News from Ted
(Scroll down for the English translation)
Enfin, Les Voyages de Jupiter est de nouveau disponible en Francais, et vous pouvez l’acheter ici, sur mon site web. Cette traduction a été publiée pour la première fois par Albin Michel en 1980, avec un grand succès, en grande partie grâce à l’invitation de Bernard Pivot à son émission télévisée emblématique Apostrophe. Le soir suivant mon passage à la télévision, j’ai dîné dans un restaurant près du Panthéon et, lorsque je me suis levé pour partir, presque tous les clients du restaurant m’ont applaudi. C’est le moment où je me suis senti le plus honoré publiquement.
Le livre comporte 598 pages, avec une préface de l’éminent historien Claude Manceron, qui était, par hasard, mon voisin à Saint-Privat. Il comprend 32 pages de photographies en couleur.
Il est disponible directement auprès de moi, signé et dédicacé si vous le souhaitez, pour 29,00 euros, affranchissement compris, en France uniquement. Pour l’usage de ce site, le prix serait exprimé en dollars US 35.00. Si vous habitez hors de France, ecrit moi directement a tsimon@mcn.org
At last, “Les Voyages de Jupiter” is back in print, and you can buy it here on my web site. This translation was first published by Albin Michel in 1980 to great success, largely because Bernard Pivot had me on his celebrated TV show “Apostrophe.” The night after I appeared on television I dined at a restaurant near the Pantheon and as I rose to leave almost everyone in the restaurant applauded. It is the closest I have ever come to being publicly honoured.
The book has 598 pages, with a preface by the distinguished historian Claude Manceron, who happened to be my neighbour in Saint Privat. It includes 32 pages of colour photographs.
It is available from me, signed and dedicated if you wish, for €29.00, postage included, in France only. For the purposes of this site the price will be expressed in US dollars 35.00. If you live outside France please write to me directly at tsimon@mcn.org
Once in Calcutta I made my way to the Salvation Army Hostel, known as the Sally-Ann, by recommendation, where I made friends with Jacqueline LePrince from Paris and Eric Hansen, from San Francisco who had been helping at Mother Theresa’s home.
[Eric wanted to take spices home, so we went to a spice firm and said we were thinking of importing spices. We were given several large bags as samples and were shamefully pleased with ourselves.]
Spices from: K.C. Dutta (Spice) PVT Ltd, 255 M.D. Road, 2nd floor, Calcutta 700. 070
Prices: Haldi. (Tumeric) 9rps/kilo: Dhania (Coriander) 11.5 rps/kilo:
Jeera (Cumin seed) 29.25 rps/kilo
Slight fever back again. Compared it to having two images out of focus, as in bad colour printing – “out of register” – sense of there being two simultaneous existences which have shaken loose. The body turns, but the soul lags behind. The whole idea of soul leaving the body at death might come from that. See page 31 [Staying with Adrienne] Go on from this to other forms of detachment.
Tagore writes about the spiritual tradition of Ancient India, the pursuit of purity. Leading to the discovery of the one-in-all, and the release from self. He speaks of India as though she were uniformly devoted to this search. Observation, alas, contradicts this idea, at least today. It may be the best place to go and lose ourselves, but the majority here are clinging as tenaciously as any to what little they have, and to their traditional forms. The easy fatalism of a once luxuriantly forested and underpopulated land has led to the present predicament . . . . .blah, blah.
Pithora PWD April 6th
Calcutta was hot, sticky, and I never really got used to it. The explosion in my belly from the lunch before Ranchi is followed by an even more unpleasant immovability. (I over-reacted with the Lomotil. Should have left the beautiful machine alone). So I did very little in Calcutta except let Jacqueline LePrince trail me about – she made several remarks about my docility. There was the futile excursion to Tagore’s house, and Bel [??????] Moth where all we achieved were some chores at the tailor and the railway station.
There was the enormous steak at The Other Room, too big by far for my poor stomach.
The [Military] Tattoo. The ridiculous queues and the even more ridiculous battle for survival once inside – while dogs jumped through fiery hoops, and while motorcyclists dared death. Also two days at Lucas and an oddly equivocal Raj Pande [Boss previously met in Assam.] (who could I suppose be having trouble at home).
Mother Theresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying makes you wonder why you didn’t start one up yourself – until you think about the beginnings of it. Now it’s rather better ordered and more pleasant than the average railway platform. Tube and plastic beds, raised on the left, floor level on the right, very close together, much smaller than I pictured it.
Rick Eager, who lost himself to two Nepalis, and whom I lent 250 rupees. His involvements with Calcutta police, which I heard about from Eric Hansen in Puri, so many passports stolen, so much dysentery.
And the Sally-Ann “big nurse”, married to a Misi tribesman, with daughter, who has a poor opinion of world travellers, and wishes she could get back to working with real children.
The silly proprietress of the two-star Fairlawn Hotel, and the incredible scene over the soda water. [I was disappointed because there were no bubbles. I pointed this out. She threw a fit.]
“Nobody has ever complained about the water before. And you’re not even staying with us. There has never been any sickness from water. We get it from the Saturday Club.” (The clincher).
She managed to go on for quite a while but said no more. Oh yes, “My husband was a regimental …something or other.” So obviously the soda water has got to be OK. I could go upstairs and complain to him she said, heatedly, but her staff politely deflected me.
Next day the bar was closed “for a dry day.”
Was glad to get out of Calcutta, without having really experienced it, neither its enormousness, nor its detail.
Howra Bridge is rather awful. On the way out I ran dry and later broke the chain (on the connecting link). Too much heat. Stopped from 12 to 3, and met a somewhat reasonable “science graduate” at a Sikh shop. Had my tea bought for me by a truckie. Almost went straight to Sambalpur, wavered right up to the Xroads, then went to Puri meaning to go to Konarak. Glad now I didn’t. Slept most of the time (between trying to dislodge my bowels) and fought occasionally with the sea. Had Phil from Milwaukee in my room, a very boring teenager who liked taking things. Jack the Dane turned up same night. Curious blend of softness and violence – still in the pupal stage of conversion. Tends to treat people as mindless – aftermath of self-realisation?
Funny episode in the tali restaurant “I don’t approve of Fanta and Coca-cola drinking,” when I couldn’t eat the lunch he had offered me.
The beach at Puri – before the cyclone
To Konarak on Monday. Bought brass.
[I bought two brass balances: up to 500gms + weights, 65 rps and 250gms + weights, 40 rps. Don’t ask me why; I still don’t know.]
The original Jaganath – at Konarak
Short but worthwhile visit to Sun Temple. Eric in the IB. Then all night ride to Pithora.
Left Konarak for Delhi with 24,400 miles. [Reading on the clock since Los Angeles.]
More thoughts about the book. “You’re a real man,” would lead to personal doubts about sex and gender. Must be careful not to make gratuitous confessions. Thoughts about how an environment – say a TV studio – conditions behaviour. A saint could handle it – I guess that’s a reason for practicing austerities in the forest. Coming to India is a contemporary equivalent for Westerners, though the austerities are thrust upon is.
Have had the horrors about this cross-country ride. The journey to Puri made me realise that it was already much hotter in central India than I’d thought possible at the beginning of April. Air is superheated. Faster I ride the hotter I get. Like air from a blast furnace. The rear sprocket is a toothless mess, and have forebodings about the bike. Tyres are getting close to bald, specially front tyre. Often my mind conjours up clairvoyant’s prediction and I use them to crystalise my anxieties. Forget who put it into my mind to travel at night, but now it seems the only way. Thus breaking a rule for the journey. My sensitivity to the bike is extreme. And I imagine variations in sound and feel. A tinny quality to the engine sound, Hollow rattling in the transmission. And an alarming wobble at slow speeds as steering head deteriorates.
What is there to occupy the mind at night – for the mind craves occupation. Inevitable thoughts about the future, and much struggle against expectations. But generally I’m keeping my mind on the job. No serious lapses of concentration. Bar one, when I was too intent on reading a milestone to notice the big rocks laid out on the road. Hit one and am lucky, though wheel rim is bent somewhat. A million diversions on the highway – for culvert construction – driving off into sandy hollows.
On second night, after Pithora, stop in Raipur and drink lassie with two student eye-doctors who insist on paying. Raipur has an impressive look about it. A little further on is Bilai – biggest steel works in Asia, spread out below me from viaduct. Occasional hellish glow as slag is tipped.
A new cinema hall stands brightly in the middle of nowhere. – all the promise of the old Odeons in the Thirties. A while later, stop to rest by roadside. See one rear box hanging crazily by one rubber mounting. The patent lock had sheared off. More trouble in store. Don’t have the wit to remove the broken part which later shakes off. Much trouble with lorries on the narrow sections, particularly with lights. However, making faster progress than expected. Over 500 kms each night brings me to Jabalpur on Wednesday evening (after a day stop at Seoni in PWD [Public Works Department bungalow] where I argue about 8 rupee bill and pay four after ostentatiously “closing the book”.
Also, the Care official there, who says, “We are helping the Govt of Maharashtra to set up a nutrition programme.” He is a good advertisement for nutrition; sleekly obese.
“You are from?”
“Do you mean today, or originally?”
“No, no,” he says, irritably. “You are from?”
How could this mean anything but “Your native place?”
My impromptu train ride to Delhi from Gaya to listen to Amjad Alikhan play his sarod in concert was frustrated when the concert was cancelled. Trying to make something of all the effort I decided to first take the train to Benares, before returning to Bodghaya. Benares, also called Varanasi, is the holiest of Indian cities on the Ganges.
Monday 14th (The Ides of March)
Peter Wells, the New Zealander met at Delhi on the train is an odd fish; super naïve and sophisticated at the same time. Very young, but with the impassivity of stone – no, less life and more despair than stone. Has been traveling a while– S.E Asia, USA, Mexico, Europe, etc. Worked in North Sea. Likes to take risks and defy authority. Says he enjoys it. Races bikes. Was studying biochemistry. Now determined to find out how cells respond to influence of moon, stars and planets. He strikes me as being in a state of shock. I’ve been thinking again about the disadvantages of too ambitious a first journey. One can be too young to travel? He got caught on a bus in Kabul at twenty degrees below with only his shirt. Has been ill ever since.
We wandered around Varanasi together. I was uneasy because I made every decision. He bought a shirt that didn’t suit him (bright tomato colour) and clung to me a bit.
The Ganges at Varanasi (Benares)
Tuesday 15th
The river boat at Varanasi brought one extremely shattering moment. I see something floating (so much floats; garlands, bits of wood, dead dogs, etc ) Something with a crow sitting on one of its protuberances. Closer, I thought oddly of the knees of a camel sticking up, a ginger colour and hairy. It was a corpse lying on its back, toes, knees and face protruding from water. Crow was sitting on nose and eating the face. Body in attitude of grotesque comfort, lying back in the Ganges. Very moving because it was the materialisation – incarnation – of all the feelings that underly Benares, as though the thought streams met and in the intensity of their interaction caused this body to appear briefly and float past. I thought immediately of Death in Venice – and now I think how often a time or place is infused with secret meanings which yet never manifest themselves. This corpse was the manifestation of Benares. As rare as it is commonplace.
[Peter Wells took a picture of the corpse and, much later, sent me a print which appears in the Penguin edition of Jupiter’s Travels.]
The train to Gaya – perhaps my best Indian train. Crowded, but I was lucky to have the rubber [What on earth was that!] to sit on. Elderly pilgrim couple squatting at my feet. She toothless, stoic, red sari, curled up incredibly small. Knotted into one corner of her sari, a 5 paise coin, which she carefully replaced by a sprinkling of chewing tobacco. He is in euphoric mood, shaven with long whisp of hair on the back of his skull. He has his canes and flags. Once or twice he and his companions let loose great shouts of exultation and incantation. As we rattled over the Ganges bridge, they tossed tiny blossoms from the window and he looked out at the river like one who was seeing his home for the last time, solemn, beyond tears or emotion, trying to fix the moment.
Wednesday 16th
First day of polling in the election. Janata flags everywhere. [Janata was a block of parties opposed to Indira Ghandi’s Congress Party]
Everything is slowing up as the heat grows. Bodhgaya is hotter, calmer. I take the cabin where the quiet tattooed German stayed with the American speaking Oriental girl (the one who had that amazingly trivial conversation with red-haired Deborah over the laundry one day). The second night, when I was less tired, grew into a cavern of sounds and feeling. The beetles were chewing away at the bamboo poles in the roof, sounding louder and more voracious with every hour. The mosquitoes’ whining was intense. I felt oppressed and close to death, felt sure I would die – not in a physical way, but a sort of death of the soul, maybe. Perhaps the ego can only flourish in a temperate climate, where the extremes of nature don’t constantly remind one of one’s fragility.
The East produced the Buddha.
The West replied with the armchair.
Thursday, 16th
Owls swooping into the neon light to snatch a frog from my feet.
Friday March 17th
[I met a Thai monk called Amray who persuaded me to move briefly to another vihar maintained by Nalanda monastery which was joined to the 2000-year-old university of the same name that had been in ruins since 1190. I knew nothing of it at the time. One might say what a wasted opportunity, but ignorance was a price I had to pay to travel through so much of the world.]
Arrived at about 10am. Warm greeting from Amray. The ‘prefect’ is a Laotian ex-monk. He fixes me up with a bed at one end of the prayer hall. Free lunch at the “Thai Kitchen.” Very hot during the day. Many mosquitoes. First evening at 8.30 lying on my bed as monks come in and chant the Sutras for half an hour. Pali is a very melodious language. Very long words, but seemingly succinct. The work of the Institute is carried out in English and Pali. The prefect is very scornful of it. There are three hundred students on the rolls, but only a handful turn up. Lots of them are not even in India. They learn lumps of Pali scripture by heart and get their degree (MA) which is hardly worth anything in reality. Both electricity and water fail frequently.
Reading Miller raises a sympathetic storm in my mind as I stroll round the “cloister,” but the memory fades. Stars are brilliant.
Dogs are an important part of society and in their bestiality and trivial tempers seem to be there expressly to remind us of the perils of bad Karma.
Actually, on another occasion, observing birds, it seems to me that this whole system of grading species according to superiority is a blatant example of the human ego trip.
What would be so terrible about being born a bird or an animal. Actually, the concept is absurd.
What eagle in its right mind would want to be born into the slums of Los Angeles? One hopes that human beings had more dignity in the Buddha’s time.
In afternoon I take Amray to Bihar Sharif [about 50 km away] to get his tax clearance form. It’s a great test of equanimity. Two hours in the office while a Brahmin with a palsied hand and a face engraved with counterfeit cares, fiddles with papers. Two assistants take a tea over the road and buy me one. Talk quite nicely to me. Afterwards I watch him (the assistant) struggling to talk with his lower lip cupped to stop the betel juice from running over onto his paperwork.
[After a few days I left to make my way to Calcutta via Ranchi, where I stopped to have lunch in a relatively expensive restaurant. The food gave me dysentery and I was forced to stop and squat in a field, where I wrote this Ode to Ranchi water.]
The food in Bihar is rather bizarre
You should not stray far after lunch in Bihar
Not even as far as the local bazaar
For none can outrun the food in Bihar
Well, that’s what I wrote in March 1977.
As I told you last week, I have just received copies of a new edition of Jupiter’s Travels in French, and I need to get the word out. If those of you who live in France could suggest the names of magazines or web sites I should contact, I’d be grateful.
I arrive in Bodhgaya looking for somewhere to rest and write.
Bodhgaya, Monday February 21st
Tent in grounds of Tourist Bungalow. Not a very peaceful place. Meet Jacques Martin and his girlfriend/wife. They tell me the Burmese Vihar might be better. After two nights I move across, so –
Wednesday 23rd to Wednesday March 9th at Burmese Vihar
[All the most important Buddhist national communities had built temples at Bodhgaya, where the Buddha was said to have attained enlightenment. Associated with the temples were places, called vihars, where pilgrims could rest. Some were more rigorous than others. The Burmese vihar was the most relaxed. It consisted, so far as I remember now, a two-storey building and a large yard, with vegetable gardens. Down one side of the yard were a number of small huts, each with just a bunk and a bench, and I too up residence on one of them. I quickly made the acquaintance of a Burmese monk, Amnuay Bahaddesiri, who held classes in Vipassana meditation, and also led morning sessions of yoga exercises on the roof. I signed up for both while I wrote my piece.]
[While I was there they were erecting a new building. As usual the women were doing the heavy lifting, carrying baskets of wet cement up to the roof. I finished my piece – which never saw the light of day – and I heard that Alikhan, one of India’s most famous musicians, was giving a concert in Delhi. I had met him in Assam, and we became friends.]
Buy train ticket for Delhi.
A rickshaw to Gaya, bumping quietly through the night. Conscious of the river of sand beyond the trees and palms on the right. Occasional ghostly ox wagons and pony cabs in moonless dark leave shouts and chatter. Little snatches of sound. I’ve done so little moving at night, and none in silence. It’s not even 9 pm. The train leaves in seven hours. How to pass the time. Have the perverse idea of getting drunk. At Anand’s restaurant ask for a beer. The proprietor himself comes to move me onto a patch of grass, separate from the rest, in gloom, where I swallow two bottles of beer and dream quietly on my own. Have two good ideas. One is to identify societies by the drugs they use. (i.e. the kind of relief needed). The other, better idea I have since forgotten.
Before leaving P.K. Anand [the owner] takes me into his office, which is one of a row of lock-up shops that were once his family’s stables. They were great landlords, he says. He tells me stories about vasectomies – how he once needed labourers and sent someone in a rickshaw to offer 5 rupees to anyone who would come. He got no takers. They thought it was a ruse to get them operated. And the ticketless traveller of 15, caught by police, and taken straight to the operation room. Says family planning is resented as interference with the laws of Karma. A man’s ability to reproduce is determined by his previous life. Virtue is measured by the fruit of his loins.
The long wait on the platform is tedious. Already I’m regretting this impulse. Journey drags on endlessly.
The long, dreary wait on Gaya station after too much beer. Railway employees and passengers alike stretched out on platform. Man in dhoti, shirt, and shabby worsted jacket, rises up and with his lamp disappears along platform into darkness . . . .
Glimpses of mother on opposite bunk caring for her child.
Chai wallahs with earthenware cups. Burned my mouth on coffee at Allahabad. Had a guava at another station, not knowing what it was.
At Delhi station slightly desperate mood, try to phone Alikhan and lose rupees in telephones. All around others are also losing their money. In kiosk the telephone employee is allowed to continue unperturbed – changing notes for people to lose more money.
With sense of rushing into folly, take rickshaw to Alikhan’s address. After much looking, find it, but he is not there, only a student. He sends me on to new house, but I telephone first and, thank heavens, he knows who I am. I’m kindly received and then comes the numbing news that the concert has been cancelled. (And looking back I see that the whole enterprise was dodgy from the start, fraught with compromised motives, last minute reluctance, overcome.) Now I’ve a real struggle for equanimity.
Friday March 11th
Woken by student plucking at sarod, playing scales. Bus to Lucas. Lots of interesting mail. From mother, PH, Pat K, Barbara, Doug and Ash. Lifts my spirits. Set off on my chores which scarcely fill the void I’m in. Peter Kline has left. Ottolenghi retreats as I approach. Call to London is usual farcical failure. Passport office is closed. Follows desperate beer with Madan (Asst. Mgr) who assaults me with talk of serial depravity by English Hippy girls and his friends. He is depressed, but a more general obsession shows through. Undoubtedly, I am not exposing myself generally to the dirtier side of the world’s business and must bear this in mind in case I am misled into making “objective analyses.”
Attempts to get back to the Defence Colony are frantic as each bus leads me further into the unknown. There are election meetings booming out everywhere – huge voices. When you can’t understand what they say it’s obvious that the meaning is irrelevant to the main purpose (?) Remember the speech at La Plata.
March 12th
Breakfast at ‘smart’ restaurant. Waiter leaves door open for light, but others always close it. Music starts, a swinging Hindi number and I object. The owners turn to me with severe regret.
“Prayers,” they say. I’m mortified. Then waiter switches on the A/C directly behind my head.
Thick atmospheres, and rarified.
What does it mean to speak of materialistic societies? Aren’t Indians even more obsessed by money and possessions than we are? But the values are different. We actually want these things for their own sake. But it is noticeable that well-to-do Indians are quite comfortable in shabby, primitive surroundings (e.g. Patna party, religious observances). Other things are at stake. Security. Status. Responsibilities discharged. When an Indian businessman robs his clients it is on behalf of his clan, not himself.
What is there to write about Delhi? Tales of frustration and small blessings on buses and in shops. The saving of it, of course, are the minutes spent listening to Alikhan practicing and his student on sitar afterwards. (And the shy-looking lad on table-tabla who nevertheless managed so much equanimity with his slight inward smiles. The enigma of the Mona Lisa is, of course, that we want her to smile at us, but it is purely inward.)
The passport office was closed on Friday afternoon (otherwise I might have gone straight back to Gaya). On Monday it was like a maze with lines of people queuing, but the counter I wanted was like a trough in a piggery. I always wonder how I can ever expect to reach the clerk, but it happens. George’s story of the Pakistani train ticket office sounds as bad as any three layers of frontiersmen with guns and big muscles sprawling over each other. I suppose I’ve always assumed that one day I would be confronted by just such an impossible situation, and the truth is that I’ve probably been through several already, but having to deal with them practically one can’t afford the dramatic view but must focus on the spaces between the bodies. There seems to be always a way through.
Bodhgaya also had a Maharaja, with his own palace and peacock
Next week: by train to Varanasi – also known as Benares.
From Patna I’m on my way to the religious heart of India but suffer a most felicitous interruption – dancing girls included.
Sunday 20th February
After a haircut (very short) and breakfast with Jha I leave for Bodhgaya anxious to settle down to my piece [I was planning an article on the election for the Sunday Times] and unsure whether this will be the place, though Carol recommended it so highly. It’s a long ride – the short cut I had hoped to find eludes me – and very little English is spoken here. I’m reluctant to stop and ask because of the great crowds that will gather. This is something of a dilemma. People will help, I’m sure of that, but there is no measured response – this one gets in colder climates – and the surfeit cannot be managed. I don’t want to be riding today. It’s too hot. I’ve got too much stuff, and the road is squalid and uncomfortable. I can detach myself from this discomfort and be content – but sweating in a crowd would push me either to anger or to a self-mocking surrender. I should have enough petrol for 100 miles. Gaya is 72 miles, but 15 miles before getting there the main tank runs dry and 5 miles later, the reserve also. I can’t understand why the reserve is so unreliable. Does it splash over? Anyway, there I am.
The passing scene as I sat beneath a tree and waited for help to appear.
A couple of villagers come to talk – a Brahmin who looks sly but a bit bright, tells me how poor he is. The other fellow has just come from the village on his bicycle. The Brahmin interrogates him and then sends him back to the village. [To get petrol for me.] The other fellow accepts his instructions willingly. I would give him money, and struggle to empty the oil from my jerry can, but the Brahmin says No, pay later. I sit under a tree and read. Heller. [I was reading ‘Catch 22’]
Nothing happens. Eventually I try to flag down a car. The driver waves me away impatiently. A truck coming the other way pushes him off the road, gives me a thumbs up sign. The camaraderie of the road. Then two chaps on a Bullet stop. The pillion rider wants to help, but they haven’t enough petrol. So we stop a car. And they pump petrol from it to give me a litre. He is the vice-Chancellor, retired, of Madagh University and asks me to drop in at Gaya. The Bullet rider says I must appear at the wedding he’s going to. I can’t refuse, though it means I won’t see Bodhgaya before dark.
He’s a small, solemn, bearded fellow – a Rajput (i.e. Kshatrya). Wedding is off the road, by a village. The groom’s party is under a big tent with multi-coloured ceiling, cushions and floor-coverings and a throne for the groom who is covered with head gear. The father and grandfather, and the pandit wear brilliant yellow turbans. There are weapons also on show, traditional for the warrior cast.
Two dancing girls take turns with a group on tabla, sarod (with bow) and harmonium. She moves languidly from foot to foot (ankle bells) and then shuffles out about six steps in a very stylised way that’s supposed to be very erotic. The facial expressions are most interesting to me – a sort of smugness, indifference of a deliberately false kind (almost contempt).
Sometimes she picks out someone who might pay her money, and squats in front of him, singing some verses at him directly, and accepting a variety of humiliations and jests until he pays up (10 rupees seems usual).
Meanwhile, over at the bride’s house, a similar ceremony is going on. The house is drenched in coloured lights. Next morning groom and bride together endure a series of symbolic acts – he is covered with things dangling from a paper hat, with spangles and mirrors sprouting from it, in heavy clothes, almost invisible, and has to spoon milk with a leaf from one pot into another one and then on to some smouldering cow dung, sometimes with a silk sheet held across his face, while the Pandit jabbers away harshly from some tattered papers, losing his place, coughing, stopping for consultations. Then, in the middle of it, the group and the dancing girls crowd in, and she sings over the top of it all, while the observers chat. And I imagine being the groom and I think I would go quite crazy.
Later before leaving the father reads my hand, as promised. He holds it in a handshake, then pushes back my thumb. “Acha,” he says. “You have a very determined soul. This is reflected also in your mind, etc.” What he tells me is the flattering side of my personality, and true enough. I’m quite impressed. My planet is Jupiter. For seven years under bad influence of Mars, which will continue for two years. After that Success!!! I have a weak hold on the affections of women, and owe everything to my mother. There will be two accidents, not major but not minor either, in these two years. (I wonder if I’ve already had one of them).
Overnight the son and I slept side by side under the tent. People were very concerned about the security of my things. Already two bags and four pairs of shoes have been stolen.
This has been an eventful week. A French journalist, Patrice Roux, brought me to a small town near Paris to meet Anne-France Dautheville who is known, in France, as the first woman to ride a bike across the world. We had never met. What made it most interesting to me was that she travelled at the same time I did. We had a very lively conversation, helped by the fact that she is a lot younger than I am, and her English is better than my French. It was recorded by Patrice who had a film crew with him. He says he was very pleased, and I enjoyed it so much that I typically forgot to take any pictures myself. Take it from me, she’s an attractive, strong-minded woman who has fought and won many battles in life.
I hope that the video gets out, because the other happy thing that happened was a delivery of books, and I finally have copies to sell of Jupiter’s Travels in French. Not only that, but my Italian publishers tell me they are reprinting. So, it’s been a good week for Jupiter.
See you next week.
Just a reminder of the route
Still Saturday 19th, February
[Following an afternoon spent gliding above Patna among birds of prey, I’m invited by my pilot, Jha Prakash, to join a different class of predator.]
In the evening, Jha absorbs me into a party at his brother-in-law’s room at the DAK bungalow. A mild US couple also arrived previous night, and they too have been invited. I assume that virtually anything foreign, that isn’t positively disgusting, confers prestige on a social gathering.
[In the course of the evening I gradually became aware that I was in the presence of the most powerful politicians in the state of Bihar which, at the time, had a population of 100 million or more. Indira Ghandi’s Congress party was in power but was expected to lose in the upcoming election.]
The room is as shabby as usual – flaking pale blue plaster, il-assorted and ill-upholstered settee and armchairs. Ordinary beds. Here are first the MP for Bihar, then the Chairman of the Bihar Congress Party and member of the State Legislature whom I’ll call (X); then a man who has just been made Chairman of the Bihar Homeopathic Board (C); two police chiefs, the “SP” of Patna, and one with an equal but mysterious rank from Delhi. The host is leader of the Bihar Section of Congress Youth (Y) a self-made man credited by Jha with giving away most of what he earned as a contractor. Then there was an ASP, a PR man for Congress, and a newspaper management executive. The politicians were in ethnic dress (C and Y in dhoti).
C and the MP arrived by car in reverse order of importance, each one being greeted effusively and acclaimed as “our great leader.” The policemen simply materialised and then faded away in the same manner.
X was the dominant presence. A crafty grin played on his wide mouth. His eyes glittered shrewdly through slits beneath a broad overhanging brow. He exuded confidence and control even when drunk, sent his power vibrations out in a steady field to every corner of the room. Y’s approach was more mercurial and intense. Between duties as host he would spring suddenly into the foreground of the party, perching with great agility on the end of the bed in lotus position, and deliver a fierce oration as though addressing not a handful of people but a crowd of lakhs [Lakh = 100,000]. His sunken eyes blazed in these short bursts of fervour.
The MP likewise conformed perfectly to his role. He was a bit above it all, the raw politics, the grass roots. He was the Delhi statesman, able to view events with the detachment proper to a cultivated man. He essayed a short speech, in English, pretending to be an army general making a public announcement several weeks following the defeat of Mrs Ghandi at the polls. “ . . . . and so, in view of the chaos and dissension which have swept the country, since abandoning the orderly progress maintained under Mrs Ghandi’s government, we have no alternative but to suspend the constitution and declare martial law . . . .”
The assembled party burst into cries of “Never. It will never happen here. Mrs Ghandi will win, hands down, sweep the country, etc.” The general embarrassment was obvious. It was not a very witty speech and failed as satire. At this point there were several whispered conversations between police and politicians, and the party moved from politics to music. It seems the police were afraid the two US hitchhikers might be from the CIA (an idea which, to me, seemed laughable).
C, who was the object of the party, had been sitting alone in an armchair, taking no part and looking like a bundle of clothes waiting for the laundry. Now he was urged to sing. I was told he was a poet. A beatific expression flooded his features, and he came to life. To my surprise he sang beautifully and the words, though I couldn’t understand them, were offered with clarity, emphasis and meaning. I was convinced they were of real quality. It was impressive that this collection of political animals could respond so sincerely to his songs.
Later, X became completely maudlin. He grabbed me and pressed invitations on me to visit his residence, and the PRO and ASP literally dragged him away from me. Before the party ended I talked briefly to the Superintendent of Police, and gave my view that in comparison with the true dictatorships of Latin America, India was the freest of countries, and that I was pleased to be able to say so. I expected him to be pleased to hear this. Instead, he said, very seriously, “That is the trouble. There is too much freedom. We must have more control. We can achieve nothing like this.”
Perhaps his appearance, which reminded me of a Brazilian apparatchik, made his opinion seem more sinister. And I began to speculate on the existence of a stratum of opinion in the Indian bureaucracy which would like to see “a firm hand” on the people.
[If only I could have had my iPhone: there would have been some wonderful pictures – or on the other hand I might have landed in jail.]
Next week: Onward and inward.
The ubiquitous holy cows of India didn’t look too happy with their diet of street food.
I took Carol to the Bangladeshi border as we’d agreed and returned to Gauhati thinking I would need to renew my permit before leaving Assam. I called on Dr. Das, the academic, who invited me to dinner.
Tuesday, February 15th
Dinner with Das. Wife rather self-conscious about food and I’m sure she’s made it blander than usual. But it’s nice and we have a pleasant time. All the same I feel that we never really get to the point. It’s all rather trivial. Comparisons of customs. He attacks reservation of jobs for scheduled castes.
Dr Das mentions village at the foot of forested slope. The villagers grew sugar cane and made their own molasses. The forest was government property, and a logging franchise was sold. The villagers could no longer get firewood (the trees were clear cut) and they were able no longer to make sugar. Also, he said, their supply of fish was cut off from the other side of the hill. (Why?)
[He talks about the lackadaisical behaviour of students, and quotes one of them.]
“I may start a law practice and fight for clients. Of course I can cheat them. In India lawyers do this.” Young law student in Gauhati: who failed to appear at appointment.
Dr Das invited 1000 families to his mother’s funeral.
Wednesday 16th
My frustration at discovering that today is a Govt. religious holiday comes to the boil. My permit has now expired and I can’t get another till tomorrow. I decide to get out of Assam. Pack and leave early. Get to Barpeta Road at 10am and have short but warm meeting with Debroy. He seems really pleased. Takes Abbey’s book. [I had a copy of Edward Abbey’s ‘Desert Solitaire’]
Shows me his account of shooting man-eating tiger. I ask him to send a copy to France. He agrees. Maybe it will make a good article. Good for him to get some currency.
Just a little trouble later at border because of stupid policeman getting date wrong. Siliguri awaits me and stuff is as I left it, but I seem to have lost my draft of Kolhapur episode. Saddens me. Also there’s an enormous amount of stuff to carry and it takes a while to work out a system. I figure to go straight to Calcutta, see Carol again and offload some gear.
Thursday 17th
Set off at great rate. Road is good. Then after 150 miles make the crucial error and, still on Highway 31, go almost to Patna before discovering my mistake.
[Leaving Assam I crossed the Ganges, but in a maze of tributaries and bridges without signage I followed the river upstream towards Patna instead of downstream to Calcutta.]
On the way, nearly hit a small boy who ran right across my front wheel. Fearfully close, in spite of my being very watchful. Reminder of mortality. How those few inches affected my life.
Now at Barauni junction I’m quite depressed. No Carol. No Calcutta. Raj Pande [The Lucas agent] etc. Only “dirty” Patna awaits me. I struggle through thickening crowds of people on road, who seem to have been gathering by the riverside. The sun was really blinding now, and I was afraid to hit someone. Got to Patna just at sunset, but it proved remarkably easy. The first time I stopped I was directed to DAK bungalow. Two fellows on scooter escorted me there. A chemical engineer received me and eventually found me a room at the Indrasan. Patna is neither huge nor dirty – I’m at a loss to understand where these reputations are formed. Perhaps arriving by train gives a different impression. But then what about London?
Friday 18th
Send telegram to PH (perhaps too frivolous.) Film and letter to Carol in Calcutta. Have good food at Amber restaurant, Fraser Road. Hang out with engineer, and brothers at hotel. Have beer with Prakash, the pilot brother, who takes me upstairs for dinner. No call from PH.
Saturday 19th
This morning got the bank draft at last and sent it to Nasir. [Nasir was the film distributor who helped me in Bombay. I must have owed him money.]
Still nothing from PH. It puzzles me that not even the least courtesy is paid to my message.
Second day in Patna. I would have left but for the promise of a seat in a glider. Prakash was eager to talk to me when he’d seen the bike. He was able to appreciate a measure of what it represented in terms of effort and determination, and also has a high opinion of his own superiority, which allowed him to believe that he measured up to me, status wise. I put it that way because he’s quite boastful of his own exploits and accomplishments. He has been a qualified commercial pilot for a long time. Recently took up gliding. In Montreal he was working as a pilot and took a flyer on a snack bar concession at the world fair. He says he was making $800 a week profit [$4000 today.] He used it all to travel (The gamble included flying two cooks from Delhi to Canada.) On his journey through USA, Far East and Europe he lived in Hiltons, spared no luxury, had girlfriends, and took many photographs. Most of the pictures in his album seem to be pictures of himself taken by friends. In these pics he looks like a boorish, vicious playboy. The vitality and mischievousness which make him attractive are absent. In Europe he was joined by his wife. There are pictures of her looking dumpy and miserable. She seems to have done a lot of shopping. They have one or two children (he never mentions them). She watches indulgently as I look at pictures of his girlfriends and he talks about them in front of her. Although he is likeable, I know I couldn’t enjoy his company for long, but I am excited by the prospect of gliding again. (When I ask him what it costs to have shoes polished, he makes a point of telling me that he always polishes his own). He says he started the family sweet shop and has had an instinctive flair for business since his youth.
Prakash takes me gliding in afternoon. What a rush of excitement. For a bit I felt quite scared but really loved it. He takes me to the airstrip at 2pm – and we go up in a two seat Indian glider (Rohini). It’s very dramatic – much more so than the helicopter – and I try to conceal a surprising nervousness – but it’s very exciting, as we twist in a mild thermal alongside the big kites racing past us [Kite = bird of prey, up to two feet long]. The wind is a tremendous presence. And to watch the big kites swooping around is quite fabulous. One came very close and I got a quite different feeling about it – very powerful and businesslike. The wind which is supporting us also seems to be grasping at the glider from all directions trying to upset it. I’m not sure I’d want to do much more of it, since it feels so unsafe, but I grab these opportunities eagerly for the new perspective they might offer.
It’s interesting that certain risk-taking activities are socially acceptable for mind expansion (i.e. climbing, parachuting, etc) whereas motorcycling is not. Yet all arguments apply to both.
More about the rest of this extraordinary day next week.
[We are guests at the Monobarie Tea Estate after crossing the Bramaputra.]
At a spice market
Monday 7th February
Lazy day, although I get all my addresses transcribed into a small book indexed by country.
The evening is reserved for a cultural program in aid of local high school. Don’t give it much thought and don’t wear much clothing. Arrive to find a big tent like a circus. Gets very cold.
At first, Bihu dances, with little character sketches in them. Another dance from Madya Pradesh. Then main event begins.
[A proper theatrical stage has been set up under the tent.]
Turns out to be an endless melodrama, full of characters, entwined in tales of disaster and degradation. A mother of an illegitimate son has been deserted by her lover. Her brother proposes a new marriage for her, but first she must get rid of her son. He sends the boy off for adoption and finds her a rich Brahmin husband. When her lover turns up he’s told the son has died and she has remarried. He goes off in despair. 25 years pass. The son appears, broke and hungry. A painter/beggar doesn’t help him. Then his father appears as a violinist/beggar. He also can’t help him. His name is “Tettari.” Then a pock-marked villain enrolls the son in a gang. The painter has a daughter. The original brother has become wealthy (presumably off his brother in law) and is a publisher. He has designs on the daughter. She spurns him, but necessity forces her onto the street with her father, selling fake charity tickets. The Brahmin family walks by, and the son buys a charity ticket. Previously he refused to share their picnic with Tettari when he was starving, although the mother wanted to (blood tells). Now the gang robs the girl and father, but Tettari forces them to return the money, and a police inspector gets involved. The old brother seduces the daughter and corrupts her. (Tettari goes over to the police.) after her father has been beaten up while robbing. The Brahmin overhears his wife confessing to the violinist that they have a son, etc, etc.
It’s a soap opera, comic strip acted out on a stage. The rape or seduction of Miranda by the rich and unscrupulous brother was particularly drawn out and harrowing, – lots of mirthless laughter as he closes in on his prey. English words and titles are used by characters who have sold their souls to acquire status and power, particularly by the acolytes of the gang leader, the brother, the inspector. I thought that something like this would be a great success on the London stage, but the cast would be huge.
The characters [actors] were shivering round a small fire in the grounds between appearances. They had mattresses laid out in classrooms, and were giving a series of three nights, different shows each time. They charged 500 rupees each night. None of them, it seemed, spoke any English.
I was fascinated to be so close to a lost tradition of the theatre, but it was freezing. Hard to keep my mind awake, and Carol was raising static about the cold, and how extraordinary it was that Roy and the others didn’t seem to have any concern for the comfort of others. It became clear that none of the plantation people had any idea of what we were in for.
Tuesday, 8th
Another languid day, but a burst of unnecessary excitement in the middle when I suddenly get it into my head that the election is on Feb. 16th and I ought to get my piece in now.
[I had been planning an article about the election for the Sunday Times.]
Eventually declare my folly to Roy, and he tells me it’s March 16th, so no hurry. Feel foolish, but relieved.
There’s a party in the evening to welcome the bride of one of Roy’s assistants.
Notable guests: Indian manager with navy club blazer inscribed DFC with wings [RAF Distinguished Flying Cross] and the most outrageously affected ‘Old Boys’ accent I ever heard [and I’ve heard a lot]. If he appeared alone on the Palladium stage, he’d be a winner. His manner was appropriately unpleasant.
His wife, articulate and intelligent, confesses she hates him, and cultivates her sensibilities in defiance. She was able to relieve herself by talking to me about literature – very fast for a while. I was glad to help, but unable to say much that was worthwhile.
A young assistant, previously in hotels, a bit travelled, came on full spate about the reactionary policies of the planters. “As Lenin once said, ‘Politics is the opium of the people’.” [Rubbish! Confusing Lenin with Marx and politics with religion.]
At lunchtime, one of the fields nearby burst into flame. The Punjabi assistant with the dazzling smile supervises the attempt to beat it out with green branches. Still it spreads. The citronella crop is ruined. He says it was set deliberately by a worker who wanted to save work clearing the land.
Wednesday, 9th
Lunchtime departure to Tezpur.
Roy Boswell receives call to visit local CID and returns happy that they have ‘no objection’ to his permit. [There are two Roys – Eastment and Boswell.]
Boswell’s a fine old gent. Was manager of the same garden as the blazered buffoon. In England his wife died, and he wants to retire in Assam. Has ‘adopted’ an Indian family and plans to live with them, buy some land and pass it on to them. There is a local tradition for this kind of thing. A surveyor in Tezpur did the same – Aitken Bros.
More great rivers to cross, then Tezpur and the DC’s office. We meet the Additional Deputy Commissioner. Mr Buyan, who turns out to be a sweet man. Takes us home for a big tea and fixes us up in the Agricultural Bungalow.
He tells us more about how the joint family system works and stresses the power of the mother to enforce moral obligations. If one of her sons fails in his duty (i.e. to give financial help to a needier relative) she will refuse to visit him and ostentatiously stay at another place nearby. The news of this action will travel rapidly between the wives at the bazaar, and he will be disgraced. Thus, the function of gossip to enforce conformity.
Thursday, 10th
Ride around Tezpur – to a hill with ruins of Krishna temples (2000 years old.) Later move into Circuit house, for the hell of it. Conveniences not much better than bungalow – and beds embarrassingly creaky. Costs so little – 2 or 3 rupees. Roy’s friend, the magistrate, has been living there six months, and is in trouble because she left Tezpur for his party without the DC’s permission. Now threatened with eviction. Fines for overstaying at Circuit House or DAK are draconian – but I doubt whether they are enforced.
Meet the two Roys later, at club. We’re invited to breakfast at home of a cinema owner. His son graduated at Milwaukee Economics. Now works in business.
Friday, 11th February
[After breakfast we went on to Gauhati. It was time for me to take Carol to Dawki on the Bangladeshi border, and leave her as we had agreed, but it was a very painful parting. The road to Dawki from Shillong, over a rolling landscape of tea estates, was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. There was a short mountainous section.]
Small party of ragged men shouting and waving red flag, met on way down from Shillong. Was it a religious procession? Then two sections of cement pipe crammed with women, waving and also shouting at 500 syllables a second.
Then the first blast from the rock face.
[The side of the mountain slid down, but we were unhurt.]
Next week is my birthday and there will be parties. I’m sorry you can’t come. I’ll try to squeeze another episode in but forgive me, please, if I don’t. Cheers to all.
An Ahom castle in Assam
[We are on our way to Dibrugarh, upriver in Assam, expecting to spend the night in a DAK bungalow, one of the many rest houses built for travellers in British India. We already had invitations for the following days to visit first the oil town at Duliajan, about 50 kms East of Dibrugarh, and then on to a British tea estate at Margherita another 50kms or so further East, owned by Jimmy and Jean Beven. Due, no doubt, to our unusual means of transport and our personal stories, we were invited everywhere.]
We got to DAK at 5.30, expecting half-hours peace. Almost immediately the two guardsmen from the Tea Estate appeared: one in a modern stock-broker’s pin-striped suit, the other in lighter gear. I had to send them off, and used Carol’s request for aspirin as grounds to plead for mercy on health grounds. They were very pleasant, and promised the jeep for later, and left. Carol tore into me for using her health as an excuse – not unreasonably – and then went on about it ¬– unreasonably, while I retained my annoyance at not being free to simply stop and sit and reflect after such a lovely day. But we broke it down in time, and when Dilip arrived we were both happy.
Party was chiefly interesting for: A wealth of pretty young Indian wives; Sikh’s talk about rice crops in Punjab, recently bad, and the advances of Haryana; His wife’s lost ambition to be a journalist.
Monday, January 31st
From Dibrughar to Duliajan. First to Dilip, then to Special Branch. [We were supposed to check in everywhere.] Then to Agrawallah, then finally on the road out from the “overbridge” cross-roads, past Triplex drycleaners and the Khodi shop, out along the railway line, 30 miles of quite good road.
Duliajan is a company town, bult by private British interests for Assam Oil Co. Now of course nationalised.
75,000 gals per hour through treating plant.
75 million tons crude per annum to Gauhati through 16inch pipe.
Crude from well to collecting stations where water and gas are separated off. (Flare of gas burning; only 40 % is used by fertiliser plant and local energy needs) Then to tank farm, then to treating plant where heated to 95 degrees C. and cooled. This breaks up the crystalline structure of the waxes (This crude heavy in wax} to enable it to be pumped in winter, 1100 kms to Bihar. (Some refined in Gauhati. Third refinery planned in Assam.)
Drilling well, mud is pumped from plant 10 miles or more away. Also gas and water. Drill pipes of 30’ lengths drawn up in 90’ segments. 90 seconds to pull up each segment. Drill bit may be changed every 80 ft or so. 1400 hp to turn bit. 700 hp to pump mud. New rig costs India $1,500,00. Rig helper gets about 450 rps per month, plus bonus free home and services = 700 rps = $18 per week.
Waste gases used to fire the company crematorium.
[We went on from Duliajan to Margherita where we stayed several days in great comfort.]
Margherita Tea Estate. Jimmy and Jean Beven. 473 hectares. Plants per hectare 11,000 to 15,000.
Tea is one unique species. Varieties, by selection, called clones. 30 altogether. Margherita has 20 or so different ones, by curious names like TV-2 or Margherita 1.
Beven makes tea to customer requirements, as opposed to producing for a general standard and leaving the selection to buyers at auction. Now almost none is sold through auction. Europe and America are a growing market for expensive teas.
Process; Tea plants plucked weekly, two leaves and a bud. Produce 14 to35 quintals of made tea per hectare per annum. Quintal = 100 kgs. His plants yield in 2 to 3 years. Can live for 100 years or more. Mulch and paraquat (herbicide). Guatemala grass when land is fallow (deep rooted). Principal pests, red spider, green fly, and fungus.
Leaves are dried of 30% of their weight by blowers. Then two methods. CTC – cut, turn, and curl – by pronged rollers. Or Orthodox, rolled between revolving discs. First gives a more “liquory” tea. i.e Thick Body – tea “creams out.” When left standing it becomes opaque. Second gives lighter, more aromatic tea. Then laid out on aluminium sheets about half inch deep for 30 to 45 minutes to complete “fermentation” before being dried and packed. Best chests of mango wood, and another wood from Andoman islands.
Plantation Act of 1953 (?) requires brick houses, free firewood, 2 weeks holiday, transport home at certain intervals, minimum 8% bonus (has been as high as 20%) recently profits were about 20%.
The day with R.K.Barua [An oil man.] An evening party
Jimmy and Jean Beven get us an elaborate picnic lunch and we set off to follow various tracks to the “inner line.” Border of Arunachal Pradesh, to find elephants working lumber. On way, stop to take pictures under the road sign for the Stillwell Road, to Chunking, Yunming, Wanting, etc. Barua pulls up. Is very excited by idea of taking us in his jeep to see various things. The wildcat rig, down to 17,000 feet, pipes stuck by extreme pressure forces them against side. Schlumberger lowers explosive charges to free joints.
Pat O’Leary from Burma. The all-denomination temple, recreation rooms. R.K’s constant emphasis on the vulnerability of his installations (explosives, etc) and how much he relies on the goodwill of the people around (Singpho tribes – light grey cloaks, loin cloths, bows & arrows, Tibetan settlement. The ropeway, for monsoon, across the Noa Diking, upstream from Mige.
Lots of logging – Hollock, Hollong, Simal and the ironwood (Nurah?).
February 6th
Crossing the Brahmaputra. DAK bunglow. One bottle of beer and a half of whisky left from Monday night before. Call Sengupta to say goodbye. Then to SB office, back to police station – very fluent policeman in charge – back to SB. Ferry on unmarked, sandy road. On to the “Joya”– tea hut owner in long dhoti gives us boiled egg and tea. Great calm expanse of river, clumps of foliage sailing downstream, like offerings. Pan boy selling betel on board. Ferry costs 7.50 for bike and rider. Soldiers and peasants all with woolen scarves wrapped round heads and chins like toothache sufferers. Large port of Dibrugarh was swept away by erosion in a recent monsoon (’73?) so new business is building in Tinsukia.
On the crossing, waves of sadness engulf me. They seem to rise out of the water itself, since I have no particular reason for sadness or melancholy. As I contemplate it, I feel a great tide of feeling submerged beneath the daily details of life, but ebbing and flowing powerfully according to its own purposes. At times, no doubt, I travel with this current, at other times against it, and probably I have no real conception of its meaning or existence.
My observations and sensations of “reality” must be so conditioned by this fundamental stream of emotion that they would be seen as all works of the imagination. And I’m led to think that a true description of this journey should also be entitled Imaginary. This has some relevance to another recent series of ideas which led me to see the life of the emotion as a “looking glass” image of the physical world, and my hypothesis as “The Looking-glass Principle.”
We are pulsing through this grey flatness of water between banks of sand that crumble and fall before our eyes. The journey has lost its beginning and offers no end and we might be floating along the Styx for all I know.
The ferry arrives on a forlorn bank of the river, wind blowing sand through the rushes and grasses. Long dusty road leads out. We stop and savour the silence for a while. See solitary boatmen out on the river which is now choppy in the breeze. Where we meet the main road an elderly man entertains us with lusty laughter and gestures while giving incomprehensible directions to Demraji and N.Lakimpur. Countryside on this north bank is richer looking and emptier. Great variety of tribal faces pass on the road.
Many men with bows and arrows are thrashing about in a marsh of water chestnuts trying to start up some creature they’re hunting. At one point a small black thing darts out and speeds across the vegetation to disappear again. They follow with howls but lose it. One of them looses off a couple of arrows at an egret – but without much conviction. His string seems rather loose. The arrow’s path very curved. Meanwhile two women work steadily bent over in the mud harvesting chestnuts, each with a basket slung at her hip.
The feeling is that if we stopped here we might be drawn in and able to stay, but we both need rest from experience, and time to think. After 80 miles we get to Lakhimpur – 2.30 pm and get a good lunch at Joya hotel.
[The Bevens have given us introductions to another Tea Estate.]
Then another 80 miles to Monabarie T.E, which seems to recede as we approach. Well after dark we turn into the garden and at last find Roy Eastment’s bungalow. He’s there alone and fixes us up. We eat and drink and play music. Soon we’re dancing to Hindu film music and having great fun.
Monday January 24th
We planned to leave and had breakfast (duck egg omelette). Then Carol began to feel really sick. She notes that several times, when it’s time to move on, she’s got ill and she suggests it’s her homing instinct.
We decide to stay another day. People are most solicitous. Vijay Vikram Singh in particular. He also remembers my suggestion of the previous night that a museum with information about the animals would help the park. Other remarks of mine have less success. However!!!
C in bed most of the day. We assume it has to do with the tetracycline course and wait for it to right itself. Evening I go back to the bar. This time to drink rum with the DFO [District Forestry Officer] a Kachari, and three Bengali auditors working with him. They ask me many questions about the journey.
The Bengalis volunteer to go to out of the way places, and have spent much time among the hill tribes in Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, etc. Their long absences from home bring the conversation round to the “joint family system” – in which all sons retain a financial interest in supporting the home, according to their incomes, and the wives remain to look after parents, etc.
One of them asks, very seriously, whether I prefer their system or the Western unit of two. I explain my feelings about the need to reestablish contact between our generations, and lead on to the demands of a technological society, specialisation, sacrifice of emotional interdependence and feeling, and suggest that these deficiencies are reflected in national policies and lead to such disasters as Viet Nam. It seemed like a stirring speech at the time – and included an apologia for drop-outs in Western universities.
A fourth Indian, an engineer attached to ITDC was there briefly. He was a foppish insecure young man. Revealed that his father had sent him to boarding school at the age of four. He strove to say something significant and always failed. I appreciate, in retrospect, his bewilderment. He knows he’s quite bright, but he always misses the mark because his own experience is too distorting. Echo of myself in the Express pub. [The Daily Express, in London, as a young man.]
People dealt more charitably with me then than I did with him!!!
An open cast coal mine near Dibrughar. Women seemed to do most of the work. They brought the coal to the train in baskets on their heads.
You wouldn’t think coal and saris go well together.
Tuesday 25th
Leave for Gologhat. On the way, stop for tea with DFO and Bengalis. Carol enjoys them, especially the DFO, who talks about census-taking in the park. They count animal droppings over a sample area. Also try to estimate what population the park can hold. Grazing habits. Snakes. Shows real affection for animals. Spent 11 months at Michigan State. Tells story of American Indian who asks him where he was from.
“I’m Indian.”
“Yes, but what part of the US are you from?”
Says their appearances were very similar.
On to Gologhat.
At Gologhat College: Dr M.K. Saika.
“There is a man in hospital now who fought with a tiger. He saw the tiger attacking a woman and he went to help. He had the long knife that the people carry. He struggled with it and killed it. He was badly mauled. The woman was already dead. He attacked the tiger without hesitation. Our people are like that. They are very warlike.”
Thursday 27th, to Dibrugarh
Changed razor blade. This one has lasted 4 months. i.e. 16 weeks of daily use.
Notes at random: [Watching women working in paddy fields]
Must be unpleasant to stand in mud, cold, bug ridden, all day. The colourful saris make the paddy scene seem cheerful. But then people laugh and smile even in prison.
History of advertising/promotion contests, etc. Like Ovaltineys. And the part they played in perverting society.
What raises a village beyond the sum of its parts?
Recollections of Chowdrey, the geologist:
Lead to the notion that all those experts who advise governments of developing nations on vital policy decisions may in a sense have “gone underground.” If they were to reveal their strategies they would become political targets of the first order, since their tasks usually involve sacrificing the prospects, if not the lives, of large sections of the community. (i.e. Health, Housing, slum rehab. location of Industry, exploitation of resources, fiscal policies, etc.)
In Tezpur:
Indian hospitality requires the guest to be an exhausted and starving cretin.
You may ask for anything, but God help you if you ask for nothing.
Everybody in India assumes that as long as you’ve got a chair to sit in, all other ambitions can be postponed indefinitely.
“Please sit,” is the most common phrase, after “You are from?”
Sunday 30th
Visiting Syam and Ahom villages with Dr. Barua and wife. 35 miles or so into the country.
Syam or Thai-speaking people from Shān province of Burma came to Nagaland in 1600 to follow the Ahom kings (who had come 200 years previously.) They called their new settlement “The Golden Place.” Later they drifted further into Assam.
This village was only three and a half miles from the border with Nagaland. It felt quite definitely more remote and rural than other villages and we’d left traffic a long way behind. We went first to the doctor’s house – a retired surgeon, old Thai face with a few black and crooked teeth, a son who seemed a shade wrong, and family.
Doctor is head man – has mementoes of visits to various Buddhist conferences. Also literature. Then we strolled through the village, gathering a few more people as we went.
Saw looms under houses, between stilts, and rice mills. Admired the spatial proportions of interiors, gardens, and relationships between plots. Also abundance of vegetables, banana, betel palms – sat in a teacher’s house for a while and asked questions about village. They claim there is never violence, undue drunkenness, quarrels between families. All is peaceful.
Why? They don’t know. Later, after lunch at doctor’s asked him the same question. He doesn’t know either. Welcomes education, considers the people backward, yet cannot say how education can help village life, but supposes instead that the recipients will be dissatisfied and move to town. Yet he says he has no fears for the future of the village.
Ahom village: Two elderly brothers and younger family. Spinning in yard, drying out rice, pictures of mulga silk on spindles. The “Danger” notice to frighten evil spirits from the sacred coconut tree.
Even more immaculate house and yard. Lovely sweets and tea in brass goblets. Kitchen is up a ladder, on first floor. Smoky place, says C, and dark. Daughter, who took away the tea things, has a B.A [University degree] Two brothers very neat, light bodies, with nut-like heads, button eyes. Both tied up in the red & white cotton cloths round their waists but with a plain dhoti below. They look strong, monkey-like agility. They go to market once a week, would not like people to come and sell in the village, let alone see permanent bazaar. They value the quiet.
Vice-chancellor, later, on return: Great expansive chuckles. “So now you see how backward our people are.”
We protest that on the contrary we were most impressed. He didn’t even give us a chance to finish the sentence, before assuming we must be joking, and burst into laughter again, repeating the same idiotic clichés.
By now I was gazing into his blue-pebble lenses with the first tender shoots of loathing springing up in my heart. Happily, Barua now put in a diplomatic word, in Assamese.
“Well,” said the VC “even if our people are poor, they are at any rate quite jolly.”
He waved at the untidy expanse of fallow ground all about us, with the weather-stained embryo of the physics building poking its rusty reinforcing iron into the sunset.
“We are growing fast now, and soon this will all be buildings. This chemistry building is coming up. It may all be empty now but . . . . “ He struggled a moment, and I added “Master plan is there.”
‘Yes, yes,” he said. It made a perfect epilogue to a perfect day.
Vinegar Joe’s famous World War II road to Burma
