The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  Hyperventilating and bent double after the arduous journey, they spill onto the streets, waiting expectantly for the miracle. As word of the cure’s efficacy spreads, politicians hurry to endorse the event, and businessmen volunteer to fund it.

  Each patient clutches a transparent water-filled plastic bag. Like children with goldfish home from the fair, they hold them up to the light. The bag contains a speckled black murrel fish, an oily cousin of the sardine.

  The fish vary in size: anything from three to six inches. The longer the better. Their beady eyes blinking innocuously, they swim about in the limited confines of the plastic bag. They may be wondering what’s going on. But a murrel fish would have a hard time imagining the precise details of its fate.

  When they get to the front of the queue each asthma sufferer hands over their plastic bag to a member of the Gowd family. First, the fish is removed from the bag. Then its miniature jaws are prized apart. A magical and foul-smelling yellow paste is stuffed into its mouth. And, as the patient sticks out his tongue, the fish, replete with ointment, is thrust down his throat.

  There are less than twelve hours to go, for the star of Mrigasira Karthe will be in alignment at eight a.m.

  Harinath Gowd, second eldest of the five brothers, sits in the tiny courtyard of the family home and casts an uneasy eye at the main entrance. The battered blue door bends inwards as the crowd presses against the other side. The old city’s narrow streets are clogged with asthmatics for miles around. Most arrived days ago, for fear of missing the astrological timing of the event.

  Harinath attends to last-minute arrangements. Two hundred kilos of the magical paste have been prepared, concocted according to a secret Ayurvedic recipe. Pujas, religious ceremonies, carry on around the clock to appease malevolent forces. The air, which is thick with incense, only aggravates the asthmatics’ difficulties. Police are briefed in case of rioting.

  The astrological tables are double-checked.

  Rubbing his greying beard anxiously, Harinath Gowd reinforces the tattered door with a plank of wood.

  ‘Every year more and more people turn up,’ he declares. ‘See how popular is this miracle of miracles.’

  ‘It all started with my great-great-grandfather,’ says Harinath. ‘He was a very generous man. He was known throughout Hyderabad for his good deeds. During the monsoon of 1845 he saw a sadhu, a holy man, sitting in the pouring rain. The mystic was cold, hungry and abandoned by the world. So, my ancestor, Veerana Gowd, brought him here, into this house. He fed him and nursed him back to health. Weeks passed. Then, just before the sadhu was about to go on his way, he revealed the fish miracle to my forefather.’

  Harinath pauses to recite a string of orders to his son.

  ‘The holy man,’ he continues, ‘said that from henceforth the well in the courtyard would be full of magical water. And that it was to be used in making a special paste which was to be put into the mouth of a living murrel fish. The water, the ingredients of the paste, and the astrological timing together form the magic of the miracle. The sadhu said that my family was to serve a free cure for asthma on the first day of the monsoon. But if any fee was charged for the remedy, it would have no effect. Charge money, and the magic would be broken. That was one hundred and fifty-two years ago. True to our word, my family has never charged for the cure.’

  Initially, word of the miracle antidote was slow to spread. In the first few years, asthmatics from the back streets adjacent to the Gowds’ house turned up. But, as the years passed, more and more people heard of the miracle. And, as more tried it, word spread faster and further. Two years ago about a quarter of a million asthmatics ventured to the Gowds’ house to be cured. This year, an estimated five hundred and thirty thousand arrived.

  In any other country, if half a million patients came to your house appealing for a miracle, the authorities would demand forms to be filled and permits to be signed. But in India, where miracle remedies are a way of life, things are more straightforward.

  Watching a Hindi movie on television the night before, the five Gowd brothers seemed remarkably relaxed. Didn’t it bother them that half a million asthmatics were pounding on their door? Or that the responsibility of stuffing several tons of live oily fish down throats would prove too difficult?

  Shivram Gowd, the eldest of the brothers, stretches out to turn up the TV’s volume, to drown out the frenzied groans of asthmatics out in the street.

  ‘Of course we’re not worried,’ he says. ‘Remember, this isn’t a feeble allopathic medicine – but a miracle cure.’

  The sheer number of patients demanding the unconventional prescription has meant that, in recent years, the Gowds have had to take on extra volunteers. More than five hundred of them, speaking every major Indian language and dialect, help to make sure that things go smoothly. Hundreds more hand out free drinking water and custard creams, donated by local businesses and charities. And, whereas sufferers were all once treated in the Gowds’ ancestral home, special stalls are now erected in neighbouring streets to administer the physic to the maximum number over the twenty-four hour period.

  The sadhu’s directions ensured that the Gowds make no profit from their miracle cure. But, it is obvious that they enjoy being the centre of attention for one day a year.

  ‘We are proud to help people in this way,’ intones Shivram Gowd warmly, ‘for the rest of the year we are humble toddy tappers.’

  Would he prefer that the miracle cure be handed out on more than one day a year? Shivram Gowd pauses to take in the cries of the hopeful outside. Then rolls his eyes. ‘No, no,’ he whispers, ‘one day a year is quite sufficient.’

  All night, mantras are repeated over the great basins of mysterious yellow paste. Then, as dawn rises over the Mughal city of Hyderabad, a prolonged ritual begins in the confined courtyard of the Gowd ancestral home. The five brothers sit on a raised platform surrounded by their families, as their forefathers did before them. Dressed in sacred saffron robes, they bless the tubs of oily ointment. Out in the maze of winding lanes, the asthmatics and their families jostle about with restless anticipation. The miracle is near.

  At the front of the queue is Krishna Punji, an aged farmer from Orissa. He pokes a wrinkled finger into a small plastic bag to check that the murrel fish, which he bought from a vendor the night before, is still alive.

  ‘I’ve been here six weeks,’ he announces feebly, ‘I wasn’t sure when the miracle was to be held. So I came a bit early. You see, I’ve got very bad asthma.’ He lets out a deafening wheeze to prove his point.

  At the stroke of eight, Harinath Gowd stuffs a pellet of the yellow paste into the waiting mouth of a murrel fish, and thrusts it down his brother Shivram’s throat. The Gowds always start by taking the medicine themselves.

  They swear by it.

  Moments later, the battered doors of their home are pulled inward and the great tidal wave of sufferers surges into the courtyard. At its crest is Krishna Punji. He hands over his fish, opens his toothless mouth as wide as he can and, before he knows it, the three-inch speckled charcoal murrel fish is swimming towards his stomach.

  The miracle cure has begun.

  Crushed together, and filling every inch of the old city, the legions of patients squirm forward. Many bought their fish the night before. For those who didn’t, hundreds of murrel fish dealers sprout up from nowhere. Every street urchin and miscreant are suddenly crying out ‘Machhi! Machhi!’, ‘Fish! Fish!’ The competition between sellers, who get their stocks from the Department of Fisheries, keeps the prices down. A standard-sized murrel (three to six inches) costs three rupees. The emphasis is very much on large. Everyone believes that the larger the fish, the better it will clean out the throat as it goes down.

  ‘The wriggling of the fish is very beneficial,’ calls Harinath Gowd, as he shoves his complete hand into a woman’s mouth. She begins to choke because her fish is so large – almost seven inches long. A harsh thump on her back dislodges it. The murrel fish can be seen, fr
antically trying to swim backwards, towards safety. Engulfed by the waves of asthmatics, all holding up their transparent bags, Harinath Gowd again rams his fingers down the woman’s throat. The seven-inch fish heads into the dark abyss of the patient’s oesophagus, never to surface again.

  If you recoil at the prospect of swallowing an oversized antibiotic, forget the Gowds’ miracle cure. It’s traumatic for the patient; and is no easy remedy to administer. Every step of the procedure has its own obstacles. When removing it from the bag, the fish tends to flail about and often falls into the mud underfoot. With the throng so tight, bending down to search for a lost fish is hazardous in the extreme. More cumbersome still is the business of levering the murrel’s jaws apart and inserting the nugget of yellow paste. Even when this has been achieved, the creature has to be propelled head-first down the sufferer’s throat. Administering the medicine a single time would be an achievement worthy of praise. But performing it half a million times in a day is a miracle in itself.

  Every city, town and village of the subcontinent seems to be represented at the Gowds’ tiny home. Buddhist monks, Assamese tribesmen, businessmen from Bangalore, Goans and Tamils, Pathans and Sikhs – all congregate together into a whirlwind of life; all frantic for the miracle. Many are gasping for breath, seized by asthmatic attacks brought on by the crush of bodies. Others scream hysterically as they are separated from their children. Every moment the turmoil heightens. The mob is compressed like liquid injected through a syringe.

  Then, suddenly, it is rife with rumours. The stocks of fish are running out. The supplies of miracle paste are almost at an end. A stampede follows. Babies are clutched above heads to prevent them from being sucked down. Moments later, the half million murrel fish are not the only casualties of the day. Two elderly men are killed in the stampede, trampled underfoot.

  For Anila Mathani, an Indian living in Singapore, swallowing a murrel fish is no longer a novelty. This is her third time.

  ‘You have to take the medicine three years running to get permanent relief from asthma,’ she says, holding up her carefullychosen specimen. ‘This year volunteers are handing out the cure in the streets around the Gowds’ home. I will only take it in the house itself; and from the hand of one of the Gowd brothers. This is where the magic spell was cast; and it was here that the sadhu revealed that the miracle would work.’

  Does she believe in the remedy? Anila Mathani nods vigorously. ‘Of course it cures asthma,’ she says. ‘Three years ago I was confined to bed. My doctor said I hadn’t long to live. Now look at me. Remember, Indians are shrewd people: do you think they would spend time and money travelling here if there was nothing in it?’

  Diehard believers in the miracle cure follow a strict regime in the days after their appointment with the murrel fish. They restrict their diet to a list of foods prescribed by the sadhu in 1845. These include such comestibles as snake gourd, old rice, dried chillies, mutton, dried pieces of old mango, and milk which has been left with a piece of porcelain in it. On the fifteenth, thirtieth and forty-fifth days after the miracle, the patient is expected to swallow two extra pellets of the magical yellow paste.

  Vegetarians have it easy. They don’t have to swallow the fish but can consume the repellent salve in a mixture of molasses jaggery. But the Gowds frown on those without the will to gulp down a live fish.

  With news of the Gowds’ medication spreading throughout India and abroad, a regular stream of fraudsters have tried to capitalize on the miracle cure. Quacks and charlatans in every large city advertise a similar antidote on the same day each year. Most claim to be related to the Gowds. Unlike the five brothers from Hyderabad, they charge for the medicine.

  ‘It’s expected that fakes will try to make money from this,’ says Harinath Gowd pragmatically. ‘We have been offered millions of rupees by multinational drug companies for the formula, too. But we don’t have any fear of the con-men, or of people copying our recipe through reverse engineering. They can copy us all they like, but we have one thing that they can never have – the magical blessing of the sadhu.’

  As the multitude of asthmatics choke down live fish, supporters for the Society for Animal Rights, a local pressure group with modest support, stand on the sidelines. But their calls for an immediate end to the slaughter of innocent murrel fish go unheeded.

  ‘Imagine what an agonizing end those poor little fish are having,’ says Dilip Narayan, the society’s spokesman. ‘This is an act of primitive barbarism. It must be stopped.’

  By and large, the medical profession is equally reproachful. Not because of the pain the murrel fish may suffer, but for the dubious effect that the cure has on treating asthma.

  ‘This isn’t miracle healing, but faith healing,’ explains Dr. Madan Kataria, a respected Mumbai physician. ‘People line up for hours and go through the traumatic experience of swallowing a live fish. Then they feel better. The improvement has got to be due to a psychosomatic effect.’

  The Gowd family’s miracle cure for asthma may be the laughing stock of the medical establishment. And it may sound like nothing more than mumbo jumbo to the rest of us. But it seems that the remedy could have a scientific grounding after all. Scientists at the Royal Prince Alfred Institute of Respiratory Medicine in Sydney recently published a possible cure for asthma. And it happens to be very fresh, oily fish. A study at the institute found that only fresh fish (canned fish, for instance, doesn’t work) has anti-inflammatory properties. Oily fish such as murrel, which contain omega-3 fatty acids, can decrease the amount of inflammation in an asthmatic’s airway.

  Back outside the Gowds’ ancestral home, the local police officers have given up trying to keep control. Pickpockets are busy taking advantage of the crowds. A contingent of Naga warriors is waging a full-blown military offensive to raid the stall dishing out free custard creams. But, worst of all, I find myself at the head of the queue.

  I hand over the bag containing my four-inch murrel fish to Shivram Gowd. A blob of the vile miracle paste the size of a walnut is forced into the fish’s mouth and around its face. The paste, which has the consistency of marzipan, has the smell of putrefying offal.

  A bystander indicates for me to stick out my tongue. At the last moment, the fish and I exchange a troubled glance. The murrel seems to be demanding an explanation. Alas, I am in no position to start justifying the unusual treatment. What comes next is a new experience for the both the fish and me.

  Having a grown man’s hand lunging to the back of one’s throat is deeply unpleasant. But it is nothing in comparison to the sensation of a live and terrified fish bearing fetid miracle ointment swimming down one’s oesophagus.

  Hour after hour, thousands of asthmatics receive the treatment. All through the day, the afternoon, and then the night. By six a.m. the next morning, the short-lived shanty-town around the Gowds’ two-room house begins to break up. The pickpockets board trains for other cities. Balloon-sellers, beggars, and most of the half-million asthmatics have disappeared. By seven a.m. the fish merchants are frantic to get rid of their supplies.

  The bottom had fallen out of the murrel fish market for another year.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Swiss Movement

  AS A TRAVEL WRITER I’ve specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader’s hair stick on end.

  I’ve waded through swamps, hacked through jungles, done my time in war zones and in mine fields, and in rotten, rat-infested sewers the world over. Never before though, have I been asked to drop everything and journey to a place of sheer idyll.

  Not until now.

  So when an itinerary came through for a jaunt around the Swiss Alps, I balked. It all seemed too good to be true. My wife said they’d sent me the wrong trip, and that I’d better leave before they realized their mistake. So I packed my bags and left, post haste.

  The next thing I knew, I was at Zurich airport picking up my Swiss Pass. It allows unlimited travel on most trains, buses and boats within
the entire country. The clerk was a slim, small-eyed man with three clocks laid out neatly on his desk. I asked about getting to Appenzell, the heart of Alpine country.

  ‘There is a train leaving in three minutes, forty-five seconds,’ he said precisely.

  ‘Well, I’ll never make that.’

  The clerk narrowed his eyes. ‘Of course you will, sir,’ he said, ‘this is Switzerland.’

  Two minutes later, I was aboard a train so silent that, when it left the station, you could only tell it was actually moving by looking out the window. It didn’t grate along the tracks, so much as glide.

  Lulled by the sense of safety and the silence of the carriage, I fell into a deep childlike sleep. When I awoke there were hillsides all around, rolling like waves and overlaid with fields, their grass the colour of crushed emeralds. There were mountains, too, great grey crags looming down like broken teeth, some still tinged with snow.

  At Appenzell I alighted, and found myself in the backdrop for an Alpen commercial. No bigger than a village, it was the kind of place I never quite believed existed at all. Prim little chalets with window boxes overflowing in riotous reds and pinks, exquisitely painted buildings, cuckoo clocks, cow bells, and perfectly squared stacks of firewood awaiting the winter freeze.

  In dazzling light of late afternoon I drove the short distance to Weissbad, where a smiling farmer named Johan showed me his cows. As someone who lives in a world shaped by crude reality, I was at first skeptical. It was as if the whole place had been conjured as a kind of tourist fantasy. But, the longer I stayed there, the more I came to see that the orderly perfection and sense of contentment were utterly real. Farmer Johan’s grin was always on his lips, even when my back was turned. And he wasn’t the only happy one. His cows were simply beaming delight as well.

  If the surroundings were out of an Alpen commercial, then the cows were surely extras from a Milka chocolate ad. They were spotless, pale brown, pretty beyond belief, and had oversized bells fastened on leather collars around their necks. As they roamed the lush pastures ruminating, they made a wondrous music all of their own.