Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  Everyone seems to drive with one finger on the horn and another shoved high up a nostril. The ring-road soundtrack is a chaotic symphony of deep blasts, staccato honks, high-pitched beeps, musical notes and a weird duck drone. It’s as if Delhi is blind and driving by sound – except it seems many are deaf. Women are curled up on the pavement sound asleep, and a man is stretched out on the median strip, dead to the danger. On the backs of bikes, on the laps of the motorcycle mums, babies are floppy with dreams.

  It’s clear it would be suicide to drive here and luckily I won’t have to. The ABC has a driver, Abraham. Abraham’s thick curls have crawled off his head like furry caterpillars and they now encircle his ears. He wears a mean pair of black Cuban-heeled cowboy boots and fake Levis.

  But Abe is no cowboy. Small, skinny and incredibly jumpy, he’s worked for the ABC for twenty-five years but still seems nervous around boss-sahibs. He wrings his hands when Jonathan asks him a question, and whispers answers so quietly we have to lean close to pick them up. This just makes him more nervous and he jumps back as if we are going to hit him. Mild-mannered Abe, however, is Tarzan of the traffic jungle. He knows the strict species pecking order: pedestrians are on the bottom and run out of the way of everything, bicycles make way to cycle-rickshaws, which give way to auto-rickshaws, which stop for cars, which are subservient to trucks. Buses stop for one thing and one thing only. Not customers – they jump on while the buses are still moving. The only thing that can stop a bus is the king of the road, the lord of the jungle and the top dog.

  The holy cow.

  Eighty-two percent of Indians are Hindus. Hindus revere cows, probably because one of their favourite gods, Krishna, is a cowherd, and Shiva – the Lord of Destruction – has a bull called Nandi.

  I’ve always thought it hilarious that Indian people chose the most boring, domesticated, compliant and stupidest animal on earth to adore, but already I’m seeing cows in a whole different light. These animals clearly know they rule and they like to mess with our heads. The hump-backed bovines step off median strips just as cars are approaching, they stare down drivers daring them to charge, they turn their noses up at passing elephants and camels, and hold huddles at the busiest intersections where they seem to chat away like the bulls of Gary Larson cartoons. It’s clear they are enjoying themselves.

  But for animals powerful enough to stop traffic and holy enough that they’ll never become steak, cows are treated dreadfully. Scrawny and sickly, they survive by grazing on garbage that’s dumped in plastic bags. The bags collect in their stomachs and strangulate their innards, killing the cows slowly and painfully. Jonathan has already done a story about the urban cowboys of New Delhi who lasso the animals and take them to volunteer vets for operations. Unfortunately the cows are privately owned and once they are restored to health they must be released to eat more plastic.

  New Delhi and its cows can wait, though. Jonathan and I need a week’s holiday and a catch-up after a year apart.

  Before dawn on Monday morning, Abraham drives us through wide avenues, around green roundabouts, past a flower market, and drops us at the New Delhi train station, which doubles as a pavement hotel.

  We negotiate an obstacle course of bodies lying comatose on the concrete as we scamper after a scrawny porter who insists on carrying our backpacks upon his head. The old bloke keeps stumbling and shakes with Parkinson’s disease, so Jonathan ends up carrying our bags and very nearly the porter, who looks at our train seats with an obvious longing for a good lie down. Feeling sorry for him, I hand him fifty rupees (two dollars). But just before the train lurches from the platform, he’s back, yelling at me about ‘no good money’ and throwing the notes on my lap. I look down and swear – I’ve accidentally given him fifty American dollars and the poor guy has no idea of its worth. Humiliated more by his mistake than mine, I hand him one hundred rupees to appease us both. He stumbles off singing with delight and a crowd gathers around him in shock. It’s way too much. (For the next two years the porters at New Delhi station will recognise me as the Mad Madam who paid four dollars for nothing, and demand a similarly huge sum. Some will even shake to arouse my sympathy.)

  Early morning is not an attractive time to travel in India. As we slowly pull out of the city we are hailed with the twenty-one-hundred-bum salute of slum dwellers squatting beside the tracks doing their morning ‘ablutions’. Some smile and wave but most don’t even seem to see the train. It’s as if Indians, living in a country too crowded for privacy, have developed a remarkable ability to look without seeing. They don’t notice the child grabbing their shawl, the beggar pulling at their pants, the filth, the misery, the public nose picking, pissing or pooing, and they seem deaf to the call of the country – a violent guttural growling retch: crrrooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaak, punctuated by a giant spit of phlegm: pppppttttttttttttttttttttaaaaaaaaaaab!

  It’s a sound that punctuates morning, noon and night. Dawn is obviously peak croak time. Inside and outside the carriage a round of throat-clearing begins and crescendos into a symphony of spitting. At about nine it abruptly stops and everyone slurps chai and settles back to snore, burp and fart like foghorns. The chorus of bodily functions is loud enough to permeate the music playing through the headphones of my mini-disc.

  By nine-thirty the ablution hours have ended and it’s safe to look outside the window again. Beyond the gap between the two panes (where a grey mouse is having a great time) we see village after village that look as if they’ve been bombed. Concrete bunker homes have roofs of rubble and twisted metal, plastic is piled up on earth huts, and the streets of sandy soil are covered in rubbish. Battered buffaloes, black-bristled pigs, skittish goats, horribly thin horses and red-arsed mangy monkeys graze the waste. We never lose sight of humanity. Women in bright cotton saris are shopping, sweeping, threshing, planting, weeding, water-collecting, plaiting hair and carrying huge loads of produce on their heads. Children play cricket, fly kites, scrub clean for school and scamper about. Men are mostly sitting on string charpoy beds, drinking small cups of chai, playing cards or just squatting on their heels and watching the world go by.

  Five hours later we chug into the small town of Derradun where we organise a taxi to take us the two hundred kilometres to Rishikesh. After haggling over the price – that is ten times what it should be, because we aren’t Indian – a scrawny, dopey-looking driver who speaks some English promises to be ready in an hour.

  ‘I am Kunti. Kunti will come in one hours,’ he yells.

  We duck into a fly-infested restaurant, where we are pointedly ignored by cheesecloth-clad tourists in trainee dreadlocks who seem determined to believe they are the only travellers to have discovered the delights of Derradun. We eat and wait. And wait. And wait.

  After two hours Jonathan waits by the restaurant door while I walk up the long dusty road where we saw Kunti heading earlier. While attempting to avoid a scuzzy dog that has half its brain showing through its scalp, I accidentally walk through a circle of men who gape and giggle hysterically at my arse. I’m wearing hideously baggy pants and vow to buy a sack for future travels. I come across some sort of a taxi rest stop and find our driver lying on a charpoy rope bed holding hands and linking legs with another man. I hate to break up such an intimate scene, but after being ignored for a couple of minutes I walk over to the end of the bed with my hands on my hips and say in my best hey-I-don’t-mind-if-you’re-gay-but-you’ve-got-a-job-to-do voice, ‘You are our taxi-man to Rishikesh.’

  ‘Yes, madam, I am Kunti.’ He wobbles his head and doesn’t take his eyes off his mate, whose arm he is now stroking.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘No, madam, on time.’

  He’s still not looking at me.

  ‘You were meant to come an hour ago,’ I sigh (I’m getting really cranky now).

  ‘Yeeeeesss,’ drawls his friend.

  ‘We’ve come, we’re there,’ snaps Kunti.

  ‘No, you are here.’

  ‘And there.’

>   ‘So you are here and there?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  They both roll their eyes as if I’m mad.

  ‘So you are in two places at once, are you?’

  My eyes are now rolling back in my head.

  ‘Yes.’

  The driver now moves his eyes to focus on his friend’s crotch.

  ‘Can you say no?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Say it then.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  I stomp back to the restaurant ranting and raving like a lunatic and remembering more and more about why this country drove me mad. Jonathan is sympathetic but more practised at patience.

  ‘Just think, I have to work here,’ he laughs but his eyes betray a rising fear that I’ll leave him within a month.

  The Tweedledee and Tweedledum of Derradun turn up an hour later pretending it’s three hours before and that the previous conversation never happened.

  But their Ambassador cab makes up for their shortcomings. It has brown velour seats, an orange roof and a back-window curtain of purple paisley, and it doubles as a mobile temple. The dashboard has a fluorescent Ganesh (the elephant god), an orange toy cow, a snow dome of Satya Sai Baba (the Afro-haired living god of Bangalore), and a blue plastic Shiva god bouncing on a spring. A brown, four-armed Barbie in a sari stands on a lotus and she has an aura of tiny lights that flash when we brake.

  ‘She is Lakshmi, goddess of money,’ states Tweedledee.

  ‘Our favourite,’ adds Tweedledum, who is practically sitting on his boyfriend’s lap.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ laughs Jonathan, clearly amused by the antics of the daft duo.

  Below Lakshmi is a faded photo of the driver’s parents, a tiny national flag saying ‘Proud to be Indian’ and a CD spinning on a string. During my last trip to India I was an extreme atheist, contemptuous of all religion. I’d arrogantly ignored the colour and spectacle of Hinduism and its acceptance of a multitude of ways to the divine. Now I find myself immediately tickled by the kitsch aesthetic and within half an hour I’m almost a convert – praying to all these gods and more – because Kunti, the most annoying man in the world, drives like the maddest, playing chicken with everything on the road, including the chickens. With one hand on the horn and another on his friend’s horn, Kunti steers with his knees and speeds straight towards anything that could kill us, veering just as we are about to crash. I shut my eyes, Jonathan swears and the driver and his friend sing along to a tape featuring the high-pitched wail of a woman obviously being tortured.

  Then, of course, after assuring us they know exactly where they are going, we get hopelessly lost.

  ‘You don’t know where Rishikesh is, do you?’ I say.

  ‘Yes, of course, madam.’

  ‘Well, why are you stopping and asking everyone and why do you keep changing directions then?’

  They turn the tape up.

  Jonathan yells over the top, ‘Are you lost?’

  They ignore us.

  Some time later, on a narrow road where grey stones cascade down a sharp valley, we get out to wee behind some rocks. Just as I’m yanking up my pants a schoolbus pulls up and all the children get out and run towards us with cameras and autograph books. We bolt like Beatles having a hard day’s night, pursued by schoolboys screaming ‘photo, photo’, and girls with long neat plaits giggling ‘autograph, Auntie, autograph’. They trap us beside the car, and we give in.

  This is my first photo op this trip, but I’m already on mantel-pieces all over India. I now remember that I spent hours on my last journey posing for snaps while holding young babies, hand-in-hand with shy daughters and with boys trying to put their arm around their easy western girlfriend. It’s again time to abandon shyness, personal space and privacy and to become spectacle as well as spectator. Eleven years ago, as an awkward post-adolescent, this annoyed me intensely, but now I see it’s a fair exchange for my voyeurism.

  Besides, I’m now better at being public property and ready for a change in my public role. Being a broadcaster at Triple J isn’t just a job; it’s a life. In Australia my identity has been defined through the airwaves and the television. I really enjoy being part of people’s lives but I’ve grown weary of the pitfalls. F-grade celebrities get the sperm-covered letters without the sex, the death threats without the protection, and the stalkers without the psychological assistance. A persistent, psychologically troubled bloke had been pestering me for the last year, and while one of my bosses thought it must have been ‘flattering’, it just made me feel scared, vulnerable and violated. Stalkers colonise your mind and I wanted mine back. Leaving my wonderful job was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but perhaps I didn’t just do it just for love. A part of me wanted to reclaim myself, to redefine my identity, to grow up professionally, to embrace anonymity and to get rid of the stalker. In some ways I’m already regretting my move away from the good life but right now I’m enjoying the fact that here in India I’m famous for just being white.

  In trade for our photo, the schoolbus driver gives us the first sensible directions to Rishikesh and we head up the Himalayan foothills to stay in a hut in the grounds of a handsome old hunting lodge. We tip Tweedledum and Tweedledee handsomely for not killing us and then kiss the ground. Here, a gorgeous garden somehow grows out of crumbling dry dirt: white and pink poppies, yellow chrysanthemums, deep crimson buds, orange star-shaped things and some bizarre cabbage-like vegetables. Steep, jagged cliffs with profiles like steak knifes rise above us. Tiny villages perch perilously on top. The buzz of a billion Indians and their noisy cars is so distant I can now hear subtle sounds: the caw of crows, the squawk of myna birds, and the chattering squeak of a tiny squirrel. Yet it’s a landscape of tired splendour. The sky is too exhausted to be blue and it sits low on my shoulders; the earth seems drained of its vitality and the trees are limp and dusty. The only thing showing any sparkle is the Ganges – it burbles over small rapids swirling blue-green and broad.

  Swimming in India’s most holy river is meant to cleanse you of sin and a sign in front of our hut reads: ‘IF YOU STAND ON ONE LEG IN GANGA WATERS FROM ONE NEW MOON TO THE NEXT – NOT ADVISABLE – IT WILL HEAL YOUR BODY OF ANY PROBLEM IN ANY ORGAN.’

  Jonathan and I decide to take our host’s sensible advice and let our eyes be healed by a quiet look at the holy waters.

  But even here, in the middle of nowhere, there’s someone. Within twenty seconds two young imps with fishing rods appear and squat beside us to exchange the usual dialogue of the traveller. This involves exchanging ‘good’ names (everyone’s names are good in India), admitting we are Australian and agreeing that Shane Warne is a great cricketer but a naughty man. That’s the end of the boys’ English but they seem content to stay and stare at us with absolute fascination and intense concentration. We sing them a few verses of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as if to earn their adoration, but then resolve to shake them by walking through the scrub.

  Deep within the faded foliage we’re still not alone. Women with long skirts, silver anklets and broad backs unload huge bundles of sticks from their heads as they take time out from their work to laugh at us. We escape by climbing a mountain. Right on the lip, an ancient lady with a weathered, leathery face decorated with tiny tattoos emerges from nowhere and blocks our way. She reaches out, cups my face in her huge, hard hand, and babbles in Hindi. I don’t understand a word but I’m spellbound. It seems she’s telling me something I can’t hear but need to know, perhaps that in India solitude is a selfish pursuit and there are rewards for going without.

  One day we take a trip into Rishikesh itself, the Ganges holy town where the Beatles came to meet the Maharishi. It’s a dirty, dusty strip of clogged streets, ashram yoga centres and mad markets. Spirituality is for sale.

  We walk past three-D photos of Indian gods, plastic key rings of saints, t-shirts saying ‘Om’, vials of holy Ganges water, photos of fat movie stars and even the ratty, dust-clogged dreadlocks of shorn sadhus. Sadhus are men who have abandoned
their families to travel India’s sacred sites and dedicate their lives to worship. They and the shopkeepers seem to worship us as walking dollar signs – we are constantly surrounded, followed, hassled and ordered to give money or buy crap at one hundred times the local price.

  We tire of inane chats that always end in ‘come to my shop’, free guided tours that inevitably lead to a beg for funds and offerings of assistance with puja (prayers and offerings), which inevitably descend into demands for a huge donation to the nearest Brahmin (a member of the priestly caste). It seems these people are either deaf to the word ‘no’ or they are the biggest optimists in the world – they follow us for miles still trying their sales pitch, their begging plea or their speech about the delights of Rishikesh. One little girl chases me and pulls my shirt for half an hour. I give in and buy her little pots of coloured powder for forehead tikka spots, but when I open them I realise the gold and silver containers are empty. I return to complain but the imp has gone and in her place is a woman begging.

  She hasn’t got a face.

  Above her neck is a mass of melted flesh like burnt candle wax. Two pools of black stare out and stumps of burnt flesh wrapped in rags plead up at me. I retch in horror and run. This is my first glimpse of a dowry burning – where a woman is set alight in a ‘cooking accident’ because her husband or mother-in-law want more dowry money and attempt to kill to get it. If the bride dies, the husband can marry again and collect another dowry; if she lives, she can be shamed into leaving the house as damaged, useless goods. I want to scream with shock, fury and sadness but there’re too many people staring at me, following me and grabbing me. There’s just no room for rage.