Village Visit

Nov. 8^th, 2012

After Mama left, I went with Mel, Mal and Joe out to a friend’s village a couple hours outside of Kolkata. The village was the home of our friend Abdul, who we knew from long before when he worked at the infamous Sudder Street food stall Tirupati. His good friend, Kartik, with whom he lives in Kolkata, also came with us. Kartik and Abdul are both deaf and dumb and are something of icons on Sudder Street. They know a lot of foreigners and somehow communicate with their Indian sign language and simple, common sense hand gestures. I had known of them during my first time in Kolkata, but didn’t get to know them like Lizzy (Mel and Joe’s older sister) had. Mel and Joe spent a lot more time with them than I did, but I always enjoyed hanging out with them when I did. They were some of the most kind, friendly and generous people you could possibly meet around Sudder Street.

I was excited to out to visit Abdul’s village and see a bit of rural India; something I had not really experienced. We left in the morning and walked to the train station. That in itself was an experience, as Kartik (Abdul was already at home in the village) took us through streets we had never seen before. I kept wanting to stop and look around at what was going on around us, but unfortunately we were moving through the streets too fast and I was having a difficult time keeping up with the crew of fast walkers. When we got to the station, we had a difficult time getting tickets. Kartik had some sort of passes, so they weren’t even sure how we would go about getting our tickets. They didn’t even seem certain of what train we should take and which stop we would need to get off at. The lines for tickets were long, but Mel and Mal found a women’s only line that was shorter. They figured out what tickets we needed and bought four. On the way to the track, Kartik pointed over to a secluded corner of the station. There were two bodies underneath plastic coverings. He said that they had probably been hit by a train. We walked up for a closer look. There was some sort of official or security guard standing around them. I thought he would get angry with our nosiness, but he paid us no mind. As we got closer, he uncovered one of the bodies to take a picture of it for records. It was shocking to see this body that had been living just minutes before. Although it was a gruesome sight, I was surprised how little of a mess someone hit by a train had made. Just a couple lacerations across the neck and chest. We walked on and Kartik showed us a bulletin board next to one of the station’s offices. The board was covered with polaroids of bodies that had been hit by a train and had not been identified. Some of them were difficult to look at, like the body that had been cut in half by getting run over on the tracks. So many of them were unidentified because train victims are often poor people without family that live around the tracks. They have a reputation of drinking or abusing drugs and falling off the platform at the wrong moments. Others, however, are often murder victims that have been disposed of on the tracks.

When we boarded the train, we somehow managed to get seats before everyone else piled in. We were seated next to what we came to understand as some sort of train gang. Not many people in India look tough to me, and these guys were no exception. But the way they acted showed me that nobody wanted to mess with them. They were loud and playing cards. Nobody would sit too close to them, and they would bully and laugh at the vendors that came on to sell their wares. I saw a couple of them get bottles of Sprite from a vendor without paying. Another vendor was selling something in a small packet I had never seen before. When one of the guys saw my confusion at what the vendor was trying to sell me, he simply grabbed one and gave it to me. I was glad to be on their side. It was some sort of dried ginger candy that I felt was not worth the theft or the five rupees.

We got off the train after and hour and were surprisingly far from the city. We were in a town that seemed to exist almost entirely because train tracks went through it. We still needed to get transport to Abdul’s village. Kartik knew where it was, but still had trouble figuring out how to get transport. We assumed that since Kartik had been there and since he was Indian, he wouldn’t have a problem getting there. However, he had more trouble communicating with Indians as we did. He tried communicating through gestures and sign language to rickshaw and taxi drivers. They had little patience for his charades. We also didn’t know where we were going. He tried to explain the directions to Mel, who could understand him pretty well. We were looking to go to a village with a mosque and a school. Eventually we found someone patient enough to help and he directed us to a shared van that would be going that way. Naturally, Joe and I climbed onto the rack on top when it started to get crowded. After about 30 or 45 minutes, we arrived. It was another twenty-minute walk through the surprisingly compact rural village before we reached Abdul’s home. We were greeted warmly while kids from around the village took notice and started to drift our direction. We sat on the front porch of Abdul’s little one-room home. After greeting us, Abdul’s wife went inside to prepare lunch for us and tend to their baby. It was weird to see Abdul living this typical small-village lifestyle with a wife and a kid, as I had known him as the complete opposite: on his own in the big city. The lunch was a spicy and delicious beef curry (Abdul is Muslim) with rice. I felt bad that Abdul was giving us meat, since it is expensive. However, knew that a couple days before was Eid-al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that usually involves sacrificing goats or sheep, though for some reason in India slaughtering cows seems more common. So there was lots of meat and this was probably left over from the holiday and needed to be eaten. Kids from the village gathered around as we feasted, sitting on top of the ledges of the porch. Abdul chased them off, then poured water along the edges, a trick I had seen shop owners use in the city to keep stray dogs from loitering around their business.

The day passed slowly and not much happened. We sat around, relaxed, talked, drank tea, had some arm wrestling matches with macho dudes, etc. We walked around the village and visited some of Abdul’s friends. One family invited us into their compound, which was constructed from mud in an adobe-like style that reminded me of what I had seen in Northern Ghana. It seemed like half the village followed us in just to gawk at us. It reminded me a lot of how things were in Malian villages. Peaceful, hospitable and lots staring. As we waited for them to prepare tea for us, mothers handed us babies for us to hold. One of them, who was a little bit older, maybe two, was handed to Joe. As soon as the little girl looked up at him, she started screaming and jumped out of his arm. It was a good time for all.

A bit later we walked through the nearby fields that bordered the village to walk to the nearest road that had shops on it. I can’t remember why we went there, but I think everyone else needed to pick up some bottled water since the village did not have clean water. It was a long, slow and meandering walk through the fields. Occasionally we would see people at work in the fields, casually tending to their crops. It was a warm and comfortable dusk and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Save for the obvious shortcomings (bad water, far from shops, flooding during the monsoon, etc.) this village seemed idyllic. Close to the paved road we were going to there was what looked like a large smoke stack. It was actually some sort of kiln for making bricks. Huge stacks of bricks were piled up around it and they looked like giant pieces of PEZ candy.

Kartik and Mel

oe giving Kartik a piggy-back ride.

Look at his hat!

A bit later we walked through the nearby fields that bordered the village to walk to the nearest road that had shops on it. I can’t remember why we went there, but I think everyone else needed to pick up some bottled water since the village did not have clean water. It was a long, slow and meandering walk through the fields. Occasionally we would see people at work in the fields, casually tending to their crops. It was a warm and comfortable dusk and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Save for the obvious shortcomings (bad water, far from shops, flooding during the monsoon, etc.) this village seemed idyllic. Close to the paved road we were going to there was what looked like a large smoke stack. It was actually some sort of kiln for making bricks. Huge stacks of bricks were piled up around it and they looked like giant pieces of PEZ candy.

That would be pretty much the end of my time in Abdul’s village. I had plans the next day, and decided to go back to Kolkata that night with Kartik. Mel, Mal and Joe would be staying behind for the night. It was getting dark by the time Kartik and I were able to flag down the next van headed to the train station. It was already packed, and even our spaces on the roof rack were cramped. I had to hang on tight as the van barreled down the narrow, potholed road. It was one of those surprisingly rare moments when I am traveling that I realize I am really far away from home, and it gives me a feeling of wild freedom.

We waited on the platform for far longer than we expected. We sat at a tea stall and chatted the whole time. “Chatting” with Kartik is far easier than I expected it would be, considering he can’t hear or speak. I knew a few of his sign words for the people we knew, places and a few verbs and nouns. Mostly, though, I was picking it up along the way. As with learning any language it is a tremendous strain on the brain and you have to stay focused. Then, once you understand what someone is saying to you, you have to think of how best to express your ideas through that language, which is often the more difficult part. An interesting side effect of our conversation was the attention we got from passersby. Both a foreigner and a person speaking sign language would be enough to turn heads. We offered both of these. Some people would just walk up, stand a few feet away, cross their arms and just stare at us making our gestures to each other for a few minutes and eventually walk away. Sometimes a small crowd would gather and shamelessly watch with completely blank expressions from up close as we conversed. This did not faze Kartik in the slightest. He must have been used to it. I learned that Kartik was quite the gossip. A lot of what he talked about was sexual and I had to re-confirm several times that I was understanding him correctly. One thing he told me was that Abdul would dress in lady’s clothes and “spend time” with men on the sly for money. It was pretty shocking to hear, and couldn’t be too sure that I was really understanding him correctly. Mel and Joe would later tell me that he was probably talking about what he did, but saying it was Abdul just to test the waters and see how I would react. I am not sure how I even reacted to this, but I imagine I was pretty casual, just responding, “oh, really? Interesting. Well, if that’s what he does, then whatever.”

It was an interesting evening, to say the least. During the hour and a half wait for the train and the hour on the train, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about Kartik, Abdul, their lives, as well as a lot of their sign language.

Back home at the Modern Lodge, I arrive to find Raju and Raju already asleep.

Mama's Last Days in India

 

Nov. 6^th 2012

Back at the station in Kolkata.

Now that we were back in Kolkata, we had a little bit of time before Mama had to fly back home. Before she left, we were invited to lunch by my friend Jasma. She took us to a fancy restaurant at Kolkata’s newest malls. When we were on the way to meet her, My sandal broke. Now we were in urgent need of a cobbler, as I could not show up with just one shoe on (though I wouldn’t have cared to walk around the mall like this, I understood it was not acceptable). The neighborhood we were in looked like there would definitely be a cobbler nearby. It only took a little bit of asking around and showing people my broken sandal to be pointed in the right direction. The cobbler had my sandal fixed up within minutes, I gave him a few rupees, and we were back on our way. Of course, Jasma called me out for being late. I explained what had happened and she rolled her eyes, questioning why I hadn’t just bought a pair of decent sandals or worn shoes. But that is Jasma and I expect that.

The lunch was quite the experience. It started out with a grill being set up in the middle of our table and a variety of kebabs presented to us. Ground lamb kebabs, marinated chicken, whole crabs covered in spice. They brought as many kebabs out as we could eat. When we were finished with our grill, we went to the buffet. Now, I am generally anti-buffet, but this was pretty decent. There was biryani, raita, sabzi, a few curries, rice, naan and lots more. I ate more than I should have, but then again, my appetite usually shrinks when I am in India. Afterword we walked around the mall, peering into the high-end clothing boutiques. Mama was not really interested in buying anything, but it was interesting for her to see a part of India that she had previously not been exposed to.

The last couple days we had in Kolkata, Mama was not feeling too well. Her stomach was out of sorts, as it probably should be in India, but it sapped her energy right at the end. When the kind owner of our guesthouse found out, he gave her a package of Cadbury chocolates. I was glad that Mama was lucky enough to have a kind guesthouse staff, unlike the typical surly people one usually has to deal with in budget guesthouses in Kolkata. Although she was under the weather, we still had some time to walk around and explore the surrounding neighbors. The day before she left, the streets were more calm and quiet than normal, due to the approach of Eid-Al-Adha, one of the most important Muslim holidays. This calm in the city allowed certain things that I had not noticed before to float to the surface and become visible. One of these was a man repairing plastic buckets that I had never seen before. He had a small fire where he was heating up flat pieces of metal, which he would use to melt plastic for repairing buckets. I suddenly remembered that I needed to get my plastic cup fixed. I had been traveling with this orange cup since I was in Morocco, and it had just recently broken when I accidentally dropped my bag on it. I had saved the pieces, wondering if I would figure out a way to fix it. And here was my golden opportunity. I went and got my cup and all its pieces. I waited in line (this bucket repairmen had quite the steady flow of business). He heated his pieces of metal and fused the cracks in my cup back together. He used spare pieces of red plastic to reinforce the repair and to help fuse the handle back on. The workmanship was all about function over form, but it still turned out beautifully. 

Look at this craftsmanship!

It wasn’t our only salvage of the trip though. One day we were walking down a major boulevard, when I spotted some discarded piece of clothing. After so much scavenging in Africa, I find it hard to overlook some sort of unused but usable materials. I picked it up and discovered a filthy pair of colorful pants. I figured Mama would tell me to just put them back, which would have been sound advice. But no, she encouraged me to take them along. Everyone else said I was crazy. Later, I soaked them, and washed them several times. They turned out to be quite wearable, but not on a guy. So I gave them to mama and she loved them.

Mama's new pants.

One day, Joe, Mel, Mallory and I went to Kolkata’s Botanical Gardens. The hour-long bus ride, although crowded, was something of a highlight. It took us through a variety of neighborhoods that I had not seen before. A lot of it seemed poorer and more ramshackle than a lot of the areas I had seen. Part of me wanted to get out and explore, but this was not the time to do so. We were on a mission. The gardens were as I remembered them from last trip: a nice retreat from the chaos of the city, but still rugged and chaotic for a botanical garden. It was far bigger than I had remembered and I saw a lot that I had not seeen before, such as tire-sized lily pads that looked like they belonged more in Alice’s Wonderland or Willy Wonka’s house. The garden’s claim to fame was its “world’s biggest banyan tree”. Somehow I remembered it as the world’s second largest banyan tree from the time before. Maybe someone chopped down the other one since then. It does not look like one tree, but more like a sparse forest of thin, trees connected by vines and branches from above. But it is indeed one tree.  Also, there were mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos that I thanked for preying on Mel and Mal before getting to me.

The night before Mama left, we were hanging out in the room when we heard the unmistakable whine of bagpipes. It was surprising, obviously, to me, and exciting to Mama. Bagpipes are her favorite instrument. They are nostalgic for me, as every summer growing up I would hear people practicing and performing bagpipes in the park nearby the beach we always went to. There was some sort of bagpipe school at the community college. For me, bagpipes were the music of summer more than the tune of an ice cream truck. So to hear them now, so far away from Idaho or Scotland was mind-blowing. We ran outside, followed the sound, and found a parade going down a nearby street. There was a bagpipe band a couple dozen strong marching down the street. I always say that one of the greatest things about Kolkata is that every day you will see something that you’ve never seen before. I explained this concept to Mama once, when we were walking down the street, and just then a small boy heaved a puppy into my face and said, “hey want a puppy?” That had never happened to me before. Sometimes, though, even when you have seen something before, it’s presence in Kolkata makes it feel like something brand new. After a bit of research into why the hell there would be a bagpipe band in Kolkata, I discovered that a more primitive version of the bagpipe, made from a goat skin bag has existed in India for a few hundred years. This, however, did not explain their modern Scottish style instruments, or marching band uniforms.

On one of our days, we made an effort to visit Kali Temple, one of Kolkata’s few notable landmarks. We trudged through the terribly slummy neighborhood and the temple’s trinket-vender-laden surrounds to arrive at the crowded temple. There were hundreds lined up to enter the temple and get a glimpse of the idol representing the (simply-put) Hindu goddess of death and destruction. We waited in the slowly moving line that wrapped around the outside of the temple. We saw other people bribing their way to the front of the line or in the back entrance. When we finally got to the entrance, there was chaotic pushing and shoving. People were trying to force themselves and each other in, while other people were trying to get out. I saw the man in front of me ruthlessly put his entire body weight behind the man in front of us, trying to force him into the small doorway. The crowd swayed around us like large ocean waves that we were forced to submit to. I started to realize that this was actually a dangerous situation. Last time I was here, it was not this bad. Perhaps if I was alone I would have proceeded, but I couldn’t see the situation improving and I didn’t want to put Mama in a dangerous situation. Things looked like they were on the verge of violence or something of a stampede (a common occurrence at Indian religious gatherings), so we turned back around and squeezed our way back out. We walked past a bloody square of concrete where goats were ceremoniously slaughtered and watched the butcher nearby hack up the most recent sacrifice.

So that was the end of Mama’s trip. It seemed so short, but I knew it was a significant event in my mom’s life, just like it was for me the first time I came to India. She had never been off the North American continent before and has lived in Idaho for the last few decades. India is the kind of place that can turn your understanding of the world upside down, especially if you have not been many places. For this reason, I knew it would be hard for Mama to go back. She had just gotten a taste of what life looks like in a place like Kolkata, and now had to go back to her normal life in Idaho. Everything would certainly appear a little different with her new perspective. Most difficult would be the fact that she would be going back to a community where nobody would be able to relate to her experience. They might ask, “Oh, how was India?” Maybe they were being genuine or maybe just politely acknowledging that she had gone somewhere for a couple weeks. Either way, though, it would be difficult for them to empathize with what Mama had seen and experienced, and understand how readjusting to Idaho life would be difficult after having your perspective of the world flipped on its head.

When Mama left, I felt kind of lost again. I had about a month left in India, but still wasn’t sure how I was going to use it. I had had plans of going to Pakistan, but the visa was impossible to get. I had considered going to Bangladesh, but the visa was pricey. Kashmir was a possibility, but this late in the year the roads would be slow, treacherous and possibly closed for the winter. Travel there would require more time than I had. I also considered sticking around Kolkata to volunteer and maybe work on a photo project. It was a hard decision, because I felt like I had to do something that would get me way off the beaten track, and show me something about India that I hadn’t seen before. Trying to figure out how I was going to do this, though, was making me procrastinate. I wasn’t planning an adventure because I couldn’t decide what it was going to be. 

Varanasi Pt. 2

 

Nov. 4^th, 2012

On our second day in Varanasi, we started out by going to a local school for underprivileged children. It was run by a local NGO that received part of its funding from the bakery and café we had eaten at the day before. After we had asked about it, Mama decided she wanted to go and visit, since they encouraged people to come volunteer or see what the school was doing.

The school was in the upstairs of a small compound. In fact, it was actually just two small classrooms within a family’s home. The fact that the organization was started by a local family was inspiring. They had other programs in other parts of the city, but their focus was in education. We sat in a classroom of very young kids during an English lesson. I took a look at their workbooks which I always find interesting. Soon after we got there, a few more foreigners showed up. I got really self-conscious of our presence at this point, since I felt that we were being a distraction. Soon there was a tea break, and one of the teachers brought us some chai. We chatted with them about the programs and learned as much as we could about the program and how they work. Mama wanted to make a donation to them, but I tend to be skeptical of many aid organizations, especially those that work in touristy areas. A lot of their stuff seemed legit, though I was not totally excited about how they encourage people to come on visits like we were doing simply because they were trading a distraction to their students for donations. After talking to the teacher and some of the kids, we went with the head master’s room and chatted some more before making a donation to the school. 

Teacher and students.

Mama and the kids.

 

 

We spent most of the rest of the day walking along the ghats. We went past where most of the touristy areas of the ghats and just kept walking. Every few hundred feet or so we would see something interesting we had never seen before. Along a lot of the river, people had large hoses connected to water pumps. They were spraying water from the Ganges at large chunks of mud and dirt that covered a lot of the steps leading to the river. I wasn’t sure, but I imagine this was a seasonal necessity. The river would rise during the monsoon, then slowly lower throughout the dry season, leaving huge deposits of mud all over along the rive banks. The dirt was caked several meters thick at some spots. There was a lot of work to be done. We saw a group of men on their pilgrimage, getting their heads, faces and armpits shaved with a straight razor. Nearby a couple of men were climbing in and out of a whole in the ground, carrying buckets of mud or clay, perhaps for construction purposes. It was an interesting place to see people from all over India carrying out their various rituals as they made their pilgrimage.

A man washes himself on a platform in the river.

Painting the Ghats

Water Buffalo

Spraying mud off the ghats.

Getting shaved.

Men pulling what I believe to be mud or clay from a well

Spraying mud off the ghats.

Trying to spray me off the ghats.

Shiva lingams

Eventually we reached a smaller, lesser-known burning ghat than the one we had visited the night before. We sat at a distance and watched the whole process of a few cremations. We were never bothered by anyone. There were several in the process at the same moment. One body, wrapped tightly in white cloth and adorned with marigolds was waiting in line on a bamboo stretcher. The corpse looked shockingly thin. Members of a scheduled cast carry out the cremations. The corpse soon had liquefied ghee poured all over it to help it burn evenly. A pile of wood was erected and the body was lifted on top of it and then set on fire. The men would occasionally tend to each pyre, poking at the coals, moving pieces of wood or adjusting the body. Usually the body’s calves would be hanging out of the fire and would remain unburned. They would have to wait until the knees were burn through to push the legs backward into the flames. I would see the funeral workers frequently poking at the bottom of the feet, checking to see if they could be flipped back yet. They also have to use their stick to puncture the skull at some point to prevent it from exploding. It all seems pretty morbid, and I wondered if Mama was going to get squeamish or find it hard to watch. In fact, she found it all fascinating and didn’t want to stop watching. We sat there for at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half. And honestly, it was one of the more relaxing moments in Varanasi. We were sitting instead of battling crowds in narrow streets and nobody was hassling us.

Afterword, we ascended some nearby steps that led up to a Jain temple. The steps were so steep and narrow that I was actually afraid to go back down them. So after walking through the temple, we walked into the neighborhoods behind it to avoid the potentially treacherous descent. We strolled back the way we had come, but away from the river, under the cover of the tightly-packed neighborhoods. Like the area we were staying in, the roads were too narrow for cars. It was not crowded and very peaceful. One area seemed to be a Muslim neighborhood and there was a mosque wedged into one of the buildings. Nobody bothered us until we got to a small touristy strip with guesthouses, trinket shops, western-food cafes and CD stalls.

Cow dung drying on the wall to be used for fuel.

Women and a tourist.

Electricians at work.

That night we treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the rooftop restaurant at one of Varanasi’s nicer hotels. We mostly did it for the view, but also because we hadn’t had any upscale Indian food since Mama had been visiting. I had actually been to this restaurant five years earlier, but it was a lot different. As far as I remember, the building it sat on top of was not a fancy hotel, and the restaurant was basic and grubby. Since then, they had capitalized on their prime location and view of the Ganges. At $6 or $7 a plate I couldn’t believe the prices, but it was Mama’s treat, so I sat back and enjoyed the food and the view.

View from the restaurant

Boats gather around a ghat for the nightly ceremony.

After dinner, we walked to a nearby ghat where a nightly puja ceremony takes place. We had to shove through buckets of hustlers and little kids selling postcards before we could find a spot in the crowd to watch the puja. The offering featured a lot of fire and chanting, so it held our attention. It was somehow chaotic and serene at the same time. 

Later that night, when we were back at our hotel, I went back into the street to get a Sprite for Mama. On my way back a guy started following me and trying to sell me hash. By this point, I was so fed up with the hassles of this town that I turned to him without hesitation and yelled, “No! Go away!” He froze, shocked, and just said, “Oh my god!” It’s disappointing, but it often seems that the best way to deal with the worst of India is to lose your cool. The point doesn’t really get across otherwise.

In the morning we relaxed on the terrace at our hotel and just watched river life go by. I went out to get us some idlis for breakfast. I had gotten the fluffy rice cakes with sambar and coconut chutney the day before and Mama had liked them. She had commented, though, that she thought they would work well as a sweet dish rather than with savory sauces. So I got hers without the condiments and got some sugar from the hotel’s café.  We coated the idlis in sugar and they turned out to be delicious. Good idea Mama. While we ate, we saw a snake charmer sit down and start to perform. It was very sporadic as he only wanted to charm his snake as foreigners passed by. If they ignored him it wasn’t worth his effort to continue. Then a flute salesman walked by. He stopped, amused by the snake charmer, and tried to mimic the charmer’s playing. It wasn’t correct at all, and the charmer seemed annoyed. Realizing he had chose a terrible spot to perform, he got up and left.

Idli with sugar

We had the rest of the day free, before we had to get on the train that night. We had wondered what it would be like to see the other side of the river. There was absolutely nothing built on the opposite bank. There was just a big stretch of sand that was exposed when the river receded after the monsoon. We could see that there were a few people scattered about the sand, and the occasional boat would go across the river. So we ventured down to the banks and asked around to find a boat that would take us across. Plenty of people said they would take us across in a private boat, but we eventually found the boat that was loading up lots of people and would take us across for a small fee. When we reached the other side, I didn’t see anybody paying anything, so we just got off and nobody said anything. And there we were, standing on what now felt like a desert. The sand was expansive and hot and the sun beat down on us. I wasn’t quite sure where everyone dispersed to, but after a couple minutes of walking into the sand, we were alone. I turned around and looked at the city across the river. It looked incredible and amazingly distant. It looked ancient and almost unreal.

A boy walks across the sand with his kite.

Mama

We continued to walk and eventually found some men dispersed throughout the landscape flying kites. It looked like there was some sort of competition going on so we sat around and watched for a while.

Men and kites.

When we had seen enough, and gotten hot enough, we headed back to the river bank. There was a place where there were a few boats and people gathering. I still didn’t understand for what reason, other than kiting, people would come to this side of the river. Perhaps there were villages deep in the savannah in the distance. It seemed that some of the people disappeared into or emerged from the foliage.

A young, flamboyant guy approached us. He was excited to meet foreigners and asked if he could take a picture with me. He put his arm around me and his friend snapped a couple pictures of us. He was pretty giddy for the experience. I just pretended I was some sort of celebrity and soaked it up. A nearby woman thought this was a good idea, so she had someone take a picture of her with Mama.

We then found a boat going back across the river. When we arrived, there was some disagreement about the price. We paid the ten rupees each that we saw everyone else paying, although the driver was demanding 100 from us. I looked around for help, but suddenly everyone that had been on the boat with us had disappeared. So we just walked away after paying him what we assumed was fair.

We had to get back to the train station, and finding a ride there was not the easiest task. Walking through town with backpacks on makes you even more of a target than normal. I tried to play several rickshaw drivers off each other to get a lower price. It worked decently, and we got a ride with a driver with some sort of substance in his mouth that was turning his mouth, teeth and spit a bright green. Just before leaving, a cop came up and got in the front of the rickshaw. Normally, if taxi or rickshaw driver tries to let a friend ride with us I will refuse to proceed. The fact that it was a police officer, though, eased my hesitations. I didn’t want to worry Mama, but I was still nervous about our extra passenger. The traffic in Varanasi is horrific, and was especially treacherous at the time of day that we left. Our driver ditched the arterial and started working his way through back streets. This didn’t excite me, but at the same time, I knew we were probably going to get to the station slightly faster. The driver drove like an absolute maniac, and I even mean relative to most Indian drivers. When we tried to rejoin the main road, though, we were met with a traffic jam. Several cars were sitting there, stationary, refusing to yield to the other cars. The jam was only caused by a few drivers stubbornness. Suddenly the cop hopped out of the rickshaw, walked into the traffic jam and started waving his baton around. Magically, the cars started moving and the jam dissipated. We saw a limping dog making its way across the street, weaving through the slow-moving traffic. As it got closer, I saw that the dog was probably in the worst shape I had ever seen a living dog. It barely made it to the concrete median before collapsing between the two lanes of traffic. It was missing a lot of its hair, had scars and cuts all over its body and was missing an ear. Worst of all, though, it was missing about a third of its skull and you could see its exposed, and seemingly rotting brain. I don’t know how the dog had ended up like this, but it almost looked like someone had taken a swing at its head with a sharp machete. I hoped that the dog would just die soon as it lay there, oblivious to the traffic going on around it.  Eventually we reached the place that the cop wanted to get off at and he silently left without paying anything. Later, we were dropped off across several lanes of traffic from the train station. The drive had been a long and exhausting white-knuckle roller-coaster of a ride (even for India). My nerves were frayed, and I wasn’t in the mood to cross six-lanes of cutthroat Indian traffic with a concrete barrier in the middle. Alas, there was no other option. I took Mama’s hand and we carefully made it to the middle. As we were crossing the final three lanes, I saw a large horse attached to a carriage behind it. Then I saw a young man with madness in his eyes and thick burn scars on his face run towards the horse with a hop in his step. I could see what was about to happen, but even still, I didn’t believe that he was really going to do it. As he got to the horse, he cocked his arm back and unleashed a right hook right into the horse’s nose. The horse sprang up onto its hind legs, panicking. The wild man put his arms up in some sort of celebratory pose as if to say, “Hey, I just punched your horse, what are you going to do about it?” Simultaneously the horse and its two owners that were standing nearby chased the boy into the street. He didn’t run away. He wanted a fight, and he got one, right in the middle of the street, stopping traffic. The horse anxiously stood by in support as the two men took the young guy to the ground. A few punches were exchanged, but nothing seemed to phase the horse-puncher. The scuffle fizzled out quickly and the crazy man wriggled away and sauntered off laughing at the chaos he had brought. We had stood by and watched in shock. I couldn’t believe that this guy had really just punched a horse, unprovoked. I said to my mom, “Did you see that guy’s face? It was all burnt.” Just then, I turned and realized I was standing next to a man in a suit with an orange turban and a face that had been burnt beyond all recognition. The sight of him sent a sucker punch to my gut, and I really hoped he had not heard me.

We proceeded to the train station and made our way to the ticket office for foreigners. We had been unable to secure a first class ticket for the way back, but there is always a chance that more seats will open up the day of the train. We were not so lucky, and we were forced to get a sleeper class ticket. I was used to riding sleeper class, but the idea of it made Mama nervous. I had done the best I could, but if we wanted to get back to Kolkata in time for Mama’s flight, we would have to take the sleeper class.  It would be dirtier, much less comfortable and a lot more crowded.

I could tell Mama was nervous as we waited on the platform. It was dark now, and the scene around us was growing more menacing. Rats were running around us and there was a junky shooting up in a nearby dark corner. I don’t know if things were actually more sketchy than normal, or if I was just more aware of it since I was with Mama. Just before the train arrived, a young guy came up and greeted us. I was guarded at first and admittedly acted cold to him. So many of my interactions with people in Varanasi had left a bitter taste in my mouth and I was more untrusting than ever. I soon realized, though, that he was a good guy and just wanted to meet us and maybe practice a little English. I was actually relieved to have someone that seemed trustworthy with us, who could give us a hand when the train came. Although we had assigned berths, unlike in third class, which is a free-for-all that gets packed to the gills, it can be stressful to get onto the train as everyone is pushing and shoving as they vie for luggage space.

The train was crowded, but not nearly as bad as others I had been on. Mama was nervous at first, but eventually relaxed. I felt bad that we had not gotten a nicer train car, but in the end, Mama was glad to have the experience. It was less comfortable than what we had had on the way to Varanasi, but it was more interesting and different. I felt relieved later that Mama had come to terms with the train and would later have fond memories of it.