On the beach

The immigration official at Kotoka airport in Ghana leaned back in his chair, smiling. A disconcerting smile.
"So, you are a freelance journalist?"
"No, no, not a journalist. I write and I photograph."
He let me into Ghana.

Now I'm in England and in about a fortnight I'll be back in the Pohangina Valley. But I see this blog is still back in India and I have a lot of catching up to do — the remaining time in India; Nepal; Ghana; South Africa; Malawi. Perhaps, instead of making excuses, I'll carry on from where I left off...



Unlike most of Rajasthan, Gujarat has water. Every time we passed shallow lakes and ponds, reservoirs and jheels, I looked for birds. I usually saw them, and felt encouraged. It has water of a different kind, too — the desert mirage. I looked out the window at a desolate plain; it dissolved into a shimmering lake and, on the horizon, small trees which appeared to dance and float.

A family of nilgai in the early evening, their coats warm in the soft light. Above them, the moon, not quite perfectly full, grew brighter as the sky darkened. The bus drove on towards Kandla and Gandhidam and the encroaching night; the sun turned deep yellow, then saffron, then orange as it sank into the dense haze.

But this revealed a more disturbing aspect of Gujarat. We had entered a more built-up, industrial area. Foundries and factories disgorged huge plumes of dense black smoke into the air; as we drove through a small town in the twilight, the end of the street disappeared into what looked like a cloud of dust; in the last light it glowed as if the air itself burned — but this was not just dust, not just smoke. People on the bus began coughing and I could smell and taste the dying air.

The sun, by now a huge, red, shimmering ball, just touched the horizon beyond an electrical substation. Pylons, masts, a net of cables and insulators; silhouettes like a diagram of a world gone wrong; a vision of some terrible science fiction future. Fire burning from a chimney, pouring black smoke, fire raging in the mouth of a furnace.

After dark I peer out the window. The bus has been driving forever. The brilliant, almost-round moon shines yellow in a black sky and one star glitters; it stays with us for a long time, but remains alone. Where are all the other stars? What has killed them — too much light, or too much darkness?

...

In Bhuj I visited the Aina Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors — a name from the pages of Gormenghast — and bought a small booklet about Kutch, mostly because it had a map of Bhuj and the region. Actually, both maps were more like diagrams, the information topologically rather than topographically accurate, and possibly accurate only in a relative sense. Compared to the forts and palaces at places like Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Bikaner, the Aina Mahal apparently had little to offer — much like the palace at Bharatpur. Evidence of the earthquake showed everywhere, inside and out, so that the small area open for viewing had the character of a wounded survivor, no longer magnificent and powerful but now humbled. I think this might in part have been why I liked it.

I photographed a few details — probably not what usually gets photographed — bought three postcards and wandered around the outside, studying the aftermath of the 'quake. Ruined walls, rooms open to the sun and wind, abandoned by humans, colonised by pigeons and palm squirrels, time and crows. Piles of rubble. Wooden scaffolding; struts bracing walls. A gorgeous butterfly bobbled around the rubbish and rubble and nettles, sunlight glowing in its wings, a metaphor for the fragility and resilience of life. When the next earthquake hits Bhuj, or the one after that, who will inherit the city? What will be left to inherit?

...

A small boy cycles alongside me in the dimly lit road, calling out something incomprehensible, perhaps an attempt to communicate. A tall, lean Muslim man steps onto the road and says something to the boy, who cycles off. The man greets me.
"He is my son," he says. "He wanted to practise his English."
"My name is Pete," I reply, holding out my hand.
He shakes it as we walk and nods at his disappearing son.
"He is second year."
"Second year?"
The man roars with laughter, throwing back his head.
"No! Sekondar!" he says, or a name sounding similar.

We laugh about it and when he says goodbye he shakes my hand and touches my shoulder with his other hand, the gesture of goodwill. A great smile. A new friend.

...

Sleep is another kind of refuge. It's also another kind of exploration, a wandering among dreams. I wake from vivid dreams, unable to place myself in India — I know I'm lying in the dim light in Bhuj but cannot feel it. The sensation reminds me of the dislocation I'd felt after my first long internet session at Naini Tal; most recently, I'd felt the same strange sense of being elsewhere when I closed my books on Africa last night and remembered I wasn't in Malawi or South Africa, camped in a tent and wondering about honey badgers and secretary birds, but in an echoing hotel room in Gujarat, listening to dogs barking and people singing in temples. I can't decide whether the essence of a refuge is that it allows you to be elsewhere — ideally, somewhere of your choosing — or it frees you to be exactly where you are. Perhaps the two aren't so different.

...

At Mandvi I checked into the Shital, which might better be termed ... well, you can guess... But it was only 75 rupees; almost nothing, which is what the room was. Really little more than a partitioned-off area with a metal cot, metal folding chair, small coffee table, ceiling fan and silverfish. I strung up my mosquito net and went looking for somewhere better to transfer to in the morning.

...

The cabins on the beach were closed. They looked derelict. They reminded me of old New Zealand baches; refugees from the '50s or '60s. Shuttered windows stared like blank, opaque eyes in pale walls; the bench seats had been stacked roughly, as if the place had been abandoned rather than closed for winter. An enormous, black PVC water tank lay collapsed and crumpled on the weedy sand near the padlocked office; concrete fence poles leaned at irregular angles, supporting a few strands of loosely strung barbed wire. Broken glass shone bright in the evening sun, near tangled piles of discarded fishing net and the occasional turd of indeterminate origin. A pack of dogs slept, spaced and curled, on the sand and a few people wandered the beach in the distance. By India's standards, the place was deserted, inhabited only by birds and the wind and ghosts from the past. I wanted to stay there, in one of those empty cabins, alone. I wanted to live and grow old on an empty beach, in a simple cabin with walls of books, watching the sea and the clouds, feeding birds, walking into the distance, drinking tea and wondering.


But not on this beach. I looked out into the Gulf of Kutch, and felt it impossible not to wonder why on earth I came here when New Zealand has beaches superficially similar and profoundly more meaningful for me. Then I looked in the other direction, out towards the Arabian Sea. The Arabian Sea. I said the words in my head, imagined other lands out there, places I've never been. South America. Antarctica. Africa. I stood on the beach at Mandvi, looking out across the Arabian Sea, towards Africa, and then I knew why I was here.


...

Walking along the waste land next to the beach in the late evening, I could hear people chanting and singing in temples. Many people. Yet the beach, with its birds and small waves and light reflected from shallow lagoons, with its sand ripples and the remarkable pattern of pellets of sand radiating from the burrows of some small invertebrate, attracted only a handful of people — a couple sitting at the high tide mark, looking out to sea; a boy wheeling a bicycle along the sand; two boys walking quickly and laughing, as if trying to outpace a smaller, stouter boy lagging behind. A man wading shin deep to examine a beached boat. Western cultures — which do exist, despite Gandhi's quip that they "would be a good idea" — are often criticised for being materialistic, for their apparent lack of spirituality, or for the shallowness and insincerity of their predominantly Christian practice — M.-the-Hare-Krishna explained to me how people in Christian churches look at their watches and think, "Oh, I need to be doing something else" — but a beach like this in Europe, say, or the UK, would be appreciated, probably to the point of being ruined. The thought occurred to me that here, perhaps, a great many people are too busy worshiping their gods to appreciate what their gods created.

Similarly, when I studied ecology at University it seemed fashionable to condemn the "Judeo-Christian ethic", with its belief that humans were given dominion over the other aspects of creation, as responsible for much of the world's environmental degradation. There might be some truth to the argument, and I don't know what similar ethics are enshrined in India's non-Christian religions, but India appears to me as the most environmentally degraded country in which I've travelled. Surely this cannot be attributed mainly to the country's 23 million Christians — less than 2% of the population.

I'm not saying western "culture" is better or worse than that of India. I simply wonder why some people seem so caught up in religious beliefs that they apparently fail to appreciate the world in which they live, and conversely, why others seem so unable to understand the world as something more profound and beautiful than just a mere playground — something to be "experienced", bought, or owned.

...

In the dim morning light a dishevelled man leans and blows his nose onto the street, flicking the snot off his fingers. He inspects them, rolls thumb and fingers together as if forming a ball, then wipes his hand on the tail of his filthy coat. He shuffles off, slowly, hardly lifting his feet, down towards the misty end of the lane.

...

Outside my window at the Seaview Hotel the partly built hull of a wooden ship looms in the mist, the tops of the ribs projecting skywards like old standing stones or peg teeth in the lower jaw of some mythical monster — some kind of troll, perhaps, or one of those sea monsters ancient cartographers drew on maps when they had no idea what was there. What would they have made of modern Mandvi? Could they even have imagined the trucks and jeeps and motorbikes with their ear-piercing screams, the rows of small, dingy engineering workshops with enormous metal-working lathes peeling off ribbons of steel; would they have been puzzled by the power lines, the tangles of cables and insulators apparently serving no purpose? Some things they would recognise — the wooden ships, of course; the blacksmiths hammering at small forges; the bustle, the noise, the grime, the rubbish — even if many of its components would mystify them. But I suspect so much would be unimaginable that they would simply write on their maps, "Here be monsters."

And what are our monsters now? Not those we discover, I think, but those we have created. On the wall of the school A.L. and I visited yesterday, a newspaper cutting had been pasted onto a larger rectangle of cardboard with a fuzzy photocopy of a black and white photograph of Indira Gandhi. I saw the word "Pokharan" and the date "1974" written in a child's hand on the card. Pokharan in 1974 was the site where India, in attempted secrecy, first tested its nuclear weapons; the newspaper cutting was the same article I'd read at Mt Abu about India's keenness to start selling BrahMos cruise missiles. Here be monsters, and you too can buy them from us.

...

I decide on a late breakfast at the "Omlet Centre". I'm waved beyond the kitchen to a small cave in the back of the shop, illuminated by a neon tube and an energy saver bulb. Four ancient fans wait in their wire cages, frowning down, blackened with oil and grime. Bench seats and tables made of square-section metal tubing and formica, the tables brindle — the colour of the dog sleeping in the lane — the seats faux-marble. Everything's sticky. A Pepsi cooler, topped by a layer of solidified dust, stands in the far corner. What lies were told to get it here?

The Omlet man walks into the cave and stands over me. He glares down.
"Yes?"
"Omelette?"
"Without chilli," he says, checking his assumption rather than making a statement.
"Without chilli. No chilli."
"Onion," he assumes, and walks off.

The omelette, with with a well-judged amount of onion and just a smidgeon too much salt — borderline, not unpleasant — comes with a stack of very lightly fried bread. No greasiness, more warmed than fried.I give him the 15 rupees and succeed in conveying the idea that I enjoyed the breakfast. A hint of a smile.

...

A woman runs after her small child. Both look as if they live on the street — that blackened, dusty look, the hair thick and dishevelled, clothes faded and lacking the vibrancy of house-dwellers' clothes. She catches him and he falls to the ground, then tries to run away again. She follows, beating him several times with a stick, then snatches him up and quickly carries him, struggling, across the street.

...

Waitangi Day. This time last year, in 2006, I stood just below the summit of Mt Rolleston with Jono, after we'd climbed the Otira face. I remember the tremendous sense of elation and joy, the feeling I was where I belonged. I suppose I felt at home to a degree that seems inconceivable here in India. Nevertheless, there's a hint of it here in the Omlet Centre in Mandvi, now I've returned and the men recognise me. The ferocious one came over soon after I'd sat down and leaned close to me, held his hand up, fingers and thumb side by side, and said, "Just 5 minutes. Okay?"
"Okay," I said.
I think his apparent ferocity might arise from the concentration needed to form words in English. It's accentuated by his appearance — bearded, intense, seemingly always with a frown. The difference when that hint of a smile appeared yesterday was remarkable. He wears the crocheted Muslim cap and long gown.

He brings the omelette and stack of warmed bread.
"Sorry," he says, apologising for the delay.
I don't mind. I feel comfortable here, enjoying the chance to sit and write away from the public gaze.
"Tea, coffee, water, Pepsi, Sprite...," he says. I gather he's asking me what I'd like.
Tea please."
"With sugar. No sugar."
The statements are the closest I've heard him come to asking a question.
"With sugar."
Tea with sugar arrives quickly and tastes like real tea, not the powerfully strong, heavily spiced brew I've had everywhere in Gujarat. Inspired by A.L.'s efforts yesterday, I jot down two words of Kutchi and practise them mentally. I go to the front of the shop and pay the bill.
"Khaso," I say. Good. He carries on peeling red onions, but there might be a trace of a smile.
"Abhar," I say — Thanks. "Thanks. Good omelette."
He grins a little.
"AH baar," he says, correcting my pronunciation. Then, "Shukriya."
I know that one — the Hindi version. He rattles off a string of words in various dialects and languages, utterly confusing me. I laugh.

"AH baar," I say, and leave him peeling his onions vigorously and smiling just perceptibly.

---

Photos (click to enlarge them):
1. The Aravalli Range, near Mount Abu, close to the border of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
2. A mugger at Trevor's Tank, the reservoir in the wildlife sanctuary near Mount Abu. "Mugger" is the local name for one of India's two species of crocodile.
3. Babbler at Kileswar, Barda Hills, Gujarat.
4. Early morning near the Gangaram hotel in Bhuj, Gujarat. (The photo has been desaturated because I like the look).
5. Boat builder at Mandvi, Gujarat. He was working on a small fishing boat which would take about 6 months to complete, according to his boss.
6. Morning fog at Mandvi.
7. Going back in time... in the fruit and veg market in Bikaner's old town.
8. Station Road in Bikaner.
9. Early morning in Mandvi, near the "Omlet Centre". The brindle dog was further down the lane.
10. Squirrel at Great Malvern, England. Evidence I'm in England (or more strictly, not in India nor Africa).


Photos and words © 2007 Pete McGregor

Time and life: Jodhpur, Mount Abu

It's been a while, but I did say I wouldn't be updating regularly. Partly it's the difficulty of finding computer monitors I can trust to give a reasonable representation of the photos so I can select them and do a little work, but there are other reasons. Now I'm about to leave India. To travel on to Africa — Ghana I trust, but if they won't let me in (I couldn't get a visa in advance), it'll probably be straight on to South Africa. Wish me luck! As usual, these are just small excerpts (mostly unedited) from my hand-written notes, and the usual qualifications apply about the quality of the photos — I trust they're okay, but every monitor's different.


Jodhpur

When Xuanzang said, "Who would wish to enjoy it alone?" he spoke of human knowledge [1]. But the desire to share extends far beyond knowledge; it includes, particularly, the emotions, and arises, I think, largely from the deep urge to be understood. Even the enjoyment of solitude can be enhanced by the knowledge that later you'll be able to share what you felt with others. With friends, including family; with people who understand, even if you've never met in person. Is this why I write and photograph? To share, and therefore be understood? Perhaps partly, but I like to believe my motivation's also less selfcentred; that some of the people who read what I've written and see what I do in some of my photos will feel that they, too, are understood. They'll understand that here's someone just as human as they are, asking similar questions, doubting similar things, and they'll feel a little less alone.

...

On the way back from the market I visited the dyer, who recognised and acknowledged me. I asked if I might photograph him, miming the action. He nodded and paused, holding the brilliant black and orange cloth in his hands as he squatted by the dish. After the photo a young man rushed up, apparently acting as some sort of spokesperson — and apparently wanting some sort of payment. I couldn't work out if he wanted me to provide a copy of the photo or baksheesh, and when I kept asking, could get no further than understanding that what was being asked was to be handed to him, not the dyer. The dyer's wife, hearing the fuss — several other late teenaged boys had gathered — came over and tried to wave them away, as if looking after me. At that point the dyer gave me a marvellous, man-to-man look, ignoring everyone else, and held out his hand. I shook it — a firm grasp, his brightly stained hand clasping mine — and the boys drifted away. When I walked past later in the evening his wife, sitting in the doorway, gave me an enormous smile.
"Namaste," she said.
I responded in kind, and walked on into the evening, feeling as if every tribulation of the last two months had been absolved.

...

Acid green doors in a cobalt blue wall; a yellow scarf in a line of laundry. A troop of langurs files across the cliff below the Mehrangarh. A muezzin calls; a woman leans over the rough-mortared wall of a rooftop, looking down at the street below. Perhaps one of the reasons I like Jodhpur is the idea that it's surrounded by desert; that its isolation while relative, is nevertheless apparent; something here says remoteness might still be found. But I wonder — if Jodhpur's on the fringe of what's remote, is it remoteness from my own land, my own way of life, and from everything I've known since I was a child?

...

As I sit on the rooftop in the evening, chatting with G and J, a great flock of egrets flies past, just above the rooftops. They fly with their hard stares fixed on the distance and I hear only the slightest rush of air from a hundred or more wings. In the dim light the brilliant white birds look like souls leaving the world.


Mount Abu

In the cave below the temple, our guide points. There in the dust near the wall — the pug marks of a leopard.
What is it about these footprints that means so much more to me than the constructed symbolism of the temple we've just left — and which I did not enter; where I waited outside?
Marks left by a leopard. The shape of rugged hills rising through the haze in the late morning sun — outliers of the Aravalli Range. Rock slabs, rounded forms, curved shapes in a landscape of dry grass, wicked-spined Euphorbia, thorny shrubs, a blue sky streaked with faint wisps of cloud. Graffiti everywhere on the easily accessible rock. Broken glass shining in the sun, glinting in the dust. Screes of rubbish; litter scattered first by human hands, then by the wind which flutters the solitary flag.

...

Reading in the morning sun on the rooftop. Talking with Karina and Andreas. What would Gandhi have thought, on reading the article in The Times of India which described India's enthusiasm for selling the Indian/Russian BrahMos cruise missiles to "friendly" countries?
"'There is a huge market for cruise missiles. BrahMos is unique among cruise missiles due to its 2.8 Mach supersonic speed (all other cruise missiles are subsonic at present) and much longer strike range. It's the ultimate force-multiplier,' said BrahMos Aerospace chief A. Sivanthanu Pillai."[2]

Perhaps Gandhi was an aberration.

...

Friday 26 January 2007
India's Republic Day.The amplified barrel-organ music begins at about four in the morning. I'm downstairs before 8; the manager hands the newspaper, which contains a report on a speech by India's President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam [3] — the man mentioned by Amartya Sen as both "extremely amiable" and "the leading architect of India's ballistic missile programme and a key figure in the development of nuclear weapons." [4]. In the last address of his term as president, Kalam focused on crimes against children — no doubt he had in mind the horrific, gruesome murders prominently reported in the Indian media recently. Describing children as India's "national wealth," his proposals for eradicating cruelty for children included, "watchful neighbours, fast action-oriented police machinery, vigilant media and speedy exemplary punishment." He also suggested the need "...to identify people who have such tendency [sic] through modern psychological test aids." The report did not mention whether Kalam offered suggestions about how to identify those who should be tested.

...

After breakfast Andreas and I walk to the Lake Palace hotel to talk with Charles about a wildlife trek. Charles is not there, the man says. Three o'clock he will be there. We arrange to meet Charles at three o'clock, and return to the polo ground to watch and be deafened by the the Republic Day celebrations. Dancing, some singing, music — some potentially lovely, some horrendously contemporary, all painfully amplified. Women and girls in gorgeously coloured traditional clothing, faces exquisitely made up; young men with oiled hair and tight jeans, arms around each other's shoulders or waists. One man wears a T-shirt with an almost life-sized image of a shaven-headed African-American man wearing a chain and cross and a scowl. Hugely exaggerated muscles; pointing a pistol directly at the onlooker. Straight from the fantasy world of pulp movies and gangsta rap videos. Overt aggression. What motivates this man to wear this T-shirt? Where does he feel he belongs?

A few metres away, two young women discuss something. One leaves. The other, a small woman, has some kind of spinal deformity, giving her a hunchbacked appearance. I smile at her and she returns it, a beautiful, open smile.

...

Saturday 27 January 2007
In the dry watercourses at the foot of the range a few pools of water still lingered. Good places to watch for wildlife in the evening, but to get to them would have been difficult. I searched the hillsides slowly, carefully, but even the birds seemed mostly to be inactive, like us. A few swifts raced swiftly about the sky; a solitary Egyptian vulture cruised above a distant ridge; the pale half moon hung high above us. I looked up at it and thought how, when I looked up at the daylight moon and wondered, that action and those thoughts drew me closer to someone who, thousands of years ago, also looked up at the daylight moon and wondered — closer than to someone who, right now, might sitting in a gleaming, air-conditioned board room with other people in crisp suits discussing marketing strategies for cruise missiles.
Karina and Danielle talked quietly; Andreas stood upright and motionless in in the sun and wind, looking out into the distance. These hills are home to bears and leopards, snakes and, reputedly, hyaenas. I continued searching through the Nikons, but there were no bears and no leopards. Certainly no hyaenas. Not even a snake. Maybe the mongooses we'd seen lower down had eaten them all.

Sunday 28 January 2007
In the morning sun, the yellow-green and blue flight of parakeets, a flash of pastel orange, the shimmer of quick wings. In the evening the silhouettes of those parakeets across the overcast sky. How many generations of human eyes and minds have seen this? How long ago were these things not seen by human eyes? When did some man or woman hear the chatter and look up for the first time to see those birds arrowing across the sky?

Monday 29 January 2007
At nine minutes past midnight a dog howls and yelps, almost screaming. The cause of its pain is unknown to me; the intensity is not.

A few puffy clouds rise above the dirty murk of the plains. Soon I'll leave this place and descend into that murk. I write this in the late afternoon of the 30th, when I'm feeling tired and worn down and a little alone. Again, a dog screams, perhaps in pain, perhaps in terror, which is a different kind of pain. I never want to hear that sound again, but this is India and I'll hear it again and again before I leave, just as I'll hear "two rupees" and see the outstretched hand, again and again; just as I'll see shorelines that are nothing more than rubbish tips floating on an evil scum. Again and again. The list goes on.

I want to write about the Delwara temples, but the ability to put the event and the feelings into words seems to have deserted me. I remember intricate carving in marble, thousands of individually carved figures and designs, an almost unimaginable effort. For what? For beliefs so alien to me they seem meaningless, and the effort, therefore, seems like an enormous tragedy of wasted effort. This, of course, is only my lack of belief speaking.

But the accomplishment deserves far more respect even if I can't hold the beliefs. I looked along a line of curved pillars to the outside of one of the temples, and the effect was like looking at a reflected mirror — that sense of the scene being repeated forever. Whether this was the intention, I don't know, but the effect was striking. Elsewhere, the way doorways framed ancient trees or other details seemed deliberate and was certainly arresting. Beautiful, too. Even divorced from the religious convictions, the temples must be admired for their architectural accomplishment.

The main temple centred around an enormous idol, a figure seated in the lotus position. Red lips, details in black, the bulk of the figure, including the face, white. A white cloth, like a shawl, draped the body. The idol sat beyond a cordoned-off area, in a chamber lit so the figure rested in soft light. Something about the expression on the face kept me standing there, gazing in. Eventually I walked away, but felt compelled to return and study the figure again. The face almost without detail except for the main features — eyes, nose, mouth —seemed so Indian. Immensely serene; eternally patient.

But what delighted us most were the doors at the temples . Old, mostly blue and faded, the paint partly worn off; weathered, patched, padlocked, some with old chains; set in plastered walls showing the signs and colours of age. Danielle and Scott understood my fascination — they share it. Something about textures, colours, the accumulation of histories, stories. On one door — perhaps the ultimate old door, with its mended, weathered panels — a gecko rested, motionless. The little lizard clung to the top left of the door as if not only owned it, or belonged to it, but had actually grown there. With cameras forbidden, these words must suffice.


...

The moon, almost full, grows slowly brighter as the afternoon turns to evening. A myna, brilliantly coloured, stands in the sun on the wall encircling the rooftop, then drops out of sight. A flash of sunlit wings against shadowed foliage. Babblers fly across the rooftop and perch on the waterpipe above my head; they peer down at me with crazed eyes then fly off. The sun disappears from where I'm sitting; it grazes the tops of the flags and lights the palm trees beyond the hotel. Frank, the German man who's been hitching rides with truckies in Gujarat, sits on the table and chats with me. He smiles a lot, and seems relaxed and happy, and a little of his mood transfers to me. I feel encouraged.

Tuesday 30 January 2007
An Egyptian vulture soars overhead. Higher — much higher — an aeroplane, silver and a long way ahead of its sound, crosses the sky. Another passes by, soon after, and later I see yet another, thus more than doubling the number I recall seeing during my entire time in India. Other than the fighters, of course — and my memory might have failed me.

I continue walking. Partway along Bailey's Track a dog lies on a large, flat-topped rock on the edge of the path. I can't tell whether it's sleeping or dead, but some intuition urges me not to continue, not to wake it if it is indeed sleeping, to let it lie. A strong intuition.

I listen, and turn back.

---

Notes:
1. p. 189 in: Sen, A. 2005. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. Allen Lane. 409 p. Sen, an Indian himself — and certainly argumentative — won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics.
2. The Times of India, Thursday 25 January 2007, p.9.
3. The Times of India, Friday 26 January 2007, p.5.
4. p. 253 in: Sen, A. 2005. op. cit.

Photos (click to enlarge them):
1. Bishnoi woman and child, near Jodhpur.
2. The dyer, Jodhpur.
3. Sack mender behind the veg market, Jodhpur.
4. Rabari woman and child, near Bhuj, Gujarat.
5. Republic Day performers, Mount Abu.
6. Mongoose; Kileswar, Barda Hills, Gujarat.
7. Old door at Kolayat, Rajasthan.
8. Rabari child near Kileswar, Barda Hills, Gujarat.
9. At Kileswar.

Photos and words © 2007 Pete McGregor

The Unimpeded Distance

Deshnoke; the Karni Mata mandir — the rat temple.

A man with a spectacular, multicoloured turban sits near the front of the bus. The turban seems to be perched on his head — how does it stay on? He has a white moustache, slightly cloudy eyes, a strong face. I see him at the temple and he acknowledges me and shows me how to pay my respects to the rats.

Which run, climb, scamper, sleep, feed, and sometimes fight, in abundance. Some appear healthy and sleek, most aren't so good, and a few seem very ill. They're all small; certainly, none approach the size of the enormous rats I've seen along the railway line in New Delhi. Many have broken or shortened tails; few lack scabs. Most people I know loathe rats, and although I don't share that revulsion, my appreciation's usually a deliberate, or at least conscious, acknowledgement of the fact they're wild animals. Here, however, I don't even have to think about enjoying seeing all these little creatures scampering about — I've simply become aware of what borders on delight at seeing these small, furry mammals going about their lives not merely unpersecuted, but actively supported and protected. The strength of this feeling surprises me; when I crouch to frame a photo and a little rat comes close to my knee, whiskers quivering, I'm astonished to realise I'm half hoping it will climb up onto me. Meanwhile, of course, another part of me — the western, scientific bit, perhaps, or maybe the fillyjonk part — whispers, "Leptospirosis, disease, bacteria, germs!" The rat turns away and scurries off, leaving me relieved — and a little disappointed.

To see the white rat, they say, is lucky. Soon after we'd arrived and Indian family indicated to us that the white rat was somewhere over there, inside the fenced-off enclosure. I'd looked, but failed to see it. Now, later, I go back to watch a feeding barrel full of a seething mass of rats. Somewhere among the melee of bodies... a paler shape. The swarm heaves and the pale form disappears. I watch. There it is again, this time more distinct. This is, without doubt, the white rat. More a creamy-yellow, but nothing would stay white among that. Lethargic compared to the others; eyes closed. I wonder if it's the only albino rat in the temple; how often the temple houses more than one, or none. How many of these rats do the guardians recognise as individuals? How many rats live here?

The more open areas of the courtyard are largely free of rats, which spend most of their time near the walls and food stations. The trays of milk are spectacular — an array of rats, heads down, encircling the clean, white milk. A geometry of belief — the visible demonstration of the belief that these rats are a stage in the transformation of individual human beings — or a geometry of exploitation — the rats taking advantage of that human belief? I feel no need to choose between these interpretations. They're just ways of seeing, ways of thinking. What I enjoy is being able to see and think in these different ways and to know they're only two interpretations among an indeterminate but enormous number. In other circumstances choosing an interpretation can be critical — for example, if I'm trying to decide whether my fear of negotiating a tricky section of mountainside or a street in India is sound commonsense or simple cowardice — but I suspect the need for such decisions is less common than we think.

To see the white rat, they say, is lucky. Perhaps the luck, for me, is to be gifted the idea that it's not necessary to choose between those geometries — of belief or exploitation — and that what's far more important and worthwhile is to recognise the value of both. But the real luck, I think, is just that I'm here. I beckon Angela and Phil over to see the white rat, hoping they'll share the luck.

...

Just inside the entrance, three men sit in the shade. Judging from the old, well worn harmonium in front of one and an enormous drum, similarly well used, in front of another, they're musicians, but for a long period they're silent. Then I hear a slow, gentle music begin. The sound of a simple melody from the harmonium, with a soft, deep beat from the drum. Lovely, immensely peaceful. Then it's joined by an ethereal, high-pitched and utterly beautiful, wailing voice. I look over, expecting to see a woman sitting with the three men, but they're alone. The remarkable voice comes from the harmonium player. He sits, moving his large fingers from key to key, working the bellows with his other hand; he looks around as he sings. His lips, slightly parted, move, if at all, imperceptibly. The sound has the almost magical, keening and other-worldly quality of kulning, the Scandinavian cattle-calling songs, and the purity of some Mongolian throat singing. I go over and sit nearby, entranced — almost in the literal sense. Rats scurry along the walls, pigeons fly across the courtyard, the old man softly tapping his drum looks off towards somewhere else — perhaps somewhere in his own memory or imagination. This slow, wailing, ethereal music, here where these detested animals are appreciated and respected, moves me almost to tears.

Kolayat

As usual, this temple doesn't move me much — certainly not like the Karni Mata temple. Is it partly the absence of life? I struggle to appreciate the beliefs that created this — perhaps I'm only seeing the stone and tiles, mirrors and paint, and not the people lost in their devotion? Or, maybe the ritual, the dogma, around which this temple was created is more than I can understand at an emotional level, leaving me only with the logic of knowing these are things others believe? How does this differ from the Karni Mata temple? I wonder if the little furry lives at the Karni Mata temple somehow impart a far more concrete, unassailable quality than do arcane beliefs. The diversity of beliefs and the degree of detail of each set within Hinduism are reputedly enormous, and perhaps it's that characteristic that leaves me feeling as if the basis for belief has become arbitrary, or simply a matter of which version you were born into. In contrast, there's nothing arbitrary about a rat — unlike a marble and gilt building, it's much more than a product of the human mind.

...

An old, spreading tree; a dog growling. The dog lies with its head up, paws in front, Sphinx-like; like the Sphinx, the dog is blind — both eyes are gone, leaving small, dark sockets. It growls, I guess, because it hears strange voices. Two pups frolic, and an old, turbaned man with a white beard and bright, wrinkled face sits by the blind dog. He talks to us, but we understand nothing other than he's talking about the dog.

On the bus; Bikaner to Jaisalmer

I look across and out the window to the desert, where the fading light suffuses everything with a soft, violet-pink hue. It's easy to imagine the unimpeded distance might continue forever; that it would be possible to walk on beyond the horizon and find only more desert; to travel at last into the great silence of oblivion.

Jaisalmer

On the way out from the Desert Cultural Centre I chatted with a retired teacher of English. He told me how he'd once translated a poem from Hindi into English; a poem about a beautiful woman from overseas who had come to visit the desert. She'd asked an old tailor to make a traditional dress for her. This required the old man to measure her — something he'd never had to do for a woman before, as he'd always taken measurements from old clothing. The English teacher grinned, and his eyes sparkled behind his spectacles.
"The old man's hands trembled," he said, and went on to explain how, when she visited the village, "the young men twirled their moustaches."
He mimed the action, and repeated the phrase.
"That was many years ago," he said. "The poet doesn't know if she ever returned. He doesn't know who she was."
He looked away, out across the busy road, towards the encircling desert.

"She came to explore the desert," he said.

...

In the fine dust on the side of the track at Gadisar Lake a lean, sleek dog with golden eyes tries to lick the residue from the inside of an empty glass jar. The low sun reflects, brilliant and dazzling, from the water. Flocks of house crows scavenge among the thorny scrub. I walk back to the fort and eat stuffed tomatoes and chapatis on the rooftop at sunset, looking out over the city towards the desert.

...

Altitude and solitude. Here on the roof of the Little Tibet, with the sun on my back, I have a degree of the former and a small, relative, and inevitably temporary amount of the latter. I find myself constantly qualifying statements about my situation here; constantly using the word "relative" and the phrase, "but this is India". Sometimes I think nothing in or about India can be said in relatively absolute terms except when speaking of excess.

Altitude and solitude. Her phrase, years ago now — a different world, a different life. How do I now differ from that person I was; how have I changed? What have I accomplished?

A house crow visits the nearby table — beautiful, silvery grey, the black shining head and bill, a touch of iridescent green on the throat, the morning sun a brilliant point of light in its eye as it cocks its head to look at me. A pigeon flashes past, over my right shoulder and into the big, empty air beyond the wall a metre away, over the entrance to the fort. The bird carries me with it — I feel the fluid air under me, the sudden, giddying depth beneath. The exhilaration of altitude and flight.

Then a jet fighter thunders in from the desert, from the direction of the Pakistan border, and circles the city. Jaisalmer fort dates back to the 12th Century; after the better part of a millennium we still kill each other and call it defence. Later in the afternoon I read The Times of India and learn that by 2009 India hopes to have two "carrier battle groups" each with "two to three guided missile destroyers, two multipurpose frigates, two attack submarines and a tankers, among other warships". The aim, apparently, is "to project force as well as act as a 'stabilising influence' in the entire Indian Ocean and beyond" (The Times of India, 9 January 2007, p. 13).


...

Something seems wrong. It's not just that the visitors come here in their hundreds every day to gawk and photograph and record — the man standing conspicuously in front of the palace with his camcorder held out, panning slowly to fix everything and everyone has become ubiquitous — it's the way Jaisalmer has responded to that influx. Even if I felt like buying something here (I don't) I'd doubt whether the price would be fair, or at least in line with what I'd be charged somewhere less internationally famous; I'd doubt the quality — had this item been manufactured "efficiently" for the tourist market? In short I'd doubt the authenticity of what I'd be offered. What I AM offered.

The closer I look, the more I begin to question the authenticity of much of what I see. The basic structure of the fort and much of its impressive detailing surely dates back to the fort's construction, that is, the original building and some subsequent additions. But there's the catch: when do these later additions and changes cease being "authentic"? The concrete floors, plastic flowers, electrical wiring in metal conduit, the careful floodlighting at night to enhance the fort's "golden" character — these have their own kind of authenticity, but it's that of modern India; it has as much to do with the fort-as-survivor of a long gone time as do the giant windmills slowly turning on the horizon, supplying never quite enough power.

But it's not just places and physical objects, it's the relationships between people. Denise and Rosa had noticed this too, and, if I've understood them correctly, felt a little let down when they discovered that the enjoyable conversation and enthusiastic interest they'd encountered seemed so often to lead eventually to a request to visit someone's shop, or buy something, or even to a request for baksheesh. I've experienced much the same; sadly, I find myself becoming increasingly guarded, even suspicious, when treated with what, elsewhere, I usually regard as genuine friendliness, most likely arising from curiosity. The sort of pseudofriendliness that disappointed Denise and Rosa also disappoints me; it's like the sudden, deflated feeling that overcame me when I discovered the woman at Naini Tal was actually interested, not in me, but in the possibility of converting me to the Full Gospel Church. These kinds of ulterior motive degrade relationships — what appears to be mutual interest turns out to be self interest. The relationship is not authentic. Many religions seem to have this capacity to degrade relationships by reducing genuine interest and compassion to the building up of credit for some kind of afterlife. Even in its seemingly less self-interested form, that of expressing concern for others because it's the will of god (or other diety), the relationship seems less genuine, less authentic than a relationship filtered by nothing other than an openness towards the other person.

Now for the qualifications. First, this particular form of inauthenticity is by no means always the case. Even here, in the tourism hotspot of Jaisalmer, I've enjoyed wonderful, uplifting exchanges, like my encounter with one of the residents outside the hotel. I walked past, and, catching her eye, said, "Namaste," with the formal gesture of hands joined.
"Namaste," she said, smiling. Then, "Hindi?"
"Only 'Namaste'."
"No Hindi?" she said, thus exhausting her English.
I thought for a moment.
"Aloo gobi," I said, grinning. The equivalent of saying, "spaghetti," to an Italian.
She thought this was wonderful.
"Aloo gobi!" she called out to her friends, with some kind of commentary. She turned back to me, enjoying the joke.
"No Hindi?" she said again, as if hoping I'd managed to acquire a working knowledge of the language since she'd last asked.
"No Hindi," I said, and looked remorseful.
She looked disappointed, but still smiled at me. When I saw her the next day and said, "Namaste," the enthusiasm of her response — a lovely, deeply expressed, "Namaste," in return — meant more to me than any of the conversations I've had with overtly friendly shopkeepers and others trying to lead me towards a purchase or a camel safari. What the vendors don't realise, of course, is that I'm a lost cause — you can lead a camel to water but you can't make it pay to drink.

Second, and perhaps less obvious, is that from another perspective maybe it's quite possible to be genuinely and deeply interested in a potential purchaser not just as a source of income, but as another person, a human being. For some, this might be one of the joys of selling trinkets to tourists — the joy of having an endless supply of (sometimes) interesting people to chat with. To see these conversations simply as a sales pitch is to insist that no other perspective can be compatible with that view; it's dualistic in the sense that it requires you to accept only one of several possibilities. I don't know if there's a cultural aspect to this, but suspect there is; moreover, I'm sure there'll be times when, back in New Zealand, I'll find the polite invitation to browse without harassment to be dull and impersonal.

...

I eat at the Surya, on the rooftop, where a German woman mistakes me for someone she'd seen in Nepal. But I haven't travelled there. Not yet...

She'd heard me pronounce "desert" and identified me as a New Zealander.

---

Photos (click to enlarge them):
1. Dancer at the Bikaner camel fair.
2, 3. At the Karni Mata Mandir, the "rat temple" at Deshnoke, near Bikaner.
4. The singer and harmonium player.
5. The old drummer at the Karni Mata Mandir.
6. The white rat. I hope you get to share the luck.
7. Mr Sharma, founder and curator of the Desert Cultural Centre at Jaisalmer.
8. Pigeon doing yoga at Jaisalmer fort.
9. Black (pariah) kite hunting pigeons; Jaisalmer fort.
10. In Jaisalmer fort. The calf was 9 days old when I photographed it.
11. The rooftop of the Surya restaurant, Jaisalmer fort, at sunset; 13 January 2007.

Photos and words © 2007 Pete McGregor

Still on the road in India

Sunday 3 December 2006

Because I'd arrived so early, I got perhaps the best seat on the bus from Naini Tal to Kaladhungi — immediately behind the driver — and because we travelled so slowly, I was able to leave the window open and gaze out at the steep hillsides, for the most part covered in forest — jungle, I suppose. An elderly woman sat next to me; later, another woman squeezed onto the seat next to her, but even with three of us on the seat I still enjoyed most aspects of the journey. Possibly the least comfortable was the volume of the music — the music itself I found pleasant enough but I began to wonder whether I'd leave the bus deaf or bleeding from the ears.

Nevertheless, like most bus trips, this I found almost meditative. If I can look out a window there's so much to see, so many momentary images — a cow feeding by a sign saying "Himalayan Botanical Gardens"; the strange, semi-geometric shapes and red-brown colour of termite mounds in the forest; a langur sitting on a branch, silvery fur backlit against a dark valley so the animal looks haloed; the shimmy of a small lizard across a dusty shingle fan. All these things, so vivid at the time but when I try to remember them later, I've forgotten most. It's not just visual impressions though, nor impressions of any sense. As well those, I find ideas arriving — lots of ideas, things I realise, and in particular, much wondering.

Like how these buses become so battered. I have no idea how old they are, but they're all different manifestations of the same age — prehistoric. Or so they seem. I can understand how the exterior of the bus rapidly accumulates dents and scrapes, and how the rattles and bangs and squeaks develop, but how on earth does the interior of the bus come to look as if it's been filled with hammer-wielding rhesus monkeys?

They have a hard life, these buses. While waiting for mine to depart this morning, I looked across at the bus parked next to us. I realised the sides, beneath the windows, were spattered and streaked with dried vomit. I put my head out the window and checked my bus — it had the same adornment. I guess it's not just the buses that have a hard time on these hill roads.

As we moved away from the mountains and descended rapidly, the haze over the lowlands became increasingly obvious. It also became clear — an exactly inappropriate word — that the haze wasn't solely or primarily a natural phenomenon; it had a dirty, slightly brownish hue. The extent and intensity of the pall appalled me. Some weeks ago, on one of the rare occasions I saw a few minutes of TV news, I saw a headline banner saying scientists have measured a local climatic effect from massive forest fires in South-West Asia. How must this shroud over India affect the climate?

At Kaladhungi the conductor pointed across the intersection.
"Museum," he said.
And there it was. Jim Corbett's house, his winter home. Two large busts, one on the lawn, the other on the verandah; several signs in English and Hindi explaining aspects of Corbett's life —his relationship with the villagers, the history of the house, etc. A large map of the region with information about the man-eaters he'd shot, with estimates of the number of people each tiger or leopard killed. I walked slowly around, through the house, trying to imagine what it was like when he lived here. Then, I suppose, it must have felt alive, functional, full of activity even if that activity was as quiet and still as Corbett reading and smoking, or sitting at a desk writing the books that made him famous. Or was it the books? Was it the events about which he wrote — the shooting of the man-eating tigers and leopards, the ending of terror — that made him famous? The books certainly made him famous outside the region, but there seems little doubt he'd still be remembered, and probably just as revered, within the region even if he hadn't written the books. Now his name's famous for other reasons too, primarily as the eponym for Corbett National Park; nor has it escaped the usual fate of famous names — it's used for all sorts of marketing. Arriving in Ramnagar, I peered out from the packed bus to see a billboard advertising, "Corbett plywood."

Inside the house, the quiet, stark rooms lacked much human feel. The clock hadn't been stopped here; it had continued ticking while Corbett had left, had been removed, then, eventually put back in the form of a few fragments — a few items of wooden furniture, a fishing net, the disintegrating remains of a mounted sambar. Tattered copies of his books with broken spines and simple title labels stuck to the coverboards. A camp bed. Supplementing these and similar items were photos and paintings depicting Corbett — referred to as "Jim" — and explanatory text about such things as his competence at carpentry and painting, at playing musical instruments like the flute and banjo, and his skill at taxidermy (although the only evidence — the sambar — seems to contradict this).

It's as if he's gone from the house in more than the literal sense. Where he truly continues to live is in his books and the appreciation of some of the local people; here I think particularly of the small, helpful man museum attendant who seemed concerned I'd understand the significance of what I saw, and looked after me well. For him, Jim Corbett still lived, still deserved a respect more meaningful than the mere recognition that his name could be used to sell plywood.

Tuesday 5 December 2006
Ramnagar. At a quarter to six the muezzin begins calling with tremendous volume, so intense the loudspeakers distort and crackle. I'm distant enough to be not bothered and in any case I'm already awake with a headache; besides, I actually enjoy the call. It reminds me I'm in a strange land — strange in the sense of utterly different from my own — and it makes me think about how seriously much of the world takes its religion. A slight feeling of respect for the strength of these beliefs; a hint of envy that I don't have my own beliefs that are as strong and certain (or do I?) — and a substantial amount of relief and a sense of freedom at not being fettered by them.

I also find it hard to feel entirely comfortable with the imposition of the muezzin's calls, at such amplified volume, on the entire area. I suppose from his perspective it's wonderful — if you follow Islam, you'll appreciate the calls; if you don't, you're punished for your disbelief. However, to me this is not a punishment. It's part of travelling; one way I learn to understand and appreciate how other people live. I, of course, will be moving on.

...

On the outskirts of Haldwani a man drives a mule-drawn cart with a huge load of sand; the effort to pull the ancient cart with its murderous load must be enormous, but this is not good enough for the driver. He raises a long, weathered leather strap and flogs animal brutally. I can clearly see it's lame; it drags its right hind leg as if the limb's useless; the beast has its head twisted to one side as it struggles along the road. He lashes it again. We drive past, on into the hills and back towards Naini Tal.

...

Two heavy tow trucks retrieve pieces of wreckage from the road and over the bank. Whatever the vehicle was — bus or truck — it's unrecognisable now. A piece of heavy steel rod with a large cog on one end sticks up from the tarmac in the middle of the road, where it has impaled itself with tremendous force. What happened? Did the brakes fail on this steep, winding road? Could anyone have survived this? How often does this happen?


Wednesday 13 December 2006
With the aid of a loperamide pill at the start of the journey and another some time in the wee hours of the morning, I survived the nine hour journey in the "luxury bus" from Naini Tal to Delhi. Despite the cramped seat — the man in front had pushed his seat back to recline hard against my knees — I slept off and on for much of the night, although it grew very cold and by dawn my legs and feet were badly chilled. I was also wondering what had happened to the luxury bus's rat, which had woken me some time during the night as it crawled across my thigh.

Thursday 14 December 2006
Back in Parharganj in Delhi, the hotel manager recognises me and I don't need to fill in all the bureaucratic details in the register, as he'll transfer them from my last stay. He asks if I've collected the parcel I left over a month ago. The travel man greets me and asks how I got on, so I list the places I've visited since leaving. He looks pleased. I eat lunch at my little stall and the young waiter recognises me and looks after me. I know my way around; I know a little of how life works here; I feel relaxed and comfortable. Some people here know enough about me to recognise me and remember to ask, for example, whether I want plain or butter naan this time. Little by little, a tiny part of Delhi has begun to recognise me.

Sunday 17 December 2006
The pressure of lives here may be what I'd most struggle to accept. I try to imagine Paharganj with only 1% of its population — the alleys empty, the stalls unstaffed, clothes and bags and scarves hanging untouched, no rickshaws save for one every 10 minutes or so, no din, no horns. Someone disappearing around a corner at the far end of the lane. A face looking out from behind a half-open door. No one else. The silence. What would this be like? How would I feel, walking along Main Bazaar with only a few dozen other people? Relieved, relaxed, unhurried, and unpressured? Or would I miss the energy and excitement, the vibrancy — and the anonymity? In a largely depopulated world like that it would be hard not to stand out, simply because you're a significant proportion of the population. Of course, it's likely I'll always stand out here, being tall, white, and blue-eyed. I was going to say thin, also, but if anything, that helps me blend in.

I can cope with extreme crowding when I have to; I can even enjoy it, as I did on the bus from Kaladhungi to Ramnagar, but what I doubt I could endure is sustained crowding, the unrelenting pressure of other people all around me. How much of that discomfort arises from the the presence of other people and their effects and how much is the absence of wildness? These, of course, might just be different ways of saying the same thing, but to me they feel different. I'm enjoying — mostly — where I am right now, whatever I'm doing, but even when I'm relaxed, I realise I'm reminding myself to relax and enjoy it; with a few memorable exceptions, the enjoyment's deliberate, it differs from that spontaneous joy which appears suddenly and inescapably when I'm somewhere wild, or at least in the presence of that wild quality. It's nothing like the feeling that arises and can almost overwhelm me when I finally understand I'm somewhere remote — somewhere that feels not just beyond the easy reach of the nominally civilised world, but where I feel as if I've stepped aside from time.

In that respect I wonder whether that quality of remoteness is a function of how easily one finds reminders of the present; in other words, the easier it is to remember in what era you're living, the less remote you feel? A plastic bottle on a beach; a laminated map on the polyurethaned plywood wall of a Ruahine hut; a lost and weather-ravaged running shoe bearing the Nike logo on a riverbank in Mongolia. A cellphone ringing at Badrinath. Each of these things places you in the last half century — some in the last decade. Remoteness is not just distance in space, it also has a temporal aspect.

...

Saturday 16 December 2006
What is it like to be born into an environment where you're never more than a few metres from another human being; where the air you breathe seems to be as much dust and fumes as nitrogen and oxygen; where each day your ears become a little more desensitised to the din; where the only time you see extensive green fields is on your rare excursion out of the city; where your world comprises wall and wires, concrete and compacted dirt, cars and buses and rickshaws and scooters and motorcycles, dogs and cows and their shit, ubiquitous litter, and always other humans — and their shit? What is it like to grow up in an environment like this, and to see people from foreign lands walk along your streets and buy things you can't afford, eat in restaurants you can't afford; to know these people live in the countries you see on TV, in the kind of luxury you know you'll almost certainly never enjoy? They come, they look, they buy. They form opinions and make judgements. They leave.

If I differ in any respect from these kinds of foreigners, I suspect it's in two main ways — I buy less, and I'm slower to form opinions, more reluctant to make judgments, preferring instead to wonder. This is my impression, but I might be wrong; others might see me differently.

Friday 22 December 2006
Reclining on the comfortable chaise-lounge at the Kiran Guest House in Bharatpur, reading and thinking. Krishnamurti; his ideas about freedom from ideas, the importance of observation without interpretation, the need for relationship with nature as a prerequisite for relationship with people. Meanwhile, an elderly woman, bent double, whisks the area, sweeping the dust, looking after the home, keeping it clean and neat for the guests. Working while I lounge and relax. This is what it is to be lucky, to be privileged. Those who insist you make your own luck ignore the greatest luck of all — to be born; in particular, to be born into a life like mine.

All I can do is smile at her, acknowledging the work she's doing so well.

She smiles back at me.

Christmas Day, 25 December 2006
Keoladeo Ghana National Park [1] in the late afternoon; the sound of twigs snapping, branches being broken. Not by chital, not by sambar. Not by nilgai. Not even by cattle. By humans, by women collecting firewood. Incrementally, load by load, they remove the park. Slowly they're burning the park — not in situ but in hundreds of nearby homes each night. The smoke from the fires adds to the smog enveloping India; the smog hastens the warming of the Earth, which affects climate patterns. I'm told the monsoon has been poor here for the last two years. The wetlands are desiccated and dusty, the birds much less abundant. Most of the migratory birds fail to arrive.

Four rose-ringed parakeets race across the rose-tinged evening sky. I've been stalking jackals for much of the time I've been in the park this afternoon. Now it's twilight; I walk back along the road and three jackals cross in front of me. They don't see me until I'm half the distance I'd managed earlier in the day. A chital stag whips up his head in alarm. Big antlers in velvet; the beautiful, white-spotted coat. He stares at me, then bounds off, from just 30 metres away. A nilgai bull, the same short distance away, watches him but seems unaware of me. I have become part of the forest, another obscure shape in the almost-gone light.

A little way further on, a file of strange, grey shapes in the dusk. The closest, at the head of the line, steps forward and snuffles the air. Wild boar. The night becomes tense. After I move on, they cross the road behind me, quickly, still maintaining their single file, and disappear into the dry, low forest.

Who owns this land? To whom does it belong? Do these questions even make any sense?

Sadly, I think "ownership" in this context too often means the claimed right to exploit, and often to desecrate. In fact, I find it easier to understand how the land might own those who live with it than to accept the converse.

But, as usual, this perspective sees "the land" and "those who live with it" as separate — but who are the latter? Humans only? Birds, deer, fish, reptiles, insects, spiders, and all those other animate lives? Plants? The distinction seems arbitrary, spurious. The only unique claim humans might have is that we can choose to desecrate the rest, and in doing so, we we contribute to our own destruction. We are less separate than we think. This is most clearly understood by thinking of the land and its inhabitants not as "stuff" — not as objects — but as interacting processes, as relationships.

Thursday 28 December 2006
The cycle rickshaw ride from the guest house to the bus station offers its share of interesting sights. The birds, of course — red-wattled lapwings, a coot, egrets, others I subsequently forget. A man washing his laundry in one of the roadside ponds — in stagnant, festering water that looked like sewage. Spreading something to dry in the breezy sun. A dog, crushed flat on the road; a rag of skin, paws attached, everything else broken and formless, house crows tugging at guts withering in the heat. A guest house advertising a "specious lawn for camping sight." And signs advertising "ACC." I have no idea what this means, but reflexively think of New Zealand's Accident Compensation Commission — the conditioning again. What must it be like to see these things through the eyes of someone who's never seen anything else? For such a person, how strange must New Zealand seem?

I sit in the rickshaw, slightly surprised by the the chill of the breeze, although it's already mid morning. Thinking of the friends I'm leaving behind at the Kiran. They told me when I arrived that they wanted me to feel like a guest in their home, and that's how I've felt. This morning Ashok sat and chatted with me at breakfast, in his rudimentary English — far superior to my few words of Hindi. I asked him when his little boy would start school. He already has, Ashok conveyed, although the wee boy's less than 3 1/2 years old. We'd met him yesterday when Neil, Andrew, and I accepted Ashok's invitation to visit his home for chai. Andrew tried to entertain the little fella with armpit farts but got no response.
"It seems to amuse the kids in Nepal," he said.
Ashok sat with me as I finished breakfast. He gestured to himself.
"Miss," he said, and gestured towards me. "Seven days."

Yes, I'll miss him too.

---

Notes:
1. It's pronounced "KEV-lah-dev".

Photos (click to enlarge them):
1. Langur, Semnopithecus sp., at Naini Tal, Uttaranchal.
2. Rose-ringed parakeet, Psittacula krameri. Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Rajasthan.
3. Oriental magpie robin, Copsychus saularis. Keoladeo NP.
4. Brahminy starling, Sturnus pagodarum. Keoladeo NP.
5. "There's something tasty down there." Palm squirrel, Funambulus sp., Kolayat, Rajasthan.
6. Old Delhi.
7. Female snow leopard, Uncia uncia, Naini Tal zoo. CAPTIVE ANIMAL.
8. Chital, Axis axis, Keoladeo NP.
9, 10. Golden jackal, Canis aureus, Keoladeo NP.

Photos and words © 2007 Pete McGregor