From My Notebooks In 1976: Back Down India’s West Coast

26th January 2025 |

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.

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.