Cha Chi Makes Good Business

Arriving at my hotel I swore I would never venture back out onto the streets. Obviously, my wish was not someone else’s command, and venture out I did. It may have been safer inside but the excitement was outside and you couldn’t help but find the whole experience exhilarating. First you have to convince the gauntlet of rickshaw drivers that you really are equipped with the necessary appendages to walk to your destination. Then you are met with a chorus of “yes madames?” and “excuse me excuse mes” as people try to tempt you into their shop. The thing is that you cannot resist turning round even though you know better, heads are on some kind of swivel radar reaction, and you have to be iron willed and minus all reflexes to make it through the gauntlet without being snared. And then there is the begging which is everywhere. Little children pulling at your clothes calling “rupee, rupee”, rubbing their stomachs eyes as round as chapatis. Dirt smeared party dress clad little barefoot girls calling out “Hello chocolate”, “hello chewing gum”, as you become sweetness personified in a nice white wrapper. It’s such a guilt trip, but what can you do, the whole idea is not to encourage dependence upon the tourist, not to encourage begging and yet you’re weighed down by plastic bags full of carpets and pashminas and expensive jewellery. Sometimes it’s hard to even feel anything at all. You temporarily mislay your sense of humanity, and the sympathy vote is lost when the cute little child trails you for half a mile wrapped around your ankles, pulling on you clothes, calling out relentlessly, till the aggression in your voice begins to scare you and you force yourself to blink rapidly and remember this annoyance is actually a hungry child.

Driving rules are somewhat unique and you can learn over time how best to put them into effect, but they were most appropriately and immediately summed up in three short phrases. “Good brakes, good horn, good luck!” And brakes have nothing to do with anything when faced with a challenging obstacle course of pot holes, pigs, sleeping dogs, and hurtling on coming traffic. In fact, more often than not it’s the accelerator which is the preferred pedal (the clutch long ago burnt out and was not deemed important enough to replace!) Most journeys are accompanied by fervent prayer, clenched fists, closed eyes and a blasphemous stream of consciousness.

“Good horn” had me thrown for a while, I didn’t really believe it to be some sexual overture from long distance truck drivers, but every lorry did state in very large ornate letters “Horn Please”. It seemed a strange request. I wondered whether it was an attempt to pre-empt road rage and create some kind of holistic approach to anger management. “Reiki on the road”, “massage on the motor ways”, “assertiveness training for articulated lorry drivers” – a whole host of Therapeutic activities could be learnt from behind the wheel, but I sensed that anger management was perhaps not behind the all pervading honk! After all, every beep of every horn seemed to communicate something different. Honk to express joy, resentment, frustration, romance, bare lust, or simply to mobilize a dozing cow, but not for anger. Maybe there is something to say for beeping ones horn as part of regular driving etiquette. Forget about gesticulation and flaying arms or wordless abuse mouthed at you from behind the safety of windscreens. Get your fist on your horn, change pressure, duration and urgency and you have morse code of the roads.

Sitting in traffic jams in the early hours of the morning, gives you plenty of time to contemplate….I was already immersed in sensory overload, I was already overwhelmed, and terrified. My breathing became erratic as we dodged steaming trucks and kamikaze moped drivers and rickshaw wallahs who thought that even three wheels on their vehicle was too much and so insisted on taking every bend at a pace and angle that defied all laws of gravity ….contemplation soon gave way to acceptance. You don’t try to understand you just soak it all in and hope you’re still alive at the end of the experience. Surprisingly I came to realize that actually the madness has method, or at the very least, consistency. There is a Highway Code of sorts. It isn’t published but it is mutually understood by all road users from the cow to the truck, from the public bus to the camel and starts with that all important Rule Number One, the assumption of immortality! Just as there is an order in the natural world, there is order on the Indian roads. Every road user needs to know his place; there is a strict precedent that dictates who gives way to whom and who is top dog (or should I say top cow!). Needless to say, it is the everyday pedestrian that sits at the bottom of the heap. There is a universally understood mantra that to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail and to stop is defeat. This is observed without exception. It is understood that advance warning of any manoeuvre is not expected and is assumed to be cowardly. It is also to be duly noted that everybody has right of way and if at all possible vehicles should spend at least half their allotted journey on the wrong side of the road at top speed with horn blaring continuously. The horn tone and duration at this point is of the up most importance, and communicates the urgency of most truck driver’s missions. It says in no uncertain terms that a heavy vehicle of a weight far past it’s capacity is hurtling past without any intention of stopping even if it could, which is normally unlikely. Overtaking is an institution in India, you must overtake at every possibility preferably in the face of great danger and at the cost of all lives. Appropriate conditions for overtaking are on blind bends, in rural villages, on roundabouts (going in the wrong direction) and in confined spaces but above all when there is on coming traffic that is larger, faster and even more delapidated!

India conjures image of the profound. It is assumed that once she is under your skin you will undoubtedly be awash with epiphanies and enlightenment. I found my awash in many things …filth, sweat, rickshaw drivers…but never awash with blinding revelation; for me that all came much later. Instead, it was the inane rather than the profound that shaped my days leaving me in a constant state of bemused headshaking laughter at the stupidity I found myself a part of – laughter being the only stop gap between you and insanity.

Divine patience is a pre-requisite if planning to spend any time in Asia. I am lead to believe that the Fairy Godmother of this fine attribute did not attend my birth and laughter became my weapon of choice. It doesn’t take long to learnt that to laugh is to survive days potholed with frustration, bewilderment, and seething anger that is India’s daily diet. It also helps to keep your karmic state unsullied by tearful outbursts at poor unsuspecting rickshaw wallahs, who, due to some horrible injustice in their lives, seem always to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and frequently bore the brunt of my rage. One way or another, India had me in tears or laughter, but rarely did I find myself in the state of guru style bliss most fitting the home to yoga and meditation.

This country does not sneak up on you slowly, she pounces within an instant of arrival in her humid, dusty, chaotic cities. She is not a country that hides her face behind mass tourism, high rise hotels and lawn gardens. She grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you hard till your head reels and your brain rattles and every orifice is full of dust. In fact my first step onto Indian territory gave me the distinct impressions I was in for quite a ride. You prepare yourself for culture shock. People tell you about their holiday in Goa, where, yes, there really were cows wandering along the beach. You buy the Rough Guide/Lonely Planet, and you watch Gandhi the movie and read a Salman Rushdie novel, but when the first thing you see as you enter the arrivals lounge at Delhi airpor, is a pregnant cat strolling casually by, you are struck quite suddenly by the searing realisation that nothing can ever prepare you for the real thing.

And so there I am, at the thresh hold of a new life, my passport newly stamped, chaos all around and the profoundest thing in my mind is why nobody else is concerned by the airport cat, or even seems to notice its presense. I assume that in a country where a cow wandering along the train tracks is considered to be normal and not a cause for a State Of National Emergency (trains are so late there is always at least a day to get the cow out of harms way), a cat bares very little relevance.

NB Ironically enough, it happened to be one of only two cats I ever saw in six months in India. This did cause a little concern as it left me wondering whether ‘goat’ was a rather generic term on the menu!!!!

The cat incident filed for future reference, I decide that maybe I should find my transfer to the hotel. Due to what can solely be providence extending her one and only leg up of the whole 180 days, there was a man waiting for me with a placard bearing my name. I am swiftly ushered into an air-conditioned vehicle and head straight into a 1am Delhi traffic jam. Not what I’d anticipated! I had come face to face with the infamous Indian truck – a true feat of engineering ingenuity. A challenge to all laws of physics and aero dynamics. The King of the Road. Every vehicle is nose to tail in a convoy of a smoking roaring beeping carnivalesque monsters decked out in last years Christmas decorations and Diwali paper chains. And from each belching lorry a collection of ubiquitous elephant gods and blue goddesses designed to protect jangle happily. However, it is clear that the only thing that could truly protect these drivers with a death wish other than a very strong belief in reincarnation is the illusive seat belt. This strange anomaly comes in many forms and can be worn in an assortment of inventive ways, most bearing very little in common with the classic style of over the shoulder, around the waist and into a lock. There is normally a strap of some kind, often worn in a nooselike manner, perhaps for a quick painless death in case of an emergency. Few are connected at both ends to anything of a stable nature and most are held together by a collection of elastic bands, string and blind faith! More compulsory than the inadequate seatbelt is a string or two of good luck marigolds. These tended to hold you in better favour with the gods than some strange western contraption.

If someone had told me that I could achieve the illusive and genetically impossible firm and shapely thighs of a pilates instructor, further more that I could master the fine art of tantric breathing in a matter of minutes. I might be forgiven for assuming I had been whisked off for a comfortable few weeks at an exclusive health farm. Sadly, this health farm was purely mythological (and the firm thighs short lived). The truth of the matter being that a healthy dose of Delhi Belly and six months of some of Asia’s finer squat toilets and open air urinals can have a similar effect. My new found physically enhanced body came care of India. To squat is to have thighs to die for and to breath through ones nose is a recipe for disaster!

I didn’t mean to fall in love with India. I sort of tripped and fell and found myself with an unreasonable affection for a country responsible for such inner turmoil in the bowel district! I suffered my love for India much the same way you might suffer your first kiss. You know it’s good for you though the experience is somewhat confusing. Breathing becomes an issue and something you have to plan. You know you’re supposed to be enjoying it but there is a part of you that just wants to get it over and done with. Yet, without a shadow of a doubt you are aware it can only lead to finer things…but with a little more hindsight this time! I loved India despite myself. Once breathing through your mouth becomes normal, once squat toilets are merely a case of rolling up your trousers and literally wading in and once the local food has stopped passing through your system in three minutes flat, well, you really begin to quite like the place!

It wasn’t my plan to spend the next six months perfecting my bartering skills, or learning the fastest way to disperse eager rickshaw drivers or compiling the top ten ways to reject opportunistic marriage proposals. It wasn’t my plan to be in India at all, but life doesn’t always take into account what you actually want, irrespective of timing, destiny had decided that India was to be my next port of call. You see, I wasn’t looking for the meaning to life, I wasn’t doing the nine to five and searching for the light, I wasn’t having a midlife/early twenties crisis. I wasn’t gap yearing, or training to become a Buddhist. I wasn’t disillusioned with the rat race and looking for adventure, I wasn’t an adrenalin junkie looking for my next high. In fact I was the total opposite. Having soul searched, sky-dived, found the meaning to life, learnt inner peace, achieved spiritual enlightenment, realised the desire to put down some roots, got focused, had adventures, done carnival, sowed my wild oats, had my first maternal instinct and on my return from two years away incidentally found love on my doorstep – I was ready to ‘settle down’. Twenty four months on the road and I was happy to let go of the back pack strings and ‘be content’. But fate and it’s little posse of devilish minions had very different plans for me. I was convincing no-one.

According to my sisters I had achieved full Brownie points by getting job, boyfriend, eclectic social group, new nickname and status as ‘local’ in the village pub in a mere six weeks. So of course, next step is to leave all these glorious home comforts behind and head off into the unknown sporting the brand new title of Tour Leader. If life is too easy it seems you convince yourself something is wrong and do your up-most to send yourself back into the lap of turmoil and confusion. And if turmoil and confusion are what you are looking for you could do no better than a trip to the India subcontinent.

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