An ordinary trip

It may be exaggerated to call it a “custom office”. It was a bare desk right on the street. A sleepy official stamped my passport: I was in India. Muddy, packed streets. No signs of any other tourist or Westerner whatsoever. Which came as a surprise, for Sunauli is a common crossing for those going or coming from Nepal. I was quite happy about that, though soon an exchange agency brought me back to the essence of the West. It was called “The Money Mantra”. Anyhow, it´s not of this cultural syncretism I want to talk about.
I was heading to Gorakhpur. It´s not what you´d call a touristic destination, and hardly anyone would consider it a “must see”. It was a strategic point, for there is a major railway junction. But that´s all. However seeing is not all. There is also taste...
I was there for three days. Such a long stay was due to a mistake, and yet it was a lucky one. There were no tourists around, and oddly enough, locals didn´t pay much attention to me. No one aproached me, and I felt like living the exotic: rambling buses, wagons pulled by oxen, women wearing colourful saris... And then I found this eating place. It had a few common tables, a big fire in the middle with an enormous pot, a TV broadcasting ill news about the Commonwealth Games, and some rudimentary zinc walls protecting us from the dust of the streets. I shared a table with four local men, who seemed to be part of some belching chorus. The cook was a silent (he barely spoke any English) Indian, with a miraculous gift for daal bhat tarkar. He seemed eager to squander the product of his talent, handing me bowl after bowl. He was like Siddartha, getting rid of all his garments; and me, the Westerner, grabbing them all.
What I liked the most, was that no one seemed to bother about me being a foreigner: no one cared for our silly habit of using a fork to eat, and I wasn´t offered one. It didn´t matter of course, and I didn´t expect it. Curry flavour made cultural differences disappear, and the TV reporter was the only one who wasted any time talking. We were all silent, concentrated on the next bowl and the rotis coming out from the fire with impressive speed. I feared the crack of my rather weak economy; but confirming his divine origin, the owner made signs to me, asking only for 50 rupees. Astonished as I was, I promised me to eat there again. You may call me frivolous: incidents in Gorakhpur motivated Gandhi´s fast. And yet, that forgotten place holds one of my best memories of India.