Indian Roadways and Conveyances, Pt.2
Labels: indian transit, medicalized authority structure, pathologization of human behaviour, public health education in india
'Adventure Land'
When the bus stops I disembark and promptly hunt down some chai. It’s late evening, and the air is chilly, even (especially?) after seven hours spent in the back of a trundling, sweaty bus. Before too long I am met by the 4x4 that will shuttle me through Jim Corbett National Park and Tiger Reserve, on up to the village of Marchula. From the village, I’ll begin the two-kilometre hike to the Himalayan Outback’s riverside camp. I throw my stuff in the truck and we roar off.
A little later we stop and I realize I’ve been dozing. I also realize that we’re not merely stopped, but stranded: the engine won’t start, we don’t get cell service, and we have to walk up the road for help or reception or something.
Sometimes it pays to go with the flow, I tell myself tritely. The guy in the passenger’s seat and I set out. His name is Dharampal, I learn. Lakhi, the driver, will stay with the vehicle.
Between our soles and the asphalt, there’s a thin layer of noisy sand. Each footfall seems to rip the night.
Hmmm. We really are in the middle of nowhere.
It’s a few hundred metres of walking before I’m able to take stock of all that’s happening:
(1) we’re abandoning our vehicle
(2) to walk, at night,
(3) through a ‘Tiger Reserve’, which is
(4) a parcel of land in the Himalayan foothills singled out because of its
(5) exceptionally high density of tigers – the tiger being, among other things,
(6a) one of the few animals, along with the polar bear, known to hunt humans for its food and
(6b) a creature exceptionally fond of doing its hunting and other sinister activities in the night.
But tiger attacks are rare, right? My pace, along with my pulse, probably quickens with the thought. Sure! You hear about tiger attacks in India from time to time, but that’s probably only because of the sheer number of people here. In a country of over a billion, someone is bound to get munched periodically.
Holy-god-what-is-that!? Something is breaking branches in the roadside thicket! Before realizing it, we’ve made an abrupt detour toward the opposite shoulder. Then, just as quickly, we stop. Unable to go on, twenty meters from the thicket-beast, we wait for it to reveal itself:
A deer. It is a deer.
We keep walking.
“Very dangerous place,” intones Dharampal, a little breathless.
“Uh-huh!” I answer, not liking the way it sounds. I clear my throat, but don’t like the way that sounds either.
Tiger Attack. I consider the idea seriously for the first time. Statistically unlikely in the grand scheme of things, for sure.
Then, all at once, I recognize our plight for what it really is: the culmination of an unusually elaborate conspiracy with fate to be successfully stalked, killed, and ingested by a tiger. I have to hand it to myself: I’m in the best position I can be in if my goal is to get devoured.
“Adventure Land,” Dharampal adds thinly, no doubt having similar thoughts.
From out of the darkness, a dimly lit checkpoint emerges. (We’re saved!) After an unfruitful interaction with the sleeping guy in the tiger-proof hut – (they have no phone, and the truck they are about to send down-road doesn’t think we could use a ride; it rumbles off) – we are out walking in the dark again, this time back the way we came.
I try to hail a passing convoy of Land Cruisers and they nearly run us over, not slowing one kph.
Who wouldn’t stop!? We’re going to be eaten! Don’t they know this?!
“Are they tourists?” I ask Dharampal after the dust clears.
“Yes,” he responds. I imagine Indian drivers with white cargo, under orders not to render aid to any roadside ruffians, even if said ruffians’ lives are in serious danger.
We plod on.
Presently we arrive back at the truck (The Truck!). Lakhi has been asleep in the back. Just then another group of SUVs comes barreling down around the turn. I step into the roadway melodramatically.
They stop. They are Indian tourists, in open-air 4x4s, out for a night-time jaunt in their resort’s vehicles, hoping to see some wildlife. They agree to give us a ride down the road. We hop in.
In first gear, we crawl along, waiting to surprise some animals or something. The engine yells indignantly on the downgrade.
One man in the backseat passes me some whiskey, and I realize he’s drunk. He manages to ascertain my country of origin, that I’ve been to India once before, that I traveled in this state, though it had a different name then, and that I am here “for fishing.” He also manages to goad me into taking a few pulls of his dilute whiskey before I begin nodding off again.
I am awakened periodically: whenever a terrified herd of unfortunate animals winds up in our headlights (often), we stop the trucks, everyone cheers, and we watch them filter, trembling, into the woods. (This may be the moment wherein most drinking is accomplished.) I wonder how many of them are wasted – the driver? – before slipping into sleep again.
I awake to doors slamming. We‘ve parked the 4x4s, I guess, and the wildlife enthusiasts have headed for their rooms before I can say thanks. Hands in pockets, I pace the grass and dirt parking lot while Dharampal calls someone at the camp.
It’s got to be past 2am by now. I sit on the ground for a moment, but a guard I hadn’t noticed sees me and invites me into his hut. He offers me his spare plastic chair, then closes the door to the cold. We exchange a head bob as he sets down across from me.
The fluorescent light is the only sound. I pull my hood over my eyes and begin to doze.
The guard must take out a bidi and light it, because the smell wakes me. I listen to him pull air through the small cigarette: it crackles and hisses.
The light whines.
At some point, help arrives.
Labels: bidi noises, indian transit, man-eating
Indian Roadways and Conveyances, Pt.1
When deciding if you’d like to fish mahseer, you need to ask yourself if you’d like to come to India. While India emerged from colonial rule in 1947 with an expansive rail network and at least 50 million English speakers, there are other aspects of travel here that one might find challenging. Beyond the gastrointestinal trials you’ve no doubt heard so much about, there are a few other considerations that need to be weighed. Ask yourself: “do crowds of people swirling over and about the roadway on two dozen different methods of locomotion overwhelm me?” “How do I feel when every person I talk to tries to invite me into their shop or home for chai or food? Am I flattered or frightened?” “Do I find it funny or infuriating when my bus driver, barreling along at high speed within inches of pedestrians, depresses the horn for no less than twelve continuous seconds?”
This last question brings up an important issue, and you'd do well to consider at length: “How do I feel about honking more generally?” In the West, horns are used only in emergencies, or when danger is imminent. But in India, horns are used whenever possible! Here, drivers actually encourage their peers to honk as a matter of policy. Hand-painted on the back of trucks, auto-rickshaws, and an unpredictable assortment of other vehicles, one can find words of exhortation: “Horn please,” “Sound horn,” “Blow horn,” “Horn okay,” “Okay,” and even, “Good luck.”
...
Here are another couple paragraphs, still in the works, crafted toward the same end:
Some of the brightest and most idiosyncratic moments in India -- the times when you hear yourself thinking: 'I can't get over this place! What!' -- seem to take place during the actual experience of transit. I travel to the Himalayan Outback’s Ramnagar camp on the day of the Hindu festival of Holi. Holi celebrates a miraculous event, even by the standards of Hindu mythology, wherein one Prahlad, a sort of model of devotion to god, emerged unscathed after being carried into a fire by a demoness, Holika.
Among other things, Holi is a day on which people all over India throw paint and pigment at each other and have a really good time doing it. It is also a day when grinning little kids line up on the road’s shoulder and shoot Super Soaker-style water cannons at passing buses, effectively marking, with festive and probably-toxic coloration, those passengers-dumb-enough-to-have-their-windows-open-when-it's-90-degrees-out as just that: dumb.
When I’m not scanning the shoulder ahead of the bus for mischievous looking groups of kids (friends of the water cannon operator will stand by, you see, clasping their hands in anticipation and clapping once the bright stream of god-knows-what-they’ve-bottled lets loose), I watch my fellow passengers. Four men whom I’m pretty sure have never met take turns reading a paper. Another man, face painted, falls asleep with his cheek on this neighbor’s shoulder, leaving bright colors on the pale shirt. I watch, again betting they don’t know each other, wondering what will happen when someone else takes notice. Nothing comes of it.
Labels: hindu festivals, horns, indian transit