You know Harry?

You know Harry, Sagar and the others?  Of course his actual name might not be Harry but it’s what they call him.  I did too.  Anyway, they were the ones I knew before I knew that I knew them.  It was only after we met, actually, that they were able to explain and I was able to understand that we’d known each other already for a couple of years.

I don’t know, maybe such circumstances are common in Rajasthan, and it’s not a bad thing to discover at a first meeting.  It’s kind of an unexpected head start.  Anyway, it happened in the small desert town of Phalodi where tourists rarely tread.

If I think of the beginning it’s likely a bit tragic, you see, because it is so too often for me that at the beginning comes tea.  Well, I exaggerate.  The tea came in the middle of the start, and the start of the start was more the hired white Ambassador stopping.  It was not due to mechanical fault but rather an idea that brought the vehicle to a halt: the desire to stop somewhere random, away from the tourist towns, to see if we couldn’t find the real, unadulterated Rajasthan.  Phalodi was a fair choice.

Now, I know there’s more to the town than that singular dusty road leading up from the highway, with the usual assortment of desert homes, small shops and light bustle.   But I didn’t know it then so it seemed the only way to proceed.  And not too far along that road, on the left side, was a primary school gate.  It was as we were passing, and my Australian friend Lachlan was there then, that the school kids started calling out to us, making a bit of a fuss.  They were excited to see foreigners and I don’t remember what words they used, but it likely included ‘One pen, one pen?’, the phrase that seemed ubiquitous in Rajasthan.

Of course one of the teachers, Madan, came to the gate to see what the students were getting excited about and I can say now that his curiosity was likely not less than theirs, though he didn’t show it.  He did however ask where we were from and told us to wait, at the gate, while he consulted with the headmaster.  He wished to invite us into the staff room cum headmaster’s office for tea.

Approval came forthwith and we sat in the staff room cum headmaster’s office with the headmaster behind his desk and several teachers finding places to stand or sit about the room.  Well I don’t recall exactly but the conversation must’ve mentioned cricket and there may have been a song or two, while we waited for tea.  Madan struggled with his English but through simple words and understanding communication found its way.

It’s a simple thing, tea, and although it took a while to arrive it came in cups with saucers in much the usual way.  It was only when the drinking commenced that the trouble started.

Well, we couldn’t have anticipated the slurping.  The first one or two loud, unashamed slurps might’ve been overlooked as unfortunate: in Australia slurping tea is not the thing to do.  But when it progressed into a kind of random chorus of slurps from all corners of the room a smile started to work its way onto my face.  I wondered if those slurps could be heard back at the white Ambassador down the street.

I sat there looking down, thinking of Lachlan.  ‘Please don’t slurp, please don’t slurp!’ I was thinking, knowing that if he did I would no longer be able to contain my laughter at the strangeness of things.  Besides, I wanted to compose myself enough to take a loud, unashamed slurp of my own that would set him off instead.

‘Don’t look at him! Don’t look at him!’ I told myself; but sure enough, when I felt composed and strong I made the mistake of giving him a small glance and he was ahead of me, as it were, just then taking the boldest, most unrepentant slurp of his tea.  It sent me into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and it spread to Lachlan too.  And there was nothing to say, you know, when the slurping for them was a way of complimenting the tea, when they asked why we were laughing.  I think we made something up about the white Ambassador but it was embarrassing.

Well Madan, as it were, didn’t quite write us off as mad.  Instead, he introduced us to his class and I saw they used slates to write on, with chalk.  And he took us to his home, a little further up the street, where he showed some nice pictures of traditional Rajasthani puppets and introduced us to his family.  And that was that: we were soon on our way towards Jodhpur as planned.

He’d walked with us back to the highway though, and we’d stopped for a second, farewell tea at a stall there.  Strangely that tea too was remarkable.  It had various spices in it and stood out as the finest cup of tea we found in the whole three months of that Indian adventure.

Months later I wrote to him and I couldn’t help but mention the tastiest tea in India.  Indeed I asked for the recipe; I was missing chai by then.

About a month later I came home to a letter, from Phalodi.  The envelope was large and oddly fattened at the bottom.  Inside was a plastic bag with a greyish, brownish powder in it.  Madan didn’t only send the recipe, but a sample of the spices used in the tastiest tea in India!

To be honest I felt slightly uneasy about getting a strange powdery substance through the post.  I can only be grateful that the sniffer dogs at Sydney Airport would not appear to be trained to detect Rajasthani tea spices in the midst of mail bags.  Anyway, there was nothing to do but boil the milk and try it out.  And I read the letter, thinking his written English was surprisingly good.

It was two years before I reached India again, and in that time Madan and I had exchanged several letters.  From that small first encounter it had become essential to revisit Phalodi.  With a train and bus from Delhi I arrived once more in the small desert town.  Madan didn’t know what day I’d come exactly, because neither did I.  So I wandered up the street wondering if I could recognise his house again.  It was just as well to ask: Phalodi is a small enough town for that.

Whoever it was led me through new alleyways until I was sure I was hopelessly lost and would never find Madan, when eventually we stopped at a small telephone shop.  It was Madan’s family’s business and he was there.

It was just a few days, the second visit; but of course he introduced me to Harry and Sagar and the others.  We rode motorbikes through the surrounding desert countryside visiting various picturesque village temples of older and newer construction.  There were parties, a staged drama featuring the school students, Harry climbed a tree and Sagar was apologising for only being able to take part of the time I was there as leave from his job.  I wondered why he’d think to do that for a complete stranger.

Madan had started losing his hair by then; but the more interesting development was in his spoken English.  It was dramatically improved and I was able to explain about the cultural difference in the tea slurping.  ‘How did you do that?’  I asked, about his English.

‘If you really wish to learn something,’ he said, ‘the best way is to teach it.’ 

He’d become the school’s English teacher.  And he took me back there one day, where I gave the very first English class of my own, only it was cheating since the lesson I taught, his class had learnt the day before.  They knew all the answers to the foreigner’s questions and they gained confidence from that.

It was strange, meanwhile, how much Harry, Sagar and the others seemed to know about me.  Madan must have said a lot, I thought.  It wasn’t long before I left that it made sense, when they thought to explain, a little sheepishly, that every time I’d sent a letter they’d all sat together to read it, discuss it, definitely in Hindi, and gradually draft the English reply!   

‘That’s why Madan’s written script was so good,’ I thought.  Each Phalodi letter might’ve been signed with his name but it was a team effort.  I’d been writing to all of them and through those letters, it wasn’t only Madan I’d come to know, but the entirety of one little social circle in a small desert town.  It was really rather good that the white Ambassador had stopped there, at the start.

India elsewhere? 

              Bangladesh?

                               Iran?







This article also published in Star Magazine, here: You Know Harry?

There Shall Have Been Jaisalmer

There could even be future predictions in those books.  Who’s to say there isn’t?  Who’s to say what wisdom is there, in the rare manuscripts and ancient tomes of the libraries of Jaisalmer, where the dry desert air is favourable to conservation?  Yet here, I embark upon a far humbler task: of predicting the past.

As once there came tribesmen into the arid territories of the Thar, as once there came herdsmen driving cattle and flocks of goats to forage among the thorny, scrubby bushes and desert grasses of that marginal country; as once there came wayfarers and traders from east and west, with textile, gemstone and treasure chest; so it shall come to pass that western backpackers, two, shall arrive in a white Ambassador that shall have been hired from Something-or-Other Tours & Travels in Delhi.

Over the centuries, in places where wells and tanks have been dug and there is water to drink, settlements shall have emerged and, gradually, a small but dignified desert kingdom shall have been established.  There shall be palaces and forts built for the Bhati Rajput royalty and the capital shall have taken the name of its founder, Maharawal Jaisal Singh.  At a time long after the camel caravans from Central Asia, Africa and Egypt have ceased to come; long after the several neighbouring kingdoms have been combined into Rajasthan, the land of the kings; and many years after the Pakistani border has been etched across the map, the backpackers shall have reached Jaisalmer to see all that has gone before them.

And they shall have with them a driver, who in his previous life was a bear.  That very driver shall have steered the Ambassador in safety across the nearer Rajasthani plains, dodging camel cart and swerving around cattle herd; and he shall have stopped to undertake urgent on-road mechanical tinkering as they navigated the ribbons of tar of the Thar.  In Jaisalmer, so shall it have been that they took rest.

Let it be said that they shall have stayed in a hotel near the large tank to the city’s south, the tank that’s embellished with minor temples around its edges.  They shall have heard the rumour that the main gate to the tank was presented to the Maharawal by a well-to-do lady-of-the-night, and when he disagreed to its construction due to considerations of propriety, she did it anyway, while he was away, incorporating a Krishna Temple in its uppermost storey so that he could not object to passing beneath it.

Let it be written here that they shall have enjoyed one sunset at the tank and have found the following sunrise while eating breakfast on the hotel rooftop, with views to the fort and the old city within its walls.  Let it be known how they visited that city of laneways, with its Jain temples and its haveli mansions in filigree design, of delicate craftsmanship, that shall have been constructed long before by the once wealthy families of trade.  By the time of the Ambassador’s arrival, the city in all its history shall be there, perched upon its hilltop in the Thar, Jaisalmer: the golden city.

So too shall they have visited the shops of souvenirs and desert jewellery in turquoise gemstone, silver and lapis lazuli.  They shall have known the carpet stores where dozens of carpets are to be unfurled upon arrival, as potential customers sip tea.  They shall have met the Singaporean ladies, three, down from Kashmir; and they shall have heard the Singaporean critique that westerners usually prefer carpets in bold, contrasting colours.  And it shall have amused them as the Singaporeans chose their own carpets in not less predictable pastel shades of aqua and rose.  To each group shall be their own traditions.  But it shall not have mattered in any substantial way, because the carpet stores are stocked for all comers, from the east and from the west.

Verily I say that on the third day they shall have organised a tour, by jeep and by camel, to the sand dunes of Sam.  As His Royal Highness the Maharawal could tell you, winter nights in the desert are cool and the locality of Sam follows that pattern.  But kindling for the campfire shall have been brought from afar, due to the lack of trees, and the locals shall have donned military type jackets and factory knitted shawls.  The foreigners, meanwhile, shall have unrolled their technologically designed sleeping bags that come with guarantees of withstanding a specified number of minus degrees, the sleeping bags which their mothers shall have made them bring.  They shall have slept in the open, with Australian pillows, under the Indian stars. 

And those foreigners shall know nothing, not how to survive in the desert nor even how to speak the Rajasthani tongue; but they shall have eaten well, the dinner prescribed by the tour agreement.  Meanwhile the locals shall have busied themselves in poaching: cooking and eating a small desert deer.  The locals shall have imbibed from desert wells while the foreigners had bottled water from a distant alpine spring.

On the following day there shall have been camels, two, for the ride back into town, a ride of several hours, and I tell you they are tall beasts such that when the camel one is sat upon is elderly, with arthritic knees causing it to sometimes stumble on rocky ground, when there is the sound of leg bones creaking as it walks, it’s not an altogether calming experience.  ‘Does he ever actually fall over?’ shall have been asked in sign language, as best it could be done.  ‘Sometimes,’ the camel driver shall have made him to understand by way of reply.

And the he-camel shall have passed beside she-camels and there shall have been bellowing, camel lips inverted with bubbling froth welling up from a camel mouth.  Camels live for about twenty years, they shall have heard, with a working life from two to sixteen.

So let it be recorded as it shall have been done.  It is my past prediction.  They shall have seen Jaisalmer.

 

But being a patriot, I suppose 6th century art critic Xie He might have preferred the mountains of his China.  Fruit adorers might like instead the mango tree gardens of Malda Town, or after the desert wanderings of Jaisalmer, it might be time to get lost in the rain.

It's up to you. Nobody's telling you what to do. It's your choice.




This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: They Shall Have Seen Jaisalmer








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Rodent Tourism

She had a dainty nose, small and pointed; her eyes were chocolate brown and shaped as watermelon seeds.  Through the brown silk of her hair could be seen the pink flesh of her small, rounded ears.  Her body was a little plump, overweight; but she was loved.  As she flitted about, like a bridal party attending to its bride it followed her: that long earthworm of a tail.

I’ve never had any particular affection for rats, but this one was the pet of some friends of a friend, many years past in that town of islands, Kristiansund in Norway.  She had free run of the house, the rat, and they seemed not to mind as she scurried up their arm or circumnavigated their necks.  Rats only live for a year or two, they said; so a life-long friendship for a rat is but several seasons.

People are never alone in this world: naturally enough there are other rat admirers amongst us, people enamoured of rodents.  This article is for them, for should one find oneself desirous of rodent-company whilst on holiday, there are options.

Entrance gate to the Kani Mata Temple, Deshnoke, Rajasthan

Deshnoke is a small town of around 15,000 people about thirty kilometres from Bikaner in Rajasthan.  It’s not a town that’d attract much attention, being not dissimilar to any of the other small towns in the brush country of the Thar Desert, if were not for the Karni Mata Temple.

Born in 1387, Karni Mata was a mystic believed to be a reincarnation of Durga; it is said she performed many miracles.  When her stepson Laxman drowned while attempting to take a drink from a tank, Karni Mata urged the god of death Yama to bring him back to life. 

Yama initially refused, but later allowed all of Karni Mata’s male children to be reincarnated as rats.  Alternatively, the 20,000 mostly brown rats that are fed, protected and worshipped at the temple are said to hold the souls of traditional bards called Charans.  Karni Mata is said to have been 151 years old when she died.

Removing one's shoes at the grand silver gates that mark the entrance, it's quite a novel experience to wander a courtyard populated by rats.  At the altar it's possible to seek Karni Mata's blessing, consuming Prasad, the edible offerings shared by the rodents.

The temple is said to reinforce a simple truth: all life is sacred, even rats. 

It is auspicious to see a white rat.  It is auspicious if a rat runs across your foot.  And as I was once told, when bubonic plague caused many human deaths in the towns of Rajasthan, in Deshnoke not a single person died, thanks to the blessings of Karni Mata and her temple of rats.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel, St. Lucia

Across the world in the Caribbean, and it may not be there now for there were plans for it to close, there is or was a budget hotel set amongst a lovely rat garden.  It’s a beautiful establishment in the lush subtropical hills above Castries, the quaint capital of St. Lucia.  The rooms are clean and spacious, food delightful, particularly as the reception area and dining table doubled as the living room of Cherie and her family, the local hoteliers.

A laid back French St. Lucian, there was no question Cherie had a soft spot for animals.  The multiple dogs and cats wandering about were additional family members, so the rats should have come as no surprise.  It was while sitting on the balcony enjoying breakfast, with the paradise of the St. Lucian Caribbean spread out like a blanket beneath, with views all the way to the horizon, Martinique, that they could be seen scurrying about in the garden immediately below: large, well-fed and clean.  ‘People said I should poison them,’ Cherie said, ‘but I didn’t have the heart to.’  If St. Lucia is paradisiacal for human beings, Cherie’s garden is the equivalent for the rats.

And if the St. Lucian pedigree of rat, significantly larger than the Deshnoke and Norwegian varieties, proves insufficient, then far to the south of St. Lucia can be found the capybaras, the world’s largest rodents.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel to Martinique

The Argentine wetland of Estero del Ibera abounds with wildlife, monkeys, deer, caimans, which are an alligator relative; and for me the star attraction: the capybara.  As large as a small goat and tail-less, even for the rat-non-lover this marsh-dwelling rodent is something special.

Capybara wades

As usual I’d imagined hours of weary search and maybe slight danger in the quest to locate the species; in the hope of the sort of fleeting glance that would more than satisfy the visitor to the Sundarbans in search of tigers.  Safaris should be like that, but it wasn’t.

It’s possible to hire a boat from the small town of Colonia Pellegrini to navigate the short distance across the lake to the Ranger Station, headquarters of the National Park.  The boat comes with a guide, who with some luck could be named Gaston, for Gaston makes his living that way.

After not more than several minutes, stepping off at the wharf by the Ranger Station, the expedition was done.  There on the grassy lawn was a capybara.  The creature didn’t bother to look up as we walked close enough to punch its broad flat nose; it was terribly busy doing nothing, what capybaras do best; an almost-statue but for the odd grind of the teeth.  It ruminated on grass as an elderly mother-in-law in a Bangladeshi village might chew paan or betel leaf.

Capybara chews

That capybara was seriously so unfazed by human presence I thought it might be a fraud: that some ranger had tamed one to impress the tourists, that it’s probably called Antonio and sleeps at the end of the ranger’s bed.  I wanted a real, wild, useless capybara.

Soon back on the water, after checking-in at the Ranger Station, with the silence of an oar Gaston sidled the dinghy to within inches of a caiman, the crocodilian as long as the boat.  It floated as though dead: but its eye moved.

‘Australian crocodiles can run as fast as horses on land over short distances,’ I told Gaston.  Actually I’ve no idea if its true but I think I might have heard that on TV once.  He was suitably impressed.

Continuing through the reeds two things became apparent.  At Estero del Ibera there were seemingly-lifeless caimans all over the place, their hardy scaled bodies and jagged long jaws floating about here and there, the reptiles completely fearless of the boat.  And there were genuine wild capybaras, different sizes but inevitably fat, and completely fearless of the boat.  It was incredible.  Giant rat swims, giant rat chews something, giant rat does nothing much in particular: all could be seen at incredibly close range.

Capybara wallows

Completely satisfied with my capybara encounters, I was in a better position to enjoy the overactive river otters and the bird life, the most impressive bird being the ungainly southern screamer, something of a cross between vulture and turkey that nested in reed clumps and though I didn’t hear it, must be in the habit of screaming now and then, presumably in a southerly direction. 

A swamp deer watched with this, ‘yeah, whatever’ look, as we paddled close.  What was it with these Argentine animals?  None had the least fear; had they not met humans before?

Capybara does nothing much at all

The great thing about Gaston was his genuine interest.  He must have done that tour every day and probably still does, but he really seemed to love those wetlands, his backyard.  I imagined his life with slight envy, how tranquil it would be if the most stressful event in your workday was a caiman closing an eyelid, or maybe that gets to you after a while?

For rodent enthusiasts and those who are not, the Estero del Ibera experience can only impress.  There must be few safaris in the world where contact with wild animals is so easy, where you could just about reach out and touch them; and its surprising really, because while it’s illegal to eat capybaras in Argentina, so I was told, they are hunted for their leather: capybaras sometimes become the belts worn by the gauchos, the Argentine cowboys.

Capybara, king of the rodents

Of course there's more to the Caribbean than rats.  And for more adventure, tracking rodents can't compare with tracking fearsome, wild beasts in Eastern Europe or wondering if the wolves will come...

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A Concise History of Cinema

The Ranjit Talkies, photo courtesy of Hotel The Hadoti Palace, Bundi

 
And…rolling! They barely touched in the days of Twinkle Khanna’s debut, the hero and the heroine, as they sang and danced and sensually raised eyes to one another on their way through their love story.  Even with machine guns while fighting the bad guys on the roof of a moving train there was time to dance.  For the most part the choreography stemmed from the little yellow flowers in the sublime fields of the rolling hills which were otherwise not part of the setting.  Heroines wore full saris back then; it was before the cost cutting on cloth. Cut!

Scene two: for young western backpackers in Rajasthan a tour could not be complete without a visit to a cinema hall.  There should be an introduction with at least one Kajol or Madhuri Dixit figure.  Fades out…

When my mother was about twenty-five what they called the picture theatre was an entertainment hub in the small town of Coonabarabran, the only spot on the map for the most of one hundred kilometres in any direction, on the edge of the Australian outback.  People gathered of a Wednesday and Saturday evening to touch base with Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor.  It was in the days when the hero and heroine barely touched and before the cost cutting on cloth.  With less than four thousand people in the town a night at the pictures offered a view to the world beyond sheep stations and wheat fields.  The word ‘film’ is generally considered to have two syllables in Coonabarabran: fil-em.  Zooms in on wheat field…

Scene four: Bundi in Rajasthan is not a large town, about eighty thousand people, and amongst its attractions is a solid cinema hall, the Ranjit Talkies.  It’s difficult to pass by.  The scene was of a crowd that covered most of the area in front of the building, vaguely forming two snaking queues on the day we tried to pass.  There was the excitement of anticipation.  With curiosity and spare time to lead us to a close encounter with Bollywood, we joined the queue.

It wasn’t long before heads started turning and there were whispers.  It’s not every day there are foreigners in Bundi and it must be even rarer for them to attend the Ranjit Talkies.  The queue seemed to have hardly any life to it but for us it didn’t matter as somebody plucked us out and took us directly to the small window at the counter.  We were guests.  I believe it cost ten rupees, each ticket, and we’d not realised that those were the most expensive seats available.  We were guided like two of the Khans to mid-centre in the front row of the gallery. 

With the crowd filling the seats in the hall below and despite the full-volume continuing chatter, the fil-em was about to start.  Add dramatic background music…

In the Doris Days of my mother’s trips to the picture theatre my father had just arrived on the scene.  He’d come from Sydney as an engineer to partake in the building of Coonabarabran’s water supply dam.  Many years later when the river suffered from seasonal algae blooms and the water used to come out of the taps a green colour I used to say to my grandmother, ‘you should call your son-in-law and ask him why the water from his dam is green.’ 

And how mother met father well, in brief it’s not unlike a 1960s Hollywood plot.  There was a scene at a dance at the Buckley’s Woolshed in Tooraweenah, and it can’t be said of all couples that they first saw each other in a barn.  And there were picture theatre evenings in the plot, with Vivien Leigh in re-runs and Julie Andrews singing and dancing, although her dance sequences lacked the syncopated Bollywood troops appearing from nowhere to further enliven the moment.  Fades out…

Scene seven: in the Kim Basinger and Dan Akroyd years as kids in Sydney we were more worldly, preferring serious documentaries like ‘E.T.’ and ‘My Stepmother is an Alien,’ and although there were instances of small round chocolates called jaffas taking advantage of the sloping wooden floor, with the sound of jaffas rolling adding a kind of ten-pin bowling ambience to the cinema near my place, we didn’t talk through fil-ems.  When the lights would dim the audience would hush. 

In Bundi the fil-em lasted a monumental three hours plus intermission, Bollywood usual, and it was not as passive an experience as in Sydney.  People talked unashamedly which was good because the local guy beside me was able to discuss the on-screen events to ensure I was following the families-don’t-agree-to-the-match-but-it-happens-anyway storyline.  It was particularly caring that during the scene when the hero was wrestling a tiger he reassured that I should not be worried as it was only acting.  It helped me understand why in some shots a large wooden pole could be spotted protruding from the tiger’s back and why its limbs didn’t seem to move.  Cut to shot of tigers prowling…

And when to make conversation I tried to explain that in Australia a movie ticket would cost the best part of ten dollars my cinema companion became Amitabh angry.  He’d understood the Ranjit Talkies’ management had overcharged us, ten dollars, and was on the verge of leaping out of his seat to heroically run off downstairs to have it out with them in the foyer.  Guests were really to be looked after at the Ranjit Talkies; fortunately I could clarify before the action scene started.

It wasn’t only my father who had taken interest in my mother, so the plot continued.  There was also a pharmacist.  My grandmother was concerned about my mother’s reputation so she told her, in front of my father, to make a choice and see only one of them.  ‘I agree with your mother,’ my father chimed in, ‘and it should be me.’  Well, my mother: she only could’ve done what Audrey would’ve done.  Cut to close-up of heart-broken pharmacist…

In Bundi the projector had a problem and at various moments the film burst into flame, the projector would shut down and the lights would be turned up.  There was nothing for the audience to do while the Ranjit management fiddled about fixing things so they all turned around to focus on that other spectacle: the foreigners.  They were waving and calling hello.  Well, we only could’ve done what Shah Rukh would’ve done. We waved back, and I believe they applauded before the fil-em re-started.

With tickets available at the Ranjit for just a few rupees we appreciated the importance of cinema: providing escape from the materially difficult lives that many in the audience presumably lived.  Just as in Coonabarabran it was at the picture theatre where something beyond the routine of small town life could be enjoyed.  In the world’s largest democracy across religions and languages Bollywood unites; and in Australia in the 1960s, in a cameo role, one mother and one father the Hollywood pictures helped unite.

As would later occur in Eritrea after a wedding, on the following morning in Bundi as we walked down the street someone called from across the road, ‘did you like the film?’  Yes, we very much had, although there rightly should’ve been a song and dance routine to accompany our answer.  That’s a wrap!




Please note: the above concise history does not consider Bangladeshi cinema due to the constraint which arises from its being 'concise'.  Nor does said article cover that Eritrean wedding or a lovely river in China on account of it being about 'cinema.'


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: A Concise History of Cinema



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