Durga Puja in Darjeeling

Oct. 2, 2011

The morning after my sick day, I decided that I didn’t have much time to go further into Sikkim. The travel in this mountainous region was so slow that if I went any deeper, I wouldn’t have enough time to get back to Kolkata by October 5^th. I wanted to be back in time for both Durga Puja and the arrival of my good friends, the McKernans. So I checked out of my hotel and waited for the first jeep heading out of town. It took most of my day to leave Sikkim and return to Darjeeling. I had never intended to stay in Darjeeling, but it was both a convenient stopover point, as well as a far more relaxing and comfortable town than I had expected. During the course of the day’s travel, I started to see hints of the beginning of the five day Durga Puja, West Bengal’s most significant Hindu holiday. People were putting the final decorations on their roadside “pandals” (temporary temples constructed to house the ceremonies and worship of goddess Durga) and there was a hint of anticipation in the air.

I arrived in Darjeeling just after sunset and found the town to be much more crowded than it had been just a few days before. The streets were packed with Bengali visitors in town for the holiday. Part of the reason I wanted to be in Darjeeling was for the Durga Puja celebration, but it seemed that half of Kolkata had the same idea. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a room since this was such a busy time. Every hotel I passed had a Indian tourists shuffling in and out, but somehow the one that I knew was only popular for westerners and was nearly empty. I got my 4-bedroom dormitory for my good price and was satisfied with my situation. I went out into the street to shuffle through the crowds and found some street noodles and chai.

The next morning I woke to the sounds of drums and chanting. The festival was already starting with parades through the street. I had considered leaving this day and heading straight to Kolkata. Upon stepping outside and seeing the activity, though, I knew that I could not pass up this opportunity to see how Darjeeling celebrated Durga Puja.

Porters carry goods through town.

I spent my day simply wandering the town, watching the slew of parades passing through the narrow streets. Although I felt that the festival was obscuring the town itself, it was exciting to see the place so alive. Everywhere I turned, there was a horde of children carrying banners and wearing costumes, marching down the street in devotion to the goddess. I visited a couple of the “pandals” and watched worship ceremonies take place. The streets were packed and it was hard to move through the crowds. Foolish drivers tried in vain to push their cars through the melee. As one of the parades passed by, a woman stopped me and put a red banner around my neck and pushed a bindi, made of red-dyed grains of raw rice, against my forehead. I wasn’t looking for a spiritual experience, but not becoming part of the celebration was impossible.

The red-rice bindi.

Later in the day, I found myself near one of the higher points in town where there was something of a town square, with a stage set up. I sat off to the side and was approached by some guys near my age. One of them spoke English well, and he was a pretty interesting guy. I have regularly found the Nepalese/Himalayan youth to be much more westernized than Indian youth, or at least just easier to relate to. For a place that wasn’t colonized, they seem to have a pretty good sense for western pop culture, and not only the worst stuff. This guy was a musician and was really into punk and metal music. He was surprisingly well-versed in American punk music from the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Nepal and surrounds are the only places outside of North America or Western Europe where I have found people so into punk music. I am not much of a punk fan, but it was refreshing to find people that were into something beyond the most easily accessible elements of American pop culture. The guys told me about their band and the occasional gigs they would play at local bars. One of them showed me his homemade tattoos. Another told me that he had had to go to rehab because he had been smoking too much marijuana and drinking. He also said that heroin was a growing problem in the area, but that he no longer did that either. I was disappointed that their next performance was not for another week. I really wanted to see them play. The obscurity of the Darjeeling punk scene (in fact they were from a nearby village that they had to walk from) was so alluring, and I felt like staying just to learn about it.

I wanted to stay in Darjeeling longer, and experience it in its normal peacefulness. It seemed like it was an ideal place to stick around in just to write and read with little distraction. I needed to get back to Kolkata to meet with some dear friends of mine. I wanted to take the famous “toy train” back to Siliguri, but due to landslide and such in the past few years, it only went halfway there. Many visitors to Darjeeling take a brief made-for-tourists loop on the toy train that costs an exorbitant amount of money. Another option, though, is to take it in one direction as a means of transportation, where it is actually cheaper than taking a jeep. It takes three times as long as the jeep, but then again, I wasn’t in a rush, and why wouldn’t I prefer to take the adorable train?

For the most part, the train did not stray too far from the road, but it was far more comfortable than the jeep. It took about three hours for the steam engine to reach Kurseong, another hill station about halfway to Siliguri. The views were great, and the villages we passed through were utterly charming. Teenagers would run along the side and jump on for a free ride to the next town. Kurseong was not as quaint as Darjeeling and didn’t have as impressive of views, but it still had a lot of the cultural aspects that made the area appealing and none of the tourists. I still had plenty of time to make it to my evening train in New Jalpaiguri, so I wandered the town a bit. There was a small market that must have been more active in the morning hours. Some of the streets were too narrow for cars and meandering through the little alleys in search of nothing was a good way to pass the time.

When I got hungry for lunch, I walked to the jeep stand and perused the grimy stalls. A young guy, maybe twenty, summoned me into a cramped little stall saying I should eat there. It was as good as any other place, although the food on offer looked thoroughly unappetizing. There was a bland soup and some stale bread. The guy that had invited me in was now sitting so close to me I could smell the intense odor of alcohol on his breath. He insisted on buying me a boiled egg. I acted grateful, and ate it, but did not want it in the first place. Then he asked for another egg. I thanked him for his generosity, but tried to explain that I was full. He took the egg anyway and peeled it. I noticed his hands and fingernails were filthy. He decided that if I was insisting that I wasn’t hungry, he would share it with me. He gouged his fingers through the center of the egg, split it in half, and gave the one of the now gritty halves. I thanked him, told the stall operator that we would not be eating any more eggs, and swallowed my half down quickly. The young man was now grabbing my arm, going through the same questions that I had already answered minutes before. I was starting to get nervous that I would never be able to leave politely. Eventually I explained that I needed to get in a jeep or I would miss my train. I wasn’t hoping for his help, but I knew I would get it anyway. He stumbled away from the stall with me, and showed me where the next jeep would be leaving from. It was empty and the driver wasn’t to be seen. I was more than skeptical of this young drunk’s advice. Then he went to a shop, and brought me back a handful of small candies. By the time I was beginning to unwrap them, the driver showed up, the jeep filled with passengers and I was suddenly heartily shaking my new friend’s hand through the window as we descended further down the hills.

Within an hour we were back on the hot, flat plains of West Bengal. I was not excited to get back to Siliguri, one of the least interesting and unfriendly places I have seen in India. It was even more shocking on the return trip how fast the culture, environment, atmosphere and everything else changed between the two places. It was like I was suddenly back on the ground. In my mind I perceive the two places as land and sky. It just makes sense like this. A bigger stretch would be heaven and hell. At least the climates would still fit. It was late in the day, and the polluted sky was a burning orange and I was suddenly sweating again. The crowds, the noise, the stern demeanor of the men that surrounded me; it was all putting me in a foul mood, making me wonder why I had bothered to ever descend from that lovely kingdom in the sky.

I found a shared auto rickshaw that was going down the road to the train station in New Jalpaiguri. By the time I got there it was almost dark and I was uncomfortable. I didn’t know what I needed, but I had a couple hours to kill. I wandered around the food stalls, wondering if I should get something for the 12-hour journey. I decided on a takeout box that included rice, egg curry, roti and dahl for dirt cheap. After this I was surprised to run into a foreigner. I had figured that the transit hubs between Kolkata and Darjeeling would have a lot of tourists, I had seen almost nobody until now. It was a young, blonde Israeli girl who was traveling alone. She looked lost, but surprisingly not uncomfortable. We started talking and she said she had parted ways with her travel partner a month before and was having a great time. Traveling alone as a woman in India is by no means impossible, but it is not something that should be taken lightly either. She seemed pretty care-free about it, almost acting oblivious to the potential dangers or general obstacles. I admired her for being so open-minded about it, but after talking to her a while, she came off more as naïve and lucky than confident and savvy. She was also heading to Kolkata, but was taking the next train after mine. We hung out near the tracks until my train came. I figured I didn’t need to worry about her since she had made it this far and was still having a great time, but I still had a hint of concern for her in the back of my mind.

By the time I got back to Kolkata I was in no better mood than the evening before. The ferry from the station to the other side of the Hooghly River was not running when I got there, so I took a bus instead. Even the special atmosphere of Kolkata in the early morning was not making me more optimistic about this ground level of India. I made my way back to my hotel, the Modern Lodge. The management did not remember me whatsoever, and I was annoyed to have to fill out their exhaustively inquisitive guestbook, get my picture taken and have my passport photocopied. Then I was shown to my room. The only one available was a tiny shoebox that I could barely standup straight in. It barely had enough room for my bag, the fan barely worked and there was no shutter in front of the broken window. Then I stepped, barefoot, into something slimy and wet. I looked down and saw a small puddle leaking out from a pipe on the wall. My heart sank. I swiped my finger across the liquid and brought it to my nose. Yes. Yes, that is raw sewage leaking into my room. Good to be back in you, Kolkata. Sarcastic wink.