We were walking through the market square again, when a couple 14 year old boys ambled up to us.

-What’s up?

-Just crusin’ kid-o.

-Cool, cool. Where are you from?

They had loads of questions for us: where had we been, where were we going next, what did we think of Bodh Gaya, India, America. We were hungry so they took us to a little hole in the wall restaurant near the Tibetan refugee markets with cheap food in heaping portions. They hung around the market while we ate and then told us about their school and their hobbies as they led us along some back road back to our guest house. We promised to play some American football with them the next day and they asked us if we wanted to see their office and meet their Vice-principal, as it was on the way back to our hotel.

The office was a room on the ground floor of a mixed-use building and housed a couple desks, a computer, and Sandeep. He was exactly the kind of person I was hoping to meet in India. 22, smart, passionate about his life and trying with all his might to make a difference in his community. I got excited just watching the excitement well up on his face when he explained the various programs he was involved with and I thought for the first time here: “this could be me”. He was working with the school and with a micro-finance program called Women Helping Women as well as serving as the acting administrator for the Root Program in Bodh Gaya.

His eyes would dance when he talked about the future, optimistic in the face of some of the most daunting and deeply entrenched problems I can fathom: abject poverty, mounting debts, and lack of any significant educational infrastructure in India. He proudly showed us photos of the people he was working with and the group’s website and he urged me to help spread the word to solicit volunteers, money, and ideas to help him conquer these herculean tasks. We exchanged information and I promised to keep in touch. There were now 6 kids walking us back to our guest house and we again promised to meet them all the next day.

The Students:

I was completely prepared to have my ass kicked on the soccer field. I have never been know to be a soccer player and years of a relatively lax exercise regiment has allowed my stamina for running to drop to pathetic lows. I am also wearing my hiking boots, the only shoes I’ve brought for the trip, so I am clumsily clomping about trying to avoid stepping on the bare feet of the kids. But lo, I am just starting to get into the game when they all start to drop out of it, exhausted.

Tired and bored with the 20 minute outburst of gaming, we set out to meander the streets. The kids are busy leading us to shops of interest and chatting up a storm and imploring us not to forget them when one, Zishan, asks me point blank if I will buy them an English dictionary to help them in their studies. He leads me up to the shop and the tubby fellow behind the counter produces a dusty hardback. 800 rupees. 20 bucks. The cover is tearing away from the binding a bit, but the kids are adamant. Zishan looks me straight in the eyes and tells me that this will help all 20+ kids in his class and their families and the next wave of students, and I can tell he is being honest.

I begin the haggling that I have now perfected, and manage to convince the tubby book-pusher that for 800 rupees we should get the book, some tape to mend the spine, and some notebooks. Zishan picks up the book and marvels at its weight. It makes it all the way around the circle of hands before Kara runs it home to protect it from the elements. Zishan invites Jacob and I to come to his home that evening for some dinner and conversation.

At 7 we are led by Hassan and Ranjan back through narrow alleyways between rooms stacked upon rooms stacked upon rooms. It is like a labyrinth and we lose our bearings straightaway. Zishan lives in a part of a rental house and we are greeted at the door by three of the cutest kids imaginable who are thrilled to have such esteemed company in their house. It becomes a playful fight for our attention and when Jacob pulled out his camera they squealed with delight and began to pose and posture, then run to see the result, then step back for another go.

It’s getting late and the kids are bouncing off the walls. Zeshan says we should head over to Hassan’s house so we can escape their yelps and laughter. Back in the little maze, we weave our way deeper into housing web. Hassan’s parents are out front by the little hearth nestled in between brick walls. We go into his room which he shares with his brother. It is small, but filled to the brim with little treasures, all of which we are shown in a crudely formal procession. The English-Hindi translation book, the soccer ball from earlier today, school notebooks full of carefully formed words, the broken stereo on loan from a friend, and finally some artwork which Hassan had created.

I flip from flowers, to mandalas, to landscapes, to washes of fading colors, but settle on a picture of some trees with a man from the village standing before them and a little house. It is striking and I think it would make the perfect cover illustration for some 1970’s collection of existentialist essays. I love it and Hassan says I can have it if I would like. I make him sign it, just like my mom made me sign every piece of artwork I’ve made (“All great artists sign their work.”), and then carefully set it aside.

We dine on delicious roti and potato curry made fresh over the fire outside. All the parents of these kids are farmers and struggle to survive off the land. They speak no English and don’t aspired to learn it. These kids we’ve met are an exciting new development in the India of today; they are educated and they plan on studying hard to continue their studies at universities around the country.

On the way back to our guest house Zishan and the rest of the crew ask us again and again to be sure that we stay in touch via email and never forget them. I ask Zishan how his family can afford to send him to his school and he says that he is sponsored by a family. They all are, except Ranjan, who has been stuck in the menial local school with the kids that don’t really have plans for a future outside of Bodh Gaya.

I wished I was wealthy as I offered the only help I could think of: “I’ll talk about you guys to my friends and family back home and see if anyone wants to help out, buddy.” (that said, if anyone is interested please let me know, it is something on the order of $30 or $40 a month) We parted ways and agreed to meet them again as we were on our way out of town. I put my artwork in a safe place and prepared for the next part of our evening.

The Russian:

We had met him on the train from Varanasi and he shared a rickshaw with us to Bodh Gaya from Gaya proper. We settled on the same guest house and kept bumping into him throughout our stay, coming to places as he was leaving or vice versa. We decided that we needed to get together for some drinks on our last night before parting ways for good. He was off to Calcutta and we were going up into Nepal, but we wanted to let our brief time together have a moment to crystallize. We could tell were were cut from the same cloth.

The language barrier was enormous and conversations always stalled out and ended up in crazy pantomimes to explain our stories. We had some Indian rum and choked it down with Indian soda (thums-up, bottled by Coca-cola of course) before hitting the streets of Bodh Gaya. Right when we got downstairs the power went out and we had to convince the guest house owner to unlock the gate and give us 30 minutes to roam the streets.

It was pitch black and we stood for a while in the nothingness to let our pupils dilate. The rooftops slowly came into view and the muddy road up to town. The place was completely dead. Every shop was closed and there was not a soul to be seen anywhere, just scavenging dogs rooting through piles of trash. Then, right as we passed in front of the entrance to the Mahabodhi temple the power clicked back on and all the lights along the path came alive.

We found a cozy, strange looking arc of lamps at the top of a little semi-circular set of steps and decided to sit and soak it up. “Stranne mesto,” said the Russian to himself, “stranne mesto.” There was a moment of silence before I asked what it meant. “Strange place, this is a strange place.” I agreed and practiced saying the phrase to myself to save it for later.

There was a dog that materialized out of nothing, hovering behind us and it began to whimper. Then there was a scraping sound moving down the path towards us getting louder in short bursts. We all stood up, a little uneasy. There were scores of dogs watching something with the greatest excitement and through the darkness came a kid dragging a crate of filth behind him and leaving a slimy trail of goo in his wake. Further behind him two other people were slowly loping along and as the kid reached the top of the steps the Russian gave him a cigarette. He beamed back at his confused looking followers and then after several awkward moments we set off back to the guest house through the pack of dogs. Stranne mesto.

When we got back Jacob and I went up to the roof to get a good view of the night and the Russian retired. It was blissful up top looking across our soccer field lit in an incandescent yellow. And beyond it, peeking over the treetops, was the temple. It looked fake, an illustration of some ancient past. I watched the moon and the stars and the clouds slowly drifting by and then my gaze returned to the temple. I felt not like I was traveling, but living. I am alive and I am doing exactly what I want to be doing…and it feels great.

Varanasi by night

Varanasi is a mess…there are cows and cars and bikes and people everywhere along the narrow little roadways. The dogs are mangy and the monkeys are street-tough thugs that own the roofline. It feels ancient here. This is one of the earliest cities in the world; it was just beginning to set its foundations when the Buddha was ambling about the countryside.

The city was wrapping up its day of bustle and there were only a few men that approached us offering rickshaw rides or drugs as we walked out to get one last look at the Ganges. The little single room shops that crowd around the street were beginning to look skeletal without the garmets and bags and pictures and postcards hanging out on display. We walked down to the ghats shortly after sunset, but the sky had been grey and wintery the whole afternoon. It started to spit rain on us as we watched all the people pulling their lives together underneath the cover of tarps and rooftops.

The wind began to shift and a cool breeze whooshed through the streets sending up little clods of debris and trash. The homeless folk alongside the river jerked up their tarps over their head or else shuffled under awnings and a pack of dogs trotted past and up into the streets. A flash of light blinked through the clouds and fog and haze like a firework and the power went out. We were left in nearly total darkness and the sound of the river crescendoed into the void. I thought about how the sound of the Guadalupe River had filled a similar darkness in Texas on many a campfire night.

We slowly strolled along the ghats breathing in the fresh wet air when the rain picked up. I was getting soaked, but this was the cleanest, holiest water in all of India. Once it hits the Ganges it becomes a river goddess, but the streets are flowing sludge now. I’m not sure how long it had been since the rains fell in Varanasi, but it would need to rain hard for weeks to flush everything out.

We began to pick our way back through the night to our hotel. Everything looked different without the lights and the rain wasn’t helping our sense of direction, but we were alone on the streets now, except for the cows. They own this place and have an unquestionable right-of-way on the roads. The big bulls walk out into the center of an intersection and alter the entire flow of traffic for a mile in each direction. They laze about in the medians, they wander up to open doorways, they get stuck at the top of stairwells, they shit everywhere and they are completely and unerringly holy. It would be amazing to experience a day in the life of a Varanasi bull. He would cover about 100 meters or so in an afternoon, grazing on the rubbish treats that abound in the gutters. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of faces would rush by every hour on every imaginable mode of transportation. Jacob and I decided that if there were an alien race attempting to understand the way of life in Varanasi, a cow would be the ideal disguise. Who knows if those dull dumb eyes are really as vacant as they seem. Little Gliblitz might be behind there taking notes for the mothership.

We finally sloshed back into the hotel and climbed up to our fourth floor room. I couldn’t sleep so I walked up to the rooftop and gazed out over the now sleeping city. The rains had stopped but the dull rumblings of thunder could still be heard bouncing off the buildings. I had grown to love this little rooftop and the view it afforded of the city.

Perhaps the most striking image I’ve seen yet in India I took in from this very spot. Across the alley way there a collection of brick walls jumbled together on the irregular buildings. Projected onto one of them was the silhouette of a figure deftly jerking its limbs and bobbing side to side. It looked like some sort of madcap puppet shadow show being put on especially for us. Darting up above was a little patch of color, barely visible in the fading light. It was a kite, and the shadow belonged to the boy fighting to keep it aloft. All the kites here are the same exact little size and diamond shape, but the different patterns, like heraldry of Scottish clans, are what allow the pilots below to diferentiate their kite from the hundreds that clutter the skys. Opposing rooftop forces battle one another and try to cut the stings of their enemies leaving the loser’s kite to helplessly drift back to Earth. There are kites in trees and strung up in the electrical wires around town, slowly succombing to the passage of time. Butat that moment there was only this one kid and his lone kite dancing around in the hazy, starless night.

The next morning we woke up at 6 a.m. hoping to see the aarti on the Ganges, but it was pouring down rain. The boaters were on strike for the duration of our stay, so we were unable to watch the sunrise light up the ghats from the water. I feel like the whole town was suffocating. The ghats are supposed to be vibrant and alive with people and products cruising along the river, but instead there was a lonely row of empty boats floating back and forth. Someday I’ll have to come back and see Varanasi in full form, but now we are moving on to Bodh Gaya.

Have you ever seen the inside of an Indian Police Station?

Haridwar is the first town we’ve been to on the holy Ganges River. Every night there is a ceremony called Aarti at the centrally located Har-ki-pauri Ghat (basically a series of low steps down to the river). Not having ever been around the Ganges at night, we had no idea what to expect other than fire. When we reached the river there was already a crowd beginning to congregate and uniformed men were giving impassioned speeches and collecting donations from people one by one. Each time someone gave them money they would pocket it and write out a reciept, but not before holding the cash up and goading the crowd into giving more.

At precisely 5:45 the loud speaker behind us came alive with the sound of bells. This was the cue for everyone in our midst to join in and everyone seemed to have either a bell to ring or something metallic to beat on. The mosquito-filled night swelled up into a cacophony of dissonance that began to sound almost refreshing after the first few seconds.

Fires were lit. Big roaring fires inside of handheld metal dishes. I closed my eyes and let the sounds fully sink in. I had never heard anything like this before. It lasted for at least 5 minutes but it felt like an eternity. I looked around at the faces of the faithful and saw the passion on their faces flowing down through their hands into the banged out rhythm.

The loud speaker switched over to a distorted sound of either lapping waves or distant gunshots and all the ringing stopped jarringly. A religious sounding song began to play and people started to walk down the ghat to the river. They all had little boats made of leaves and flowers which they proceeded to light on fire and send downstream.

Their fires lit and their ceremony over, the people began to disperse back into the maze of the markets and we set out to find a cyber cafe. The city server was down, so we were isolated from the world wide web. We stopped by a movie palace to see when the next showing of the ridiculous looking Bollywood flick would start and then my camera got stolen.

I would have completely missed it, were it not for the keen eyes of a shopkeeper who was watching me at the time. His eyes grew wide and he lept out into the street to stop the thief. It was a kid, no more that 10 or 11 and he had already passed it off to another kid who darted into an alleyway and disappeared around a corner. The thief stood with his arms out begging me to search him. He made those eyes that guilty kids make to prove their innocence and I felt an anger welling up inside me.

A crowd formed around us immediately and men began to loudly interrogate the thief in Hindi. The few people that new any English translated bits and pieces to me, but I was left mostly in the dark. We walked back to the scene of the crime where another little delinquient with a bowl cut was standing around and someone told me I needed to take them both to the police station.

A man with a Tom Selleck moustache took charge and slapped the kid in the face before dragging him to his motorcycle. He made the bowl cut kid climb on too, and then with friendly eyes he motioned for me to get on the very back. I walked to the station and arrived a few minutes after the police questioning began. It was still very calm in the room as Tom Selleck told the police what had happened with arms waving and the kids tried to look sad, sorry and poor.

A couple of English speakers had walked with me to the station and they translated my version of the story to the police again. I stepped outside to catch some fresh air and to collect my thoughts when I looked back in to see the real interrogation about to begin. There was a huge leather tongue with a handle in the hands of a burly officer and the kids had their shaking little hands out in front of them.

“NO, NO, NO, NO!” I wasn’t about to watch a beatdown of children done in my honor, but I wasn’t in time to stop the first blow.

Ka-THWACK!

Bowl cut didn’t confess to the crime in time and he paid the price. His big dumb eyes filled up with tears and he started to whimper. He looked even more pathetic than before.

“Please don’t. No more hitting them. Someone translate that and tell them not to hit them anymore. Please, please, NO, NO NO NO!”

I was able to stop the paddle this time and pleaded with the officers not to continue. There was a glimmer of suprise on the thief’s face (and a surge of relief on bowl cut’s) and he confessed to taking the camera. I doubt he expected any compassion from the rich white kid he’d just ripped off. He went with the officers to try to retrieve the camera and I collapsed back onto the bench.

Awkward silence filled the room. Bowl cut was still whimpering in the corner and the officers were all looking back and forth between me, Jacob, and each other wondering what to do next. I gave bowl cut the rest of my crackers and tried to appologize with my eyes.

The police came back with the thief but without the camera and they threw him into an old-fashioned prision cell. I gave my contact information to the head of the station and we chatted a bit about nothing. He was honored to have me in his office and wanted to assure me he would do everything in his power to get that camera back. I simply asked that he not leave the kid in the cell overnight and I told him we would check back with him the next evening. I was torn between mercy and justice as we left with the thief in his cell and bowl cut still moping in the corner of the office. It was starting to get cold.

The next day was bad news. The officer nearly started to cry when he told me that the camera had eluded them and there was little hope. Jacob and I took tea with the head of the station, much to his delight, and tried to convince them both that I didn’t think less of India because of the incident. On the walk to the train station we bumped into the thief and bowl cut and I felt the anger swelling up again. They had the audacity to ask us for money. I hope they at least enjoied all my photos from around their country before they sold the camera in some back alley.

Freewheelin’ up to Shimla

There were no reserved seats left, so we bought a general admission ticket and hoped to hop aboard and deal with extra charges later. The train pulled in and stuttered to a stop as Jacob and I trudged along to the AC car. It lurched again after about 90 seconds and we figured that since the train was well over an hour late, it might be a quick layover. We hopped into the general class car and managed to find a couple seats near the window.

This amazing feat quickly turned sour when the train pulled ahead to the other end of the same station and about 300 more people piled into our car. They were running and jumping into the mass of people in the doorway and grabbing onto whatever they could. Our little bubbles next to the window were reduced to half seats. Bags were hung in my face, elbows rested on my head, feet were on my feet and it got hot really fast. Hundreds of sweaty people stuck into a single boxcar, breathing on each other.

We jerked back and forth across the station for about an hour and more and more people sifted aboard and settled into every little nook and cranny. Every town we hit along the way saw hundreds more people hoping to replace the 10 or 12 that wanted to get off. The train became heavy with bodies and struggled a little longer to get moving each time. As always in India, everyone was looking at us. Whenever I glanced up from my book I met eyes with everyone who unabashedly stared me down.

The seat was a piece of flat, hard plywood and my ass and legs were numb after the first hour. It took 5 to get to Ambala, where we were to make our transfer. I tried to send my mind to the mountains that we would ultimately arrive at. I thought about the cold crisp mountain air that I can remember from summer vacations. When we hit Ambala I limped off the train through the deluge of boarding passengers and into a strange little waystation of a town.

We were unable to find a bus to Chandigarh, where we would need to find a bus to Shimla, the little hilltop village that we had chosen a couple days earlier to be our introduction to the Himalayan range that we will cross in about a month. We settled on a taxi ride with a madman at the wheel. Jacob and I shared the seat in the front while 10 or 11 others were crammed in behind us in the 6 seater.

An hour later we were in Chandigarh and quickly found our way onto the bus to Shimla. It was already10:30 and the ride was scheduled to take 4 hours. We had started our day about 14 hours earlier at the rail station and we longed for a bed to stretch out in. The bus, like every mode of Indian transport, was overbooked. There were 40 seats and 55 people. I made the mistake of watching the road from the back of the bus where we were curled up and sleeping through the trip became impossible. We were on little mountain roads winding our way up, up, up around switchbacks going much too fast for a vehicle this size. From the back I was swung violently from side to side first into Jacob and then into the kid next to me who was a native of Shimla.

“I’ve been on this bus hundreds of times,” he would say as he threw up out the window over and over again. I thought back to the curry I had wolfed down in Ambala. It seemed like a bad idea now as the bus passed another car at a blind corner. The bus swerved back onto its side of the rode and I swung back into Jacob who was equally impressed with our driver’s recklessness. The only consolation was that it was pitch black outside and I couldn’t see the fall that we almost slid into at every turn.

Hours passed and my hands grew tired from clutching the railing so tightly. I contemplated religion and all the sins I had accrued over my 23 years. The higher we got the smaller the little lights looked off in the distance. I laughed outloud whenever I thought we were finally going to topple over, but none of the native Indians around me seemed the least bit worried. We crested a hill and then doubled our speed down into the station and the bus slammed into park. We were in Shimla, and the mountains, an hour ahead of schedule.

Amritsar

The Golden Palace is like a Sikh Mecca. It’s the epicenter of an entire fairh. It was like being in a dream, walking barefoot on the cool marble around the glinting building. I had never even known that it existed until I began to plot potential destinations on a map of India on my wall in Austin. It was just another pushpin denoting something that might be of interest.

Now I was circling it slowy with thousands of faithful followers. To enter the sacred area everyone must walk through a shallow pool of warm, running water to clean their dirty feet. Then you climb a set of stairs and it comes into view. You can not tear your eyes away.

It is covered in gold, a genuinely golden temple. It sits in the middle of a manmade lake of holy water into which many hairy, bearded men would dip themselves. This had been going on since about 1600 AD when the temple was constructed. Around the outside of the pool is this marble walkway and about 3/4 of the way around is a foorbridge to the temple lined with 18 golden lanterns. The place was abuzz with echoes of talking, laughter, and footfalls reverberating back and forth between the white buildings surrounding the whole congregation of people. A loudspeaker boomed out prayers which sounded like poetry and at one end of the facility was a little band of musicians singing and playing tablas and harmoniums and other instruments whose names I could not begin to guess.

The line to cross the bridge and enter the temple was well over 1000 people long and had barely moved since we arrived. We would come back tonight to see the golden building light up the darkness. In the meantime we had another destination in mind about 30 km away.

It was getting cold buzzing along in our auto rickshaw through the Indian countryside. In our quest for the cheapest ride we settled on a slow, rickety three wheeler that was so loud you could barely hear yourself think. The sun was on its way down and there were no buildings to block the wind which rushed down the mountains and through the fields. The further we got, the more nervous I became. It sounded so reasonable from the hotel when we threw back a shot of cheap Indian whiskey and packed up our jackets.

Every night there is a ceremonial closing of the border with Pakistan. The guidebook mentioned it in a little side blurb and every rickshaw ride we had taken in the town ended with a ridiculous rate quote for a round trip journey. We had no idea exactly what a border closing ceremony would entail or how many people would attend.

Also, in light of the recent events in Pakistan, we were not sure if the mood would be tense or if the Pakistani’s would even be there to watch. Our jalopy rolled to a stuttering stop in a bustling little outcrop of buildings. The place was a mad house and there must have been several thousand people here, judging from the number of vehicles already parked in the dirt lots at either side of the road.

Jacob and I joined the trickle of people heading westward down the road, now lined with barbed wire fenses and a pronounced Indian military presence. There was something starting to happen up ahead, a crowd began to roar. The pace quickened and we found ourselves now trotting, now jogging, now running with the excited kids and adults. Coming into view was a little half stadium with soldiers on the walls and stationed at the flag poles about to begin pulling in the orange, green, and white.

We gasped into the inner keep and the crowd became deafening with cheers, chants, claps. Through the furvor we could make out the gates and on the other side, a neatly near-mirrored image of buildings and people, only they were cheering for the Pakistani flag. The soldiers were all dressed regally and their helmets were adorned with a red fabric fan like some exotic mating bird. Their uniforms were a classic khaki and they had tall riding boots and rifles. The Pakistani soldiers had the same fanned headgear, uniforms, boots, and weapons in a different color scheme.

As the flags decended in unison across the stadium, the people grew louder still and complex, aggressive marching maneuvers were performed in precise synchronicity. The flags reached the bottom and a massive roar erupted from the nearly 12,000 Indians and Pakistanis. Near us a chant began for Hindustan, the pet name so many Indians have for their country in hopes of officially becoming the world’s Hindi state. Masses swarmed down from the bleachers to the road and began pressing the military’s chain barricade. I spun around and around in wonder.

The gates were manned and 5 Indian soldiers goosestep charged 5 Pakistani ones, meeting at dead center, inches apart. The gates swung to shut and they gracefully dashed back into their countries. Slam! The border was closed for the night. The crowds again let out a roar, jittery from the experience. Men would approach and shake the hands of the soldiers, children would pose with them for photos. This was the biggest outpouring of national pride I had seen in India. Everyone had Indian flags, Indian visors, Indian shirts, Indian banners. In Pakistan the crowd began to thin out as people tried to rush back to Lahore before nightfall, but in India it was a celebration.

The huge crowd in the street was let through the gate in throngs of a couple hundred. The chain would lift and people sprinted up to get as close as possible to the fence. All were smiling and snapping photos. Behind the chain the mass regrew to an even bigger size that impatiently waited their turn. Jacob and I climbed up the bleachers to take it all in. Gazing across the wall, we watched the sun setting behind an empty shell of a stadium. Some lonely figures collected garbage and small groups of troops whisked by toward unknown destinations.

The world on that side looked like India. It used to be India before the line was drawn on a map some 60 years ago. But here at the gates it was like night and day. Another mess of the crowd was let up to the gate after the first batch had been herded out. People were not leaving until they got right up there. It’s like the edge of a cliff, something compels you to just look down from the rim. After the crowd started to thin out a little Jacob and I went to wait our turn and we too got within a couple feet of Pakistan to look across at the backs of their soldiers’ heads.

Back in our rickshaw we each looked out at the passing landscape. I watched out the back at the sunset and the silhouettes of kids flying kites from the rooftops (oh, so many kites in Amritsar!). I thought about the empty, delapidated mansions that punctuated the fields and wondered what this land must have been like in its prime. We passes war memorial after war memorial with names of wars I had never even heard of. How many lives were emptied in the name of this land? And now there appears to be more trouble brooding over the horizon. I wondered, too how much longer a couple American kids will be able to bumble out here to watch and take pictures.

We almost made it all the way back to the hotel before the rickshaw finally bit it. We had to stop several times to let the engine cool down, but now there was no life left in her. We grabbed a bite and headed back to the Golden Temple.

I had read that there was a “closing of the book” ceremony that also takes place every night. The marble had grown colder since the sun went down and it seemed cruel to make people amble about barefoot, but the temple shone brilliantly. It was illuminated from each side and as I walked it would grow brighter and brighter until I was directly underneath a light and then it would fade back down again. We slowly circled, taking out time despite numbing feet.

At the footbridge we made our way to the central chamber. At this hour there were only a hundred or so people milling about, so we walked straight up to the brilliant glow. The prayers sounded so much more significant from here on the bridge and as we drew close, people began to sit and listen. We joined them. The voice boomed out at the world from a loudspeaker. Words tied together and danced in a strange lilting melody before ending with a warble. There was an old, bearded Sikh reading from the ancient book and behind us a crowd had gathered to sit and listen.

I closed my eyes and listened to the echo. A sense of awe filled me full as I realized that this very spot was where some people had devoted their entire lives to getting to. Someone on this bridge with me. probably many of them, had been saving money for decades to be able to watch this ceremony and bathe in the waters and soak in their devotion.

The voice reached the end of the reading and began a call and response, getting a reply in unison from everyone around me. The book began to be wrapped in cloth and a man sung a feathered stick over the top of it. Everyone rose to their feet and we began a procession through the building. The inside was vaulted and completely covered in gold. There was a chandelier hanging from the center and a congregation of religious musicians on the floor. People all around me dropped to the floor to pay respect to the book, touching their heads to the ground and silently reciting prayers. We walked back around the crowd and I noticed the two golden clocks on the wall, both emblazened with the Omega corporate logo.

We managed to get back to the footbridge where people seemed to be gathering, sensing the start of the next part of the ritual. A golden box was being brought slowly down the way, its presence announced by a large and blasting horn. The book had been completely wrapped and was carried out to much fanfare. Everyone continued dropping to their knees and reciting prayers in an excited mumble.

Again the horn blasted out and the book was placed in the golden carrier and carried back down the path by a dozen men. We watched it all the way back to its nightly resting place and thought that this has been happening every night for over 400 years. How many millions have watched the book on its little walk? The moon was out and reflected off the holy pool of water along with the Golden Temple. A series of fireworks went off elsewhere in the city. There was some holiday taking place today and the revelers were somewhere celebrating the night.

I thought back to a comment that Jacob had made at the Taj Mahal. “I wonder in what year this place will cease to be?” We ambled back to the hotel and I drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Delhi’s Underbelly

The train was late out of Gwalior, an experience I expect I will get used to in India.  So many people and all of them have somewhere they are trying to go.  We had spent the morning roaming the city of Gwalior in the shadow of the fort.  In the city’s palace there was a wealth of treasures from throughout the country and the world.  There was a room of cut glass mirrored funrature, intricately carved 8 foot dragon lanterns, a marble sculpture of a woman making passionate love to a goose (?) and more ivory figurines than you can shake a stick at.  It is in stark contrast to the abject poverty I’ve been seeing here, but the museum is hardly well maintained.  The highlight was the ball room where two 40 foot crystal chandeliers hung overhead.  Apparently they used 10 elephants to weight test the roof before installation.  That is a sight I would like to have seen.

The rest of the city is dusty and tourist free, but we’re off to Dehli by train this afternoon to rub shoulders with the 14 million plus that roam the streets.  We arrive to the station early to give us time to haggle with the station master about our waitlisted seats, but the train is running a couple hours behind.  We won’t be off until after 9 which will put us into Dehli late and we have no reservations for accomodation there.

At the station we are the entertainment.  We play cribbage and take two on the floor of the platform and a crowd forms around us. A woman flatout tells Jacob to give her his jacket over and over again, laughing but not laughing at the same time.  A young man who is learning English pesters us with question after question while Matt, who knows a fair amount of Hindi, tell everyone he is from Goa.

Everywhere we go all eyes are on us.  In town a creepy man followed us around for several blocks, limping along 20 feet back. We darted across a busy street to lose him, but we’re never alone here.  Even in the rooms at night I feel like somehow, somewhere, someone is watching.

Finally the train and then finally Delhi.  We are met by the rickshaw army and settle with a man who promises to take us to his friend’s hotel.  So many friends in India.  The street that he drives us down looks like the set of The Temple of Doom after shooting has wrapped for the day.  Dark neon signs and doors closed to the road where small bands of vagarants mingle and merge to follow us to wherever it is that we are headed.

The driver’s friend’s hotel is booked full and he takes us to place after place with no luck.  Fed up we cut him loose and trek out alone in the night to find lodging.  It is about 1 a.m. and we’ve been packed into a train all evening.  We need sleep. 

A dusty bearded con-man pulls us from the mess of other dusty con-men and takes us to his friend’s hotel down a dark side street.  We laugh with each other to break the tension.  This is a bad place to be wandering about at night no doubt, but we are 3 well nourished Americans standing a head taller than the crowd, so we follow.  When it, too, is booked full the bearded man tries to take us down an even darker, littler alleyway.  No deal.

We are going door to door now.  The places that are not full are too too overpriced.  Each time we leave a hotel a throng of men try to get us to go to their hotel down this or that street. “5 minute walk, 5 minute walk.”  At every stop the hotel owners wake up from cots in the lobby and groggily tell us the rates.  They are not in the mood for bartering. 

We have 3 simple requests: a showerhead with hot water, a western toilet, and clean sheets.  Not a single place passes the test, but it reaches the point where we have amassed about 20 seedy characters lurking outside to wait for our exit.  How is it that so many people are in the lodging business?

My stomach is bottoming out.  The train curry was a bad idea.  We are desperate and don’t want to face the crowd again, not afraid, but tired of dealing with so many hands in our faces.  Being in Delhi means breathing in Delhi, too. My lungs ache.

We settle at a place that gives us a deal for staying 2 nights.  It’s worth the money to not have to go back out into the street.  We hike our bags up to the cramped little room and I trot the passports back down for check-in.  The man who is running the show is a mustacheod little weasel.  We had to wait about 10 minutes for him to slurp up his curry and verbally abuse the bearded man about something in Hindi.  He was vile and exemplified the kind of huckster that I swore I would avoid after Agra.

He wants to keep the passports until the monring in a cluttered little drawer at the desk.  I tell him that is not an option.  He says we have no choice.  It is 2 a.m. and I am tired of fighting, so I bring Matt down with me to see if some Hindi can set the man straight.  There is now some commotion out front and the bearded man has gotten into a scuffle with the affeminate little boy that works at our hotel.  The weasel is drawn out and the boy runs upstairs to bring out another man from his slumber lodge.  This guy is wearing a tight little blue shirt over his paunchy stomach.  His hair is slicked back and he stinks of musk and sweat.

They all go outside and yell at one another for a while and paunchy blue gets in a car and violently moves it from one side of the street to the other.  There is a crunch.  Something has been hit.  Our weasel scampers back in pissed and disappears into a back room for a while before slinking back up to the counter in a tantrum.  Another smiling fellow walks up and tries to console him in Hindi.  Mustache gestures at us angrily and I take the opportunity to demand our passports back.  The new guy smiles wryly at me and says that we must pay for the rooms up front to get the passports back.  I slam the cash on the table and he laughs.  We all watch the owner struggle to transcribe the numbers and letters into his little log book and then we retire to our dirty beds, sick and tired of slimy Delhi after dark.

The Fort at Gwalior

Watching the sun set from this lonely ancient fort atop peaceful Gwalior, I took a moment to sit and reflect: I am in India.

The city is a patchwork of color from up this high. All the walls of the labyrinthine houses are painted blue or green or red, and the orange glowing light makes them pop back at me. I’m about 300 feet above sitting on the wall of the fort staring straight down at a gaggle of people going about their lives, finally oblivious to my presence. Their voices and the honking horns climb up the steep rock wall to meet my ears and mingle with the sounds of the eagles circling overhead.

Waltzing through Agra

As I stepped off the train into Agra I realized I had entered another world. We were immediately swarmed by droves of auto-rickshaw drivers, taxi drivers, bicycle rickshaw drivers, “guides”, and beggers. The city was engulfed in a thick haze of dust, or pollution and I could feel it trying to push through my lungs into my blood stream. My eyes began to water. It smelled like burning newspaper and car exhaust.

I am travelling with two at the moment, Jacob and Matt. Jacob and I went to USC together and were both itching to get out for a spell. Our calendars were in synch and the trip fell together perfectly. Matt is his younger brother, a Junior at UC Irvine who will be returning for the Spring semester in a few days. We are soaking in as much as we can.

We pushed through the throngs to a taxi arranger that led us to his man who would in turn lead us to his man who ran a hotel that we could get a “very good rate” at. Driving anywhere in India is putting your life on the line. You cannot look away from the road. There are no seatbelts, no lanes, no turn signals and amazingly enough, no accidents (yet). It’s a white knuckle experience from origin to destination bracing for impact at every dart around a cow-pulled cart. Everyone just honks when they pass and hope for the best. Our driver informed us that you need three things to drive in India: a good horn, good brakes, and good luck.

We arrive safely at our hotel and begin the haggling. All prices in India are negotiable. We throw numbers back and forth, go look at the room, are disappointed in its size, walk away, are urged to consider a new, lower price, and finally settle on the Hotel Excelency. No heating, no insulation, no English toilet, just 3 beds and a hole in the ground.

Relieved of our packs we set out for Agra Fort on foot, much to the dismay of every rickshaw driver that passes us. But our tourist map is woefully inadequate and we walk a couple miles down the wrong road. We must admit defeat and board a bicycle rickshaw, a three-wheeled cart built for two that Jacob, Matt and I teeter atop. Back in the traffic again, but much more exposed this time as the 40 year old man strains to pull our fat asses up the hill to one of Agra’s many tourist meccas.

We barely see the fort’s facade before we meet another breed of barterers, those with goods to push. Wooden chess sets, stone elephants with smaller stone elephants in their stomachs, postcards, whips, chains, 500 rupees, 3 for 1000 rupees, 300 rupees, 100 rupees, how much, how much?

There are monkeys that roam the bridge up to the fort and a few lepers and more Koreans with cameras than you can shake a stick at. The fort itself is a melange of various buildings and additions from the numerous occupants. At one end is a beautiful white marble structure which housed someone’s harum. There was a bath foutain which would have been filled with scented oils and rose petals and a dozen big rooms with windows open to the valley beyond the city. At the other end was a large courtyard of well manicured grass beneath a viewing balcony where the king would watch elephants fight to the death. Somewhere in between was a tiny mosque tucked between two buildings for private spiritual introspection.

As we come full circle in the fort and arrive back at the bridge there is a gaggle of Americans storming the gates. One wears a UT Longhorns shirt while another more portly man chose his Slayer: Reign of Blood Tour shirt that morning. Surely these are the assholes snatching up Taj Mahal snowglobes out front. They will cherish them along with their cell phone camera images for hours to come.

Lunchtime. There is a little place across the street that beckons us in. Matt and Jacob have been in India for about a week now and their stomachs have acclimated to the curry, but this will be my first big test, a genuine Indian food stand with very minimal sanitation. I fear that I might become more intimate with the hole in the floor at Excellency than I would like to. With the first bite, my stomach is ablaze but I finish as much as I can. There is much exploring to be had and I’ll need the sustinance.

We will go next to the Baby Taj by way of some market streets. Thus begins the “getting lost in Agra” portion of our trip. The streets are packed and loud. No one passes up on the opportunity to honk as they pass anything. In order to rise above the clamour, everyone has adopted a unique sounding horn: goat sounds, rapid fire, a little melody. It is maddening.

There are only a few types of shops that repeat at uneven intervals. Shoes (mostly nike ripoffs or italian leather knockoffs), clothes (sweaters, tees, saris, etc.), fabrics of all colors or with embroidered patterns around the edges, stone carvings (little buddhas or tombstones) or cell phones. If you are in need of any of these items, you will not go home wanting for them. It is amazing that any trade can happen at all, though, with the chaos all around. Out on the shoulder of the road are the food carts with peppers, spices, rice and tubers. Everyone stops what they are doing as we pass. 3 Americans sans guide, sans tour bus just romping past. But it is much to busy to try to reel us in for a sale. The road is crammed with rickshaws of every flavor, motorbikes, scooters, camels, cows, dogs, carts, cars and busses all weaving and passing and honking both directions down a street no more than 15 feet across.

We are looking all around us and again have no idea where we are. A somewhat promising side street calls to us and we go for it. Failure. Dead end. We reach the great garbage chasm. The street gives way to a wide pit of waste. We pick our way back avoiding the sinkholes and feces as the shop keepers laugh amongst themselves. Everyone was watching. We are the day’s entertainment.

Finally we hit water and set about regaining our orientation. There is a rail bridge with a little footpath that we decide to cross at. Again we are very much out of place. Along the banks of the river are scores of women doing the wash and hanging the brilliant colors up to dry. There is a herd of cattle grazing and two men attempting with little luck to corral them into order. About 1/3 of the way over, the Taj Mahal emerges through the haze, birds circling in front. It watched us the rest of the way across.

Our otherness becomes more apparent on the eastern back where the ’sights’ are fewer. Kids called out to us, women smiled, men looked concerned and confused. We again tried to cut across a side street and met a dead end, but this time there were about a dozen kids that surrounded us demanding that we take their picture and then demanding to see the results. As their yells grew louder, more kids tore around the corners and out of the doors to see. It was a spectacle for all involved.

Eventually we found ourselves at the entrance to the Taj Mahal and waited to get through the line. Rounding the corner she came into full view and we spent the next several hours circling and admiring. I drifted off to a bench alone and watched the sunset cast light off the rounded marble. I thought about home.

After nightfall, Jacob and I set out to find a computer. We got out onto the road when all the power shut off. A rolling blackout. The headlights of the cars sent rays of light through the smoke of vagrant fires and the haze which settled back in after sunset. We walked carefully so as not to upset a sleeping dog or hit a bicyclist zipping along invisibly. It is an intense experience here already, only 24 hours into India.

The Roughhewn Plan

“I just gotta get out of here.”

That’s my answer to the inevitable “Why?” that I get every time I mention my travel plans. I’ve thought a lot about this question myself whenever my mind drifts off into the future. Why do I need or want to go to some third world country? What am I expecting to find out there?

I think I speak for most 20-somethings in this country when I say that it’s hard to live here. Not hard to survive, but hard to live. Hard to engage in a world that is cold and meaningless once you bother to look past the facades of consumerist bounty and pithy religious zealotry. We are in the process of inheriting a world that sucks. It seems every week brilliant science minds push forward the end of the environment as we know it. Our democracy feels more and more like some cheap trick or sick joke with every passing sex scandal and comedian candidate. And the internet, our Saviour, is but a series of fleeting, meaningless connections. We have so much potential for discourse and engagement and all we get are porn, ‘pokes’ and photo albums. It’s shit and I’ve got to get out of here.

But there is another reason for this escape, I could find something of worth out there in this world. When the pace of my day shifts from hustle and bustle to slow, reflective contemplation perhaps I will see more clearly. I’ve had several little moments in my life where the world briefly clicked into focus, and if I had the time to follow through and soak them in, maybe I could better handle life in the U.S. of A.

I don’t plan on leaving for good; I’m not an ex-patriot. I feel very fortunate to have what I do, but I am not built for complacency. I get all riled up at the very thought of apathetic stagnation. My time in Austin has taught me loads about the good and bad in people and I am confident that from Austin I can begin to make a meaningful difference in the world. It’s a place that can lure you into a life of slackerdom, but there is a bustling enrgy just beneath the surface. I need a break before I fully engage it though. I need to be comfortable in my own head before I commit to living with myself for the rest of my life.

This is where I stand in my planning…

I have purchased a plane ticket into Delhi, India in early January from Austin. I will be in the air for about 24 hours by way of New York City and London before stepping out into another world. Over the course of three months I will backpack through India, Nepal, Tibet, China and Mongolia before taking a train into Hong Kong.

Following my Asia touring, I will trek through South America with my brother for a few months. Those plans are further out in the future and are merely sketches of possibilities so far.

—

A dear friend of mine turned me on to the writings of Joseph Campbell, who has become my constant guide through this, my first quarter-life crisis. Not only does he address the lack of meaning in our modern world, but he speaks to our great need for (and dearth of) storytellers. The world is moving to rapidly for us to crystallize our culture into myths, which have always been humanity’s bearers of meaning. So we need now more than ever to have storytellers helping us make sense of our lives and our place in the grand scheme.

I’ve spent the past 6 months of my life in Austin serving as Production Manager of the Austin Film Festival. Rigorous, rigorous work to help coddle the storytellers of the modern world. It was the first real taste of that dreaded “adulthood” I’ve looked ahead to throughout my life. Deadlines and meetings and budgets, oh my. But I feel like it is important work which is why I put in hour after hour at the office, grinding though the end of October. I witnessed the power of a group of my peers working together for something we believe is necessary. We are helping the storytellers of our generation get their footholds and audiences and that is why I am coming back for another year.

But in the mean time, I just gotta get out of here.