You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir!

by Danny Bent

  Stepping out of the front door, I realised how the city had acquired its nickname. It sloped away from the building we were in and every building was painted the same blue colour. Kites flew all over the city from every rooftop. Boys did battle against each other and kite runners chased those that had been cut down.

  Kathleen and Katherine were distracted by jewellery shops, so I walked over to a boy, Gulfam, meaning 'colour', on a roof who invited me to come up and join him, offering me the string to the kites. My nephew, Isaac, would tell you that I was the best kite flyer in the world, so I confidently took the string. A few sharp tugs would normally see the kite soar into the air, however, these kites require skill. The first tug took it into the air; the second turned it and sent it crashing to the earth at the feet of the girls as they came from the market stall. They picked it up and, with some coaching from my new friend, I managed to get it into the air again. The skill is that you have to tug as the top is pointing upwards, then allow it to spin and tug again when it is again facing upwards. Another kite came into sight and the strings were quickly taken from me. The other kites wanted to battle. The battle lasted for about five minutes and, unfortunately, Gulfam had his string cut and his kite floated off into the distance as the kite runners (his younger brothers) ran off to retrieve it.

  That night we all headed up to see the sunset from the fort overlooking the town. On the way up, an Indian man tried to sell us a stick. It looked like a very nice and sturdy stick but we thought we were OK for now. Strange man. Who in their right mind buys a stick?

  As the sun began to drop, the monkeys poured out of every orifice in the fort - from cracks, from doors and over walls. It was almost like an old-fashioned horror film before chainsaws, guns and stacks of ketchup take over – 'The Birds' maybe; 'The Monkeys'. There were thousands of them. The youngsters played on the walls. The adults sat and de-ticked each other or watched the sun disappear. As the numbers increased, a few males started hissing at us. A particularly brave one took the bag attached to my rucksack and started eating the fruit I’d bought myself. There were only three people up there, Kathleen, Katherine and I, and Katherine had gone. We looked everywhere. The fort was so huge and with so many different demolished rooms that, although we shouted out, we couldn’t see or hear her. We grew nervous. It was almost completely dark. After shouting for a few more minutes, we decided to head down. Monkeys lined every path. We had to weave in and out of them. On the way down we saw the stick seller duelling a large male monkey with his stick – now we understood why people bought them. We heard a shout from the café below. Katherine was there and had three ice creams lined up and waiting for us.

  The next day I walked around town and had the ruby from Pakistan made into an ear stud. The silver from India and the red from Pakistan became my symbol of peace between the two nations.

  It was Eli’s Birthday. Eli was a guy from the States who’d spent his time in Bundi learning from Mama how to cook. She had baked a cake for him. In celebration, I bought a turban and headed back. Our normal belly-filling thali was followed by cake (which tasted like washing powder), and by rum and beers in the garden (Mama wouldn’t allow beer in the house, even though her husband was selling it on the black market). Mama’s daughter, Saatchi, joined us tonight with her lucky white rat. In the Karni Mata Temple, near the city of Deshnoke, rats are sacred. If you go there, the temple is overrun with rats. If you see a white one you will be blessed with luck. Saatchi called me 'turban man', quite a regal name, I thought.

  * * *

  Travelling across India you can’t help but notice the number of very young children working in cafés as chai wallahs and running errands - doing anything, in fact, except being at school. If I had decided I wouldn’t eat anywhere which employed child labour, I would have starved to death.

  They serve you delicious food with the most amazing smiles and you can’t help but want to tip them. I guess this was originally a cynical commercial tactic that became second nature. However, by giving them even a small tip, you encourage their fathers to keep them out of school all the more. I imagined that everything I was giving them was taken off them by their fathers, uncles, or brothers who ran the café, so I decided to start using some tricks of my own. I’d distract the adults with idle chit chat and, at the same time, pass a note behind my back to the boys. The children only needed a moment to have it in their pocket and be acting as if nothing had happened. It probably made no odds but it made me feel a little better.

  From Bundi it was a short journey to Udaipur in the bottom left corner of the tourist triangle, completed by the adjoining vertices of Agra and Judaipur.

  Udaipur is also known as the city of lakes. 'Octopussy' was filmed here. In the surrounding desert, Bond heroically rescued Octopussy from an aeroplane which resulted in Gobinda falling to his death. The lake and palace were also used as perfect settings for the film.

  Down by the lake, local people were washing themselves and their clothes. The mornings are alternately reserved for men or women to bathe. By the side of the banks, two spiritual men were playing their kamayacha, a stringed instrument played with a bow which makes a low tone. After filming a quick Happy Christmas video for the children at school, and friends, I started dancing with the local children to the music. I’d given the local children mini plastic instruments as they waited for their mums to finish the washing, and with my ukulele we played along with the men.

  Some time later a male arrived whom I assumed was some of the the children’s dad. The mums shouted at the kids to come away from me and sit by them. It felt strange to be left alone like that. I walked away with my head down. I didn’t like to think I’d got the ladies into trouble.

  I’d developed a really bad stomach again. Squatting above the hostel ‘hole in the floor’ toilet, I emptied my bowels. My stomach gurgled and pains shot through me. It was made worse by the fact that the kind architects had made the wall to the toilet mirrored so I could see my face contorting in pain. They had also thoughtfully built a nice shelf in the toilet – just above the hole. So depleted, sick and tired, I stood to leave, only to smash my head on the shelf, knocking me back towards my waste.

  The hostel owner pointed us in the direction of a Raj music festival. It was a strange affair. Performing to the tabla, a bol (drums) and the harmonium (an Indian piano powered by air, played with one hand whilst the other pushes the hand-operated bellows), a woman carried an ever-increasing number of pots on her head. There was also a puppet show. Udaipur is famed for its puppets and this was no ordinary show. The dolls danced as their strings were twitched. At the finale, a puppet played 'keepie uppie' with its own head. Quite extraordinary.

  * * *

  Leaving Rajastan, I entered Gujarat. The race riots of 2003 between the Hindi and Muslim people were centred here. People went out and butchered neighbours, co-workers and friends if they were not from their religion. Most of the one thousand who lost their lives were Muslim and sources say that the police condoned their murder.

  The state, which is on the west coat of India, encompasses major sites of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation of 3,300BC.

  Stopping in a very small shop in the middle of nowhere, I made friends with the son and daughter of the shop owner. They initially cried when they saw me, but polystyrene planes soon bought their affection. I was sitting back enjoying watching them play nicely among the quiet surroundings when a man appeared to my right. He was staring at me but in a slightly unusual way. He seemed to be looking in my ear.

  “Dirty.”

  He pulled out his little wooden box and before I could say ‘Please don’t put that painfully long needle into my ear’ he had already extracted his first potato. After retrieving several more (it’s been a good harvest this year), he said I needed medicine. Pouring it into my ears, he shook my head one way and then the other. Tweezers were produced and he pulled something looking like my ear drum out of my ear canal. Repeating the procedure in the other ear, he gave me back my
habitual 20:20 hearing and now, when buses hooted their horns, it hurt my head even more. Great.

  As I passed through the lush green countryside, I understood why Gujarat had one of the fastest growing economies in India.

  A tuk-tuk meant for three people and its driver swept by me ferrying twenty-five children back from school. It was nice to see the children in a mixed-sex vehicle. Perhaps this practice would lessen the divide between women and men as they grow up.

  Further on, men were sitting under their trucks, eating a picnic thali which looked very enticing, whilst sheltering from the sun which was getting hotter and hotter as I cycled towards the equator.

  I found my way onto a highway with six lanes of traffic. The outside lane, normally reserved for the speeding vehicles, was filled with cows with horns as big as their legs. It’s a cow’s life here in India – if they want to hang out in the fast lane they damn well do it and no amount of hooting of horns will budge them. The next lane was fairly normal – for an Asian road - just very fast-moving traffic swerving left and right. The third and outside lane was the most interesting. Really I should have said there were eight lanes as the outside lane was again used for two-way traffic. In one direction (normally the wrong direction) I could see herds of cow / goats / sheep, bikes, tuk tuks, rampaging buses, trucks, motorbikes, industrial vehicles, camels, the odd elephant and carts. In the other direction (the correct direction) was the odd tuk tuk banished from the faster lanes by a careering bus, and a lone English cyclist fighting tooth and nail for his little strip of tarmac, and his life.

  Chapter 38

  I arrived in Ahmadabad, the largest city in Gujarat, under the cover of darkness. The old town was erupting. A festival fuse had been lit and it was going off, big time. Wherever you are in India it seems at least one festival is happening on a daily basis. With the range of religions in India, and with such high family and social values, it is hardly surprising.

  This one was a Muslim one, celebrating the birth of the prophet Muhammad. People were drumming and dancing themselves into a frenzy. Then, when I joined in with both, it got totally out of control.

  It was fun to begin with, dancing and drumming with crowds of Indians. But as more and more people got involved and breathing became a struggle, I started to get scared, my smile fell away, and I started to fight. My clothes and my flesh were being grabbed and pulled in a million directions. Each person wanted the white man to be part of what they were doing. I could feel my clothes tearing and my joints loosening. I’d gone too far this time. Why hadn’t I kept away?

  Pushing, shoving, pulling, and tugging myself free of their grasps. I saw a gap and moved swiftly up an adjacent street. The carnival was heading in the opposite direction so I felt I was safe. But no. The carnival split in two. The people in front of me headed in the direction they originally planned and the half behind me changed and followed the white guy who was playing drums like Phil Collins and dancing like an angel.

  It was like a movie chase scene but at a fast walking pace. Taking a few lefts and rights down side streets wide enough for just two or three people, and eventually finding myself lost but free from the crowd, I looked behind me to check that all was clear. I sighed and relaxed, turning to make out where I was, only to see them coming at me from the opposite direction as they enveloped me like ocean currents.

  A group of girls caught my attention as the carnival wave swept by me and I was dragged into a café. They were four stunning French girls, students at the local university on an exchange programme, and they invited me back for a French meal. We arrived at their lecturer’s home as they weren’t allowed boys in their university accommodation. The lecturer another, French lady, Manoushka, invited us all in and I was cooked up a delicious French fish meal as we jammed on the guitar and ukulele.

  Although I was still quite rubbish at it, I’d started making up lyrics to chord sequences. I made one up about the French Connection, which they recorded and cheered at the finale.

  The girls were all studying the arts - some fashion, some animation. I couldn’t believe my luck to have fallen in with these guys. They asked me to stay, and Manoushka offered me a mat on the floor for a while. Let’s be honest - what man could possibly say no? Another festival was creeping up on us and I couldn’t imagine a better crowd to spend it with.

  Each day, as I walked down to buy chai or supplies for my studying compatriots, the children from the slum would run and fling themselves at me, wrapping their arms and legs around my waist. The women of the slums, nursing newly-born children, had different eyes to the other women in India. Whether it was their cast or lack of protection from the sun, their eyes shone like balls of fire. I was in heaven, living with five gorgeous girls and adopted by a slum that thought of me as one of the family.

  I continued my yoga which I was convinced was serving to relieve my aching muscles. As I walked through the slum with Minna, Sandra and my camera, we were welcomed into a house for tea. They got the milk from the goat tethered just outside. I asked if I could have a go and the udders were thrust into my hands. The goat didn’t attack me and I managed to get enough milk for tea, so I felt pretty pleased with myself.

  That night the celebrations for Holi began, even though the festival wasn’t until the next day. We danced round a fire with the slum children and then back at the university. I’d dressed in a white lungi and kurta (the over-sized shirts) that I’d bought my dad for a present. Playing with fire poi (two balls of fire on the end of chains), I managed to set myself alight without noticing. Sandra came running over to me with fear on her face, I had no idea why, and ran into one of the sticks, setting her jumper alight. I then realised my naughty bits were getting warm and saw that my lungi was alight. Rolling in sand and patting helped immensely, although Dad's outfit was somewhat ruined.

  Finally, at the end of a chaotic day, one of the boys who’d been drumming came and rubbed a few handfuls of coloured powder onto my head and beard. Holi had begun!

  Holi is a festival in memory of the miraculous escape that young Prahlad accomplished when Demoness Holika carried him into the fire. Holika was burnt but Prahlad, a staunch devotee of the God Vishnu (the supreme god in Hinduism), escaped without any injuries owing to his unshakable devotion. It is celebrated by people throwing coloured powder and coloured water at each other. What other way could there be? The painting doesn’t start until everyone from children to old people have drunk lassie. A special lassie. Or bang lassie - marijuana in a milk shake, served from the university canteen in the morning.

  I was up way before the students, so took the time to paint my nails and add eyeliner. It’s not traditional but I thought it’d be fun, and the more colour the better in my books. I could hear the kids screaming outside and ran to grab one of my pump action water pistols – I’d bought seven, slowly finding bigger and bigger ones as I traversed the city. I had also spent the morning filling up balloons with water, so I equipped myself with a bag of those.

  I charged outside with a few bags of powder attached to my belt, ready to do a Rambo on these kids, but I had severely underestimated their ability and grace. I was on the floor, covered in every colour under the sun and soaking wet, before I could say, "Tally Ho-li".

  The commotion raised the dead and students alike, and together we fought. I’d been looking forward to playing with the kids in the slum I’d met the previous day and formed a small band to tackle them.

  Boooom! We hit them hard. We had the upper hand initially because they were in poor condition and didn't have the money to buy paint or the water to add it to, but when we shared our goodies, the slum erupted into the brightest display since the Big Bang. It was like a colourful snowball fight in thirty-five degrees heat.

  * * *

  After the festival there was more of India to see and I needed to get going if I wanted to get to Mumbai to celebrate Christmas.

  As I left the university, the children from the slum ran alongside my bike until I slowed to a stop, at w
hich point they all dived on me for cuddles. Leaving those children broke my heart.

  On the way down the coast I got my first taste of the Portuguese colonial effect. Daman. I was expecting to find perfect beaches with crowds of people having fun on them, bodies everywhere, but the bodies were of the hoofed variety. It was the cows who were enjoying themselves at this beach resort, although there were also a handful of Indians spending time with their families there, the women in their beautiful saris I had become accustomed to. Staying the night, I sampled the port of colonialists past. It made me feel like an alcoholic, sipping it in one of the seedy bars and I soon took off back to the hostel.

  Moving alongside the belching trucks, cars, and over-loaded rickshaws, I covered my mouth as a bus burped, covering my face with soot. Along the roadside was arranged a startling array of material. The people living in the slums were hanging out their clothes to dry on the railings after washing them down at the ghat.

  It was December the 23rd – I really wanted to arrive in the city to give me a chance of finding some friendly faces to celebrate Christmas with. I’m the world's biggest fan of Christmas and was already feeling a pang of sadness for not being around for Anya, my much-loved niece's, first one.

  The going was tough and I was falling behind a schedule I’d made out for myself to try to get there on time. A lorry pulled alongside and the driver’s partner hung out of the window and asked me to hold on. I couldn’t help myself. I did. He sped up to one hundred kilometres per hour as I hung on for dear life. The truck swerved round slower vehicles and animals and I, in addition, swerved around the potholes.