Lecturing tourists

Our next two stops were part of dad's lecture circuit so I saw him give two different lectures on Genesis 19 (his PhD topic) in two days. In Nagpur we stayed at the Mar Thoma (Church of St Thomas) Orthodox Seminary. Here we found a fairly progressive group of lecturers and students in the midst of preparing for a 5 yearly gathering. However they received us warmly and asked some interesting questions in the lecture. In Jabalpur Dad presented to a quieter group of students from a more ecumenical although predominantly wesleyan background. Their version of welcoming was not to ask any questions at all so I took it on myself to ask one to some surprise from the others.

In Jabalpur we were also stayed with the Vegad family. Now grandfather Jawahar Vegad had often visited my grandparents during his studies in NZ in the late 1960s. My father and Jawahar had not seen each other for more than 40 years but had re-established contact in recent years thanks to the internet. Jawahar, his two brothers and their children and grandchildren (21 in all) share their family home. This is traditional but now very unusual in modern India, especially amoungst the upper-middle classes where the Vegads find themselves. It made for a fascinating expereince for us though to experience life amoungst the wider family.

After the lectures it was back to the tourist trail with visits to Varinasi and Agra. Personally I can't say I found Varinasi all that interesting. Life on the great Ganges River is much what I had come to expect of India at this stage. Still it was something to see the dead bodies burning on the funeral pyres while a few metres away a couple of men sifted through the ash for the jewelery traditionally burnt with the bodies. Other than that Varanasi is just another city - and with worse traffic than most.

We took another overnight train to Agra. I'd done several of these now but as we discovered the hard way this particular route is notorious for theft. Dad had his bumbag taken from beside his head, losing cash, credit cards, camera, phone and reading glasses. Luckily the only thing he really needed, his passport, was in his pocket. Meanwhile the thief went through my wallet, but only took the cash, leaving the credit cards. This meant that we still had access to cash and given dad only had one day before returning home he didn't bother replacing stuff until he got there. Others on the train were hit too, losing credit cards as well, so I can't explain my luck! Part 2 of this expereince was trying to get a police report so that dad could claim on his insurance. After writing the same thing out three times (with different report headings) and waiting around for an hour dad got angry at the time taken and said "I came to see India!" to which the Sargent responded "This is India too". So it does provide some perspective - on the bureaucracy! Even then we had to leave and come back later to get our copy of the report.

Agra I did enjoy, perhaps because we only had a day there. The Taj is the thing of course, but there is so much expectation about it I can't imagine it lives up to it for many. My expectations weren't particularly high, but it struck my as just another palace, albeit with its distinctive style. The Agra Fort though, now there is an impressive building. It has colour, size, a certain maze like quality and some interesting design elements (and I don't just mean it's ornate). This I had not expected so I left feeling pleasantly surprised. Dad even talked me into climbing a fence so that I could sneak up onto the battlements. Given the place is still an active military installation this gave one a bit of a thrill, not to mention the view, but noone was really looking.

Final stop with Dad was Dehli. We we're pleased to be met by Cara and three of us had time for a market walk and a meal before it was time for dad to head for the airport and home. It had been great travelling with dad, seeing him do his thing in various places and sharing time and experiences together as traveled across India. We don't often get the opportunity to share expereinces like this with family in a one-on-one way so I'm really glad I did.

The North East

From Kolkata I flew to Agartala to meet my father Paul. On the way to the airport I experienced the ‘best’ driving move I’ve seen yet. The taxi driver approaching a clogged intersection found half a lane that I didn’t think he would fit into (and I’ve squeezed some cars through some tight spots). He went straight through the gap on the right hand side without slowing down and then pulled a left turn across four lanes of traffic that was just taking off as the lights changed and zipped across in the nip of time. Then he looked at me in the mirror with a grin to say ‘nice move eh?’, I could only smile back, impressed with his guts and sense of space of time. Thankfully the airline pilots are not prone to these sort of moves and the flight was uneventful.

This time I was greeted by a familiar face. My father Paul was just coming to the end of a four week teaching stint at a Baptist mission in Tripura where my maternal grandmother Hazel had been a nurse in the 1950s and 60s. My presence made three generations of our family there, though my contribution only extended as far as a two hour English lesson in the home school conversation class run by one of the local parishioners. I also sat in on a couple of dad’s lectures which gave me a sense of his work teaching local pastors new ways of interpreting old testament scriptures and how to preach them to the village folk. Other than that we had a couple of relaxed days. We visited what had been the hospital where my grandmother worked – now an army barracks and went to the border with Bangladesh to watch the ceremonial border closing at days end. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a closed border!

After dad finished his teaching duties we headed north to Darjeeling, famous colonial summer holiday spot in the lower reaches of the Himalayas. My grandmother had been here too for her holidays and probably went to the same viewing point to watch the sunrise. We were lucky enough to have a clear morning enabling us to see Mt Everest on the far horizon and of course the much closer Kangchendzonga (India’s highest and world’s third highest peak). To escape the crowds and traffic we decided to head back on foot and had a bit of an adventure in the process. There were two things I’d heard about Darjeeling, the mountains and toy train, yet both were still surprises. Apart from their beauty the mountains were amazingly steep, rising 3000 metres from the plain within less than 50km. In several places there were houses or hotels built with the top floor having access to the street and the bottom floor resting on the ground 4 or 5 stories below! Yet the area is incredibly populated, not in the village style you might imagine but simply by lining every possible piece of mountain road with a house or shop or something. The toy train also follows the main road route – there’s no where else for it to go. However it travels in 10 hours what a car can do in 3, so given you don’t see anything different we decided to skip that particular icon.

The second day I arranged a guide to take me on a day hike. Dad had a bad knee from the previous day’s walking so I paid about $12 for a day of one on one with the guide. We took a back road to the viewing point and then I convinced him to take me further into the hills and forest. He was up for it though he’d not been that way for some time and was a bit unfamiliar with the trail. At one point he thought we had come the wrong way. This just added to the sense of adventure as we walked through bamboo forest thick and tall enough that you can not see out to get your bearings. There are no trees to climb for a lookout and it’s too thick to bush bash so you can only go on (back? – never!). Later we came to a more tree dominated forest which reminded me very much of New Zealand bush. Steep rugged gullies and very wet. But we couldn’t have been in New Zealand because there were monkey’s in the tree tops. Nice to see them in their natural habitat instead scavenging along the road side. In the end we came out where he was expecting and walked back along the road through the local villages. We stopped for a while to watch a local football (soccer) game. The only ground in the area was originally a natural hollow on top of a ridge which has been dug out to a flat soccer ground big enough to play 7-a-side on. So it’s on top of the hill but with high grassy walls/banks on three sides making a natural stadium type setting – and preventing the ball from running all the way down the hill too often. So a nice glimpse of local community and entertainment in a Himalayan village.

Next we return to the hot plains of India but I’m certainly looking forward to more mountains when I visit Nepal in a couple of weeks time.

Activists and Party-goers

After the unexpected spiritual and activist journey of Bodhgaya I headed for Bhubeneswar, the capital of India’s other ‘poorest state’ Orissa. There I was to meet a Ghandian activist named Akshaya who dad had meet a couple of weeks earlier at an interfaith conference in Kolkata. It was nice to be met off the train and not have to find my way to anywhere. Indeed his community house was well off the beaten track beyond even the knowledge of the taxi driver who had to be directed. Unfortunately dad’s timetable and the train timetable combined against me and I only had one day to spend there, however it was a fascinating insight into a local activist community. There were about half a dozen men there that day out of about a dozen in total. They have two main projects at the moment working with local communities. One is around a major mining development proposed for the area. They are trying to make sure that local people are engaged in the project in terms of planning, employment and receiving revenue. The situation sounds similar to that of Indigenous communities in north-western Australia with mines etc being developed up there, so we were able to swap perspectives on this. The other more ongoing project is peace building work between local Hindu and Muslim communities. On both these projects the group use theatre as a means of breaking down barriers and communicating with the people. On top of all that Akshaya is also interested in alternative economic systems and has written an extensive paper on what he calls utilisation economics. So those of you who know me will understand that we had plenty to talk about. Our values are aligned in many ways but we had plenty of experiences to swap and perspectives to share, so it was a very fruitful day. I was encouraged to discover a healthy and mature activist network in India and interested to find that we share many issues in common despite our supposed economic differences.

Side note here is that climate change is well and truly on the agenda in India. From reading local newspapers it appears that the message about reducing our carbon footprint is as old and familiar as it is in Australia. I’ve also met a reasonable smattering of locals who’ve mentioned the issue or demonstrated their practical steps. A recent newspaper article even trumpeted India as playing an important brokering role in international negotiations as a willing partner but still looking out for the interests of developing nations. Of course the Indians understanding of energy conservation is also informed by the regular blackouts in most parts of the country, so they are much more used to doing without, or with less than we are.

Enough seriousness, time for the party. My next stop was to return to Kolkata, home of the puja festival that was now hotting up. The festival celebrates that slaying of demons by one of the Hindu gods. The main ritual involves the creation of life size (and bigger) clay figures, elaborately decorated, depicting the ancient slaughter. These are placed in ornate temporary temples – it’s amazing what fine artwork they can make out of bamboo! – where for several days they are the focus of celebrations (I wouldn’t really use the worship). Then over the course of a few evenings they are festively disposed of in the river where they rapidly sink and eventually dissolve. I was back in Kolkata a few nights before the peak of the festival but there must have been 1000 trucks lined up at the ghat (ceremonial riverside place) each with a set of clay figures to place in the river. Each truck also had 20-50 people crammed in the back and many had another 20-50 following along on foot from behind. Each truck represented one village or community and each group took their turn to wade their statues into the river and release it. The whole atmosphere is a carnival with stalls lining the streets like you might find at Moomba or the Melbourne show and the people are in a very joyous and jovial mood. Surprisingly I didn’t see any other foreigners checking out the spectacle but it felt like every Indian saw the one foreigner there. Any inhibitions that they had were lost in the joviality and anyone who came near wanted to shake my hand and wish me a happy puja. I felt like a minor celebrity waving to each truck as it passed and was imagining the mobbing that Adam Gilchrist would get if he happened to turn up. Eventually a particularly precocious lad of about 12 insisted that join him and his brothers as they followed their float along its final journey and released it into the river. Wading into the filthy water was not for me but it was nice to have a sense of being invited to join in the celebrations rather than just observing them.