As We Are

I’m thinking of Rashid and Zahid and Humar.  I’m thinking of the mirror man who makes the glass with which we see ourselves.

For the tourist it spells abundance, India.  With its millennia chronicled in stone, at forts, castles and in the ruins of ancient citadels; and its spirit dancing in the mystical myriad of mosques, gurdwaras, churches and temples; from its sky-embracing peaks to its biting Thar winds, India mirrors all we are.  But of this, you are aware.

The traditional tourist towns need to be savoured and honoured.  There’s no disclaimer to add.  Yet it’s not only tourists who flock to those places.  There are also touts, also rogues, also tricksters.  And there’s a greater risk: with so very much to see between castle and fort, and in the bustle of the business of all the seeing, it’s absolutely possible to neglect the very seeing of it, India.  And that would be a shame.

Yet for the malady there’s a remedy and it’s simple.  When the touts have been paid and whatever scams have unfolded, just unfold the map and close the eyes and let the index finger waggle away in small circles of fate until it randomly drops upon the paper.  And go there, where the main sight is likely called India.  Go there, in the very way we went to Patna. 

The mirror man was waiting although we didn’t know it and neither did he.  He must’ve been busy that afternoon with whatever mirror men of an afternoon do, as we arrived at Patna Junction train station and checked into a nearby hotel.  Even from the station we could tell: people stared at us in a way that in the traditional tourist towns they didn’t, and it seemed exotic, rather like for a westerner it should be, India.  Without inhibition they dared to look into the mirror.

We’d thought to see the old town.  It’s a normal thing, except Patna’s arms spread wide and from colonial Bankipur the old town was still tens of kilometres to the east.  The locals directed us to some kind of tempos and we powered off, squashed in and unaware just how many bumps there’d need to be.

We were told to get out on a large metropolitan road.  How could it be the old town?  The sun was lowering and the mirror man must’ve been moving about in preparation for evening when we wandered, directed by locals, down an alleyway.  It turned out the alley was connected to others in a great maze of alleys and although we knew, the guide book had said, there was a gurdwara to see, it was just as well to let the alleys take us as they pleased.  People stared.

We met the mirror man first in actuality, but I’m thinking of Rashid and Zahid and Humar.  Night was impatient by then.  The sky was darkening and in the midst of the alleyways we had no hope of knowing which one might take us to the main road.  Humar was there.  He was our age and more than a bit surprised to see two foreigners in his street.  We wished to ask directions but as it turned out he spoke almost no English.  Yet he took us, it might’ve been by the arm, to his nearby house and we had to stoop to get in his front door.  He understood when we said ‘Australia’, although we’d already learnt to say it in the Indian manner, ‘Os-tre-li-a’, for he mimed cricket.  His mother was soon enough busy making tea as we sat, not knowing how to communicate.  We really wanted to be going but we’d come especially to see it, India.  It was afterwards that Humar went to fetch Rashid and his English. 

Like us, Rashid was a university student and he’d never met any foreigners before.  We learnt that Humar’s father was a train driver, often away somewhere down the line, and at Rashid’s insistence we agreed they’d come the following morning, all the way to Bankipur, to show us their Patna, India.

The following day was of rickshaws, two in procession, as the four of us roamed about Bankipur.  They took us to the landmark silo, the domed Golghar that we climbed to admire the view of the Ganges.  They took us to the museum to be impressed by the tricky displays of mirrors and the box that made it look like your head was detached from your body.  They took us to the zoo where we rowed a boat on a small lake.  And they took us to Mayfair for ice cream.

Rashid asked numerous questions about Australia and we did our best to answer, taking turns on his rickshaw.  Humar was a bit lost for words.  Rashid was enthusiastic about his coming graduation, in economics I think; but his ambition was tempered by concern about job prospects.  Bihar was poor then. 

There was nothing wrong with Bihar, Rashid said, but there was political instability that had slowed development.  This was in the days before Jharkhand.

By evening we were back in Old Patna, and we did visit the gurdwara, Takhat Harimandirji Patna Sahib.  It’s important since it’s one of only five Takhats or Holy Seats of Authority for the Sikhs.  Guru Gobind Singh was born there in 1666.  As for us, we already knew of that Sikh tenet which proclaims all humans equal and who would not be impressed? 

Two years later it was, when I stopped by for the second time.  We’d kept in touch by post and I stayed at Rashid’s house, and met his younger brother Zahid, and heard of the troubles with the Naxals in the villages.  It was another few days to chat and learn, not least counting in Urdu.  Rashid’s fears had been founded: he was a graduate, ambitious but after two years still unemployed.  He was thinner and he felt it, I believe, shame for his situation, though the city’s economy was no fault of his.  And when I left the second time, they presented in silver and topaz a handcrafted ring. 

But it was before all of that, before the zoo, before the gurdwara, before Rashid and Zahid and Humar.  There’d still been daylight when we’d stopped for tea on our own in a little shop on one of those alleys.  One of the customers had struck up a conversation and he said he made mirrors.  He asked if we wished to see them, as his house wasn’t far.  So we’d agreed and gone a short way together before he told us to wait, disappearing into a shack.  When he returned his face was sadder than the winter Ganges.  His wife, he had to say, wasn’t prepared for visitors.  I thought perhaps she had only one sari which on that day had been washed.  Or perhaps it was a fight. 

Either way, the mirror man felt it I believe, shame for his situation, but he shouldn’t have: he’s the man who makes the mirrors by which we see ourselves.  As he is, so we are.

There’s good news from Patna in more recent years.  There’s been revival and double digit economic growth.  Bihar had the fastest growth of all the major states in India and tourist numbers have multiplied by six.  Patna is transformed, I believe.  Yet just I hope, and sadly contact was lost with time, that in all its gusto the upturn didn’t forget them, Rashid and Zahid and Humar; and of course Mr. and Mrs. M. Man.  Yet just I hope Mayfair is still serving ice cream.

By the whims of an index finger we saw it, India.

...and if Ye travel further to the east, Ye shall findeth a place where chatting is as a national sport, a city that sayeth yes, and a a quite necessary mountain.  Waste not time lest Ye becometh tired...



This article also published in Patna Daily, here: As We Are

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: As We Are








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The Rishka Wisdom

It pulls to the side of the road at the start of a downpour.  With a push and a click of the metal sidebars the hood is lowered and fixed into place.  A plastic sheet of some impromptu variety is served across passengers’ legs just as a waiter spreads tablecloths in the expectation of diners.  The motion re-starts and the journey continues, with the driver, often uncovered himself, giving in to the drenching delivered by the sky.  There’s virtue in putting one’s own comfort second.  There’s merit in caring for strangers.

In the tyres and mud guards, from handlebars to hood and right down to the panel of imagination, the canvas of rickshaw art at the back, in the rickshaw is wisdom.  Often called ‘rishka’ by the villagers, every day chapters of this vehicle’s sacred texts are recited and inscribed anew across this city’s roads, championing the potholes and taking the occasional short cut along part of a footpath.  In muddy patches the rishka wisdom leaves its imprint traces: the new learning of new journeys etched into the land.  Traffic rules can be as they may, but the rishka wisdom has its own ways.

Long before we heard the broadcasts of rising seas and melting ice caps, before climate scientists became accustomed to death threats, it was there.  A beacon of clean transport the rishka said, ‘consider the air; consider the planet we share.’  And of employment it spoke, the reward that may come with some effort.  The push on the pedal gives the motion to families being fed and the most basic needs being met.  In a hostile world there’s dignity in the pursuit of honesty.  The rishka says that too.

The global centre of this particular branch of knowledge is Dhaka.  The tinkle of the bell is more than a ‘get out of the way!’  It’s a philosophy that tells us to take care with our life’s course such that it may not impinge upon the freedom of others; it’s a warning that the world is full of dangers and with care we should tread; and it’s courtesy.  The rishka bell is music; it’s the chorus call of the city.

The rishka is also about communication: in the dodgem chaos drivers call to each other.  They shout and scold and curse; and sometimes offer the greetings of friends with polite inquiries as to where the other is going.  In any case the rishka’s is not the wisdom of silence but of finding one’s voice.

The rishka’s is a discourse of opportunity and making the most of every space that offers itself in life, of finding space where there is none while working towards achieving a goal.  Somehow everyone fits within the limitations of the road, as the rishka wisdom favours inclusion and a singular society.  The values of patience, ingenuity in problem-solving and, in the event driver becomes technician, of multi-skilling, there are, and while it may be frustrating for pedestrians when in a queue the rickshaw wheels touch there’s also togetherness in that, and consideration, be it belated, as the driver swivels the wheel to let the pedestrian squeeze through.

And although there’s the sometimes violence of an uncouth passenger or car owner who slaps a rickshaw driver for some silly and inevitable scrape, there too is the wisdom: the face-slapper is revealed as a fool, the measurement of bad behaviour is set and the lesson in how not to deal with life’s frustrations is for all on display.  There’s no answer in violence, unless of course it’s in Mohammadpur where passers by may rally around the rickshaw driver and in his defence deliver one.  Possibilities have no end.  The rishka says all people are both good and bad.

In every guide book it shall be written and by many a local it shall be said: always agree upon the fare before stepping into a rickshaw.  As a basic instruction it has an apparent soundness to it: pre-negotiated fares are a vaccine against arguments at the destination and a remedy for the minority of tout-drivers or tight-fisted passengers intent on battling it out down to the last solitary taka.  With agreement in advance the day runs more smoothly and there’s added convenience to be had.  And yet the rishka wisdom says such advice can be wrong.

There’s little more rewarding when at the end of a ride on asking how much to give the driver says ‘give as you will,’ when they mean it.  It’s not as yet uncommon, that cultural inheritance.  But only then it comes, the opportunity for the passenger to consider their means and the driver’s efforts in order to arrive at a mutual understanding; and when the fare is on the generous side of fair it strengthens community, creating an ever so temporary bond and a departure blessed with a tiny dollop of respectful human connection.  The rishka wisdom says: goodness too needs a space to inhabit.  Sometimes it’s up to us to give it one, by throwing caution to the wind and taking a chance, by indulging what the villagers might call the ‘rishka riks’.

And here’s a secret: chatting to the driver along the way and using words like ‘thank you’ often brings out the best, and if there is time, why not stop for tea along the way?  So while perhaps the pre-negotiated fare is good to cover uncommon routes or longer journeys, it remains but a transaction, while the post-negotiated is a human interaction and of benefit to us all.

Still there shall be the smaller number of occasions when post-journey negotiations don’t run smoothly.  Still there shall be the lessons: negotiating skills and dispute resolution which can be useful in bigger situations, at work or at home.  These are the times post-altercation when walking away with a bitter taste in one’s mouth there’s the opportunity to ponder, ‘how could I have handled things better?  What can I do differently next time?’  But by experience, how else do we learn?






Ah, but the rishka's is not the only wheel of past-present-future, and inspiration can be found too in that river that watches the small city; yet, regardless, it's so that ultimately time will find its way back to the place where the world ends.


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Rishka Wisdom




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