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by Boswell
'At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western Melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly,
soon lost any clue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible. It was the song of
an unknown bird......The sounds continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had begun -
apparently half through a bar, and upon the sub dominant.'
-E.M. Forster A Passage to India.
In the splendidly decaying Maharajah's summer palace at Deeg in Rajasthan an ornate
brass pitcher stands upon a similarly ornate table. The brass is dull through neglect and
the enamel inlays patinated with the touch of thousands of hands attesting to the truth of
the spoken word. The pitcher contained the water of the holy Ganges and no man who
touched it could lie, it was a truth serum for the Maharajah a hundred years ago. It is still
spoken of in hushed tones as the guide explains its function to small groups of tourists,
watched by the baleful stare of a stuffed tiger whose glass eyes glint in the half-light of the
vast hall. I shall, as it were, place my hand upon that pitcher and in the spirit of the Ganges tell my tale true.
I have been interested in India since my days at university where an inspiring tutor whose enthusiasm for the
East introduced me to the sub continent via the Kalila and Dimna stories and Kipling. A natural tendency
towards polytheism drew me on to a superficial examination of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism and I have
found myself entranced by the 'ethnic aesthetic'. Friends who have been to India speak of it as a defining
experience and find themselves drawn back again and again, fascinated by its mystery. I have imagined it as a
place of spirituality and beauty; a vast continent, which would take months to explore going backpacking, and
staying in Ashrams while wearing open-toed sandals and chanting Hare Krishna. However, in my Timberland
loafer period of my life I need comforts like reasonable food, a good bed and dental floss. The joys of an international hotel,
however ubiquitous, outweighed the picturesqueness of sleeping on a mud floor surrounded by patchouli incense sticks. Thus
it was that a package week away became the convenient way to visit at least a corner of the sub continent, the area of Uttar
Pradesh and Rajasthan to the South and South West of Delhi.
Flying into Delhi takes you over the vast and fertile plain of the Ganges. Green squares patchwork
the land like a Cezanne painting. Coming into land, the drier soil close to the airport reveals track
marks of extinct waterways and rivulets resembling an intricate circulatory diagram. India as a living
being - perhaps this was to be a mystical experience after all.
Feeling tired and yet excited we all dutifully made our way through the airport. Bureaucracy is rife in India. Embarrassingly it is a legacy of the Raj, and everything takes the maximum possible time whilst over-zealous officials check, recheck, stamp, frown, spit and check again as every piece of paper passes before them. So we all stood shuffling with infinitesimal steps like actors in a Noh play towards the passport control. There is a television screen in one corner of the hall with the message "spring is a lovely time" on it, which gives way to a woman in a sari extolling the virtues of a Bontempi organ. From the tone of her voice you would think that this relic of the seventies was a miracle cure for all the world's ills. I start to find it all a bit comical and my mind is happily cavorting over the possibilities of the stylophone when an unmistakable odour assails my nostrils. Flatulence. The scent of India. The woman in front is gassing me.
Once out of the airport we are herded politely to our various buses for transfer to Agra. A necklace of wilting marigolds is given to us in welcome and I have the chance to try out my 'Namaste'. I must have done it wrong because what I got in return was a puzzled look and a hand up into the bus.
The bus transfer was a bit of improvisation on the part of our tour operators. The international runway at Agra had been washed out in the monsoon and so, instead of running the direct flights promised, they had to arrange flights into Delhi via Bahrain and then the 6 or 7 hour "Long days coach journey into night."
Still, looking on the positive side we did get a window seat view of life on the road between Delhi and Agra. This according to our guide was the number 2 road, I hate to think what the number 3 road is like. Our road consisted of potholes with incidental tarmaccadam along which the driver bumped and jolted his way for six hours. It was a road surface that required four wheel drive and well, suspension. Most of the privately owned cars and taxis in India are one make and one colour - The Ambassador, available in off white and cream. This is a car made from the manufacturing plates of a 1960's Morris or Austin and the fact that they survive at all on roads more suited to tanks is a great tribute to their sturdiness. The motor bikes too are a replica of a 1960s bike, a Triumph or BSA perhaps, now called an Enfield. After a while you feel you have slid back a few decades and in some places centuries.
Being hurled about in the coach as it lurched, impacted and recoiled its way along like a shore box with St Vitus' dance is not conducive to sleep and so I had plenty of time to look at India as she jiggled past. The colours are wonderful, beautiful Saris and lush green vegetation punctuated with stalls selling bright, fresh fruit. Brown earth, blue sky, and hazy sun. The scent was not exotic but rather familiar, diesel fumes. Practically every engine in the sub-continent seems to run on the stuff and taking a breath of air is like sticking your nose up a London Taxi's exhaust pipe. Combined with the dust raised as the dry earth is churned by foot, hoof and wheel this makes the atmosphere strangely thick and cloying, at the times suffocatingly so. On we bump, passing shantytown after shantytown, the litter-strewn land looking like a municipal dump. So dense is the litter that it has formed strata. It is impossible in places to tell where the earth begins and the litter ends - like a land fill site. In the years to come archaeologists will be able to determine the age of the sediment from the condition of the plastic bags therein. We pass groups of men squatting and looking thoughtful, women fetching water from the wells, children washing in the irrigation channels, a water melon stall next to what looked like a barbecue but was, on closer inspection, a cremation. Life and death is here, there are no tactful veils drawn across the unpleasant, no doors are closed, no editing, no censorship, no protection. Everything seems to be part of a whole, the good and the bad, all differences becoming irrelevant, Siva and Vishnu walk together through the dusky light singing their lullaby of death and life across the great plain of the Ganges.