Time and a Ticket

by Peter Benchley

  "Grand," I said. "That makes all the difference. But suppose you don't like him? What do you do then?"

  "You tell your parents that you don't like him, and often your parents will find you someone else. But that happens very rarely. Most of the time the parents pick well."

  "And what about you? When are you getting married?"

  "I don't know," she said. "When I finish school, I guess."

  "Do you know who you're going to marry?"

  "Of course not. That's still more than a year away."

  "Have your parents picked him yet?"

  "I don't know. I haven't asked them. I imagine they have someone in mind."

  "What about a little thing called love?"

  "What do you mean, 'love'? If your parents have chosen well, then as you live with your husband you learn to respect him and understand him. You have mutual interests—again, if your parents have chosen well—and mutual tastes. You are, if you will, compatible."

  "Is there never any romantic love, any of that feeling that you can't live without someone, that every minute you're away is painful and every minute you're together is wonderful? Haven't you ever felt that way about someone?"

  She smiled. Her face was beautiful—dark eyes, a fine, straight nose, thin lips, and straight black hair that fell down to her shoulders in a long braid. "That is a silly notion," she said. "It is inconceivable to me."

  I paused for a moment, then said, "Has an Indian girl ever married a Frenchman?"

  "I guess so, at one time or other. Two years ago, a friend of mine married an Englishman. She claimed that she felt this love you speak of. I even remember her phrase for it: she said to me, Tm madly in love with him.' All her friends thought she was crazy."

  "Is she happy now?"

  "I haven't heard from her."

  "What about sex?" I said. "Is there no love in—"

  "Please," she said. "Let us not talk about sex. One does not."

  We spent the rest of the hour talking about America's reasons for not admitting Red China to the U.N.

  In the taxi back to town, Charlie said, "And how did you make out?"

  "Miserably. Yourself?"

  "Jeezeree! I mentioned one thing about going out with members of the opposite sex, and you'd have thought I was asking her if she slept with her brother, the way she reacted. Wouldn't say another word to me."

  That night we walked past a Parsee wedding ceremony.

  Crowds of people were standing around eating ice cream and drinking soda, and the orchestra was playing "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."

  I said, ''There's your mysterious East for you." "Never mind," replied Charlie. "Those girls are sure mysterious."

  12

  After ten days in New Delhi, we knew we had to get out. We had seen the sights and had seen all the people we had access to, and we had fallen into the rut of doing nothing but reading Time and going to American movies. We might as well have been in New Rochelle. Also, as much as the heat made us reluctant to move anywhere, we knew that only by going into the countryside could we see India. Delhi is tourist-oriented, and so are the people.

  ("Baksheesh, sa'ab, give me one rupee. No mama, no papa. Give me one rupee. Wait, sa'ab. I tell your fortune."

  "No."

  "What you say if I tell your mother's name?"

  "No."

  "Only five rupees, sa'ab. No charge if I don't tell your mother's name. If I do it, then you let me tell fortune."

  "You can't tell me my mother's name."

  "Here, sa'ab, hold piece of paper."

  A little sleight of hand, and a dollar is gone, for which you have found that you will be given fifty thousand dollars, that a blond girl will change your life, and that you must be on the lookout for a red-haired man named Jim who is up to no good.)

  We had heard that the Peace Corps had a group of twenty-six workers in India, and that they were stationed in Lud-hiana, a town in the Punjab some hundred and fifty miles north of Delhi. We tried to arrange a visit, but the American Embassy could do nothing for us, and recommended that we just go up and try to see them. The office of the Peace Corps in Delhi could not provide help, either, for if they did anything for us, they would then have to provide service for every tourist. We would have to go on our own, and leave any hospitality to the discretion of the individual representatives.

  The trip to Ludhiana is overnight on the train, through dry, dusty, flat country. We were told to lock our compartment door, for in stations and at water stops the locals are prone to climbing in and making off with whatever they find. We were also advised not to allow anyone to sleep on our floor, which people often ask to do, for every year a few people are murdered and/or robbed by the seemingly decrepit old men to whom they have extended this harmless courtesy. And we were told not to drink water on the train or eat the food on the station platforms, since there is no point in getting dysentery any sooner than is absolutely necessary. Later, after traveling extensively and healthily on trains throughout India, we would get cocky and start eating station food, to our great and prolonged discomfort. In all fairness to the opposite school of thought, there are those who believe that you might as well eat and drink everything everywhere, because you're going to get sick sooner or later, and the sooner you do get sick, the less suspense you have to go through as to when you are going to get sick. Again, that's the other school of thought. But one of its more illustrious advocates was Ambassador Galbraith, so perhaps there's something to it.

  We arrived in Ludhiana at six-thirty in the morning, and were immediately set upon by ranks of bicycle rickshaws, the local taxis. Finally, after each of our mothers had been cursed, had the milk of her mother cursed, and had every child until her next incarnation spat upon, we fell into two rickshaws and told the drivers to take us to a hotel. Our intent was not to stay in a hotel, but, hopefully, to find a concierge who spoke English and could direct us to Peace Corps headquarters. We tried three hotels—one above a fish market, one behind a fruit market, and the Grand Hotel— before we found a man who could speak English. But he didn't know what the Peace Corps was, and he directed us to the post office. Finally, at eight-thirty, we were deposited, panting in the ninety-degree heat, at the Peace Corps barracks.

  We were met by the head of the group, a young man of about twenty-three, named Paul Winther. We told him that we had come up to see them and that we wondered if we could talk to them or perhaps even see what they were doing. Paul said that not only could we see them work, but they would put us up and feed us for a couple of days if we wanted to stay. They had some extra bicycles, and he said we could go out that afternoon with one member of the group who was going from village to village talking to the people. The group had not been there long (two or three months), and they were still trying to get acquainted with and gain the confidence of the people. We put our suitcases inside and changed our clothes, and he showed us around the barracks and told us what their life was like. He wouldn't describe the work they were doing, since he said we'd get a chance to see that for ourselves.

  The barracks, a two-story white frame house, served as headquarters for the twenty-six Peace Corps representatives in India. They are, or were in March of 1962, all in the Punjab—some in Amritsar, some in Chandigarh, some moving from town to town. Only six or seven actually lived at the Ludhiana barracks, and of those, two or three spent the week nights in the surrounding villages. Whenever possible, groups from the other towns spent their weekends in Ludhiana. The barracks were sparsely furnished, with iron bunks, one toilet and one shower. When we were there, all washing was done at an outside pump, since something was wrong with the bathroom plumbing.

  Facilities for entertainment simply did not exist. The province is dry except for a low-proof beer. There are no English-language films north of Delhi. All books must be specially shipped up from Delhi. Since time-honored Indian customs stringently regulate the social activities of young women, the Peace Corps group cannot even indulge in the major I
ndian pastime, sex (called Poor Man's Polo), which is the only entertainment Indians in that area have and which is one of the reasons why India's population grows at such an alarming rate. There was one woman among the twenty-six Peace Corps representatives, and she was married to another member of the Corps in the Punjab. So most of the days began and ended early, and consisted almost entirely of work, either with the Indian people or around the barracks.

  We carried lunch with us, two sandwiches and some fruit, and Charlie and I, led by a boy named Arthur, started out on bicycles. The villages we were going to visit were on the other side of Ludhiana, so we had to pass through the town. The barracks was about a mile from the center of Ludhiana, and as we went along the paved road, Arthur explained his job to us. Unlike most of the others in the group, he was not a farmer, nor was he trained in any technical or industrial field. He had had some agricultural training, but not enough to qualify him to work with farmers on specific problems. Instead, for the first few months he had had to try to get to know the people of the villages and their problems—how their school systems worked and what could be done to improve them, how the villages were organized, what they needed, what interests and needs and desires the people had, and on and on ad infinitum. He had to learn the customs of the Punjab, and if he could, learn the language. In a few weeks he had mastered the simple phrases, the how-do-you-dos, the thank-yous, the farewells. He told us that the way to greet a Punjabi was to say "soc-city-agah."

  We rode into Ludhiana. It is a large industrial town, and like all Indian towns, it is filthy and overpopulated. The food is sold at open-air markets, and flies swarm over everything. Cows wander the streets, people throw garbage wherever they feel like throwing it, and from morning till night the streets are jammed with masses of aimless, shuffling humanity. There are very few cars, but many trucks and innumerable bicycles. The sound of frantically ringing bicycle bells stands out above all others. It is usually impossible to ride a bicycle on the main streets—the crowds are too thick. On the side streets, one must ride with one hand on the brake, the other on the bell, for everyone rides fast, and pedestrians are sluggishly unconcerned about their own well-being. We had been told that for drivers of automobiles, the hit-and-run philosophy is the only way to survive, which did not cheer us.

  Outside of town, we traveled on paved roads for about a mile, then turned off onto dirt tracks. It is all farm country, largely wheat, and irrigated by rivers. Little of the land is planted, and where there are not cultivated fields, the land is parched and barren. The villages are small and close together, no more than a mile or two apart. The houses are brick or mud or clay, or a combination of all three. They are small and sparsely furnished.

  In the distance, we heard a machine working with a strange sound, a hollow "pokapokapokapoka," and we asked Arthur what it was. A diesel pump, he said, and the reason the noise was so loud was that the owner of such a device was terribly proud of it and replaced the muffler with an echo can so it could be heard, his status symbol, all around the neighboring countryside.

  We stopped at a school in a village named Gill. The principal, a tall, bearded Sikh wearing a white turban and a faded blue blazer, came to greet us. He smiled warmly at Arthur and put his palms together, fingers pointing upward, bowed, and said, "Soc-aty-agah." Arthur replied, and introduced us to the principal and the teachers, and we had soc-aty-agahs all around, which amused the Indians. Then the principal showed us around the school. His English was excellent, but he and one other teacher were the only ones who spoke anything but Punjabi. The others, he said, could not even speak Hindi, which is, with English, the official language of India.

  The school was a yard about thirty yards on each side, with one low building in the middle for classes, and a small stone hut for the office. The classroom building was made of stone and wood, about eight feet wide and sixty feet long, and it had no chairs, no desks, and no blackboard. The children sat on straw mats on the stone floor and faced one end, where the teacher stood. It was called a middle school, and had four classes, grades five through eight. There were two hundred students in the school, taught by seven teachers, the principal among them. They were taught Punjabi, mathematics, and "general knowledge"—which included such subjects as geography and reading. In the sixth or seventh grade, they began Hindi and English.

  When we had seen the school, the principal invited us into his office for tea. The office was furnished with a desk and three chairs. It was small, perhaps six feet by eight, and one window was cut into the stone wall. The principal sat at his desk, and Arthur, Charlie, and I sat in the three chairs.

  The teachers stood by the desk. Outside, the whole school gathered around the hut, and the children giggled and tittered and shoved one another until one of the teachers went out and silenced them. Ten cups were laid out, and a drink which was half tea and half milk was served from a tin can.

  As is customary, the conversation began with standard platitudes—Charlie and I: "We are here to learn."

  Arthur: "The eyes of the world are on India."

  The Principal: "America has always shown brotherhood and friendship to India."

  Arthur: "The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow." Then we talked about the school. They needed books, he said, books and writing implements. The thought of a reasonable physical plant for the school was so obviously impossible that it was never brought up. Instead, he asked once about the physical layout of a comparable school in America. He said he would like to go to America, but what little money he saved went to support his parents. He was the last son, so that was his duty. He had once tried to go to America, but the wait for the visa was too long. Besides, he felt he was doing more for his country where he was. There are too few teachers in India, he said, and he felt sure that education was the only thing that could make her a truly independent, self-sufficient country. It was a start, at least. A country that wishes to progress cannot let half its people spend their lives in total ignorance.

  The serious discussion over, the principal asked us to sing an American song. We three conferred, and found that except for the first verse of "Row, row, row your boat . . ." the only song we knew in common was "Dixie." And Charlie was the only one who was sure of that. We plunged, only to find that our three voices were in conflicting ranges, so after less than one verse, the words of which I reversed, we gave up on "Dixie." The principal and the teachers smiled politely, and then, at a nod from the principal, a young teacher sat on a corner of the desk and began tapping out a quick, complicated rhythm with his right hand.

  I am not a lover of Indian music. My musical tastes are relatively unsophisticated, and in vocal music I am too used to a melody line and a recognizable rhythm to readily accept the sort of free form approach of the Orientals. But what this young man sang was exquisite. He had a light, high voice that sounded impossibly delicate. The words were not sharply formed, but rather caressed by his lips. He sang a song about the Punjab, accompanying himself with the intricate rhythms his right hand tapped out on the desk. We couldn't understand a word, but there was such gentleness about the way he sang, that whatever he was saying, we were prepared to believe him. It is the only song about a country, the only national or regional anthem, I've ever heard that gets its message across softly and with feeling without blaring itself out, without bombast.

  When the teacher finished, the principal asked us if we would sing a typical popular song of America, something many people know that is not an anthem or, as he phrased it, "a political song*" Arthur denied knowledge of any. I thought of becoming suddenly mute, when Charlie spoke up and said that he and I had a smashing version of "Funny Valentine" that we'd love to do. We began, with Charlie improvising here and there and I reaching for notes I never knew existed, and somehow we got through it. The Indians, to whom this music was as strange as theirs was to us, were cordial. I don't think we moved them.

  We talked for a few minutes more, and then went out and had our pictures taken with the student
s and teachers. A few more platitudes—

  Arthur: "Education is progress."

  The Principal: "Your open hearts are an inspiration to us."

  Charlie and I: "Right." —and we rode off down the dusty path.

  During the afternoon, we stopped at two or three more villages, and at each one the procedure was the same: platitudes, tea, serious talk, jollity, more platitudes. We were always most hospitably received, and the villagers were often proud to show us their tiny houses.

  On the way back to Ludhiana, I asked Arthur if our afternoon had accomplished anything in terms of Peace Corps work. He said it had. For the first few months, his only task would be to get the people to know and trust him, to learn that they could talk to him as a friend. All the formality, all the bromides, were simply a part of the Indian process of making friends. At first, he said, their conversations had been nothing but bromides. Then, gradually, he found he could talk about more concrete things, and now the platitudes came only at the beginning and end of their meetings. Eventually, he hoped, the formality would disappear entirely, and he would be able to come and go in the villages without causing a flurry of bowing and politeness. Then he would be accepted, and only then could he really begin to help them, to advise them and believe that they would take his advice.

  That night for dinner we had chicken and milk and Jello. The group ate Indian cooking one day, American the next, and we were lucky enough to be there for the American night. We had had curry twice a day for so long that anything not bathed in spice was a relief. After dinner, we talked for a few minutes, and then went to bed. Charlie and I flipped for the only available pillow, and he won, so I rolled up a blanket and put it under my head. The night was cool, and we slept soundly, each secretly congratulating himself for actually having accomplished something during the day.

  We were awakened early by someone calling us. We ran upstairs to the porch, and there was the whole group gathered at the rail, looking off to the northeast. "The Himalayas," said Paul, pointing. "You can see them only on very clear mornings, and even then only early in the morning. As soon as the heat begins to rise, they're lost."