From My Notebooks In 1977: Bodhgaya and Delhi
1st June 2025 |
I arrive in Bodhgaya looking for somewhere to rest and write.
Bodhgaya, Monday February 21st
Tent in grounds of Tourist Bungalow. Not a very peaceful place. Meet Jacques Martin and his girlfriend/wife. They tell me the Burmese Vihar might be better. After two nights I move across, so –
Wednesday 23rd to Wednesday March 9th at Burmese Vihar
[All the most important Buddhist national communities had built temples at Bodhgaya, where the Buddha was said to have attained enlightenment. Associated with the temples were places, called vihars, where pilgrims could rest. Some were more rigorous than others. The Burmese vihar was the most relaxed. It consisted, so far as I remember now, a two-storey building and a large yard, with vegetable gardens. Down one side of the yard were a number of small huts, each with just a bunk and a bench, and I too up residence on one of them. I quickly made the acquaintance of a Burmese monk, Amnuay Bahaddesiri, who held classes in Vipassana meditation, and also led morning sessions of yoga exercises on the roof. I signed up for both while I wrote my piece.]
[While I was there they were erecting a new building. As usual the women were doing the heavy lifting, carrying baskets of wet cement up to the roof. I finished my piece – which never saw the light of day – and I heard that Alikhan, one of India’s most famous musicians, was giving a concert in Delhi. I had met him in Assam, and we became friends.]
Buy train ticket for Delhi.
A rickshaw to Gaya, bumping quietly through the night. Conscious of the river of sand beyond the trees and palms on the right. Occasional ghostly ox wagons and pony cabs in moonless dark leave shouts and chatter. Little snatches of sound. I’ve done so little moving at night, and none in silence. It’s not even 9 pm. The train leaves in seven hours. How to pass the time. Have the perverse idea of getting drunk. At Anand’s restaurant ask for a beer. The proprietor himself comes to move me onto a patch of grass, separate from the rest, in gloom, where I swallow two bottles of beer and dream quietly on my own. Have two good ideas. One is to identify societies by the drugs they use. (i.e. the kind of relief needed). The other, better idea I have since forgotten.
Before leaving P.K. Anand [the owner] takes me into his office, which is one of a row of lock-up shops that were once his family’s stables. They were great landlords, he says. He tells me stories about vasectomies – how he once needed labourers and sent someone in a rickshaw to offer 5 rupees to anyone who would come. He got no takers. They thought it was a ruse to get them operated. And the ticketless traveller of 15, caught by police, and taken straight to the operation room. Says family planning is resented as interference with the laws of Karma. A man’s ability to reproduce is determined by his previous life. Virtue is measured by the fruit of his loins.
The long wait on the platform is tedious. Already I’m regretting this impulse. Journey drags on endlessly.
The long, dreary wait on Gaya station after too much beer. Railway employees and passengers alike stretched out on platform. Man in dhoti, shirt, and shabby worsted jacket, rises up and with his lamp disappears along platform into darkness . . . .
Glimpses of mother on opposite bunk caring for her child.
Chai wallahs with earthenware cups. Burned my mouth on coffee at Allahabad. Had a guava at another station, not knowing what it was.
At Delhi station slightly desperate mood, try to phone Alikhan and lose rupees in telephones. All around others are also losing their money. In kiosk the telephone employee is allowed to continue unperturbed – changing notes for people to lose more money.
With sense of rushing into folly, take rickshaw to Alikhan’s address. After much looking, find it, but he is not there, only a student. He sends me on to new house, but I telephone first and, thank heavens, he knows who I am. I’m kindly received and then comes the numbing news that the concert has been cancelled. (And looking back I see that the whole enterprise was dodgy from the start, fraught with compromised motives, last minute reluctance, overcome.) Now I’ve a real struggle for equanimity.
Friday March 11th
Woken by student plucking at sarod, playing scales. Bus to Lucas. Lots of interesting mail. From mother, PH, Pat K, Barbara, Doug and Ash. Lifts my spirits. Set off on my chores which scarcely fill the void I’m in. Peter Kline has left. Ottolenghi retreats as I approach. Call to London is usual farcical failure. Passport office is closed. Follows desperate beer with Madan (Asst. Mgr) who assaults me with talk of serial depravity by English Hippy girls and his friends. He is depressed, but a more general obsession shows through. Undoubtedly, I am not exposing myself generally to the dirtier side of the world’s business and must bear this in mind in case I am misled into making “objective analyses.”
Attempts to get back to the Defence Colony are frantic as each bus leads me further into the unknown. There are election meetings booming out everywhere – huge voices. When you can’t understand what they say it’s obvious that the meaning is irrelevant to the main purpose (?) Remember the speech at La Plata.
March 12th
Breakfast at ‘smart’ restaurant. Waiter leaves door open for light, but others always close it. Music starts, a swinging Hindi number and I object. The owners turn to me with severe regret.
“Prayers,” they say. I’m mortified. Then waiter switches on the A/C directly behind my head.
Thick atmospheres, and rarified.
What does it mean to speak of materialistic societies? Aren’t Indians even more obsessed by money and possessions than we are? But the values are different. We actually want these things for their own sake. But it is noticeable that well-to-do Indians are quite comfortable in shabby, primitive surroundings (e.g. Patna party, religious observances). Other things are at stake. Security. Status. Responsibilities discharged. When an Indian businessman robs his clients it is on behalf of his clan, not himself.
What is there to write about Delhi? Tales of frustration and small blessings on buses and in shops. The saving of it, of course, are the minutes spent listening to Alikhan practicing and his student on sitar afterwards. (And the shy-looking lad on table-tabla who nevertheless managed so much equanimity with his slight inward smiles. The enigma of the Mona Lisa is, of course, that we want her to smile at us, but it is purely inward.)
The passport office was closed on Friday afternoon (otherwise I might have gone straight back to Gaya). On Monday it was like a maze with lines of people queuing, but the counter I wanted was like a trough in a piggery. I always wonder how I can ever expect to reach the clerk, but it happens. George’s story of the Pakistani train ticket office sounds as bad as any three layers of frontiersmen with guns and big muscles sprawling over each other. I suppose I’ve always assumed that one day I would be confronted by just such an impossible situation, and the truth is that I’ve probably been through several already, but having to deal with them practically one can’t afford the dramatic view but must focus on the spaces between the bodies. There seems to be always a way through.
Bodhgaya also had a Maharaja, with his own palace and peacock