2008 April « Travels

India, Part II

April 27, 2008 at 1:41 pm (Uncategorized)

Coloured Powders

The shopkeeper was doing his best to convince me that these small packets of otherworldly-coloured powder would make ideal gifts for the kids back home.

“You think so?” I said, “What would they do with the stuff?”

“Oh, colour things”, he replied.

Ask a silly question…

“What are they made from?” I continued.

“Oh, there’ll natural, all natural”, he assured me.

Right. They were about as natural as the instant friendship at the carpet-sellers shop. Colours like these could only have come from a chemistry lab—and probably one using plenty of toxic materials at that.

Carpet Shop.

“No, thanks”, I said, imagining the keen interest Canada Customs would have in these tiny packages of day-glow powder.

The shopkeeper gave it another try, “Very cheap, and easy to carry”.

With the realization that he wasn’t going to make a sale, I started to become invisible as his attention shifted elsewhere, but he gave it one last try, “For you, I can make a special price.”

Hmmm, seems to me I’ve heard that one before…

The flower markets are the places to go for real colours. Flowers are brought in by the sackful, and sold by the handful or by the kilo, ready to be made into garlands or wedding accessories, or to be used for other kinds of decorations.

Flower Market

Red Flowers

Flower Sellers

One day, while driving through a southern town, we happened upon a wedding parade. A brass band preceded the slightly nauseated-looking groom riding a white Rajasthani horse. (Rajasthani horse’s ears are bent at the tips and point towards each other.) The ladies in their beautiful saris chatted excitedly amongst themselves, while every few minutes a firecracker exploded showering everyone with confetti. People danced as the procession moved slowly down the street.

Wedding Parade

Joe, one of our more outgoing group members, danced with the crowd, then shook hands with the groom and wished him well. Before we knew it, our whole group had been invited to the wedding but, unfortunately, we had a schedule to keep, and we had to continue on. I expect it was a great party.

In India, colourful clothing isn’t just reserved for special occasions. Even women working in the fields, or going about their daily chores, wear lovely, colourful outfits, and try to look their best.

Getting Water at a Community Well

Of course, to keep all these clothes clean a lot of laundry has to be done, and people did laundry everywhere—in canals, in ponds, in streams—almost anywhere there was some water.

Laundry Service

The three things needed for a proper washing appeared to be soap, water, and a merciless beating against a rock or other hard surface. Every time our own clothes came back from the laundry they seemed a little shorter and a little wider, the victims, I suspect, of some good thrashings.

The dhobi ghats in Mumbai dwarfed any of the other laundry operations we saw. Here, some 5000 men work in a maze of open-air vats to do the city’s laundry. It’s hard to believe that anyone ever gets their own clothes back.

Dhobi Ghats, Mumbai

If Indian women usually get the most colourful clothing, they don’t always get the best bling. For example, in the Kathakali dance, a dance form peculiar to the southwestern state of Kerala, the all-male dancers wear bizarre costumes and enough fluorescent make-up to make the members of KISS look conservative. It takes hours for the dancers to get ready.

Kathakali Dancer

We arrived early at the Kathakali dance theatre in the coastal city of Kochi to watch the dancers prepare their costumes and makeup. One of the dancers sat cross-legged under a single bare light bulb in the middle of the dressing room floor painstakingly applying his lime-green face paint while another bear of a man, made up to look like a woman, sat in the back with his arms folded over his well-fed stomach.

Putting on Kathakali Makeup

We had come to Kochi after spending a couple of days on a houseboat in the “backwaters” of Kerala—a giant labyrinth of waterways, villages, and low-lying fields in the far southwest of India. As the boat’s crew navigated the waterways, and the cook prepared one delicious meal after another, we had little to do but sit back, relax with a glass of wine in hand (the Indian Sauvignon Blanc isn’t too bad), and watch as the watery world slipped slowly by.

Houseboat, Backwaters of Kerala

Going to School, Kerala Style

If the Sauvignon Blanc was pretty good, the coffee was mostly awful, and the tea delicious. Darjeeling Gold was particularly lovely.

Early Morning Mist, Tea Country

Tea Plantation

We didn’t get to Darjeeling, but we did see coffee and tea plantations in the southern highlands. Along one winding country road, we came across a crew of women picking tea. They smiled and joked and, I’m sure, make some wisecracks at our expense. The women were pleased to have their pictures taken but, like many other Indians, became serious, almost stern, when a camera was pointed their way. As one of our guides explained, having your picture taken is a serious business and people want to look “proper” for the camera.

Tea Picker

Unlike the tea pickers, the snake charmer was used to having his picture taken. After all, he made his living from the 10, 20 or 50 rupee notes that people dropped beside him.

Snake Charmer

As the snake charmer played his flute, the cobra stood up in its basket and periodically struck at the man. The snake charmer was nonplussed by the striking snake, even as the crowd gasped or stepped back in alarm.

Cathy must have been looking particularly undecided about the wisdom of this whole “snake business”. The snake charmer turned to her and said, “It’s O.K. ma’am, it doesn’t have any teeth.”

A toothless cobra—that was a bit of a letdown.

After the snake charmer, we all wanted to see the “Indian rope trick”. You know, the one where the rope goes up in the air by itself, and the swami climbs it? Right?

The Indians looked at us blankly. None of them had ever heard of it. All of us westerners were surprised. We’d all heard of it. Was this strictly a western invention? Or worse, had we all been brainwashed by too many childhood cartoons?

Between our visit to the south of India and our visit to the north, we flew to the Andaman Islands. The islands are to the east of the Indian mainland, not too far from Burma and Thailand. From the main centre of Port Blair, we took the three-hour ferry trip to Havelock Island where we enjoyed the sunshine, warm water, birds, flowers, and uncrowded beaches.

Andaman Beach

There are still tribes on some of the outlying islands in the Andaman group that have had almost no contact with the outside world. One of the tribes still greets anyone trying to land on their island with a hail of arrows. As recently as 2006 the tribesmen killed two fishermen who had drifted too close to the island, and then drove off the helicopter that came to pick up the bodies.

We didn’t get shot at by anyone. The worst we had to endure was the chaos of the ferry, the heat and spines in the jungle, and the unsmiling, almost morose resort staff.

Unlike the resort staff, the hermit crabs on the beach seemed very cheerful (although it is a bit hard to tell with a crustacean). By the millions they scurried around, jostling and bumping into each other. At times, the whole high-water zone of the beach seemed to be moving. You couldn’t help but smile to see all the hustle and bustle.

Gone “Tropo” on the Andamans

Okay, the Taj Mahal. I’ve left it to the end. It’s not that I didn’t like it. It was quite grand, magnificent even, but still I was a little underwhelmed.

Perhaps it’s been overexposed. Or perhaps it was because, as the on-site pollution monitor showed, the air is hardly fit to breathe. Or perhaps it was because it’s not in some bucolic countryside as it appears in pictures, but rather in a crowded, dirty, noisy Indian city.

Still, I took photographs. Lots of photographs. And, like so many before me, I did my best to make the Taj Mahal look like it’s sitting in some timeless, idyllic, jasmine-scented dream.