From My Notebooks In 1977: Leaving India

At last all the parts are together. I’ve said goodbye to Carol, expecting to be with her again in Europe, and I’m ready to leave Delhi for the border.

From Delhi, May 5th

Sprocket, chain and tyres on. Try to flog old parts, in vain. In State Bank involved in dubious transaction with Frenchman, who wants to double his cheques by losing them. I get what I want – unless the dollar bills are false. To Carpet Co. and Mani Prabakhar. Pay $40 deposit on carpet. Etc. Now midday. Undecided at house, I hang about a while, then pack. Hariom and Kari arrive and closet themselves. I decide to go.

Two awkward farewells. At 3.30, on the road. A last injection of 93 octane at the flyover. By 6pm I’m 90 miles along the highway and breathing again. Stop at Chatravarty Lake Tourist complex. Shunted from the far side of the road to the “Tourist Oasis”. Here a tent (big one) and bed with linen for 5 rps.

Buy a fresh frozen fish. Cook rice. Drink beer. Feed myself (and dog). Sleep. Get out. Sleep again. Get extra cover. Sleep again. All OK. Puri for breakfast. Leave at 9. Ride fast. Have three narrow escapes with buses. Driven off road on both sides – and forced to fall by rickshaw driver. Feel a destructive resentment working in me – and realise I must cool it – or die. Take a rest and go on more sensibly. Amritsar at 4pm.

I’m resisting all impulses to digress, to Simla or elsewhere. Rehearse conversations with people who say, “What a pity you didn’t see Kashmir.” Choose Ed as protagonist. Why? Youth Hostel greets me. Swiss traveller just came through border by bus. So that means OK. Tomorrow I’ll cross.

Find rice and beer. Then Golden Temple. Golden casket. Shirted Sikhs with spears, ancient ones with ancient rifles hugged to their chests. Inside, a small group of musicians – singer, tabla, harmonium – are amplified across whole lake and surrounding colonnades. Marble floors, inlaid. All exudes great air of probity, cleanliness, people at home with each other. At diagonally opposite corners, ladies serve copper dishes of ices water.

May 7th, Saturday

Last breakfast [in India]. Two boiled eggs, tea and a wafery bread shaped like palmiers.

To border – passing Emergency signs still planted firmly. [Gandhi lost the election, so Emergency is over.] The one I didn’t photograph: “Save the Poor. Support Prohibition.” Crossings fairly easy. Then long wait for obligatory police escort. He rides in bus ahead of me and it’s to save us from the army, not the rioters. Lahore is deserted but for buffalo herd moving apparently without guidance. Yesterday 2 or 22 people died after a curfew break to visit mosque. Now total curfew again.

We foreigners make a curious crowd in this vast, deserted space. Ted and his Jap. girl can’t find money to change. They’re sent to Intercontinental, three miles, but I’m eager to leave the atmosphere. How lucky to have bought those 100 Pak. Rupees in Nepal. The road is very broad and straight, tho’ seems to be going East rather than North. But it is night.

Stop for tea and get address of a curious man in shiny navy-blue pyjamas. His companion puts his finger on his throat and goes through the motion of the ‘strong man’. Then I get to the Jhellum toll bridge. Have just been planning my night. Flashback to Tahir and M’sud Khan. [Two Pakistani brothers I knew as a schoolboy.] Thought to invade some general’s quarters. But Hamid, the elder of a group of Pathans, takes me in.

Hamid and the brothers had the business of operating the toll bridge over the Jhellum river. Quite unbidden, Hamid – top right – assumes the job of feeding me and making me comfortable for the night.

Makes up a couch for me. Brings me tea. Prepares bathroom. Another couch outside. More tea. Infinite courtesy. Much quotation from Coleridge, Einstein, Freud, Shelley, Persian poets, copies of “The Psychologist” from 1951. Dinner of roti and dahl. A walk on riverbank. A massage. A bed prepared. Great sense of peace by riverbank. Traffic hardly noticeable. Many birds. Castor oil plants.

Then, once in bed, under net, discomfort grows to an itching catharsis, as traffic roar becomes overwhelming. Eventually, after tossing and scratching for hours, give up. Faithful Hamid is there. He says it’s bed bugs. Prescribes kerosene. Tends me like a patient. Change beds, bedding, and at last sleep.

That book of Materia Medica by Adolphe Lippe MD. Calcutta 1935.

Last night: “How were the inert gases discovered? What new discoveries did this lead to? Where is God? I say that God keeps moving. In the 19th Century He was in chemistry. In the 18th in botany. Where is he now?”

Hamid is [like] an Irishman. “Now wouldn’t you say, Sir, that medicines are very dangerous? Where did you get this mosquito net. Sir. It is very marvellous. I have never before seen the moon in so many colours.” And I was expecting to be asked how much it cost! Goodbye India.

He said he hit his head many times as a child, which damaged his memory. He can’t recall his first five years, and this is a compelling urge in him. Studies homeopathy and natural medicine.

Next week: Back to the beginning.

Most of us “developed” people are in record breaking heat waves. Every single oil-producing state is ramping up production. I watch the human race committing suicide, and I am powerless. Might as well rob a bank. Thank goodness I’m 94.