Having just returned from India after a three week trip I am writing my impressions of travel from Himalayan ranges to Kanya Kumari. To set this in context here is what I wrote after our last visit in 2007.

Return of the Native.

1.

A new immigrant from India has a hard time. First, he must learn to drive on the wrong side of the road. Then he has to get used to the freezing weather and all that goes with it. If he is young and hot-blooded he falls in love and marries a wonderful local girl. Before he knows it, she is training him. He learns to enjoy the fine points of bland Western food and to honour her wishes unlike in India where a wife anticipates her husband’s whims and fulfills them before they are expressed. What is worse, he can’t join his wife for holidays to exotic places on this continent because he must go ‘home’ to see his family.

I was not your typical immigrant though. I did marry a Western girl and undergo strict training. But I went on holidays with the family and gave my former home a skip. Last time I was in India was four years ago and Monica was there with me part of the time. Monica is currently recovering from a debilitating illness and needed a long rest. My sister-in-law Nirusha invited us to visit her in India. We were in complete agreement except that I suggested three week recuperation under Nirusha’s care while Monica wanted to travel to explore opportunities for volunteer activity. After long discussions carried on in bed instead of more interesting activities, we reached an agreement – ten days in Delhi with Nirusha, a visit to the ancient Jain temples in Northwest India, a few days with my social activist nephew Rajneesh, a safari to a tiger sanctuary and a few days in Singapore with my niece. I sent the provisional itinerary to Rajneesh and he made reservations accordingly. There was a last minute scare. The visas did not arrive and I had to make several cajoling calls to the Indian consulate to receive them on the planned day of departure. Finally, we set off on a twenty hour journey made to appear even longer by the twelve hour jet lag. Thanks to travel during midweek, we had empty seats on our flight to Frankfurt and slept comfortably all the way when we were not being fed. The combination of long sleep, good food and favourable jet lag is hard to beat. We were bursting with energy when we pushed our luggage cart to the reception area at Delhi airport a little after midnight. My niece Sarala and Rajneesh’s wife Manju were there to greet us with broad smiles and open arms.

The realization that we were in Delhi struck with a new force when we walked out of the building and breathed the heavy warm air. Taxi that had been arranged to take us to my brother Vijay’s home did not show up and after waiting for an hour Manju engaged another one at the exorbitant rate of five hundred rupees (thirteen dollars). The trunk was loaded with the driver’s personal belongings but a little rearranging made room for the large and heavy case. Four of us squeezed in with smaller cases on our laps. The roads were busy even at this hour and the fifteen kilometers ride took an hour and a half. The journey from the airport was more tiring than the twenty hours of flying. I was snoozing and Vijay and Nirusha waiting in the driveway when we turned the last corner. Their heartfelt welcome made Monica’s nervousness and my weariness disappear in Delhi’s thick air. We jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped and hugged each other like the long lost kins we were. In view of the late hour detailed exchanges were postponed till the morning and after a drink of hot creamy milk we hit the comfortable bed under the canopy of a mosquito net. Sleep was not in the cards though. Noise of continuous traffic in which blowing the horn every ten seconds is de rigueur, recorded prayers blaring on a microphone in the nearby temple, call of a muezzin, again on the microphone, in a mosque across the main road are not conducive to a restful slumber. Fortunately we got used to it in a couple of days.

A tropical travel specialist in Calgary had prescribed a number of pills to be taken daily and some others as required. The need arose after a few hours of tossing and turning. Monica was attacked by Delhi Belly – diarrhea by its Western name. When pills did not help she started the course of antibiotics. After two days she could keep the delicious food in again and we breathed sighs of relief. A little too soon, as it turned out. At the breakfast table the next morning, I coughed gently with a handkerchief on my mouth. Every one noticed it and a barrage of questions were let loose.
“Do you have phlegm?” asked Vijay.
“Did you cough in the night?” asked Nirusha.
“Were you cold in the night?” asked Kamala.
Manju, not to be left behind shot the final arrow, “Did you sit under the A.C. vent on the airplane?”
Monica, a real doctor and most concerned with the health of her only husband, tried to interject but no one let her. They did not listen to my replies either. Vijay rushed to a cabinet and returned with a musty old bottle and shoved in my mouth a tea spoon full of green syrup spilling some on my sparkling white new kurta (long shirt). He did not notice the spill and confidently assured every one “His cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Nirusha went to the kitchen and brought an Ayurvedic powder wrapped in a brown newspaper and a bowl of tomato soup with a liberal sprinkling of black pepper. “Take these” she commanded and assured all who would listen, “The cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Kamala produced a yellow tablet from her handbag and handed it to me, “I took this last week and my cough was gone in ten minutes.” Manju watched me consume all this medication and thankfully did not produce any herself. But she did offer this bit of advice, “Stay in bed and drink a lot of sweet chai with cardamom. The cold will be gone by the evening.” Her prescription seemed to me the most attractive because duration of her treatment was a shade less unrealistic than that of the others.

Monica watched in consternation as I consumed all the offerings and prepared to stretch on the sofa with a cup of prescribed chai. The doctor was the only one who thought that the much ballyhooed cough was merely a sneeze and was nothing to worry about.

I later discovered that the duration of every event in Delhi is ten minutes whether it is a two hour drive to visit the relatives at the other end of the city or an hour wait for a visitor who announced his imminent arrival on the ‘mobile’. As for my illness, every one turned out to be wrong though no one admitted it. It was indeed the cough but it took much longer than ten minutes to go away. In spite of gaining several inches around my waistline due to the consumption of syrups, pills, powders, gells, soups, teas and miscellaneous brews, the cough persisted during the whole stay in Delhi and left only when the dusty grimy air of India’s bustling capital city was a memory.

Apart from Monica’s diarrhea and my cough, the stay in Delhi was most pleasant. Nirusha loves to spoil her family, particularly her husband’s younger brother. Monica and I were not allowed to do anything that could be construed as work but were expected to consume massive amounts of delicious curries, parathas, gulab jamuns, burphies, pealed apples, guavas and pears and varieties of nuts every hour we were awake. Somehow we found time to see an excellent performance of a ballet based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, the museum of modern art with some paintings by the celebrated poet Rabindra Nath Tagore and the local fair to celebrate Deewali, the festival of light. We also managed to arrange a visit to the local government hospital and a private clinic which gave Monica a great deal of pleasure as well as the information about the delivery and range of medical services in India.

2.

Our visit was planned around the holy festival of Deepavali, or Deevali. It is timed to be a harvest festival and celebrates the victory of Ram (one of many incarnations of God) over the devil Ravan. It is a good time to visit India. Weather is pleasant, heat of the summer is a thing of the past and the cold of the winter is a few weeks away. Monsoons are over but the ground is not parched and the vegetation is still lush green. However, there are a few problems. Delhi has grown to be a city of five million inhabitants with infrastructure for one tenth that many. Therefore, the roads are clogged, water and electricity supply irregular and air heavily polluted. Not surprisingly, the diseases are so common that every fourth store on the main street was related to medicine. Illnesses of the individual and the family dominate all conversation. This may be an indication of another perversion in society. Corruption in all walks of life, the favourite topic in previous visits, is now accepted as the rule of law of the mighty and there is a general realization that complaining about it is futile, if not dangerous.

Our arrival nine days before the festival was a welcome news to my extended family. My neice Sarala and her businessman husband Amul had come over from Nagpur to see us. Rajneesh and Manju came from far off Pune. A stream of visitors from Delhi culminated in a big party thrown by Nirusha for seventy guests. Monica in her new pink Salwar Kameez was the toast of the party so much so that few noticed their male relative from Canada. In accordance with the ancient custom, we visited the older relatives to pay our respects. Invariably the hosts were most insistent to feed us the creations of their servants and were offended if we, Monica especially, showed any hesitation. On every visit the hosts legitimately complained of the shortness of our one hour stay although it took us more than four hours including the travel time. All because Vijay estimated that every one of them was a mere ten minutes away although it took longer than that to get the car out of its parking spot.

On the festive day itself, Manju made a beautiful ‘Rangoli on the floor near the front entrance. It is an artwork approximately one meter in diameter made with fine white and colourd powders. Its sole purpose is to make the entrance of the home attractive and welcoming to the visitors. Lunch that followed was a veritable feast with dozens of dishes loaded with spices, sugar and fat. A snooze in the afternoon was mandatory, even for ever busy Nirusha.

After sunset, the small store room which also served as prayer nook became the hub of activity. Earlier in the day, clay statuettes of various gods, which the family worshipped in spite of Jain edict forbidding it, had been arranged neatly in an arc on the floor. Tiny earthen lamps were filled with vegetable oil and placed in front of the idols. I was assigned the job of lighting their wicks which required lying prostrate on the floor. Then Nirusha handed Vijay a ‘thali’ (round metal plate) containing more lighted lamps and offerings of rice and coconut. All believers now accompanied Vijay in chanting a prayer in the glory of all-caring and all-loving God while the patriarch waved the thali around the idols. Every one had a turn with the thali and chanting, self-proclaimed atheists and the lonely Christian included. After the prayer Nirusha, as the lady of the house, applied the ceremonial tika, a mark with red paste and grains of rice, on all foreheads and gave cash gifts to Manju and Monica.

After the religious ceremony we sat around the dining table doing justice to the lunch leftovers. Vijay and Nirusha talked of how nice it was to have us all, particularly Monica, with them. I reminded Nirusha of her instruction to me, “Bring Monica with you, don’t come without her.” She laughed, happy that her threat had worked.

As the midnight approached words became few and yawns many. It was time to wish good night. Another Deewali had come and gone leaving fond memories, especially for Nirusha whose life revolves around her extended family.

3.

After twelve restful days with the family in Delhi, Rajneesh, Manju, Monica and I said our long goodbyes and left for Udaipur leaving a long stream of tears behind. After a smooth two hour flight we arrived at our destination in the late afternoon. A van and the driver were waiting for us. We drove for five hours to the holy city of Mount Abu which is also a summer resort. The views of mountains and the sunset were refreshing and the towns and villages we passed through showed signs of economic revival. Our hotel was located on a hill top and had a marvelous view of the city and the surrounding area. The sunrise next morning was something to treasure in the memory bank. There are numerous temples of various Hindu sects in the vicinity which attract pilgrims from all over India. Our focus was Jain temples of Dilwara about twenty minutes by car. The temples were built in twelfth and thirteenth centuries and are deservedly renowned for intricate sculpture. Monica wore a saree for the visit out of respect for the pilgrims’ sentiments. This also allowed us to claim her as a Jain believer and we were permitted entrance in the hours reserved for Jain worshippers. The vast courtyard houses three main temples, two with statues of the last and the most revered Tirthankar (messenger of God) Bhagwan Mahavir for two Jain subsects and one of Adinath, an earlier Tirthankar. Small cubicles were built along the perimeter of the courtyard which had beautifully made statues of each of the twenty four Tirthankars, many repeated several times. We left when the crowds of non-Jain visitors started pouring in and it became impossible to appreciate the art works. Next stop was a lake with crocodiles where the attraction of the afternoon was a small snake tightening itself around a mouse. Then we drove to the foot of a hill and walked a long way to the top. There were small shops on each side of the narrow cobbled path. However, the merchandise was no match for a Gori (white woman) in a Sari. Almost incessant questions to her were courteous and Monica’s Hindi improved appreciably by the end of the walk. There was a famous but small and unattractive temple on the top. However, the sunset across the Aravali mountains with the winding Banas river in the valley was magnificent and the clicking of cameras competed with the chirping of a variety of colourful birds.

Next day we drove to another set of Jain temples in Ranakpur on a circuitous way back to Udaipur. The temples are a little older and if anything more magnificent in design and art work than the more famous Dilwara temples. There is one main temple for Bhagwan Mahavir in the centre with smaller temples for all Tirthankars along three sides of the periphery of the courtyard. The marble idol of Mahavir was magnificent as were all the intricate carvings everywhere. There were two older temples in the grounds which were simpler but interesting if only because they were a few centuries older. Another feature was Dharmshala adjacent to the temple, a large number of small rooms around a vast courtyard where the pilgrims of limited means could stay for whatever they could afford.

On our way out Saree clad Monica was surrounded by a crowd of school children in immaculate uniforms. Children talked to her in Hindi all at once and she reciprocated with good humour. This event prompted a strange dream that night. Monica, surrounded by hordes of children was exhorting them on a manual loudspeaker to march to Delhi to demand the end of poverty and more important – longer holidays. She then led the crowd who were shouting slogans in Hindi “Remove poverty, give us longer holidays” out of the temple grounds. I was by her side giving moral support. However, when we got the main road neither of us knew which way to turn for Delhi and the procession ended in utter confusion.

After the temple we made a short stop at a museum commemorating the great battle between Maharana (king) Pratap of Chittor and the forces of the Moghul emperor Akbar. After a night in a hotel in Udaipur we visited the fort of Chittorgarh three hours away on a four lane divided highway. Although the traffic was rather sparse, its variety was even greater than in Delhi. There were camels and elephants walking regally to their masters’ destinations along with usual pedestrians on the tarmac, horse and bullock carts, bicycles, dogs, cows, bulls and bare foot ladies in colourful lahangas (long skirts) with a variety of loads skillfully balanced on their heads.

Chittorgarh is the fort of the longest ruling dynasty in the world – from sixth century to the present day. We hired a guide who claimed a reasonable command of English. It turned out that he could string sentences using some English and many Hindi words with verbs of whichever language suited his fancy. He showed us most of the 130 temples the fort is famous for, the museum, the thirteenth century victory tower with beautiful carvings inside and out and, believe it or not, the wash room of Padmini, chief queen of Maharana Sanga who built the victory tower.

The wash room boasted nothing grand. All it had was a hole in the ground with two thin marble blocks on which the queen squatted to do the dirty work. What caught my eye about the room was its size. It was bigger than any such facility I have had the opportunity to use in any of the countries I have traveled in. The reason, the guide told me with complete equanimity and no explanation: ten maids assisted the queen in performing this vital function.

On the return drive a problem of great historical interest occupied my thoughts. What could the possible duties of ten maids be in the Queen’s wash room? The drive was almost over by the time I worked these out. Two maids were required to take off the silk lahanga, one to untie the knot in the string holding it up and the other to pull the garment over the majestic head. Third maid washed the royal bum with all reverence due to it. Fourth dried it with soft rose petals, fifth disinfected with haldi (turmeric) lotion, sixth applied sandalwood paste deodorant, and seventh perfumed with chameli oil. The eighth maid pulled the lahanga back on over the queen’s head and ninth tied the string. Tenth? She was the supervisor who made sure that the queen was not inconvenienced in any way by any maid’s slackness in her duty.

It struck me that there was no reason why this queen would be the only one to have this privilege. Other queens of Maharana must have had the maids in their wash rooms too although their number probably declined in proportion to their mistress’s importance. As for Maharana, there is no record of the number of attendants, male or female, that accompanied him to his wash room. I suspect that the wash room entourage became customary in all royal places in India and the European monarchs followed suit with great élan to outdo their primitive counterparts in the luxury every claimant to royalty deserves.

Just in case you think that the maids had easy lives, they had other duties too. After appropriate rest to recover from this exhausting but necessary task, the queen took her place on a suitably padded marble bench and opened her beautiful mouth which was to launch a thousand horses one day and interrupt, albeit briefly, Maharana’s reign. The maids took turn in cleaning the pearly teeth with a brush made out of a neem twig and helped in washing her mouth with water from the holy Ganges. According to some reports, at least one modern prince in Europe has taken this leaf from the medieval queen’s diary. To keep the princely mouth in shape to launch enough hot words to keep the kingdom warm, a qualified dentist and his well-trained assistant are in attendance every morning and evening. It will be too low a stoop for the prince whose forefathers ruled the waves to brush his own teeth. As to the royal bum, all lips are sealed and there is no word on how the issue is handled.

4.

The plan was to catch the afternoon flight and reach Mumbai in good time to spend a couple of hours with a nephew there before driving to Pune. However, the flight was six hours late. A frequent traveler on the route told us that we were lucky; the flight is often twelve hours late due to a dire shortage of pilots. We missed seeing the nephew and arrived at the apartment at 3 AM instead of expected 11 PM. We went straight to bed and woke up around ten. Rajneesh accompanied Monica to a missionary hospital to investigate the opportunities to volunteer her medical services while I rested to complete my recovery from Udaipur Downer – a less severe form of Delhi belly I had caught on my last day in that city with a glorious past and the potential of a bright future. Two days in Pune went by quickly as we visited the social projects of Rajneesh and Manju – organizing volunteers to teach slum children, showing documentaries to raise awareness of social problems, meetings with volunteers to maximize their impact and recruitment of new ‘social activists.’ We also had an opportunity to attend a social activist wedding in which most of the formalities were discarded in favour of a simple brunch and performances of classical dance and semi-classical songs of a very high standard.

Our last stop in India was a tiger sanctuary located on Kabini River near the border of Karnataka and Kerala provinces. To get there we flew to Bangalore where another van with a driver was waiting for us. It was a six hour drive on dark and often treacherous dirt roads. We arrived just in time to ‘freshen up’ before dinner. The cabins in this forest reserve were luxuriously appointed with, among other unexpected comforts, a western toilet with a somewhat appropriate brand name Hindware. On each of our two day stay we had jeep safaris in the jungle at dawn and boat rides on the river in the afternoon. The promised elephant rides did not materialize because the elephants were ‘in heat’. In the mornings we saw hundreds of spotted deer, one leopard hiding in the bush, couple of elephants, some coyotes and many egrets and cormorants in the lakes. As for tigers we had to console ourselves with the video of the reserve with these magnificent creatures in it. In the evenings we saw more egrets and cormorants and a few crocodile snouts and one elephant. The sunset was spectacular on both evenings. The meals and service in the resort were very good, particularly in view of its remote location.

On our way back to Bangalore for our midnight flight to Singapore we had the opportunity to visit the historic city of Mysore with its magnificent nineteenth century palace, Brindavan gardens with lovely fountains and a majestic temple on the top of a hill with the superb view of the city and the surrounding countryside. A traffic jam on our way to the airport threatened to derail our travel plans but the driver’s skill in negotiating the heavy traffic saved the day. Looking back, this day was the appropriate summary of our Indian experience – beauty in its many forms if you look for it mixed with confusion that is miraculously resolved at the very last moment.

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5.

We arrived in Singapore with the sun after a four hour flight. The airport facilities were amazing and we had completed the formalities and collected our luggage within twenty minutes of leaving the plane. A half hour cab ride took us to the apartment of my niece, Vijay’s daughter Maya and her husband Pritam. We spent four days with them chilling out, as Maya instructed us to do.

Singapore is a small island of about 700 sq kms and less than five million inhabitants. About 70% of the population is of Chinese origin, the rest are Malays and Indians with a few Europeans. The difference in an Indian city of the same size, say Bangalore, and Singapore is like night and day. Overcrowding, dust, garbage, smell from open drains, beggars and potholes are nowhere to be seen in Singapore while they are omnipresent in India and worsening as the economy grows. I got the impression that Singapore was growing without any pains while the cities in India were choking due to wholly inadequate transportation systems, utilities and general services.

Singapore is a city state with a small base of industrial activity focused on electronic assembly and legal drug production. Being an island, winds refresh the air constantly. The prosperity of last few decades has led to the replacement of horse and donkey carts and rikshaws by relatively new low emission cars. There are very few trucks on the roads. Hence, the traffic flows smoothly and noiselessly. The culture of cleanliness inside and out of the home means clean public places and roads with hardly any litter.

The dense living in high rises with 100 – 400 apartments in an area occupied by ten homes in an Indian city leaves room for large open spaces. While the side walks in India are strips of dirt which pedestrians avoid adding to the congestion, the roads in Singapore are immaculate with paved sidewalks and potholes as rare as concrete on some Indian roads.

When Singapore became independent in 1959 it was not much different than any Indian city. In two generations it has been transformed to match any in the first world while the cities in India have noticeably deteriorated. There are several reasons for this anomaly. First, Singapore is a compact city state, much easier to administer than a vast country like India. Total budget of the state is focused on the city. There are no long stretches of road and rail connecting far-flung population centres and no countryside to send its millions to overcrowd the city. Second, the defense needs are met by a small army whose budget does not siphon off funds from necessary services. Third, a benign dictatorship rules with a firm but fair hand. Punishment is swift for the law breakers whether they are drug traffickers, litterbugs or in between. Fourth, the corruption in public services so common elsewhere in Asia has been rooted out and the rule of law prevails like nowhere else in the world. Last but not the least, the geographic location of the island is ideal for a trading hub for Asia.

Singapore has prospered because firm rule from the top first enforced discipline and respect for the laws and then created conditions suited to the talents of its citizens by providing physical infrastructure and economic and tax incentives to promote trade and entrepreneurship. Companies trading products of foreign countries pay taxes on income in Singapore even when the traded items do not touch its port. Low tax rates attract multinationals to set offices here to advance the trade. New shopping malls attract tourists from Indonesia and Malaysia. The city state of five million residents prospers without any polluting industry and provides unparalleled services to its citizens.

Small is indeed beautiful when the rulers and the ruled concentrate on what they do best.