few things

Thank you guys for the many sweet messages and for helping out by sending faxes and making phone calls on behalf of the Bhopalis. Things are looking better than they could look at this point. We are making noise and people are listening. Must push hard at this point.

The feeling over there on the sidewalk is pretty wonderful. My fellow photographer and I almost regret that we aren't sleeping out there with the group, and we might even join them, using the hotel just during the day for its actual practical purpose - the wall socket and work space. I might have to abandon it altogether for budget reasons. But, yeah, it's a beautiful site there. One of the two truck hands hired as helpers to come along on the padyatra has actually decided he doesn't want to leave, even though his job is done and there is no more money to pay him. He really loves this group.

I miss you all very much -- don't stop writing to say hi. I promise that at some point, probably after I leave Delhi completely, I'll be able to sit down much more frequently and compose longer and more thoughtful responses to personal messages.

adrenaline in Delhi

This is the account I wrote of the other day, right after the surprise arrests, but never got a chance to post up here. Same story, but from a personal perspective as one of the foreigners:

*****************

This morning M and I set up a little ad hoc photo and blog upload
office in a barebones hotel room in the middle of downtown Delhi a few blocks away from the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, the
government division responsible for the needs of gas and contamination affected Bhopalis and the building before which the Bhopalis are sitting in protest. It is costing Rs. 485, or about $11. It's got an electrical outlet, and that's really all we need.

We had been photographing the Bhopalis in the morning and headed back to our room just after noon to download photos and burn a cd. The cops had promised not to use any force against the group until after 4:30 -- everyone could sit there until then, they said, but then they would remove everybody.

When we got back to where the group was at about 3:30. We had the
autorickshaw driver drop us off about 100 meters away to approach
cautiously. We had been warned by Sathyu that the cops might try to
take our passports away and use them as leverage against the rest of
the group. Or that they could just beat us or something likewise less creative. So we started down the street, then from across the street.

We stood incredulous at the sheer show of force from the cops. Only
in NYC had I seen such massive overkill. Several buses and about 6
trucks filled with riot cops surrounded the spot where the Bhopalis
were sitting. Hundreds of police. So many police we could barely see our group, and neither, of course, could anyone in the crowd that had gathered to watch from across the street. Only the signs and banners were visible above the minor sea of police helmets.

The group was surrounded by yellow rope and a few large metal
cage-type things. Very similar to what the NYPD does -- create a
protest-in-a-box, a McProtest. The show of numbers and force wouldn't be surprising at all in New York, but it is absolutely shocking in India, where you hardly ever see any cops anywhere, and the ones you do see do absolutely nothing as far as I can tell. It's the most copless and lawless place I've ever been, certainly. Delhi, of course, is a little more skittish, just as NYC is compared to Kentucky, but still. It was surprising.

Suddenly there were very few people left who were not arrested. I
found myself in the middle of the wide boulevard, crossing to the
other side, when Y approached me and told me to get out of the area as fast as I could. She was addressing M, too, who was by then near enough to hear. "Go in separate directions," N said, telling us they would try to get us alone on some other street and confiscate our footage. M headed toward the nearest intersection, one of Delhi's huge traffic circles. I started down in the opposite direction before realizing I would be walking a straight line down an open boulevard for a few hundred meters. Turned back around. Decided to hop inside an autorickshaw and pay double to get out quick. Strangely, though, all the autorickshaws on the street were suddenly out of commission. The first one just shook his head. I hopped inside a second one. "****** Place". "Where?" "Anywhere, just go, straight ahead." He didn't move. "Rashtriya..." he said. Something about the government. By this time we literally couldn't move because his vehicle was in the middle of a group of several hundred khaki-clad cops all crossing the boulevard at the same time. I sat up straight, pushing my head up and back into the shelter of the autorickshaw.

S must have seen me get in because he suddenly stuck his head in
and asked where I was going. "I'm trying to tell this guy I don't
care where we go, just get out of here NOW" "Doesn't matter," he
said, "you better just get out and run for it, however you can" Without a word I grabbed the laptop and my other bag and darted out. Didn't look back. Shot through the parking lot. Saw X, another foreigner, and turned. Crossed a small street and then a big one, made my way to another traffic circle, where at the perfect moment an empty autorickshaw passed by and saw me, pulling over. I hopped in, foregoing my usual fight over the price. ***** Place. He drove fast and after a block I knew I'd be all right. A minute later I was back 'home'. I gave him 30 rupees, went inside. M showed only minutes later.

We got up to the room and within 30 seconds had created an octopus of
cords between the one wall socket, a splitter, the computers, and
cameras. Apparently, right after telling us to slip away, Y was
caught and taken away. They wanted to know where we Westerners were. She didn't know, of course.

a little rest

I have taken a little bit of rest today. I realized yesterday that it has been more than 50 days straight since I have taken a day off. Working pretty much from sunrise to past midnight every single one of those days. It hasn't really felt like work, though, because it was mostly on the padyatra, which felt unlike anything I've done before - a temporary way of life unto itself. But one without a minute's break. Since arriving in Delhi I have worked harder than ever.

So today I slept in a little and then this afternoon have taken care of a few personal things, like shaving and showering and eating. You can get some pretty fancy things in Delhi. I drank a large mocha coffee this afternoon. Inconceivable just a few days ago.

everybody arrested - see www.bhopal.net/march

Bad stuff gone down. Police have arrested EVERYBODY and kicked fragile old women padyatris in the chest, sending them off to the emergency room, dragged women with babies, the whole thing. No time, I'm frantically collecting info and sending updates to Indra at bhopal.net. Go check there! www.bhopal.net

help

Please help out by at least using the fax-sending mechanism here:

http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/MarchToDelhi.htm

I'm sitting here up late again, writing and sending photos, looking at hundreds of exhausted people curled under blankets on every surface indoors and outside on the ground, desperately hoping and needing for this trip to Delhi to get them some clean water and a few other things any American in the same situation would have got 21 years ago. There is a lot of pain here and this is such a critical moment. Do anything you can manage. The link above is great.

more on Delhi and now with 650 Bhopalis

I may have been unfair in comparing Delhi and Mumbai -- no, I am sure I have been unfair. There is no way to compare because I arrived in Mumbai from Miami and NYC via Zurich (of all places opposite of India) and I have arrived in Delhi after sleeping on mudcakes for weeks. Most people, I am told, are shocked and horrified here in Delhi. Maude's friend, for instance, locked herself in her hotel room and cried for three days upon arrival here. Other people have called it "the worst place on earth." As far as I can tell, though, it's a beautiful place that looks a lot like an cross between Washington D.C., Miami Beach, but with Indian culture and Indian and British architecture.

As for negative things about Mumbai -- none are specific to Mumbai, actually. Mumbai is just extremely huge and crowded and more of a pain to deal with than most places in India. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but the architecture in Mumbai is incredible -- one of the greatest collections of art deco buildings in the world and a ton of other magnificent architecture, both very old British stuff and brand new highrise glitz. You have to get past being terrified of the street, though, to grab a glance up at any buildings. If I went back there today I would probably think it was a very accessible place. But for now I will just keep on enjoying being in Delhi.

Today was very intense. I came to tears several times, on the street and back here in our camp. Early this morning I spotted huge groups of people walking toward us and quickly realized they were all Bhopali gas and contaminated water survivors who had taken the train all night from Bhopal to Delhi. 600 in all. It was a sight I will never forget. Families of the padyatris, and others. People I knew or recognized from back in Bhopal. We formed a massive wave of people and walked to the center of Delhi, close to the government buildings. If you've ever gone to D.C. to lay out grievances and ended up feeling small and somewhat helpless, imagine this -- the capital of a country with over a billion people, and almost that many extremely serious problems. We went to Jantar Mantar, which is a section specifically reserved for the apparently constant flow of people coming to fight with the government. There were all kinds of people there fighting with the cops, hunger striking, waving sticks, and everything else. The cops fired tear gas at some groups.

Tonight, all 600 people are back here at the camp, sharing only a few bathrooms and finding floor space anywhere they can in the rooms in which we have already been sleeping and also out on the ground outside. Many people are very sick. Fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, severe dehydration and heat exhaustion. Right now Maude and I are sitting legs crossed up on one of the metal bunk beds trying to get our photos together and I'm trying to write about the past two days for bhopal.net. So extremely hard to hear ourselves think. It's like a hurricane shelter. Bad mosquitoes, too.

By the way, all this work I'm doing is on a laptop donated to me a while back by my dear Anne Eller back in NY. Thank you, Anne! Just wanted to mention that.

Check bhopal.net for the official story, and all the photos. Won't be up just yet, but probably by the afternoon in NY, evening in Europe, etc.

Delhi

We arrived in Delhi yesterday morning. I can't believe we walked to Delhi. I can't believe I'm here. Photos and descriptions of our arrival and more are making their way up onto Bhopal.net as I write this. We're in a strange space -- everyone is super excited to be here and to have completed our grueling journey, but there is still a lot (or even more) tension now that we are about to go up directly against the central government and so many people will be starving themselves on the hunger strike, which will be painful.

I love Delhi. I never thought I would -- I've heard almost nothing but bad things about it, like Westerners having mental breakdowns upon arrival in India through Delhi, or having breakdowns in Delhi after approaching from other parts of India. It might just be because I have been traversing some of the most strange and primitive land on the planet, but Delhi is making me feel like I'm back home in NYC right now. I can almost imagine myself being happy living here.

Delhi has 12 million people. (NYC is 8 million, Mumbai is 16 million). I like it better than Mumbai. Delhi manages somehow at the same to be surprisingly intimately in touch with deep interior Indian culture and highly, highly connected to the international brainsphere. Mumbai, to me, seemed to be neither of those things -- a city struggling to distance itself from the rest of India (clothing, culture, etc) while managing to seem no more connected to the rest of the world than the bandit country we just got through. In Delhi a stunning number of young, sharp men wear kurtas, the Indian male gown-style clothing, more than in the small villages, towns in the middle of nowhere, and more, even than in Bhopal. And yet, when I got a chance to flip through the channels on a tv here I immediately found whole channels in Japanese, Chinese, and even Italian. For the past week we've had all kinds of people from Delhi coming to see, film, photograph, and/or interview the padyatra, and they all have been very impressive, like New Yorkers as a group -- people that have a much higher-than-average awareness of what the hell is going on the world. Upon arrival here I was greeted by all kinds of cool people, including a lot of very young students who were refreshingly much more interested in the issues facing Bhopal than in the fact that I was from another country. No one cares that I'm foreign here - sweet relief!! I can tell, too, that Delhi is a huge community of people from all parts of India -- something I did not see or notice in Mumbai as much. There are, for instance, tons of people here from the Northeast of India, which is geographically separate (hanging on by a thread), east of Bangladesh and west of Myanmar. People from there look like they are from Burma or Thailand (as opposed to what most Indians look like) and speak completely different languages. There is that smell in the air here, similar to the one in NYC, of cross-pollination, of huge numbers of people converging upon a spot for myriad fascinating reasons, to create, to affect, to change the world in one way or another.

almost to Delhi

Again - I can't say much here and I have to send you to www.bhopal.net to get the photos and the story. You have to forgive me. Try to imagine. Right now I'm sitting on a tile floor in the corner of a large dharmshala room I can't see because the power went out about an hour ago. I am the only one awake as I shepherd huge photo-laden emails to Bhopal.net out of this painfully slow cell-phone-connected laptop. Huge insects I cannot see are fluttering around and colliding with things, like my head, with that sound of insect wings tangled in hair and clothing. I just want to go to sleep.

I'm in the Indian equivalent of Elizabeth, NJ. 20 km outside Delhi. State of Haryana, cities of Ballabgarh and Faridabad. It's a mess.

We will cross the Haryana border into Delhi early in the morning. At our sleeping place by evening.

hello hello

whereStill here, still trucking. Somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, northwest of Mathura, birthplace of Krishna. Having an extremely difficult time finding enough electricity to do any internet updating, even for bhopal.net. I am right now, however, sending a bunch of photos and text to Indra, the webmaster, to put up there, so you can check. I just can't do it twice. The only way I'm going to be able to tell you all about everything that's going on is to wait until well after it's all over and put together big thing of photos and writing. Things have been very frustrating lately, also rewarding, too, yes. U.P. is not so attractive. People are harsh and I've never seen so much human shit in my life. The road is just totally lined with it, all in different stages of being baked by the sun. Everyone just shits on the road, and we walk on it. Little detail. Not the most significant one. Gotta run, no privacy, ever. Kind of bugging me, but that's what I've got to work with, so I am... Much, much, much more later. We will be in Delhi next week and I will probably be doing a lot of writing from there, inbetween dodging cops and whatnot. Ciao for now, M.M.

Check bhopal.net! lots of cool photos!

taj mahal

So, I saw the Taj Mahal this afternoon and evening. I am surprised. It is powerfully beautiful. It is so beautiful that I felt beautiful just being near it. It didn't matter who was there, nor how many. It's just so big and tall, proud and serene that it dwarfs its visitors. You approach it through a dark archway and it sort of unfolds and blooms before your eyes in that archway as you walk closer. There was a chilled breeze as the sunset this evening and it somehow made the scale of the whole place palpable on my skin. It's not just the white building we see in photos all the time -- it's a huge and perfectly symmetrical collection of buildings, all echoing each other in a thousand little details. I couldn't have asked for better company to see it for the first time -- about 20 people who had walked all this way, many or most of whom were also seeing it for the first time. I ended up finding a spot just after sunset and just staring at the main building for minutes on end. It's an unbelievable thing. You should go. If you let it, seeing the Taj Mahal can be an experience of beauty that shatters the relevancy of the fact that it is a tourist attraction. I've never felt like just sitting quietly and staring at a building like that. It fits the story behind it. It is a translation into architecture of what it feels like to love someone in their absence.

photos from last week

Our very sweet hosts who fed us at the gurudwaaraa south of Gwalior.


Guns and motorbikes outside of Shivpuri.

Ok, I have a ton of other photos, but this is taking so long, I just can't upload them. I'm going to have to just put together a big collection after the padyatra is over and put it online on one of those slideshow websites. For now, you just have to check bhopal.net for the photos. Our cell-phone connected internet thing is just way too slow for all this uploading.

Right now everybody is dancing to drums and bells. Lots of fun. The rhythm is actually helping me work -- I feel almost hypnotized. I want to go do laundry, but I think that means I have to sit there and watch my clothes dry because people have been having their things taken by a bunch of monkeys that are running around on the roof. They are very crafty. The opposable thumb. It makes all the difference. Can you imagine if our pet dogs and cats had hands with opposable thumbs? It would be a disaster. So, that's what we're dealing with here with all these monkeys. The other day they wanted our lunch, now they want our clothes. Gotta go, got my work cut out for me. M.

photos from last week

Our very sweet hosts who fed us at the gurudwaaraa south of Gwalior.


Guns and motorbikes outside of Shivpuri.

Ok, I have a ton of other photos, but this is taking so long, I just can't upload them. I'm going to have to just put together a big collection after the padyatra is over and put it online on one of those slideshow websites. For now, you just have to check bhopal.net for the photos. Our cell-phone connected internet thing is just way too slow for all this uploading.

Right now everybody is dancing to drums and bells. Lots of fun. The rhythm is actually helping me work -- I feel almost hypnotized. I want to go do laundry, but I think that means I have to sit there and watch my clothes dry because people have been having their things taken by a bunch of monkeys that are running around on the roof. They are very crafty. The opposable thumb. It makes all the difference. Can you imagine if our pet dogs and cats had hands with opposable thumbs? It would be a disaster. So, that's what we're dealing with here with all these monkeys. The other day they wanted our lunch, now they want our clothes. Gotta go, got my work cut out for me. M.

clean shaven and one less goat in Agra

We reached Agra yesterday afternoon. Everything is great. I will definitely write something longer today, but I want to get some work done before that.

Please check www.bhopal.net/march and see the photos and from the walk from Gwalior to Dholpur. I haven't sent out anything from Agra yet.

Had a terrible autorickshaw ride past midnight last night, after dinner under a large mural of thousands of intertwining waterfalls and the words "pleasant food makes for good relations" (classic Indian randomness). It's the kind of weird, surreal place that people back in Brooklyn get together and plan down the last detail for months, but here in India they just come up with by accident. Anyway, on the way home autorickshaw driver was insane or drunk or something but it was one of those bad situations where getting out is even worse because of where you are and what time it is, etc. It was pouring rain. I kept telling him to slow down. We made it home after taking out a large goat on the way.

I am going to see the Taj Mahal for sunset, after I get my blog, photo, and fact sheet work done. It is also Holi, where everyone goes nuts and runs around bonfires in the streets and throws powdered and liquid colors all over each other. It has already been going on, but today is the real day.

I gave a little speech yesterday to an audience of gov't and activist people and press. It was set up by Amnesty International India. Several of us gave little speeches about the padyatra. I did well -- I don't so nervous when only about five people in the room understand English. Rachna translated what I said after I was sitting back down.

I took a long "bath" and shaved last night. It's a funny experience -- the bath stalls here are in the stairwell, and you're basically looking out over the city (third or fourth floor view) separated by only this sort of perforated design in brick, pouring cups of cold water over my body as I look out over the whole city, feeling quite naked. It feels good to be washed again.

See the photos: www.bhopal.net/march

Morena and Dholpur

Ok, I have to refer people to bhopal.net/march again:

http://www.bhopal.net/march

I'm only getting a few hours sleep as it is, can't wait for this slow connection to do all the photos here again. Also wrote about the last couple of days.

Slept in Morena last night. Arriving there was terrifying. One of the scarier places I've walked through. A very dark place. Every fifth guy in town was holding a gun and everyone seemed to be arguing about what to do with or about us. We had just walked almost 40 km, totally exhausted, had been walking for a couple of hours in the dark. Got to Morena and it is large enough to be called a city, but there was no electricity and the whole place was completely black. Crowded and lively, but couldn't see anything. Slept in a building under construction.

Tonight we're in Dholpur, Rajasthan, after crossing the infamous Chumbal River. Tomorrow we enter Uttar Pradesh. Check out the photos on bhopal.net. MM

The Right Hon'ble...

A sign by the side of the road a couple of days ago.

Into the Woods, again...

Ok, I didn't get to write any more while in Gwalior. Too much stuff going on and everyone needs to be on the computer at once.

I did spend a lot of time today writing the blog entry for bhopal.net, Please check it out to see what the real deal is and see some of the photos I've been taking-- don't have time to tell it all again:

www.bhopal.net/march

I should not that the blog entries pass through at least one other person (the webmaster and an excellent writer) before they go up there, so it's not always my exact wording. Becky is also contributing blog material, too. Anyway, this latest post is about 8

We leave in just about 6 hours, 5 a.m. for Banmore, where we will spend some time trying to make ties with the local people, who are pretty choked up on toxic sludge from a bunch of industrial activity in and around the town. Then on to Morena and out of M.P., through Rajasthan, and into Uttar Pradesh -- Agra and the Taj Mahal (that's going to be a really weird tourist scene after this...). We have to get to Agra in just 3 days. 110 km. It's going to be brutal. That stretch of land is also, apparently, more dangerous and more dry of water than what we just passed through. So, that's the deal -- I will probably be completely unable to communicate until I am approaching Agra in a few days.

Fever has mostly subsided. Still tired. Maude has rejoined the group and that is just a wonderful thing. Good friend, much needed now for keeping us all sane.

Gwalior is a good place, by the way. I'd like to come back before I leave India this time. No tourists, people treat me well (i.e. they ignore me) and really interesting street scene and architecture. Come to places like this if you come to India. It's got an airport if you want to skip the bandit zones on either side of it.

I'm going to try to upload a few photos but I can't make any promises -- extremely slow connection.

guns and monkeys

I am ok. Just arrived in Gwalior after three days in extremely remote bandit-dominated country with no electricity, hardly any water, and certainly no cellular internet connection. Walking 20 miles per day (32 km). My whole body hurts so bad. I have a slight fever tonight, but less than last night. Don't know what that is, hope it goes away. The foreigners on this padyatra aren't doing too well right now. There are two right now -- a 35-year-old woman from the UK just joined -- Becky. Has volunteered a lot at Sambhavna in the past. She's got a really bad fever tonight, vomited all last night. Kept getting up in the middle of the night. We also had rats crawling around our heads. Been sleeping with a lot of rats. Have basically got over my fear of that. (Subway tunnels, here I come). In Shivpuri there were gangs of them jumping and scurrying all around us and squealing. Every time I'm lying there in the pitch blackness listening to that I think there's no way I can sleep, but really there is no way I can stay awake. We are all so exhausted we could sleep through anything. The other foreigner, Daniel, the documentary filmmaker, has gone all but completely mad and has left the group for the night, maybe for the rest of the week.

Everyone else is ok. A little wet. It's supposed to definitely, definitely not rain at all in India (at least this part and 99% of the rest of it) until the monsoon, which comes after June. This was a key detail for the feasibility of this journey. It has now been raining for three days. Little bits, but enough to get us all full of mud, which believe me you don't want to see in a place like Gwalior. Gwalior is a pretty big place. Has an airport and all that stuff. We're going to stay here for two nights -- my first layover. So excited. Need to sleep and catch up on work, maybe look for a few supplies, stuff like that.

After Gwalior we're back into the bandit country, for a much longer stretch. I think we're pretty safe, though. People like us. Word spreads up and down the highway that we're cool people. We had a police escort for one especially dangerous stretch. They police out there have special, walled camps from which they wage their ongoing war on the dacoits. Apparently there are hundreds and hundreds -- one job might involve over a hundred of them surrounding a group on motorcycles and horses. One of the padyatris was a dacoit girl in her youth. She's wild. Tells a lot of stories. Probably shouldn't relate too much here. The bandit country, though, is interesting. No farms. Looks a lot like New Mexico. Brush and sand. Lots of guns, bandits or not. As soon as we left Shivpuri, the first place we stopped for tea had a guy standing out front with a full-barrel shotgun with no shoulder butt, only a pistol grip. Black gun. Just holding it there with one hand, limp, pointed at the ground. He looked as if he was just about to start his day when we arrived and he stopped halfway to the road to just stand and watch us. Everyone just stares at us, partly because some of us are foreign, but also because no one ever walks through that land. Half the guys on motorbikes have their faces covered in cloth -- unusual for India. Lots of them have guns slung across their backs. It's just a different culture -- where everyone is half-in, half-out of the law, like old Brooklyn.

I'm ok, though. I've been in a lot of pain for the past few days. To stay connected and kill the discomfort I walk along side one or another padyatri and start asking them questions about where they live now, where they lived in 1984, what happened to them, their family, what their health problems are and whether they are from the gas or from the poisoned water. It kills all my pain immediately. These people are truly incredible.

I should go for now. Will write more tomorrow. M.

reading the wheat grains

Lots of drama here today that I'm sort of glad I missed. Everyone is in Shivpuri now. I am back with them, very happily, at this flophouse place where everyone just sleeps on the floor. Quick, sort of funny story --

I guess someone was missing a little bit of cash and this was discussed in a full group meeting (that also talked about other things) where it was decided that they would reconvene an hour or two later for a reading of a big plate full of wheat grains. Some divination thing. Some people had to go out and buy some wheat and get the thing ready, which is some kind of big round dish that is spun and depending on what happens to the wheat grains you can divine who or what it is you are trying to find. So they get the whole group back together in a big circle and begin this thing. Three times in a row it pointed to this one guy. Apparently there was a huge freakout with lots of raised voices and crying and stuff. People took the whole thing very seriously. But I guess when the accused got so upset everyone decided to ignore the findings of the plate of grains. Instead, the man who spun the dish of grains took the accused man to a nearby mosque, where they did some kind of swearing over the koran about how this guy was really not guilty, and now everything's fine again.

Getting up very early tomorrow, so I better go. Wish me luck in the hills. Might not be able to get an internet conection for a few days now.

photos to go with last post

The landscape outside Lukwasa, where I tried and failed to find and reunite with the padyatra.


The view from my balcony in Shivpuri.


I didn't know cows could have horns that swirled and pointed in different directions, but I guess anything goes in India. This particular cow is also sporting some decorative headwear. A lot of cows here have their horns painted pretty colors.

alone again, naturally

Friday night, March 3, 2006, Sri Mau Hotel, Shivpuri, M.P.

This is one of the shittiest places I've ever been. Anyone who knows me well will know what such a ranking from me means. I almost feel like I'm spelunking. It's called the Sri something. I forget. Sri Mau. It's the second hotel I looked at in Shivpuri and I'm still asking myself why I checked in. I think I thought it was interesting at first. But now I've just spent my first hour in this room without even sitting down. I didn't even notice that until I finally had to sit down to type this -- my urge to sit down had simply vanished and I found myself quite comfortable pacing around and finding a series of excuses of why I needed to keep moving.

I should explain why I am in Shivpuri this evening and how I got here. Two nights ago the whole padyatra group spent the night at a Sikh gurudwaaraa in the middle of Guna. I took advantage of the clean floor and electrical outlets to get a little bit of work on the computer done. Whenever I whip out the laptop in that group, though, I get totally mobbed by people wanting just to watch what I'm doing. I think it's wonderful, of course, but it makes it very difficult to work. I don't work well lying on my belly, either. So, while lying on my belly on a hard tile floor in the middle of a Sikh temple while a duo chanted, beat on drums, and shook bells, and while about a dozen Bhopalis formed a human quilt over and around me, asking me questions in Hindi, I got very little work done.

It was then that I told Rachna it might be a good idea for me to stay behind in Guna for a day and a night, check into a room with a table, chair, and electrical outlet, and try to finish writing and laying out the last eight demand fact sheets I still need to do. Time was running out. She and Sathyu agreed. I woke up at 5 a.m. with the rest of the group, packed up my stuff, watched everybody walk off into the early morning, and just inside the gate of the gurudwaaraa for a couple of hours, waiting for the rest of Guna to start moving. I let the solitude soak in and enjoyed it hesitantly -- it felt so good to be alone again after so long, but I was also suddenly reminded what a difficult and strange thing that can be in India, too. I look out at a place like Guna, which has half a million people, and I can say with almost total certainty that I am the only American there, the only foreigner there, probably the only foreigner that has been there in a very long time. But then everybody's watching me. And things are so strange. And I can't call anybody because it's way too expensive and you are all asleep anyway.

I checked into the Hotel Varun, which is one of Guna's fancier hotels but really a total shit hole, nonetheless -- I didn't use their bedding, if that's a measure of anything. And I've been sleeping on dried mud every night. There's something about hotels that is just icky. I'd rather be out on the dirt by the side of the road than in a place that is coated with a oily film of human presence. Each item in the room painted with a thin layer of whatever bodily fluids come along with that particular object's function.

Anyway, I locked myself up in that room for more than 24 hours and got a lot of work done. I decided to leave when the electricity went out at 4 p.m. this afternoon. I packed up my stuff, walked up the street to where some buses were idling, and made it generally known that I wanted to go to Lukwasa, near which the padyatra was scheduled to end up tonight. In less than five minutes I was rolling north on AB Road, the road the padyatra is on now, from way back in Biaora all the way to Agra. "AB" stands for Agra-Bombay, because this was the old way between those two places, which are extremely far apart. Apparently it's one of the oldest roads in India, and still one of the most important. You'd think it would be big, but it's only one lane in each direction.

A little more than an hour had passed by the time the bus entered Lukwasa, which was really just a large village. The sun was setting when I got off. I thought I had seen a few padyatris along the side of the road about two or three kilometers back, but I wasn't sure. Lots of people walk along the side of the road, usually with livestock, though.

In Lukwasa, big crowds gathered around me. I used a roadside phone to try to call Rachna's mobile. Out of range. Same for Champa Devi's phone. I decided to walk back out of town to the south and wait for the group to come. It was getting dark. I ended up hanging out about half a km down the road at a trucker tea stop, where everyone asked me a lot of questions and seemed very pleased with the whole padyatra business after I explained it to them. By this time it was completely dark - thin crescent moon, black sky full of stars. There were a whole group of large fires off in the distance, but I decided that they couldn't be from my group. I didn't know whether to walk more or stop and sleep by the side of the road for the night. I didn't have enough water to safely go any farther. I decided to turn back and see if I could catch a bus to bigger town. The next stop of the padyatra is supposed to be Shivpuri, pop. half million -- I could try to catch them the next day from there. When I got back into the middle of Lukwasa I mentioned to someone in the crowd that had once again gathered around me that I was thinking about going to Shivpuri tonight. Just then a bus rolled past and they all went running after it screaming for it to stop. The bus to Shivpuri. I, too, ran. 15 seconds later I was rolling again.

It was a small bus. I went to the back. People began asking questions in Hindi. (by this point of my journey in India, by the way, not knowing any Hindi would be suicide). Why was I there? What on earth was I doing. I explained the padyatra and my situation. "Walking?" they kept asking. "Where is your motorcycle?" Then of course they want to know whether I am "shadi shuda" -- married -- and where I am from, "kahaa se hai?" No, I'm not married. Why not? I am a traveller, I say, making it sound romantic -- doomed to roam the earth alone for eternity. Without a motorcycle. I tell people that in New York, or in America in general, lots of people don't get married. We ended up getting into a discussion about Bush, who is here in India right now, of course. Everyone is setting things aflame because of it. Who was Bush, one old man asked, that he thought he could just invade sovereign countries as he pleased? Someone who can, I said. I announced that I hate Bush and put in a good word for all of you back in New York. You all hate him, too, I assured everyone on the bus. My Hindi's not sophisticated enough to communicate the complexities of my thinking on the Bush situation, but I usually get the basic idea across pretty well by holding out my palm and saying "Bush" and then smashing it with my fist. This always makes people very happy.

I just peed on some large black insect that was stuck in the squat toilet. Too dark to see what it was. The different parts of the bathroom are out on my balcony, which is the centerpiece of the facade of this building. The toilet is off on one end of the balcony, and the shower is on the other end. The sink is in the hallway, where there a bunch of other guys sleeping on cots. I have the presidential suite. Rs. 250, probably getting totally ripped off, but I didn't care. That's a little over 5 bucks. I hear rats squealing but I haven't seen any yet. Just lizards and cockroaches. I'm sure I won't turn off the lights tonight, nor will I take off my clothes. I will sleep on the bed, but on top of my ground pad, in my sleeping bag, and maybe in a mosquito net. I need sleep so badly. So tired.

When I went out in search of some dinner tonight the police were sitting at the desk downstairs carefully looking through the registry of guests and taking notes. That's when you know you're in the right place.

The plan now, I guess, is to take avantage of some extra desk time and finish some more factsheet work here in this room. I need to get in touch with the padyatra, too, though. They are probably very worried about me. None of the mobile phones work, though -- too far away from civilization. I will probably just keep trying tomorrow, but I might take a bus back south down AB Road and then just pick a spot to sit in and wait for the padyatra to come by.

Electricity's gone. Good night.

************
Morning, March 4

They are very serious about tea in India. Not long after sunrise, I was woken up to having my door banged on as if there were a fire. The door is made of corrugated sheet metal, so it makes a lot of noise. They tried to just open it themselves, but it was locked. There is little concept here of individual space and privacy. Anyway, I pulled myself out of my sleeping bag and opened the door to face a wiry young man who with wild eyes was repeating "chai, chai!" Ah, yes, chai. Of course. "No thank you," I said, with a why-the-hell-did-you-get-me-up-for-that face. "Nahin." This baffles people in India. Why don't I want chai? How can I not want chai? Is it even possible to survive without chai? Even the extremely poor in India make, drink, and offer chai constantly. I either drink or turn down chai at least six or seven times a day. I'm turning it down while I'm on the road because I'm trying to minimize ingestion of anything at all to the absolutely necessary only. The glasses they serve chai in are very dirty, too. Just dipped in a bucket of brown, milky dirty dish water and filled right back up with a fresh ladle of hot chai for the next person, the glass still dripping with the cold dirty liquid from the bucket.

So right now they've come back and there are about four or five guys from the hotel in my room, all staring at me and getting in my business. "Jhadoo," they explain. Sweeping. How completely futile.

So now I've got to figure out how to find the padyatra again. It is important that I catch them now because beyond Shivpuri is the long stretch of bandit-held hills that I don't want to deal with on my own.

*****************
Saturday late night, March 4

I was finally able to reach Rachna on her mobile, which I guess is working now that they are close to Shivpuri. They are spending the night at a place about 10-20 km from here, and plan to reach here by noon tomorrow. My balcony looks down onto AB Road itself, so I could theoretically catch them as they walked past. I will probably walk a couple of k down south and meet them just outside the city, though. I am so looking forward to getting back with them, especially when now that I'll be able to relax more and focus on the physical aspects of the trip rather than worrying so much about how I'm going to finish these sheets for Delhi. So far it has felt very much like being in grad school finals week while in a post-hurricane disaster zone or something similar to that.

*************************
Sunday morning

This morning I was awoken by a knock on the door, which I at first ignored because I thought it was the chai people. They kept knocking and saying something and I barked back "so raha huun!" "I'm sleeping!" They wouldn't stop. I finally got up and opened the door to find Vikas and Sathyu in his purple kurta standing there. I was startled. How did you find me? All they knew was that I was in Shivpuri somewhere, and they couldn't have been looking very long because It was just past 7 a.m. "A white man is not hard to find," was Sathyu's simple explanation. Sathyu is a little sick so now he's taking a nap in the bed while Vikas continues the search for mass accommodation on his motorbike. I'm very happy to see them again. One thing about Sathyu is that he is very calming, at least to me, but I know others feel the same way. I find it very difficult to be nervous or afraid in his presence. His voice alone has a calming effect -- slow, soft, very deliberate, each syllable of each word pronounced clearly and precisely in a particular rhythm. Anyway, what I mean to say is that now that he's here I feel much better about this room, hotel, and Shivpuri in general. We might stay here until early tomorrow afternoon in order to resolve some medical problems in the group and also to try to get some local police protection for the road ahead. Everything between here and Gwalior is supposedly very dangerous. Sathyu says everyone carries guns. Yesterday I was peering down unnoticed from my balcony at the guys who sit at the door of the hotel. A guy in a jeep had backed up to the front of the building and was lifting blanket to show a large gun. I think they were buying it. Anyway, we don't have any guns with us, so I'm hoping everything will just go smoothly.

Some midday singing and drumming.


walking up a hill this morning

On the streets of Guna this afternoon -- B*sh burns while Cheney watches.

Munne Bhai early this morning, listening to the news that Bush was on his way.

Babulal. Fellow padyatri.

Guna

I am ok. In Guna now, staying at another Sikh gurudwaar -- they always feed and shelter travellers. The floor is tiled, too, so it feels very nice and cool on my body. So hot here. So, so hot. Eating first meal of the day, at 5 p.m. Couldn't get anything before that except a couple of oranges. We wake up at 4 a.m. every day, in total darkness while people squat huddled around little fires, pack up our stuff and start walking under the stars. We usually walk at least 15-20 km by the time we stop, which is for the hottest part of the day, usually in some shell of some lone shell of a building in a field of nothingness or under some tree. Everyone takes naps on the ground, cooks food, and bathes. Bathing consists of pouring semi-dirty water from troughs all over ourselves in our underwear by the side of the road. Doing laundry means taking your clothes and rubbing them back and forth on a stretch of pavement with some soap. Going to the bathroom means squatting in the ditch, for whichever need. A lot of people have given up even trying to hide. The whole march just walks by as one of the group watches from the side a road, bare ass squatting and dropping whatever needs to be dropped. I am really, really, really hoping that I don't get diarrhea. That will be hard, though, because the sanitary conditions are quite a jump. Food is all prepared on the ground, right next to cow pies and everything. The cowpies, in fact, are actually used for cooking. You burn them -- they make good charcoal. Our bread is made by taking flour and water and throwing it directly on top of burning cowpies. Sometimes metal surfaces. This is served with a sort of stew of oil, water, spices, and vegetables. I am usually so hungry that every bite of anything at all tastes like heaven.

After the midday break, which usually lasts for three to four hours, we begin walking again for another 15-20 km, until we find a place to spend the night. We usually don't arrive wherever that is until it's dark. It is hard for me to take any photos of the spots we sleep in because we arrive and leave in total darkness.

This is a damn hard trip. I thought it might not be so difficult because of all the elderly and gas affected people. They are super hardcore, though. They just charge down the road with enough energy to spare for an attitude on top of it. It's incredible. For me, the whole drill feels like some mix between the activist I was back in NYC, while performing physically like some cross between a Marine and a saddhu. No comparison to the biking. This is bone crushing. About six or seven people just got sent back to Bhopal today because they couldn't handle things physically. I can't believe some of the people doing this. This would be enough to kill the average American. On top of the walking, I've gotta worry about finding and purifying my own water (they all drink whatever's there, but that would kill me), finding electricity connections to be able to continue working on these demand sheets which were difficult enough in the relatively posh environment I was at in Bhopal, protecting computer and photo equipment from both people and the extreme heat (sleeping with it in my arms, bathing with it next to me, etc.), and all the while taking as many photos as possible. On 4-5 hours of sleep per 24 hours. It's damn hard, but the rewards 100 fold. I am in parts of India that are simply off-limits to tourism, and might therefore never get to see again. The padyatra is an incredible thing to be part of, too, of course. I just don't even know where to begin describing it, it's just too damn wild.

We just passed through a dacoit bandit pocket of hills. I'm told to stay in a knot of people. Saw the first gunman on a motorcycle yesterday. Long, wooden rifle with beautiful swirling metal inlay design. About 20-30 km past Guna we will enter a very long dacoit territory, in which we will be seeking protection from local police goons. It's a solid swatch that stretches 150 km. through hilly terrain (that's what makes the wildness possible, I guess) -- the whole rest of Madhya Pradesh, through the tip of Rajasthan, and into Uttar Pradesh. This will be interrupted by Gwalior, which is one of the few places on this trip that is even mentioned in travel books about India. People gather around me and just stare. Usually while I'm typing, even now, people are just gathered around watching me type, even though they can't read what I'm writing. It's kind of hard to write like that, though. I'll be sitting in some village drinking a cup of chai and there will just be a whole circle of people of all ages, silently staring at me. Very strange experience. I asked Sathyu when he thought the last time they saw a foreigner pass through these places and he said "years." I must be true. It's very, very difficult to imagine how or why any American, for instance would be here. For one thing, there'd be no place to sleep -- no hotels -- unless they slept out in the open on the ground, which would be a really bad idea if you weren't in a caravan of natives like this one.

I'm loving sleeping under the stars. Tonight will be my first night indoors -- we're in a small city, so it's impossible to sleep on the street because it's just like one big sewer. The gurudwaar is nice.

Bush is in India, or about to arrive, I don't know. People are burning effigies here. Let me tell you... I know most of you reading this already know this quite thoroughly, but it's still makes quite an impression to be in the thick of it, with your own body feeling the heat the flames. America is really barrelling down a dark road. Party is over. Everyone, EVERYONE hates America. Even in countries like this, which are our "allies." If you could see it, you would see that it's not just the flavor of the month. The Bush arrival is relevant to Bhopal and there are huge protests going on there, too. One of the demands of this padyatra is that the Indian government cut off Dow Chemical's business access to India until or unless it cleans up Bhopal and pays for a bunch of other damage. It obviously doesn't make sense to start the same thing over again when Bhopal is they way it is, still. That is, of course, if it ever made sense in the first place. We are getting very good news from Delhi. There is a team of activists representing the padyatris and getting up in a lot of faces up there and there has been some very productive discussion so far, apparently.

I'm going to see if I can put up some photos later. Seems like the internet connectivity in Guna is good, and we're here for the night.