Marco-Indo Relations

To be fair, I did a great disservice to my Indian hosts by turning up earlier than expected. In addition, I had neither a word of Hindi nor a guide-book (a good definition of the word  tome and thus, too heavy to transport). Of course, it would be moronic of me to expect to pass unnoticed through a country such as India aboard my UFO (the ‘F’ being the height of my conceit). I’m never one for being the centre of attention but I am perfectly comfortable shining the spot-light on my bike instead. Bizarrely my simple cyclo-computer is what fascinated most. This in a country where a lot of young men’s ‘dream’ (their word not mine) is to work in the West as a computer-programmer. Indeed, there is a huge amount of ‘Institutes of Technology’ being constructed in the middle of the countryside. The scale of these developments is impressive and all these initiatives are private as opposed to public and so are commercially oriented. I would be amazed if there were that many young people with the means and commitment to commute to the middle of the countryside to all these grand colleges but such is private enterprise’s ability to pedal ‘dreams’ to the young.  I digress. One final point I should make is that I biked through one state plus India’s capital territory of Delhi. There are twenty-eight states in India and I would be surprised if an Indian would consider Uttar Pradesh the best of them. So the reality is that a fraction of the country is responsible for my brief but somewhat informative experience of India.

The truth is that I made life difficult for myself. While I was aware that biking through India would be stressful in terms of the traffic and the friendly/inquisitive nature of the people, I had to overlay this with  the stresses that a tourist faces in the country regardless of their mode of transport. As I was not cocooning myself on a comfortable train journey along-side the Indian middle-class my stress-o-meter was already in the red on arrival into a town (low blood-sugars were naturally a factor).This is not the case for the regular back-packer who has just spent the last few hours on the train blissfully lost in a book. What’s more, I was travelling alone and so did not have anyone for support, something that I would recommend for people considering India as a travel destination. Having said all that, it is a little perplexing why a mill of people would crowd around me to watch me slug some water. You get used to such things but it’s odd when the crowd is still there and growing as one goes about some bike maintenance on the side of the road twenty minutes later. I found it unnerving but perhaps there is a TV show to be made if that many Indian people find allen–tools so entertaining. What really got my goat was being run off the road fifty times a day by buses overtaking in the opposite direction to me. I was never going to win in a game of chicken as the bus had now nowhere to go. The coaches in India are mind-bogglingly dangerous. Of course, when flicking through the papers it is not uncommon to read about bus crashes and the number of deaths involved. Go figure! This is one of my biggest issues with India; life is way too cheap. There is a big difference between fate and being fatalistic, certainly where other people’s lives are concerned. In the West we use wing-mirrors much like a cat uses whiskers, in India they fold them over permanently so they can get through gaps that they shouldn’t be considering in the first place. You can imagine my frustration to see them braking for a cow but not for me, they would happily run me off the road without a thought. It’s a little hard for me to fathom how a cow’s life is more sacred than a human’s. Indeed, religion gets in the way again when one considers the terrible water pollution that occurs. Being a sacred river the Ganges is full of human ashes, dead animals and floating corpses of humans too poor or too untouchable to have a proper funeral. The towns downstream from Varanasi are full of really sick people and have a very high mortality rate as people are imbibing this water. Even Gandhi in his draft constitution (he was assassinated the day he finished it) urged Indians to educate themselves in the ways of sanitation and hygiene such that it does not spread disease and ill-health. I have no issue with people’s beliefs ... everyone is free to think how they wish. However, I would argue that human intuition should over-rule creed. Religion is a man-made phenomenon whereas man’s environment is God-given (assuming you are a believer). Man, animals and nature existed prior to religion and so I find it hard when man chooses to so obviously disrupt the harmony of his or someone else’s habitat. Do Gods really want us to worship them at the price of human lives? Of course, I realise that the West is guilty of more sinister practices in bowing to our God prophet ... er, I mean profit. I had similar thoughts when I considered the plight of cows roaming the streets. While we have managed to urbanise/domesticate certain animals I do not believe that the cow is one of them. It can’t be healthy or good for a cow’s yield to be grazing on rubbish. Litter pollution is commonplace but it did not really bother me. On the whole, the average Indian consumes far less packaging than the average westerner because they don’t rely on supermarkets. While it isn’t pretty to see piles of rubbish everywhere, at least they don’t sweep it under the carpet like we do. Our policy of out of sight and therefore out of mind is not exactly sustainable. Another thing that didn’t particularly bother me was the propensity of sober grown men to relieve themselves in the middle of the day on the street. Dublin on a Saturday night is just as bad after all. I would make the point however, that it wasn’t only me that preferred to walk on the road as opposed to the latrine-like pavement. Again, human instinct suggests that we don’t like walking in our own business. It is interesting that Indians find such practice socially acceptable in the city when they too don’t wish to traipse through it. The consequence of this is that everyone walks on the road and we have already established that the road is not the safest place to be

Indians are perfectly friendly and in the main well-intentioned. However, it is a bit much when I’m 30kms from the next town and I have Maverick riding shotgun on his motor-bike doing his best to escort me the whole 30k to the next town. Seriously, I can handle all the mobile phone cameras in the world but it’s tricky enough riding on the road without two of us biking slowly. Sometimes you just have to be rude. Unfortunately my lack of Hindi was a barrier to interpreting their good intentions. Now and again somebody with decent English would come along and I was perfectly sociable. Forgive my arrogance but I was surprised at how poor their English was. Nepal was so much better on that score. In the cities it was better, however, the people with the best English were the touts. I always give people the benefit of the doubt but in cities I learned the hard way; just ignore anyone speaking English altogether. The unfortunate problem with this is that the well-intentioned person suffers my ignorance. However, in Dublin you don’t force a conversation upon somebody unless they are looking for one. So when somebody does this in India I have to be suspicious. Clearly this person wants to sell me something or is a total weirdo, either  way I have no interest in talking to them. Invariably it is always the former and annoyingly these people are immune to the evil eye. While there are signs requesting tourists to ignore touts and not to encourage begging the reality is that such stated policy is not enforced. Poverty is on such a grand scale that the compassionate thing for the Indian to do is to turn a blind eye and let the tourist suffer the consequences.

It’s a shame to say it but India is a place where a white person needs a survival guide. There are so many things to be wary of that you really need to be wise to the place. I will say that westerners should spend their money freely there because it is cheap and the reason for all the aggravation is because so many people are struggling to earn a crust. However, more needs to be done to protect the tourist or there will be fewer of them. Certainly, if one has a stressful life in the West then one would be crazy to go to India on a two-weeker.  Perhaps the beaches near Goa, the hippy vibe in the presence of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala or some supposedly spiritual camp consisting of four hours yoga a day, hours of silence, nature walks and a lot of other nonsense would have been easier going; I’m not sure. If contemplating such I would definitely employ the use of a guide. If I had had an Indian to chaperone me then I would have had a much easier time of it. Ironically, it would have made me ‘untouchable’.

Perhaps if I knew my cricket and could wax lyrical about Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting then I might have seen a different side to them. I loved their passion for the sport and one of my best memories was watching a game of cricket on one of the most beat-up creases ever. Another passion seems to be kiting. It was amazing to watch them let a tiny hand-built kite off the reins hundreds of metres into the sky. Both boys and men could really make their kites dance. It was funny to see grown-up bats-men kiting while waiting for their innings. One other hugely impressive thing is the red of the setting sun in India; it is absolutely stunning.

While I would clash with them in terms of their beliefs this was not the issue. All of us are delusional in some regard and so it is our beliefs that make us really interesting. Clearly my relations with them turned sour but ultimately it is not that I dislike India or the people, it is simply that I did not like the person I became when there. I felt I gave them every opportunity but they wound me up so much that I was rude, stressed and suspicious. This is supposed to be the land of ‘passive resistance’ but honestly I felt like a thump would be the only communication that some of them would understand. These are not my normal qualities but my karma changed totally for the worse while there. For the record, I’m not a white supremist but it is easier to travel in a country you can relate to. Lots of people love India but I think part of the reason for this is that it is relatively cheap. You could travel very comfortably on 500 euro a month and so it is an easy destination for people to get lost in with only a few months savings from a high-income country. If this idea appeals just be sure not to take your bike!

My affection for the Indians is much like Obelix’s fondness towards the Romans ; “These Romans are crazy!” he would exclaim. Often I would be asked the reason for my journey. The appropriate answer would be to say that I was on a pilgrimage of sorts, however, I preferred to reply that I had no reason at all. They just couldn’t comprehend this. Indeed I took great pride in the fact that so many Indians considered me the crazy one.

Mind how you go

marco

p.s. – Feel free to contribute a comment if you can offer some insight.