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.
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.
posted by Michael M. at 9:34 AM
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