News from Ted
Bengal Tiger at a reserve in India. Photo by Soumyajit Nandy.
Thursday January 13th
After morning ride with Debroy, back to tent, a meagre breakfast (one egg and a chapati between us) and packing. To see the Beat Officer, a curiously evanescent character whose ornate English phrases are unequal to the thoughts he tries to capture.
“I will be performing my utmost to render your visit…” and so on. But his answer to all questions an enthusiastic but uncomprehending, “Yes.”
We talk a little. He says his superior has decided to waive the camping charge, and we get off with 30 rupees each for three days. He presses me to take the boat ride, but I demur. I ask him about himself. He is 27.
“You cannot say I have many years. Still there is the main part to come.” And, “loneliness is my companion.” He repeats this several times. Wistful, and more endearing than before.
So we ride away, much faster and surer than before over the loose surface. Carol has the beginnings of a toothache. We are both hungry and looking forward to a meal. Then the plot suddenly takes a strange twist. At the point where, on the way in, we did our mistaken loop off the main road, we keep on the road and are unexpectedly stopped by a painted barrier held down by a padlocked cable.
A man asks us to show passports. I’m so surprised, I react a bit uppish, but we follow him in as it dawns on me that this is a police post of some sort which we inadvertently avoided on our way in. The two men who take our passports go through a very similar routine as the two at the frontier of Assam, but this time roles reversed.
The writer is an unusually sophisticated young man with a cultivated understanding of our feelings. The other is a ponderous, bull-headed man. He and I start with a foolish argument about how we came to take the wrong road coming in. He says there’s a sign. I protest that there is none. The suave one cuts in saying very pleasantly, “Please sit down. Did you enjoy Manas?” Then they read through the passports and Carol has to tell them that she’s a history teacher. We too smile and joke about the misunderstandings.
“You do not have a permit for Manas.”
“This is the permit here, given in Katmandu.”
“But it does not mention Manas.”
“But we were told it was valid for Manas.”
“You should have a special permit.”
“How were we to know. We have told everyone we were coming here. No-one mentioned that a special permit was need, etc., etc.”
After consultations and phone calls they say our passports must be sent to Tezpur.
“How far away is that?”
400 kilometres.
“And what do we do meanwhile? Stay here?”
The writer smiles apologetically.
In a heated fashion I ask whether the First Secretary in Katmandu will be put to the same inconvenience for misleading us. After another pause, he says our passports will be sent instead to Barpeta Road to save us inconvenience. A man will take them on a bus and we should report there to the police station.
We leave, and I lose an opportunity to convey to the civilized one that I respect him.
At Barpeta we go to the Sikh truck stop to eat paratha, rice and curry. Then to the IB [Inspection Bungalow]. Where we meet Debroy and tell him our story. He ponders the matter, but it seems he can do nothing to affect the issue. The IB is very pleasant and homely – nice beds, clean carpet, a dining room, new mosquito nets, and bright lighting – a real pleasure.
So we leave for the Police station. The duty policeman already has our passports. He seats us and asks what it’s all about. My explanation runs through three quarters of its length before he interrupts. (I am never able, really, to explain the whole thing to anyone. It’s as though they are listening for another kind of meaning behind my words}.
He is increasingly polite and friendly – a good-looking, athletic – warlike – man. He was in Kashmir for the Pakistani war. He apologises that his superior is at the market and will return in half an hour. Then we will get our passports back. While waiting, observe the office. A door behind us opens onto the Super’s office. On my left two barred metal doors labelled Male and Female lockup. On the facing wall another such door labelled Malkhana – which means House of Evidence where case exhibits (like our passports) are kept. The floor is eroded cement. A dusty box has a collection of empty bottles standing on it. Some standing shelves between the lockups have old files, all very dusty.
We ask leave to go and return in half an hour. At the IB is a medical officer travelling around heath centres to eradicate smallpox. He has studied the map on the bike, explains that he has understood exactly where I come from and what I have done.
“This is the Union Jack,” he says jovially. “We were saluting this flag for a long time.” Then he tells me immediately who he is and what he does.
“We have succeeded in almost eradicating it.”
We go back to the station. Now we are received by the Superintendent. (Actually, a sub-Inspector) a precisely efficient (if humourless) man in khaki.
“What is your problem?” he asks. How can he fail to know? He claims to be principally concerned that our passports were taken and no receipt given.
“This should be penalised,” he says. “I shall take action. Meanwhile if there is anything I can do . . .” and he offered immense but unspecified services. Then the extraordinary man in the orange scarf and the jacket from Chicago, already quite drunk, came in and added to the profusion of wishes, compliments, promises of immediate restitution, justice and unlimited aid. Then he started singing ‘Clementine’ followed by ‘Yippy-yippy-yay’ and an unknown song about Seven Lonely Days and Seven Lonely Nights. As he sang the superintendent held his hands before his face in mute embarrassment. But then I began to sing with the drunk and perhaps that helped. Anyway we were brought tea and rasgulis (delicious) and told that next morning, as soon as the Supt. had his instructions, we would receive our passports. Meanwhile we were to be the guests of the drunk, and we followed him to his cramped quarters where the duty policeman and some others were already helping themselves to brandy and water.
The drunk sang and talked and quoted proverbs. “If this drink is intoxicating, why is not this bottle dancing?” and so on. And the others also warmed up. One was a nice but sober Brahmin landlord – owns a lot of the land of Barpeta. The other was, astonishingly, introduced as India’s foremost actor of stage and screen, a Mr, D……… Pal who smiled shyly. And so we all trooped out to the lawn in front of the polices station where some constables had lit a wood fire.
Then came another dramatic transformation. This ragged band of PCs, some with bare feet, some with cloths round their heads, some in civilian clothes, became an eloquent tribal group of dancers and drummers. The drunken sub-inspector had kept up a continuous level of song and nonsense, but so far there was no sign that anyone else’s spirits were raised at all.
Occasionally to the tune of Clementine he danced a strange little jig, with one leg bent and the other sandalled foot raised and jabbing at the air under his tubby body which also twisted about. Sometimes he took the ends of his endless scarf and held them out from his body like some ceremonial dress, in a rather feminine gesture, while sweet expressions suffused his face. Though of course from one point of view he was just a drunk making a fool of himself, in this context he was a catalyst for all of us to lose our senses.
He had promised songs and dances. The drummer came across from the other side of the fire, a lean man with a fine grin, hooded by a scarf. His drum was of the truncated egg variety with string longitudinally stretched on the body. He tapped the rhythm on the side with a stick – double hand clap to four-time, then finished each sequence with a great flourish of beats in quite subtle combinations. “This is the bull” says the Inspector.
The first dance took us quite by surprise. The DSI (Drunken sub-inspector) was declaiming something to the houses but this time his remarks are greeted by a chorus of responses and animal growls. Then the Duty Constable (DC) raised his arms and went into a sinuous dance while the others with one sustained howling first note broke into a song of simple, powerful forms supported by drum and hands. The group in the firelight became as solid and intense as the Turkana were at Lodwar, and it was all the more extraordinary because these were policemen in uniform and the trappings of their trade were all around, while we, sitting there as honoured guests, had our passports locked up in their Malkhana.
The dancing continued with even greater effect. The DC’s hands moved with great eloquence over his forehead and behind his back. Another young man joined in and danced a completely different movement that may have been from another area. The DSI continued his jig, weaving among them and occasionally confirming that they were all in heavenly ecstasy due to our presence. The DC also kept telling us not to mind.
“Don’t mind.” We danced ourselves. Carol wore the DSI’s shawl, made by his mother, and then the scarf too. I wore his funny leather peaked hat. He called us brother and sister.
While my enjoyment and appreciation were undiluted, I still recognised a small voice murmuring “tomorrow maybe they’ll throw you in the lock-up.” Not pure paranoia, though I recognised the South American influence. But the emotional ties that bound us to them tonight were fireworks, and would be dead sticks in the morning. Meanwhile we were there under their supervision and they had our passports.
[By this time I had discovered that we happened to have arrived on a day of state-wide celebration called Bihu.]
Eventually the dinner was ready. The Supt. and the Brahmin came over saying “Yes please,” in that strangely abrupt way they have which leaves you wondering whether you’ve been invited or ordered to come. In the circumstances one wondered whether the sober ones were quite as friendly towards us as the drunks. But the landlord was very friendly to Carol at the feast, and the Supt. continued offering his services vociferously into the night. Although his persistent idea of giving us a constable to guard over us had a sinister side.
We did our best with the food, served on segments of banana trunk. It was delicious but far too much. Then we were whisked off with extraordinary speed and violence. The DC who was now smelling heavily of liquor seemed determined to walk us (or march us) back to the IB and was pushing and prodding us toward the exit. Then the Supt. took over and we were bundled into the jeep instead. There was scarcely time to say goodbye to anyone, enhancing the feeling that we were mere cyphers, or symbols, or ghosts at the feast.
Contemplating it all afterwards I felt as uncertain about the next day as if the celebration had never taken place. One other thing occurred to me. The Superintendent’s emphasis on the business of receipts for passports echoed loudly Debroy’s own remarks when we first told him of our troubles. Had Debroy quietly called a friend and suggested this line of defence against the SIB. Perhaps we’ll never know.
[The SIB, or simply IB, was India’s Intelligence branch, supposedly capable of making life very unpleasant, or worse.]
The moment I sit down to write this memoir, a knock on the door. Our hero, the DC, had come out on foot. Why? “Are you all right?” he demanded, as though he had just relieved us from a siege. He seemed to swell up and fill the door frame, beaming down on us with drunken eyes and breath. “Anything you want, you may call for me,” and then astonishingly he advanced on me, seized both my biceps in his hands and kissed me firmly on each cheek. And in the same mood of heroic resolution, he did the same for Carol, though there was a brief moment when his mouth seemed to be aimed at hers and only a mighty effort deflected it at the last moment. Then he stumbled off into the fog, nursing his Punjabi passions.
Still in Nepal, we’re moving across the lower reaches of the Himalaya to the Indian border. First, I wanted to visit Darjeeling, famous as an outpost of Empire and for the tea that bears its name. After that we intended to enter the state of Assam, and visit two tiger sanctuaries, Manas and Kazirenga. Assam was politically sensitive, and tightly controlled. It has a tribal population, and borders with China, but I believed we had been given the necessary permits from the Indian consulate in Kathmandu.
January 6th. Dahran to Siliguri
Indian road continues. People are unusually indifferent to traffic. To border with 4 rupees (Nepali) left. Tea and puri. Border crossing easy, tho’ much to-ing and fro-ing with carnet. On the Indian side a single individual in a tent observes a calm ritual, with good humour. Marked contrast, but carnet has to be done in next town. Both given cups of tea. I walk away and am called back. “Have you any small arms? Have you nothing to declare?” Then smiles, and we’re on our way.
January 7th. To Darjeeling
Oberoi hotel built 1914-16, by Armenian. Bought by Oberoi [a hotel chain] in 1957. Grey stone fortress. Cosy English bedroom. Coal fire. Cast iron grate and moulding straight from Edwardian England. Hot bath. Old-fashioned bed. Very comforting. Even fog begins to acquire some charm, and even if the water doesn’t run hot in our bathroom there are hundreds of other bathrooms to choose from. Otherwise, the Youth Hostel and the old English Tea house called Glenary’s. Then Campbell Cottage and Primrose Villas. Painted roof with fretted wood, and wood frames painted liberally with white paint, like a war-widow’s lipstick. Toy train’s whistle through the fog. Tibetan boys touting horse rides. (Three rupees an hour).
Oberoi manager (Mr. Mattol) very pleasant. Took picture and promised to send print with caption for his travel magazine. Hotel virtually empty. (I’m sure the six other guests were enjoying special favours.) The town seems to be all road, with vertical drops between on which houses, hotels, shops teeter precariously. Remember the Buddhist home for children, listen to voices chanting from inside. A sound that evoked a complete life. like Trench Hall perhaps, so foreign yet so familiar.
The problem of how far we travel together has many faces. As I confront any one of them I feel the others staring at me from behind. The Saluga hotel in Siliguri is scene of a decision. The bike is too heavy with everything on it. I suggest that Carol find something to do with her stuff, or take train to Gauhati. [Capital of Assam.] C. says, most equably, that it’s entirely up to me (and for the first time I can believe her). But if I leave my own gear at Siliguri that might save enough space to leave one bag behind. Reluctantly I try it and find she’s right. She leaves a few things for me to take as far as Delhi [We planned to meet again briefly in Delhi.] and the leather bag and a few bits go into the storeroom. For once the whole thing is managed without a crisis and I’m very grateful.
When confronted with the choice of saving weight or saving a relationship, how can any decision have value. Of course, I could theoretically surrender control of everything and see whether it is returned to me as a gift. But I could not be so free with my life (and it seems to me that nothing less is at stake.) Between Katmandu and Siliguri we had two difficult moments. One was outright anger by Carol at my “supervision” of the packing.
“You must think I’m totally stupid. I don’t know why you would want to be with such a total moron.” I came back in the same vein.
Sunday January 9th, East from Siliguri
21,018 miles. Tightened chain. Noticed that oiler had dried up and opened it an eighth of a turn. Reset tappets. Rt exh. very loose. Pt setting right, but pts should be levelled and polished. Cleaned air filter. Oil is now down to “full” marker, i.e.used a lot in last 100 miles as against almost none from Katmandhu. [Oil consumption had become a mystery.] This oil was changed at 21,050. [Obviously a mistaken reading.] Plugs now a good colour. Petrol consumption seems to have been high but will see how much tank now takes. Since Hetauda 398 miles. 20 litres plus 10.
Manas
[Tiger population in Manas down from 2000 in 1964 to 2 or 3 hundred now. 3000 in Kazirenga. Meanwhile I had gathered more information about Manas, where we were now headed.]
Assam trees – Sahl, hardwood. Teak will grow, and plantations are starting.
Tigers move in triangles – in one spot for a week or so, then 15 miles to the next spot, and so on, to return to original site.
SW monsoon comes up from the Bay of Bengal to hit the Khasi hills, where it divides into two streams. Half follows the Brahmaputra. Other half stays south. Each carries hundred inches of rainfall. They meet and the rainfall doubles, but on top of hills it is dry in places.
In Orissa, see Chauderi (SB) Field Director, Simlipur, rearing a tigress.
S.Debroy, Field Director, Manas Tiger Project
Mr Das, Conservator (Forestry) – previously Finance.
[The road to Manas left the main highway at a village called Barpeta Road. I followed it to a fork where I could see no signs, and took the left fork which passed through another village and came out to rejoin what I realised must have been the other fork. We continued to Manas where we were well received by Das and Debroy.]
Village houses in Assam.
Debroy is of medium height, medium colour, good physical shape. Square head and face, straight mouth, level brows and close-trimmed mustache just above the lip. At first last night he seemed a bit sullen, reluctant to talk, but this may have been resentment at being towed along in the wake of the other dignitaries. At any rate, when I began to ask about tigers, mentioning that Das had told me they move in triangles he became more animated. Made it clear without saying so, that Das didn’t know what he was talking about, and began to pour out tiger lore. Latest census shows 54 tigers at Manas. They are a solitary animal, being together only for mating (there is no strict season) and for the first 18 months of the cub’s life. They are very shy, always move in heavy cover, are not nocturnal like leopards but hunt very early or late in the day, eating as much of their kill as they can, and hiding the remains from vultures and other smaller cats. Then they find water before lying up nearby to sleep. If there’s plenty of game they don’t move far. When the game is gone, they move on. From the pug marks you can tell sex and age of tiger.
Debroy said he had noticed that the deer had disappeared from a place near the road and went out in the jeep that morning to see whether a tiger had been moving through. Sure enough, he found the print on the road where he would have expected it if the tiger had made a kill and then gone for water.
I began to get interested in what could be read or imagined into game tracks. Debroy has been round the main reserves of East Africa. He says he got “fed up” with seeing so much game. Now I begin to understand his tastes, when it becomes a matter of constructing the presence and behaviour of an animal you can rarely if ever see, when all your information is based on the disturbances on the environment, like studying magnetism, or God. (NB it might be interesting to postulate a novel in which for some reason a person must be investigated without ever being seen [Harry Lime?]
I asked if I could accompany him on such a trip in the sanctuary. He thought about it and said he might be doing it again the following morning but, gesturing with his thumb at the upstairs room where Das could be heard enthusiastically lecturing Carol, you never knew what might happen. But if he went, I could come.
I asked what the light was, suffusing an area on the horizon. It was whitish like the lights of a distant town. He said it was probably controlled burning of grass. (Thatching grass). They did this to prevent the grass from catching fire accidentally in later months. There was some controversy over whether it was ecologically sounder to burn or not. In the first case you destroyed many micro habitats, perhaps driving some small species out altogether, in the second case you risked wholesale destruction. Debroy thought that since burning off land had been practiced in India for thousands of years the ecology was probably in balance with it by now. But the balance was delicate, particularly where tigers are concerned. Their numbers were so reduced now, that theirs was first priority.
Mrs Ghandi wanted all tourism banned in Manas until the numbers had grown. They were now investigating and reporting to establish whether this could be a useful step. Das earlier talked about the same thing but seemed to think that Mrs.G should not get her way. “We are a democratic country,” he said. “We can’t stop people from coming here.” A non-sequitur, but the feeling of resistance to imposition from Delhi was there. My own prejudice, however, suggested that Mr. Das was more concerned to project his own authority than the rights of the people.
Next morning Debroy sent a man to the tent to wake us. It was just after dawn. Grey light. He came soon afterwards with a jeep. He had a woolen hat over sleekly groomed hair and a green army jacket. The shoelaces of his half boots were undone. A man crouched in the back. We set off down the road we’d come in by. He showed the tiger print he’d seen yesterday. There were no fresher prints. He thought he must have been wrong about the kill. If she’s made a kill she would have come back for it. We saw deer tracks, elephant (wild because they won’t cross culverts or bridges) wild buffalo, with the widely separated segments of hoof spanning 7 or 8 inches, and the wild ox, or Gauer, with closed hoof. Wild buffalo grow to nine feet at the shoulder, the sturdiest animal in the jungle, and very strong. From the dirt road we went onto a grassy road and into a marshy area of shrubs covered with creepers and all ground choked with vegetation. Here a lot of elephant grass grew and at last I found out what it was. A stalk 3 to 4 feet high with substantial leaves growing from it. Man can eat the tender portions too. More tiger tracks on the road when we turned back.
This experience with Debroy transformed for us, the nature of the Jangel [The Indian word for Jungle. Strictly speaking for a forest to be called Jungle there should be tigers] and it became possible to visualise the life that went on inside it.
More exciting adventures to come. Watch this space!
I feel the need to emphasise that these notes, taken directly from my notebooks, were intended simply to remind me of thoughts, events, impressions which I might otherwise have forgotten. They were never intended to be seen by anyone, and much of what I wrote would make little sense to a third party. Nor was I particularly concerned with my choice of words. This is simply the raw material from which Jupiter’s Travels and Riding High were later constructed. I have done my best, in italics, to explain and fill in where it seems necessary.
My four-year journey was essentially a solitary one, and this was extremely important to me, but had I made an exception for Carol, and agreed to take her with me through Nepal and Assam. The prospect of my having to leave her created a sad undertone, because I knew she could not really be expected to understand my motivation. In this installment Carol and I are on day three of our trek up the Annapurna trail. I have never been happy carrying a rucksack. My shoulders are just not adapted.
December 15th 1976
To Ghorepani (9,300ft) from Tirkedanga (4,900ft)
We’re on the north side (right bank going upstream) of the Burunghok Kola. The river runs into the valley up which we travel at a point about halfway to Ghorepani and then joins the Madi Kola at Ghorepani. Soon after T. the trail descends and crosses the Burunghok Khola to climb up to Vilari – a steep climb. We breakfasted there. Woman with filthy hands. Then rest of the 4,400 ft climb to G. We arrived just after sunset when the cold really begins to bite. Were delighted to find that hotel has huge fire in the centre of the room. The chimney, a sculpture of flattened cans was purely ornamental, and smoke was a problem, but the evening was undeniably cosy. A lot of people were gathered there. And double bed at night kept us very warm. Sunrise on Poon Hill, after a struggle.
Bina’s famous Bar & Grill. (A joke, of course. Lentils, rice and cabbage is what you get.)
Hot Water. 4000 ft. First up another 200 then down 5,500. But this side of the ridge is more open and gentle, with terraces everywhere on all faces of the valley and even on a most inhospitable rocky face in distance. Many houses, villages. Tea at Bina’s Bar and Grill where I posted my letter to Pat. The stamp was cancelled by hand. [Pat Kavanagh was my agent in London. She had written to tell me that The Sunday Times were complaining that I was costing them too much. I was angry and depressed because I had struggled to survive on a shoe-string, and most of the money they had spent was on entirely avoidable things, like communications and bank stuff.]
While walking, my preoccupations are: 1 Discomfort and strain. Thoughts about enduring it, overcoming it, wishing I hadn’t started. Wondering if I’ll get used to it. Experiments with breathing. Trouble with right knee which I trace to childhood accident and, later, Macchu Pichu. 2 Attempts to divine atmosphere of Europe in Middle Ages. 3 Thoughts about my present bad relations with the Sunday Times. 4 Saint Privat, my commitments to Carol, how to reconcile two future lifestyles.
Hand-weaving silk by the roadside.
Arrive Tato Pani. Talk to quiet tourist outside first hotel, run by Japanese married to Nepali woman. He says they were at the Dalaigiri Hotel but pulled out when they found a hepatitis case was staying there. We go to Namaste Lodge and get a double bed at back. Two Australian girls.
[From this point I made no further entries until we were back in Khatmandu and ready to leave again. We had intended to continue the trek to the edge of Tibet and were infuriated to discover that we had been given the wrong permits. I can’t remember now how these permits were policed, but evidently we felt we couldn’t ignore them.]
[On our way back we got lost in a rhododendron forest in the dark and spent a night out, very worried that we might freeze, but a double sleeping bag and a space blanket saw us through the night. In the morning we saw that we were only 200 yards from the hotel.]
[In Kathmandu we spent a week getting permission to go to Assam, a politically sensitive area, where Carol was particularly keen to visit a tiger sanctuary called Manas. We planned to ride East across the Terai, which is the lower part of Nepal, to Siliguri.]
January 3rd 1977
From Kathmandu to Hetauda. Such a lazy start packing the bike with most imposing pile of baggage. Then round the shops and we leave with no map and only the sketchiest idea of the route, so the climb to Daman takes me by surprise. Endless rough climb in first gear. 50 miles in five hours to freezing summit.[Looking at the map now, I obviously took the wrong road out of Kathmandu.] No desire to spend another night below zero, and over the top we go, to find cloud hanging all around. Exciting but very uncomfortable. Memorable scene of mountain top floating on cloud, and patches of red light as sun sets.
Downhill not much better than climbing but a lot faster. Heavy pressure on shoulders and wrists and palms of hands. Thumbs frozen. But as we descend in dark, air is warmer, no more ice and frost on the road and surface improves. At Hedauda there’s the hotel Rapti. Though there’s an argument next day about the 15/25 rupee room.
January 4th Hetauda to Lahan
Mostly on the Russian road – built in 1972. Indians say price was four times the cost of theirs. Stop to make breakfast at junction with small track, where buses bring local people, who gather round our amazing breakfast spectacle. We discuss problems of spectator crowds. First was Western Reserve dam, and a huge multitude of people gathered for a Kumba Mela, to dip in the waters and celebrate. Ox carts packed with families; grinning children packed in like melons. Brilliant colours. Noise. Confusion. People streaming in and out along the skyline.
Russian road good and uneventful. Then big roundabout where Janakpur road joins. Now on Indian built road and soon come to vast riverbed where bridge is still unfinished. Road disappears in mounds of rock and sand, and leads to a broad water crossing over rocks where I’m nearly swallowed by dips in the riverbed. My boots are full of water. Carol crosses after me carrying bedding (bare foot). Drop bike once in sand. Then back on the road.
Lahan. Mr. Ombrugah (who has spent three months in Canada and saved 13,000 rupees, and missed getting an immigration permit by one week). The crowd in the guesthouse grounds, and my antics in getting them to go away. Walk to the grog shop. Mr. O. asks at shop for old magazines, says any book you haven’t read is a new book. Breakfast at his home. Little boy comes over. “Uncle, please come for tea.” Mr. O offers my cigarettes to his colleague – the general accountant. After this, long process of getting petrol.
January 5th, to Dharan
Difference in quality of road versus Russian built is very marked. This one sags, pitches and rolls. Every culvert is a bump. Lots of patching already.
(N.B. Col. Scott says Chinese road which runs north from hwy between Dahran and frontier has best reputation.)
[In Lahan we were surprised to find an army base for Gurkhas, with British officers. When I explained that I was with the Sunday Times, I was received by the officers and we were invited to drink gin and tonic with the Colonel, who wore a uniform made rather dashing with a coloured sash of the Gurkhas. He explained what the Gurkhas do.]
Brigade of Ghurkas: Capt. R.A.L Anderson, Lt. Col Scott, and Ringit Roy M.B.E
75 bed hospital, 30,000 patients annually. X-rays, Path lab, Maternity, General.
Camp has a golf course, two pools, tennis courts, etc. Some three dozen British. Staff of Nepalis. Brigade strength now down to 6000. (From 16,000 in 1968). Recruit a few hundred each year. Trained in Hong Kong. Distribute pensions to retired soldiers & widows. 130 Gurkan welfare centres. Ex-army men offer advice and assistance to resettled Gurkhan communities. Water supplies, medical care, co-operative management. Set useful example to surrounding communities. Benign infiltration, channeling of private funds (i.e. Canadian government matches charity funds, all for use of Gurkhas. Also help with building, farming, etc.)
Thanks for following along, Hope to see you next week.
This might be a good time to imagine yourself in Kathmandu, with no TV.
Friday, 31st, to Pokhara
Into Nepal towards Pokhara. First flat road then mountains rise up steeply before me, a rich red-brown village, houses of adobe, top half white, lower half terra cotta. Frames painted in almost black brown, and intricately fretted wooden shutters. Echoes of Ecuador, Colombia. Poor Nepalis wear shawl or cloth, muddy white, and tight trousers that often look more like ragged bandages. Bare feet, toes splayed, calloused, creviced. Rich Nepalis wear conical hat with design in pink ice cream colours, a suit jacket over long-tailed shirt and tight legged trousers with baggy tops. Jackets always of very dull material. The tops of old-fashioned English suits. (The jackets come to Nepal. The bowler hats and trilbys go to Bolivia). Someone told me that in Afghanistan the secondhand clothes business is literally so.
Road to Pokhara has many broken patches and rises quite high, but weather is perfect. Arrive in mid-afternoon though the town itself escapes me. A local directs me to the lake where I find a colony of small restaurants. “Lakeside, Lake View, Greenlake, Baba, Snowland, Hidden View,” each with rooms attached for about five rupees. Food is served outside on tables under canopies – variations on basic Chinese meals, with buffalo meat (Buff). Many dishes, even the tea, have a vaguely unpleasant taste, which I called Tibetan Aftertaste (TAT). Never diagnosed.
[Here I have to confess to a quite extraordinary lapse on my part. I have since diagnosed the taste. It was cilantro (or the coriander leaf as some call it), which I had eaten happily in South America, but not since. Now, in Pokhara, I didn’t recognise it, and so I didn’t like it. It shows me just how subjective taste can be.]
The population consists mainly of slightly blissful Westerners, and sharp, dedicated Nepali boys who seem to run the whole show. The latter are multi-lingual, gifted calculators, and shrewd conversationalists, but their most impressive feature is that they never solicit to the point of hustling. They DO take No for an answer, unlike their Indian counterparts.
Behind the front row of best places overlooking the lake are other cheaper huts for tourists.
I met Collin, the Australian maths teacher on his BMW. He is designing a raft to float down the Murray River. With him is a Kansas Peace Corps guy, newly commissioned, full of his coming project (a water system) with an amazing vocabulary of Mid-American expressions that sound close to blasphemy out here. I learn from him that there are five stages in the realisation of the individual, culminating in the person who has formed his own value system and is able to apply his intelligence to realise his objectives.
On a later visit we meet a couple in Snowland. He has ginger beard, morose expression, glasses and little woolly hat. She looks like an off-duty nurse. She conducts both sides of their conversation, telling him what his likes and dislikes are, discussing the merits of various dishes in the light of his tastes and physical needs, and then orders for them both. He said: “I’ve had enough grease for one day.”
Saturday, December 1st, to Kathmandu
Lovely ride. Much of it along a river. 120 miles. 5 hours. Good road except for the last section climbing up to pass into Kathmandu Valley. Visit British Embassy to find Dudley Spain. He’s not there. I’m recommended Kathmandu Guest House. Then go to Freak Street and Durbar Square, to see if Carol spots me.
[Somewhere along the way – probably in Delhi –I made contact with Carol, who had been travelling independently, and we’d arranged to meet in Kathmandu. I was expecting to find her there.]
Met Gavin Fox, and we meet again at 7pm at Swiss Restaurant for dinner. Just after eating Carol sees me through window and comes in looking like a Russian princess. We are so delighted with each other that poor Gavin is embarrassingly de trop.
We go to Carol’s hotel where Lorenzo is staying – also Australian – whose partner was knifed when they were camped out on a trek. Then we go back to the K.G.H
Sunday, 5th December
Leave K.G.H. to go to Lalibala Guest House.
[The Lalibala had a large, gated yard where bikes and other vehicles were safe, and we met an exotic mixture of travelers there, including a young English couple on a bike, Meg and Eliot, whom I visit to this day, almost fifty years later.]
The Lalibala Guest House, 1976. John Murray surrounded by BMWs. But where’s my Triumph?
There it is, with me doing my Grouch Marx impression
Follows: A week of hunting for permits, visas, boots, etc. [We decided to do the Annapurna trek.]
Visit Swayambu Temple – where monkeys slide down the handrails.
Starting the trek, December 13th
10am from Shining Hospital along valley of strewn pebbles and boulders through villages and Tibetan camp, slowly uphill.
Some confusion at first crossing. Dave comes, and goes to Dhanpur, and we climb steeply for 1200 feet, to Nandanda. I have a really hard time climbing with the pack, but no lasting pain. Arrive 5.30. Great views. Marriage ceremony greets us at last step, led by two men with vast alpine horns, and bride covered in a litter. B&W pix. Passed women in shoulder litter, carried like backpack, in the valley.
Marriage procession in Nepal
Words fail me
14th, Nandanda
Long night. Before dawn a small dog outside does barking exercises non-stop. Up at first light to catch Annapurna and Machapuchare. And the sunrise. Dark stooping figures of women with a child between, barefooted, shawled and loaded with baskets and head straps. They are chattering loudly. Who wants to change their lives? Think of Cudlipp and his “Poverty of Aspiration.” Pompous phrase. Who gives a fig for his opinions and beliefs? It’s his power they listen to. How could he know what they need? {God often speaks through crooked mouths} [Cudlipp was a famous and on the whole admirable editor of the Labour-orientated Daily Mirror. Can’t think why I took him on this way.]
Later a band of pack donkeys passes below lodge window which overlooks square dalle roof and stone street. Ponies have cockades and strips of carpet to protect flanks from harness. They all wear bells of many different tones and pitches, and the combined sound makes a wonderful river of sound flowing ––––––.
Mahendra lodge. ‘Peanut tea’. Saw sunset from rise. Slept in loft. Sewed up Carol’s pouch on stoop. Carol took pack on to Kare, Lamle, Chandrakot, then down steeply to Birethanti.
Long suspension bridge. Checkpoint. Lorries. Because Ghorepani tomorrow is high and distant we go on to Tirkedange – a tiring last haul up about 1500 ft. Map is wrong here, and first village which ought to be Hille is in fact Sudami. At T there are already several people – two Japs and a young Aussie with a very hearty manner.
We sleep on the floor here. Just after we arrive a vigorous young man comes in with a lightish pack on his back – tennis shoes, neatly pressed trousers – an almost theatrically athletic entrance. He almost immediately starts playing with the children, and has a very familiar manner, but because I take him to be a Japanese trekker it’s not until he changes into shorts and a T-shirt and busies himself about the place, I realise he’s the father. He has walked from Pokhara that day, while we are tired after taking two days. [In fact, Pokhara is much closer than Kathmandhu]
Sleep on mats, but the Aussie has spilled Raxi on one, and I breathe it in. [Raxi is a local liquor]
I’ve come up the West coast to the capital where, as usual, I look to Lucas for help and shelter. Here, word for word, is what I put in my notes.
Often, In India, it seems impossible to get away from people, and yet . . . . . . . .!
New Delhi, Monday 27th November
Swiss couple very flattering outside American Express. Give me address in Geneva and invite me there. Lucas friendly (after funny business with wrong number} and I’m installed in a dusty dancehall on 3rd floor. Itch at night and I make another discovery. It’s lack of loving. Self-induced need for caresses and sensual feeling. And I tie it up with my feelings for Carol versus Jo. Painful but fascinating.
My correspondence always leaves melancholy shadow. Pat’s letter needs answering, but how? I start, then give up in disgust. It’s all ego – what I think, and feel, and want, etc. Why should anyone be interested in my researches into myself – or how I want to run my world. How can I deal with this if I’m to continue to value myself.
Tuesday
Morning motorcycle maintenance. No clearance on inlet valves. Too much on one exhaust (right side, and blackening in rocker box.) Points OK. One pint oil used since Bombay (900 miles) Clean air filter, top up gear box and batteries.
Rush to bank. $714 there.
Afternoon meet Gaekwad. Interesting figure. Talks about his plans for cultural centre at Baroda. Slow to thaw, but affable and invites me back. Later visit. Opulent clothing I rich, dark hues. Baby mouth. Talks about politics as a theatre, the need of rapport with audience, understands needs of artists, etc.
Wednesday
To Kanpur. Long, hard ride. Trouble with lorries, and pick up stones again but the one time I was ready to throw one, couldn’t brake in time to get hand free. Fantasise a whole series of events involving encounters with lorry drivers and Law. Also melancholic about Pat’s letter. Feel misunderstood. Last night when I tried writing to her found my letter overloaded with ego and wondered if I am obsessed by my own precious reactions to everything.
Kanpur an unwelcoming town. Very busy and big. The Orient Hotel. English-speaking son of owner. The British always used to be in here. Place as run down as can be, but two splendid billiard tables, splendidly placed at the heart of it. Indian swells playing. One like ‘Roland’ without monocle – he never bends – glides across the floor, shoulders set in check tweed jacket with cardigan below. Other in classic white Indian– long jacket and tight trousers baggy round the crutch, with camel hair jacket over the top and big shawl for going out – lock of hair fixed over forehead and long narrow sideburns – very full of himself – the Prince of Kanpur – lots of whispering and conspiracies, and pairing off for intense conversations – tense scene round the telephone – illegal drinks half-concealed (it was ‘dry day’ in the bar) – cries of “Well” at a good shot. Little bursts of English with the degree of affectation that we once applied to French phrases – a fascinating scene and right in line with my fancies about turn of century Europe being relived in India.
Out for walk to watch (a) a train of buffalo carts creeping silently through the night, to shouts (more like barks) of swathed drivers, and the half-loving thwack of stick on hide. Dormant figures lie in heaps of sacking. Must be returning to villages after selling goods (b) pathetic man in threadbare cotton shivering and praying to a demonic red god lurking the shadow of a tiny stone temple by garage. (c) Rickshaw driver curled in seat, wracked by continuous coughing (d) jobless teacher begging – “you have one recourse – to give me something for food – I haven’t eaten all day. For humanity’s sake” – that last harsh appeal still echoing with my own dismal response, “You’ll have to sort yourselves out.”
The Mall, past Queen’s Park, then canal, then railway crossing. Big advertisement shows couple in swimming things, framed by huge message: STOMACH GAS AND SEX PROBLEMS Consult Dr. etc.
HIND’S Tailoring College, and the tiny door leading up to it.
To Gorakhpur, Thursday November 30th
Over the Ganges, and it’s really got something, this river.
Much later, astonished to see passing me in the opposite direction some men looking harassed and carrying a man in a litter at a slow jogging pace along a long road past sugar cane. The man is dressed in full Western suit, tie, etc. – young.
Bearers have pale blue cotton headdress. Another empty litter follows. They are travelling down a long, tree-lined road, and I’m too rushed (and surprised) to take a picture – which would have meant riding back a way and waiting.
This must have been after Faizabad where I stopped for the breakfast I’d promised myself in Lucknow. Lucknow seemed very grand, huge empire buildings, parks, but somehow I got through to the other side without seeing a place.
Faizabad much tighter, more crowded, bazaar town with old arches. Stopped in square and had eggs. Young Sikh comes to introduce himself, talks about the importance of his family in the town. Father came from Punjab at partition time. First made living as a photographer, then became cinema owner. Have two cinemas and was planning a third big one, but borrowed too heavily and was forced to sell his interest in order to repay. Now is trying again. Son took me to his house up a side street, gave me tea and sweets made for a recent wedding ceremony. Wanted to interest me in old coins. Says he has to sell them because Govt might find them and accuse him of hoarding. “Black wealth”. Exaggerated, I thought.
In Gorakhpur stayed in probably the best hotel in town. Had good meal, although the first seat I sat in collapsed under me, and I fell over backwards. First a drug salesman introduced himself, recommended A & D vitamins. Then the cable company engineer came over, thinking I was his age. Astonished by my real age. [He was 28. I was 45.]
We talked about reasons for growing old. Constant concern with money, he thought. Trying to keep the same level of living. We walk to the chemist’s shop. Boy brings out a tin of vitamins, half full. Expiry date 1975. [It is now 1976] Brings out another tin. 1978. 4 paise a pill. As we walk away talking about difficulty of finding people to take management decisions, it occurs to me that the boy is probably taking his own decision now – to transfer pills from one box to another. The man invites me to stay at his home in Delhi.
In Gorakhpur I discover there is a direct route to Nepal. Not marked at all on my map. Goes to Natawawa – Sonauli, very close. Beautiful weather, hot sun, cool air. On way see two more litters, both completely covered by crimson canopies. Bearers in same pale blue headcloth.
Border in morning. Then first problem. Have no visa. Why? All my visa info is from my journey’s outset, but of course had no plan to visit Nepal. However, can get visa at police post in Barawa, 4 kilometers away. And pay sixty-odd rupees. Which means changing dollars at bank.
First stage in story of frustration.
More to come. See you next week.
Friday
More lorries, front wheels collapsed, nose-dived into ditches and culverts.
Tribals with three camels, each with upturned bed on top of their belongings. Women leading them had each breast separately wrapped in pink muslin slung over top of sari at midriff. Cows with horns [pointing] in every direction, like the printed characters in Hindi writing. In Ahmedabad a sudden outbreak of handcarts – everything gets pulled or pushed by people instead of animals. Two women heaving one towards me, wore the same-coloured clothing of reds and yellows, and both had their heads and faces completely wrapped in saffron muslin. These wildly energetic but faceless creatures make a very strange impression. And the tribal women really are energetic – they fling every part of their bodies into what they’re doing.
Two enormous elephants coming towards Baroda – the rider is level with those on top of a truck’s cab. Biggest I’ve ever seen. After Ahmedabad leave Gujarat for Rajasthan. Clothing styles change immediately. No longer a single sari but a voluminous skirt, and a cloak which billows out behind and is caught up at the bottom. Usually bright, plain colours, mustard yellow, blue, burgundy, etc. The state line comes just before a range of desolate, stony hills, and road winds amongst them. Here for the first time boys make threatening gestures (memory of Ethiopia). Mountain people, life here looks barren. Herds of goats, sheep and some camels. First camel carts take me by surprise – brown, wooly animals.
Also I begin to see dead dogs by the roadside for the first time in India. Bunches of cactus live roadside – narrow green fingers. Many fortresses on hilltops – the roughest, least valuable land is always most protected. Havens for the proud, rebellious, and I suppose least ingenious and adaptable. Stone walls run like seams up the mountain sides.
20 kilometers from Udaipur on impulse decide to try a bungalow. Man in jacket and dhoti, with gold earrings like old sailor, attends me. No food. I walk 100 yards to village. One row of small shops. Brahmin sits cross-legged behind ––––– tins of grains, –––––, potatoes, with scales. No eggs, no vegetables.
“This is very small village, near big city. Eggs are not available.”
Cigarettes. Packet of biscuits. Get out stove and boil some rice. Mix with soya. Not very successful. Herb tea. Then another walk in dark. Group of men conversing. Children chattering. Further along some figures squatting close together in road, shrouded in robes, almost invisible. When trucks pass get up and move. Then return. Radios playing in various houses. Batteries waning. No electricity.
Agonising night, skin pricking all over my body. Again and again I get up. Is it insects, or me? See nothing, hear nothing. A kind of hell, and I’m fearful of it continuing.
Have a strange dream in which I’m reconciled with Connor Walsh. [My business partner in a magazine which I edited in 1967 who eventually accused me, unjustly, of undermining his authority and made my job impossible.] In the morning have a vague sense of these residual bitternesses being connected to this skin condition.
However, I feel OK. Eat a couple of biscuits and continue to Udaipur.
Saturday
The picture summed up the extremes of India: The mother with two infants preparing food in a filthy street under one sign promising “modern amenities,” and another all the delights of Bollywood, and all outside the walls of the city, Udaipur.
Udaipur has an extensive city wall with parapet and bastions. Take one picture.
The fortress above Udaipur.
Mountains are slowly sinking into a flat sea of soil, and only peaks protrude now, with more workable land between. Corn, pulses, and other vegetables.
The Rajasthan man is very distinguishable, smooth brown warrior faces with down-curving moustaches (as in Mughal paintings) Richly coloured head-dresses, tightly wrapped trousers, woolen jackets and sweaters, sandals tip-tilted. All carrying short sticks.
Land flattens further towards Ajmer.
Camels everywhere. Wonderful to watch. Great padded feet swinging over the road. Heads swaying – how do they support their heads? The design seems structurally unsound. And the shafts and harness shooting up at a giddy angle to bed down on the hump – one expects the carts to become airborne. Who told me camels can tow four time the weight of an ox? What attracts me so much to camel country? That’s where I feel a special excitement – not the tropics. I love the hot sun striking through cool air.
Temperate climates give peace – tropics torpor or discomfort and a sense of being permanently immersed. Which of my ancestors lived in the Middle East?
Ajmer. Open town. Tourist bungalow. Pleasant meeting with Germans, Brazilian, Australian, Chilena, Heather Matthews and the two Swiss jewelry collectors. Mike, black clothes and beard, happiest running down Nepal or Ceylon. She, self-conscious about the tirades. The other two girls revived all my pleasure of South America – listening to Spanish and Portuguese, talking about Chile – and “Hio.” And later about Australia. Dinner at Honeydew. And a too quick beer at back of Wine Shop {Why Wine?) Take a “tonga” ride. Go to bed in trepidation – fear of the itch – but it’s not too bad this time.
––––––––––––––––
Men in suits should be purposefully employed. When they hang about vaguely they leave a sinister impression, as of Mafia. This accounts for my uneasiness when several suited Indians hung about at the Lucas backyard in Delhi. Yet they were only Indians doing their nothing – in suits.
Sunday
Morning conversation outside the camper van. Exchange addresses with Brasilleira. Off to Jaipur. Swiss promise me a good road, and it’s medium. Now, however, the houses show signs of Government patronage. Water pumps, clinics and stuff. Fields bordered by tall rushes. Camels ploughing. Three men on elephant. Make a real effort to photograph people. Jaipur at midday. Find the Rajdhane hotel. Cubicle room for 12 rupees, but hotel is sweet, prettily kept outside, with a merry staff.
Jaipur Palace
After a nap, walk three hours to the stunning terra cotta centre of this “rose city.” 17th century town planning. Is this the most impressive main street I’ve seen? Wonderful palace façade. Cheeky people. Public urinals yet! Dine at Nero’s, at same table as Nigerian ‘clinical psychologist’ and colleagues. Back to Hindi, and bed.
Monday
Morning ride to Delhi, and this time the road is really good (except where it runs into a small mountain). Make astonishing discovery that speedometer doesn’t work over 40mph. 42 = 45, 45 = 50. No wonder I was hammering out of Bombay. Bad news for new pistons. Was I lucky?
Stopped halfway for biscuit and cigarette, sitting on a stone looking out over fields, sun very hot on my back. Two lads stop and chatter round the bike. I avoid them, but they can’t resist seeking me out.
“Where you dwell?” asks one.
“England” I say, and “Where do you dwell?”
“Diarrhoea” he says, or something similar.
“Have you come to look at me?” I ask, smiling faintly. To my surprise he is embarrassed and turns quickly away. First time in India I find a respect for privacy, and I’m almost sad to let him go.
PS: To Bill Shanklin, wherever you may be, thank you for your surprise gift. I did as you suggested and bought a wonderful bottle of St Emilion Grand Cru. We savoured it almost down to the dregs. Merci beaucoup.
In case you haven’t been following me during the last year or two, I am reproducing, word for word, what I wrote in my notebooks on the journey that led to my books, Jupiter’s Travels and Riding High.
I arrived in India at Madras (now called Chennai) earlier in 1976 and have been travelling round the south of India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). It’s November now, and I’m coming up the coast towards Poona (now Pune). When I was young it was still possible to hear old Empire hands launch into conversation with: “When I was in Poona . . .“
But before we get to Poona I have some rather nice pictures I wanted to show you earlier, when I got back to the coast at Karwar. It was a fishing village, and the boats were not only beautiful, but it seemed to me that they wouldn’t have looked any different 200 years earlier.
And this one
And then there was this excellent goat in Goa
[I was beginning to make notes of how the clothing had changed as I went along.]
Tamil Nadu, buff cotton round head, loosely, shirts and dhotis.
Hill stations, trousers, cloth wrapped round head over ears, usually woolen scarf.
Maharashtra, topi, jacket and trousers.
Women, same saris, but tied for working in North Karnataka and Maharashtra so that their legs show from thigh down. South more prudish.
Also in Maharashtra some groups wear turbans of purple, orange, etc.
Riding south in Tamil Nadu, narrow tar roads, patches on patches on patches, like sealed corrugations. Few cars, but lorries an buses, all spew out diesel smoke, never look in mirror. Road generally raised above surrounding paddy where ox teams are churning up the mud after last harvest. – men in loin cloth only, seeming very primitive and close to the gleaming wet soil. Women in lines of thirty or more, advancing, bent double, across fields planting paddy – saris brilliant. Oxen often have enameled horns of marvelous shapes, sometimes tipped with brass. Heads high, yoke resting between neck and hump, each one in line with a wheel. Men walk alongside ploughing teams on road carrying their ploughs, indicating that the labour of carrying is not a conscious problem.
[So now, back on the road from Kolhapur to Poona]
A fascinating challenge adjusting to speed differences between animal, pedestrian, cyclist and motor traffic. Maximum safe speed 30 mph. Occasional vigorous outbursts of swearing at buses and trucks cutting in as I overtake – or overtaking each other at my expense. Too hot for jacket. Bike boils in villages, particularly when I get lost in some bazaar street. For the first time horn is essential. Are pedestrians dreaming or deliberately contemptuous. Gopi, later, says that after the war, about the time of Independence, the people resented traffic as a symbol of the rich, and their leaders encouraged them to claim the roads for themselves and their animals.
What do ox carts carry? Baskets, coconuts, wood, grain and straw.
Poona
[Went to visit Lucas, my sponsor. Now called LucasTVS, a joint Indian company, which still exists today. They suggested I visit Perfect Motors.]
Perfect Motors. Mr. Ekbote. Perfectly air-conditioned office, approached by ratty staircase. Mr. E gives me spirited pep talk about India’s progress.
[I asked him if he had visited England.]
His contretemps with Her Majesty’s Immigration.
“Do you intend to stay in UK?”
Mr. E: “What a stupid question. Do you think I’d tell you if I did?”
“You are insulting the Queen’s uniform.”
“I don’t care what uniform you’re wearing. If you ask a stupid question … etc., etc.”
In Germany he tells his friends about Indian technology. They are frankly disbelieving. He points to their fan (Do they have fans in Germany?) and says, “It’s made in India.” Unscrews cover to prove it. Lots of other gadgets too. Mentions that India is probably doing a deal with Dassault for the Mirage, although still supposed to be on Mig 22. Says he knows because specifications of various sub-contracted parts have changed. Sends me to see Bharat Forge Co. and Bajaj Scooters.
Says India has one year’s stock of grain (admits storage facilities inadequate but now being built.)
[I hear stories of mountains of grain under plastic being consumed by rats.]
India has trading surplus. Is repaying the capital on World Bank loans. Big business is selling consultancy abroad. Technology in telecommunication is high, etc.
Go to Poona Club. In evening go for a ride along Laxmi Street. Amazing congestion. At last find my way round a circuit and back. Buy map. Carburetor playing up. Float valve is obviously sticking on low throttle. Had to clean it out again at TVS.
In Bharat Club meet two metallurgists who make sintered metal components. Were in Lichfield. One is manic, the other silent. Invited to dinner following day by two lots. One half Portuguese, the others, Sikhs. Neither ever turned up. Went to M&S house to have dinner. M puts on a sort of show of sophisticated living. Boasts of his pal in Bombay with flat behind the Taj. Promises to introduce me. Never see him again. (BO!?)
Friday 12th
Morning of batteries. After lunch to forging company. Seminal experience, like the Jain school. [Another vast dark space full of smoke lit by fire.] Staggering sights of men in long black fireproof gowns and goggles working at huge steam hammers three times their height. The hammer lunges down constantly, and withdraws, like cobra swaying, waiting to strike. Manhandle lumps of red metal with long tongs, twisting it across the die from one hole to another and Wham! Wham! Wham! The hammer strikes, almost seeming to do so of its own volition – as though in some sort of complicity, but dangerous, uncertain, like wild beast barely trained, elephant, killer whale.
I feel all the old excitement of men releasing great energy and mastering it that must have excited the minds of the early industrial revolution.
But how much of this is my projection? How much is really there? What do the faces show? Grim. Impassive, but not bored. Not even specially fatigued, and they’re on top of it.
[I remember talking to one of them. Very proud of his job, seven days a week. Pretty sure he told me they got one day off a year.]
Saturday 13th to Sunday 14th
Lazy days watching cricket, reading, writing a bit.
Monday 15th
Early away to get a look at Bajaj Scooters before going to Bombay. At factory was kept waiting an hour before a substitute for Mr. Jain could be found to take me round the works. “Mr. Jain is not in his cabin.”
[Bajaj, made the best auto-rickshaws in India as well as scooters. It is still thriving today.]
Met the export manager instead. He was an impressive fellow. Revealed that production for domestic market was rigidly limited by Government. Bajaj has “nine-year order backlog,” though other firms make scooters and can’t sell them. Govt insist that no-one shall become too big and wipe out employment by economies of scale. Bajaj makes 320 per day (including three-wheelers) can rise to 400.
En route [to Bombay] procession, in pairs, with saffron flags and cymbals, women carrying food, apparently going a long way.
Later a family coming back, with lacquered chests on heads.
Road not bad until Thana, where Bombay island begins. Barges unloading sand from dredgers, a huge activity, mountains of sand all moved by the basketful on a woman’s head. (She’ll put it on her head just to go five paces). Anyone who wonders how the pyramids & temples were built need only go to Thana now.
Awful lorry-infested crossings, the expressway to Bombay. One ghastly estate of rehoused slums along roadside.
Leaving Bangalore behind I ride back down to the west coast.
To Mangalore at 10am. Road good and bad, but much traffic. Often 40 – 45 mph. But last section bad, and overall average 25 mph. In M’lore at 5.45. To see Mr. Srikant. Stiffening steering head worrying.
Thursday, November 4th
Regreased steering head with new balls. Noticed that front brakes might need relining. Renewed brake cable. Met Ramkrishna at Chinese restaurant. Persuaded me to stay at Moti Mahal for 25 rupees.
Excused myself from Srikant. Spent evening with Ram and Arwand, brothers. Not bad. Lots of respect and adulation for my ego. Noisy room. Indians love to shout in hotels at midnight, and no furnishings to absorb the noise. In the mornings, of course, it’s even worse. When they throw up, one after another, in the echoing bathrooms. Don’t know which is worse – the rantings or the retchings.
5th Friday
Leave Mangalore 7am. Easy road. 20 miles out a Bullet overtakes me. Obviously to play games. Two up, in khaki clothes, driver wears army helmet, straps flying. “Idiots,” I think. Then pillion turns to grin at me. It’s Ram and his younger brother, famous Bullet rider of M’lore. They’ve been waiting since 6 am for me to come past. That accounts for his strange call in the morning. When I did come by the garage, caught him with his trousers down. Took them 20 miles to make up 4 mins lead. We have breakfast. Again they pay. Their attitude to me reminiscent of Raoul & Mercedes in B.A. [Buenos Aires – a long time earlier]. I seem to be recovering my charisma.
Coastal road very attractive. Density of population is noticeably reducing. Inland hills. Occasional beaches. Coconut and paddy. Turn off to Jog Falls, comes nicely just as I think of it. Climb up is delightful. Paddy terraces, villages below road, so you look down on roofs. Usually one big house of sophisticated construction with great tiled roof. Others round it. Building material is slabs of stone-clay aggregate carved out of natural deposits where road cuts into hillsides. Women carrying slabs on heads.
On coast road passed people going to market, heads loaded with earthenware, forage and green stuffs, baskets, and women carrying heavy bundles of branches, moving in a half run, hips switching extravagantly from side to side to keep load at level height.
Jog Falls is almost dry. Three streams tip over the edge, bouncing down 960 ft. Meet in a horizontal band of prismatic light. In full flood, shapes and figures in motion dance on the rock face.
Stop on the way down to cook rice and coffee. Not a soul passes until last moment. Then two men descend. One leads a buffalo (rope tied round horns) and carrying a sick sheep in sacking slung over his shoulder. Seems like a heavy load. Man behind is walking free with some animals. Why don’t they share the load of the sheep between them.
My idea about people as monkeys recurs. Fiddling with ideas (like the monkey with coins) curious, intrigued, aware that something could be done with them, but never quite getting them to work.
Down to Karwar at twilight. Fishing town. So many buildings occupied by various branches of bureaucracy – Police, PWD, Dep. Director of Fisheries, Customs and Excise, Port Authorities, Internal Waterways, Family Planning, School, Hospital, Collector, etc, etc.
Assistant says, “Your native place? From?” I tell him.
“Goa going?”
“Yes.”
“Nice place. My from is Goa.”
Delicious fish. Hotel along the road, good standard but very noisy. Indians don’t have any idea about acoustics.
November 6th To Goa
[Ten years earlier I had been a magazine editor and knew most of the stars of that world but had never met Max Maxwell, a much-admired art editor. I knew he had retired to Goa, on Arjuna Beach. I went to find him there. He received me well and I stayed several days. This description was never intended for publication. PW was a journalist I’d known.]
M’s resemblance to Paul W. can’t be denied, so that has to be discounted. His mouth is even greedier and lunges out like an excavator. Like PW in manic-depressive phases, I think, but has had the good fortune to harness his energies to appropriate ends, and avoids complications like poison (which they are, to him). Interesting that he has no perspective on this and doesn’t realise that he is a particular type whose solutions must also be idiosyncratic. By pushing his solutions to the limit, he excludes the world yet craves what the world provides. Currants without the cake.
Leads him into wild contradictions. Plans to move to even more remote spots, while almost begging for more company.
[In fact he DID understand himself very well. He did move to ever more remote places, but plunged back into the mainstream regularly and much more successfully than I had imagined possible because he was able to command a high price for his services. From Goa I rode inland.]
November 9th, To Kolhapur
Pearl Hotel.
November 10th
[In the morning, I am seized by a businessman called Shetti who invites me to his house for breakfast.]
Shetti. Ironmonger and hardware. House. Fluffy white terrier. Wife. Little daughter with grimace. Half smile, half fear. Walls.
[The walls I see in Indian houses are bare and echoing. I wonder why? Meet others, a brother, an architect, and his wife who insists I must stay with them.]
“Kidnapping” by architect’s wife. His brother, the bank clerk. Bharat Opel. Breakfast.
[They want to show me around.]
Drive to village. Old fortifications. “King’s” house. Walk to fort.
Sadhu in cave. Long hair shot with gray. Saffron gown. Legs folded under cushion. Lies on upholstered bed, with garlands hung from frame. In front are mats. He has wide grin with one middle tooth missing. Shifts his legs about as though the strings were broken. Has vicious bitch to guard him. Shrine behind bars. Dog goes for boy. He retreats, crying. Two women on mat telling Sadhu their problems. His remarks about Californians who stayed two days. “We can learn from foreigners about going from one job to another quickly,” whatever that means.
[Strange to get lesson in economics from a Sadhu.]
Sugar cane. Jaggery making. Boilers, fires, groups of women in same-colour saris drawn up between legs. Man wearing Topi – (Nehru’s hat) Nomadic tribe. They cut the cane.
[Shetti needs some kind of bureaucratic permission from an official at a government rest-house, We drive there but he is “resting” and unavailable. Come back later.]
Back to rest house. The big shots are there. Stifling atmosphere of reverence. Endless waiting for lunch. N.Z versus India at Bombay [Cricket.]
Boy serving lime-soda with salt. Soda making machine.
[My new friends are all Jains. This is the first time I have met or even heard of the Jain religion – the fourth largest in India. They have things to show me.]
Long ride back. Shetti drives – abominably. To the Jainist temple and charity school.
[They are determined to show me as much as possible about Jains. We drive to Bhaubli.]
15 miles, growing dark. On right we pass a camp of nomads in bivouac tents., a sudden and surprising flurry of movement among closely packed tents in open space, animals, coloured turbans, women, utensils. Wish I’d stopped the car and taken a picture. Yellow sky and sun. To village. We stop to leave a message.
To temple and school. Religious Disneyland. Models of Jain sites all over India. (North?) The nephew is most earnest and fatuous in his observations and questions. Little models of modish couple and limousine. 24 gods. Here’s one of them – a single block of marble. Naked. Limbs wrapped in creepers. Also pictures of him engaged in various classic struggles. Indian wrestling. Wrestling in water. Some other kind of fighting. He loses and begs his protagonist to be satisfied. Opponent insists on pursuing the battle to the end. So the God inflates himself and is pictured with his opponent raised above his head, prior to being dashed to the ground. A violent picture of a God of non-violence.
The Jain temple. Shetti is in the middle, the architect behind him.
His simple story is told also in models. He is a prince about to be married in all splendour. As he passes on his howdah, he sees a pen of sheep and asks what they are there for (as if he didn’t know). They are to be slaughtered for the feast. He renounces the bride, position, everything, and goes to the forest. (to practice austerities? As the Mahabharata has it)
We go to see the school dormitory. 600 boys are boarded here, from poor families. Walls are yellow painted brick, belongings hung on wall, mats rolled up. Boys are shaven, in shirts and shorts. Then to the ‘mess.’ Long gloomy barn, smoke in rafters and all boys cross-legged on floor in 4 lines the length of the building, each with plate and gold anodised water cup. Other boys come down the line, spooning out food. 3 brick fires with glowing charcoal at other end, where chapatis are made, produce smoke and an infernal touch.
A teacher is there, mild looking, wavy hair brushed down, spectacles. “I was a student here so I am thoroughly familiar with the routine.” The mild words have a disturbing force. I’m overcome by the imagery and all its Victorian associations. Obviously I am feeling and seeing something entirely different to what my companions feel. I want to ask if the boys are free to leave, or whether they must complete the course. Several times the question is misunderstood. At last it gets through.
“If they want to run away we can’t stop them.” They laugh at my mention of parents. No, they aren’t all Jains. Other boys, if they’re particularly bright, can get in too. Their idea is that this is a brilliant opportunity for poor boys to make good. Old boys, they say, have become big men in Bombay and Calcutta.
[Shetti brings us back to Kholapur, and dinner, with just the men.]
“Nowadays our wives can eat with us but in fact they never seem to.”
Arun Patil (Contractor) 6th Lane, Rajarampuri, Kolhapur.
Indian dogs – treacherous. Shetti’s dog actually licked the sweet breakfast goo off my fingers – before biting one of them.
Indians can put up with the shrillest barking.
Simon’s Hypothesis: Every physical law has its Sociological Counterpart
Treating people as particles – under compression. Forming bonds, clusters, crystalline structures, polymers, generating heat.
Next week: Goa Going.
Keep well, and avoid as many climate catastrophes as you can. I blame Trump, of course.
[It’s November 1976 and I’m working my way slowly up the west coast of India. In Bangalore, Gopinath invited me to accompany him on a visit to a friend of his with a coffee plantation in Chikmagalur, which was also Indira Ghandi’s constituency. I only got to know the friend as Cyril.]
He’s a passionate man, and a very striking figure as he appeared on his verandah the night we arrived. He was wearing a silk robe over a long sarong and the effect exaggerated his height. He is very dark-skinned, with a coal dust blackness and his eyes are often bloodshot or rather misted with red. At first his natural authority masked his simplicity.
[We talked a lot about politics and Indira Ghandi’s Emergency.]
A discussion, with Cyril. Again, vehement opposition to E. More power has increased corruption at high levels. Confused examples of inefficiency of new credit policies for poor.
Cyril says money is borrowed for wrong reasons. Not bullocks but weddings. Only local moneylenders can assess risks and hope to recover. But I think he gets his interest rates wrong. Wife corrects him. Moneylender rates are 22% per month – not per year. He says government requires 50% of negotiated salary increases to be paid into Government accounts at 4%. After three years they release a fifth, + interest accruing to state on borrowed capital, lent out at 16% = 39% State makes 19% profit and keeps capital.
[Well, that’s what I wrote. Maybe you can make sense of it, because I can’t.]
Another discussion with Cyril, again about opposition to Emergency. More power has increased corruption at high levels. Confused examples of inefficiency of new credit policies for poor. Says money is borrowed for wrong reasons – not bullocks but weddings. Only local moneylender can assess risks and hope to recover. But I think he gets his interest rates wrong. Wife corrects him. Moneylender rates are 22% per month – not per year.
He says Government requires 50% of negotiated salary income to be paid into Government accounts – at 4%. After three years they release a fifth. Interest accruing to State at 16% = 39%. State makes 19% profit and keeps capital.
[I confess I don’t understand any of this now. I’m not sure I understood it then either.]
Both Cyril and CR make the point that Indira could have done all she is doing in the last eight years without Emergency. Say she’s getting black on her closest associates. I reply that she may have wanted to but was opposed by those same associates. Now she either controls them or goes. They say evidence is that she has clearly fallen to the temptations of power. That her head is turned, that she has no ‘head’ – “Indira, the mother of all springs,” and “Indira, the fountainhead of India.” And then there’s her son!
But again I say, what’s the alternative?
Cyril falls back on his own position. “I’ll do what I can in my own domain to improve things. I borrowed money to buy this place, but I borrowed more to build new lines [In India “lines” meant rows of dwellings for workers] to electrify. There’s a crèche, soon I hope to start an adult night school. One day I want a hospital here. And let the politicians go to hell.
A fuzzy Gopi on Cyril’s coffee estate in Chikmagalur
Not stupid – he picks up more than Gopi in political areas – but is impatient of complications. A man who has worked hard and prospered and can’t see why the same easy formula shouldn’t work all round. He has born his crosses also (psoriasis is one) and those regrets ………………. he can’t reconcile, he dissolves in drink. Not every night, perhaps, but quite often. Perhaps very often. Joyce drinks with him. Would she contradict him? No. Would he be ashamed to tell a lie in front of her, say, about giving up drink regularly for Lent? Yes, I think he would (though many Indians would not). But if it were a case of giving it up except for these occasions, however rare or frequent when obligation required him to join his guests, etc.?
Both mother and daughter stayed up with is until 2.30am. Both were certainly bored stiff. Whether they knew it or not. In support or in protest?
How many Indians call somebody else “Master.” Why is that better than an African calling somebody “Baas?”
Gopi is a terrible snoring machine. However bad I may be, he is surely in a different class. The one reason I’m glad to leave. It’s hard to keep respect for someone who keeps you awake at night, unless you can tell him. I’m afraid to tell Gopi – he seems vulnerable – but the secret diminishes us. However every once in a while, he overwhelms me with some lucid outburst about some foolish aspect of life and quite captures me. It’s so rare to hear a witty phrase – but so few speak English well enough.
Green (or grey) pigeon shooting. Off into the coffee bushes. Swarms of children following. Birds sit on highest branches but choose trees with light foliage, so their silhouettes are easily seen. Lovely plumage. Sad slaughter. Delicious pickings. Saw bee hives on tree. Great black objects hanging from branches.
The manager thought I didn’t know what honey was – he called it tree ghee, and sent me a bottle marked:
‘HONEY – sweet fluid gathered by bees from flowers’
Think he must have access to a dictionary.
At a spice market
Chikmagalur name of district – town. Kadur Club is old British presence. Remained exclusively white until 1967, when I believe Donald Graham [presumably the president] took down the Royal portraits against Cyril’s protests.
The story of the maintenance of the road. Should be joint. But others have Jeeps and don’t care. So Cyril does it all. Once when Cyril was away a tree fell across the road and had to be sawn up and moved.
The fellow down the road asked Joyce for ten men. She said they were all at work, although if he went to the lines and offered some money he might find some who would accept.
A nice example of a dilemma. Cyril takes this stuff in his stride. Joyce is the stickler. Which is right? To get people to do things they find uncongenial, or let people get away with it, and rely on their natural good will to make it up some other way. Neither system works well unaided. Indeed it’s the human interaction that succeeds, not the method.
Tuesday 2nd
Back to Bangalore. Tilluk came round to house. We went to club while Gopi did his business. Met two Indians who make wine. Tasted it – like Sanatogen. In fact that’s what it is. Acid grape corrected with sugar. They say it’s just (a matter of) fermentation temperature. I doubt it. “India is a great garden. You can grow anything here.”
Later to Peacock Restaurant. Air-con. Disco nights. White Russian woman with ophthalmic goitre. One twenty-six-year-long swan song. Ravaged face. Tilluk’s cool goodbye. Indians are so affected by parting that they can’t control – so they have to anaesthetize.
Wednesday 3rd
The last surprise. A whip-round [organised by Gopi] collected 350 rupees, stuffed in a window envelope, with the 100 rupee note showing through. Also, I see the round robin letter, which suggests similar treatment elsewhere. Very embarrassing. But lovely of them. Bless the B.M.F.C.
[The Bangalore Malayalee Family Club still exists today. Bear in mind that I could easily survive on 10-15 rupees a day.]
Sunday, October 24th, 1976
To Mysore. Help the Germans down the hill, holding their bike with my brakes and engine. [I wish I could remember how we did this.] Then in wildlife reserve my first wild elephant wanders across the road. In Mysore, at govt. guest house, meet three Indians and wives. We go to Brindavan Gardens, under the dam, 10 miles out. Very impressive, but too gaudy for perfection. Afterwards to hotel for dinner. Vegetarian, chapati (poroti?) Very good. Fascinating to see mother feed her baby with her fingers. How much significance there is in the handling of food.
A working elephant at Mysore Reserve
Went out to see a Hindu film. Two male stars playing out endless series of fantasy situations – sort of Indian version of “Help” Richard Lester-ish. Went home after interval.
Monday 25th, to Bangalore
Pleasant ride through flat land, along road shaded by vast trees. Karnataka most irrigated state in India. Nicely received by Jacob at Lucas’s. Then D.H Storey’s wife gets me put up by Persian students across the road.
Poverty is not as alarming as expected. Opinions of emergency fairly divided.
[The whole time I spent in India, President Indira Ghandi suspended the country’s normally functioning democracy with a Declaration of Emergency. It became a temporary dictatorship. There was talk of forced sterilisation of men. Government servants in a vast bureaucracy were made to come to work on time. There were obvious improvements, and some less obvious horrors.]
Sugar cane grower in Bangalore (says he) can’t get labour. They “don’t want to dirty their hands.” Yet labour groups work on roads. Women work in paddy fields everywhere. Old India Hands say there has been much improvement.
Slogans everywhere. [On billboards. Indira’s program was known as P.]
Let 20 point P be our charter
20 pt P is blueprint for success
Efficiency should be our watchword
Dicsipline (sic – or cis?) is the need of the hour
Consolidate 100 gains of E
Talk Less Work More
Nation’s prosperity is sum total of each citizen’s effort
I.Ghandi says: Foreign newspapers attack E because they don’t like to see India succeed against inflation where they fail.
Generally adverse criticism is put down to envy and sour grapes.
Bangalore. Since Mannar things have been getting steadily better. Gradually the last traces of backache have faded. Only in Primrose Road, when I considered PH’s letter, and wrote my replies, did I feel a sense of strain, and since then an occasional excitement at having taken an irrevocable stand.
[I went to the Lucas office in Bangalore who received me very generously. However, there was a letter from Peter Harland at the Sunday Times saying the paper didn’t want to support me any longer. I wrote back that I would continue with or without their help.]
I was impelled to clean the situation for myself. Probably the letter was unnecessarily acid, and in a business sense, unwise. But I am not in business, which is another way of saying that I don’t want to maintain transactions with society when they degenerate.
[In previous conversations with Harland (who was always sympathetic) I learned that there was a faction in the newspaper office that wanted to cut me off. Apparently, they had now succeeded.]
The situation in the Sunday Times office has for me the smell of corruption. Have I injured anyone? For all I said in the letter is talked about openly in PH’s office. But he will not be sure that I haven’t passed it on. Too bad. I shall be satisfied with any outcome.
Now I feel good, excellent, even wonderful. In this frame of mind I notice that I think of my future more in terms of the ranch option than the house. Yet Jo is closer than Carol now. I have opened a conflict in myself which seems to offer no prospect of resolution. How will it be resolved?
[At Lucas’s I was introduced to a car dealer called Gopinath, or Gopi for short – and he was short and pop-eyed to boot, but very entertaining and enthusiastic about my travels.]
Gopinath’s amusing account of Indian bathroom habits. The peasant is used to shitting away from the house in unsanitary conditions. He expresses his disgust by the violent retching noise and the mess he makes. For him, henceforth, bathrooms are dirty places to be treated with disrespect – a custom passed on from parent to child. Regardless of changing conditions (Father to son? How do women behave?).
He does not explain why it should have been disgusting in the first place – unless it’s because the night soil was removed by the lowest caste and the association therefore is untouchable. The left hand symbolises “shit.” How odd to carry with you at all times this reminder of your own excrement. Carried to its logical conclusion the left hand should be encased in a surgical glove or plunged into a pocketful of carbolic.
Discussion with Chief Reporter of Prajavani newspaper. He believes that E [The Emergency] is thoroughly bad: That press freedom is vital, but that electorate is blind and not influenced by press. Easily manipulated by corruption and demagoguery. Believes in unity (i.e. apparently opposed to devolution) but against uniformity. That Indira is seeking absolute power for its own sake. Can offer no alternative, only a return to pre-Emergency state. Talks of slums of Bangalore. First there was a rehousing scheme. Now abandoned because votes are more easily controlled in slums. What are these slums? 150 of them – say 150,000 people.
Tilluk [a new acquaintance] and I stroll around a ‘slum’ – a collection of village houses – maintained with pride and cleanliness – frequent cow-dunging. [Cow-dung is believed to have cleansing properties] Pathways lined with granite slabs. Roofs well tiled. Corporation has moved them. i.e. given land alongside and told to rebuild. But spokesmen say they got no help with money or materials. Forced to sell cows and other possessions. But new houses are being built. And labour is apparently in demand. Conditions in these communities are relatively good. As we stroll, I’m reminded of Iguatú [A village in the impoverished north of Brazil I had visited].
What’s the difference? I’d say things are better here.
Pictures from Iguatú
And now a Pontification:
Next week, it seems, we enter a new era, as Trump and Musk ascend to the presidency of the USA.
For some time now I have felt as though I were hanging on to the top of a wall by my finger tips.
Soon I shall have to let go, and I have no idea what’s below me – if anything.
Does that sound hysterical?
Especially if I add that nothing will particularly change for me personally.
There is no immediate threat to my comfort or survival.
So why this sense of doom?
It’s the same feeling, I imagine, that I share with people living in Glendale, California, who were going about their usual business this week, while their Hollywood neighbours were being burned out of house and home.
With luck the wind will turn and they’ll survive. But it’ll be a long time before they feel safe, if ever.
Americans – most of them –have delivered the world to a man who has promised to break all the rules, and drag us back into the nineteenth century, a time of great wealth for some, extreme poverty for many, when war was the way to settle differences. His promise to end the war in Ukraine will probably mean preparing the way for more European wars in the future. Meanwhile Musk is keen to see a civil war in Britain, and a neo-Fascist government in Germany. No doubt he will also be a friend to Marine Le Pen, our own neo-Fascist here in France.
There is a ray of hope. Trump is a liar. Well, that in itself is not exceptional. All politicians must, necessarily, lie in order to please a wide range of people with different expectations. But Trump’s lies are in a class of their own. In the first place he’s a bad liar, who gets caught out. And secondly, he lies to enrich himself, and that is where I see some hope – that he is lying now about what he plans to do, that his threats are just to soften up the opposition. After all this noise about changing the world, annexing Greenland, dumping Ukraine, firing his own bureaucracy, running trade wars, breaking up the European Union, maybe in the end he will be satisfied by feathering his own nest and rewarding his rich cronies. I could look forward to a day when he and JD, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito et alia, sail away in a Super Dooper Yacht, with Nigel Farage as Chief Steward and Mitch McConnell doiing the laundry. While Musk, of course,will be on his way to Mars.
But the REALLY bad news is that, one way or another, we will lose four years to deal with the climate crisis, and even more than four years if his fossil-loving friends really “drill, baby, drill.”
The heat is coming. I may even live to feel it. I guess that’s what’s below me when I fall off the wall.
