Eleven days into my journey and I've just started to comit something to writing. Finding time is somewhat the issue, but finding energy is the primary matter. There is so much calling one's attention, so many smells, sounds, and sights that it is difficult to muster the drive to begin. To write is to record all that is important. On a normal day, only very little remains important, "outstanding", worthy of discussion, of mention. I use quotations since using that particular word as a descriptor for things simply 'non-normal' or just 'noteworthy' lessons the significance of the word ultimately. I would like to retain meaning in superlative words, or do my small part - memetically. Perhaps 'mentionable' would be a better choice in that case. Concerning my main point, nearly all of my experiences these 11 days have been mentionable; oustanding; superlative. Thus, writing, recording is a daunting task.
This is how I begin my journal/blog entry on the train from Delhi to Agra. I decided to write my "blog" entries into a journal so that I could just transfer them when I did have time. Nine days, 3 cities, and 30+ hours logged in sleeper trains after commiting the above to ink and paper, I have time. What I wrote contines:
While writing, I am listening to Ghostland Observatory. The band works well on this train, passing fallow farmland pockmarked with an occasional tree. No music previously assopciated w/ other experiences could work right now. Surely not the Beatles (too many varied experiences including bed time listening and car rides as a child). No Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol (Summer 2003). No cutcopy (dance parties in DC). No Brazillian Girls (2000-2002 at Nu Blu with Bro). No Scott Walker. No Chilli Peppers. No U2, Knife, Grizzly Bear, Green Day, Van, etc. New music is for forging new memories.
Just now, the train stopped. We seem to be yielding to a freight train. This pause gives me occasion to think about what awaits us in Agra. We must find the bus terminal, so that tomorrow we can get to another town, Tumdla, in order to make an 8:30 train to Varanasi, or somehow change our train ticket to depart at a later date. Ugh. Transport in India is chaos - so much so that I am sure there will be a post entirely dedicated to the topic at a future date. No other word describes it so thoroughly. Finding a bus in Mcleod Ganj? Chaos. Getting a tazi...anywhere? Chaos. The New Delhi Train Station? Absolute. Fucking. Chaos. Hell, really. And no, I don't regret overspeaking (although, there's always that very small twinge of regret with every action in general that one feels on account of having made any decision in light of how little time there is - how wasteful to breath and not chose correctly - of how few the number of predetermined available heart-beats we have and in light of how many just went by). Try this for yourself.
And here, for the more sensitive of my readership, for the politically correct and or for Indians, I must say that I was quite worked up about the whole matter. It was my first experience with the trains, so, really, all of this can be avoided and it was my fault for jumping right in. Nonetheless, I'd like to preserve the underlining current of exasperation in my writing. It makes for more fun, to say the least, and does really capture what an outsiders first impression might be. So, I am not culturally insensitive. I am not racist. I do like India and Indians. Much of these details apply universally in a general sense to all crowds. So, I submit a mild disclaimer.
The people offend. they are rude, loud, dirty and too smelly, clean and too smelly, too close, too pushy, too unhelpful, too bold, too many! If you make it to the station at all, avoiding a car/rickshaw accident or just avoid being taken to the incorrect destination, you will be accosted by tourist/travel agency agents, who skulk around travel depots and other areas likely to house or usher by tourists. They are relentless, these agents, and have no shame. They will lie insistently and become indignant if you all them on it or turn them down - something you must learn to do. Out-maneuver one, and you are faced with more. Let me just say, it's not easy to get by. They move in cells, communicate via satellite - instantly and often - and probably track your specific heat signature for all I know. You pass the first one and a new one attacks, pretending to be helpful this time. While they offer some useful information, they do so to use the good will earned to manipulate you when you are unsuspecting. They are quite good at it. Impressively so. Defeat this minotaur, and you just have the multitudes to deal with, and all that which accompanies crowds; clustering, pushing, odors, spittle, inappropriate proximity, pick pockets etc.
I caught one such bugger with his hand in my pocket as he pressed himself up against me inappropriately. Mind you, the line between inappropriate and ok hardly exists in the Indian line waiting culture. I guess I just sensed something off about this guy. Needless to say, I was furious. Have you ever seen "True Lies"? There's one sequence in the film when Arnold is riding w/ a car salesman who pretends to be a spy to lure in lonely housewives, bored, scared, uptight, living in the burbs (if you have every lived in DC, you know how not far fetched this is, hehe). In the sequence, the salesman is talking unknowingly to Arnold about Arnold's character's wife while they drive in one of the auto-lot's corvettes. Arnold plays a character named Harry. Here is the transcript:
Harry: So who are you working on right now?
Simon: I always got a few on the line. But there's this one chick I got right now. I got her panting like a dog. Its great.
Harry: What does she do?
Simon: Some sort of legal secretary. Married to some boring jerk.
Harry: Married to some boring jerk.
Simon: Aww, but she could be so hot if she wanted to. She's like all these babes, you get their pilot lit, they could suck start a leafblower. And she's got the most incredible body too and a pair of titties that make you wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Ass like a ten year old boy!...
At that moment, the camera cuts to a furious Arnold, his face contorted in rage, the sort with which a man defends his wife's - their family's - honor. Cut to his arm and fist quickly, in one swift motion, bashing the salesman in the face, hilariously killying him immediately. This clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3YJ71gdoy8 this is a bad clip, but it was the best i could find with little time), which I love to discuss, is so fulfilling on so many levels that I am not sure where to begin my explanation. Perhaps, I'll save it for another time. Anyway, that sequence explains exactly what went through my mind when I turned and confronted the perp. Secondarily, I envisioned strangling him, crushing his larynx in front of so many Indian voyeurs. "here's something to stare at!" Before any of that could unfold, my Fieldston Lower Ethics pedagogy swoops in like cupid, shooting me with, instead of a love arrow, a tolerance and mercy syringe. Then, I notice the kid's lopsided, lazy and otherwise slothing eyes. Despite hypothesizing that the kid made his eyes like that for sympathy, I give him the benefit of the doubt. I do, however, consider snatching the bill he's waving around, regardless of whether it's mine, just to teach him a lesson. "Perhaps I should just down right and blatantly demand all of his money. Rob him blind (or cross-eyed)" I chuckle. I tell him that I will get the police (I hadnt seen cops nearly my entire trip). I let him go like a caught spider released to the outisde. Delhi really tests a man's patience - a vegan, no less, was ready to asphyxiate a deformed, vertically challenged thief. I now know how Monsieur Meursault in Camus' "The Strager" must have felt momentarily when he shot the Arab in essentially cold blood. Really, it was the heat that got to me.
(I switch artists now to Gang, Gang Dance - it fulfills the soundtrack vacancy in much the same way as Ghostland)
The twerp turns and runs. I, Westley, have defeated the third torment of the fire swamp! Actually, I think the thief did swipe a few rupees. Fuck em. In the land of Karma, no one seems to be much concerned with it. In a city with 17 million mostly poor - like homeless poor - humans, everyone is getting fucked so hard no one has time to care about paying it forward, ironically since so many of these men appear to be leading sexless lives.
So, we have contended with the masses, the con artists, the thieves, and now we have the lines, the public facilities, the lack of professionalsim of those meant to facilitate travel and transport for the people, their bosses, whoever controls these railways - the gov't? Some descendant Mugal emperor? I wouldn't be surprised. The lines: if you waited as one does in DC, you would end up at the back permanently. As a new yorker, perhaps you would make it to the front eventually. At least a New Yorker has the tools for aggressive line waiting. This new sport is full contact. It takes physical as well as mental cunning. Or, if you are Me and Alex, two huge bags to place at your side. You really must use force to push your way up and keep competitors frmo blatantly pushing around you. Even if you are at the till, talking with the attendant, someone will stick an arms around you, magically through you. They will come from the side, pracitcally from the air to get their facein your way. "at last. I can be seen by thi attendant," I sigh after 10 minutes of applying my basketball boxing out skills (those which I never quite used to full effect until now). Now, you've made it to the window, but, will this person help you? No. Can she? Probably not. Are you in the correct line? Who knows. The labeling and directions of the train statio, to putit in the parlence of the American 90s youth culture, SUCK. There's no direction. The signs are too old, too dirty to read or non existent. You will not, despite what lonely planet claims, get on a Wait List. You will not get on your train that day using this method. You must go to an advanced tourism booking office - the legitimate one - to book at least 4 hours in advance.
How do you learn this? Luck if some fellow travelers from the States do not happen by you and share their experience. By the way, make friends w/ these people wherever, whenver, however you can. They may have been competitors in the States, but here, in India, any and all such people are your friends, your resource, your savior. Our saviors lead us to the tourist office upstairs away from the mass of humanity, the heat, the thieves, the chaos to a more familiar scene, that of the overcrowded bearaucratic office with underpaid people doing their moderately important jobs half heartedly, except for the one guy who happens to love his work, who smiles and who is helpful; the guy every person in need of assistance wants, who I inevitably will not get after waitng on some slow moving line with slow moving people watching slow moving time drive through congested rush hour traffic, while talking on a cell - driving and talking is not illegal in Delhi. Nevertheless, you will be happier here.
There are a few fans blowing cooled, (not to be confused with conditioned) air arond an otherwise stuffy and dingy office. "sigh. What a relief. Now to figure out how this bureaucratic maze works and by what rules I must play," I instruct myself. Almost certainly there are rules and an order of operations not to be skipped over. You cannot possibly tell the agent what you want. You must fill out this sheet of paper, 75% of which carries useless info. You must first go to the info guy so he can look up the train for you despite the other agests being perfectyl capable of doing this. If you dont' figure this out, you will have wasted a lot of rush hour driving time on line only to be told to do it all over. I watched a few people suffer this fate. Wisely, before jumoping in, I watched the other rats to learn which way to head for the cheese. "It would be gosh darn swell if they posted the office procedures for all to see and know," I editorialze.
"Hey Al?" "deed, I feel nauseous. I can't wait on these lines,: quips Al, hinting that I should take care of the cheese gathering. She guards the bags while I engage. I manage to get a ticket 4 hours in advance for the 5:30 train, the one in which I now sit. Sweet. We can now spend 4 hours looking up info about Agra, eating an dplaying a few turns of travel scrabble. (quip as well as larynx are great words I decide). I might as well get the next ticket I need - Agra to Varanasi - as well. I run through the maze again. It's then that I realize we could have came here our first day and planned out and purchased all of our trains travel, essentially all of India. Alas. Ntohgin that I have experienced this far exemplifies the saying "live and learn" more than traveling in India. India, the style of existing, must be "learned", else, take an organized tour.
