A passage through India

I am travelling executive class on the Delhi-Chandigarh express. The beautifully-tailored young man behind me has taken a call on his mobile phone; he is now in animated discussion with two other go-getters about mobile phone models, modems and notebook computers – the talk is all dialling zones and which is “the best instrument on the market”. Is this modern India? But wait. There is only one executive-class carriage on the train. Beyond this air-conditioned, plugged-in, calm, cellular world lies the other India – crowded compartments, stinking toilets, boys sitting with their legs dangling from open doors. How the other half lives. Mostly.

Chandigarh is a hole – but an historically interesting hole. It was built pretty well from scratch by Le Corbusier in the 1950s. The father of modernism was employed by Nehru to build a state capital for Punjab – Lahore, the old capital, had been bagged by Pakistan. Le Corbusier spent 10 years building the city: parcelled into 47 self-contained sectors; precisely regimented (but low-level) housing; lots of green space; a splendid university and a group of concrete government buildings that bear the architect’s signature. The latter probably looked marvellous in about 1960; today, they look grim.

Driving out of Chandigarh up into the hills – these “hills” are the start of the Himalayas – the temperature cools noticeably. Kasauli, which is at 7,000ft, used to be a Raj hill station. It remains a military town – Indian now, of course, with entry controlled by checkpoint. It exudes prosperity and has some very wealthy residents who enjoy grand views and the security of being in a controlled zone. Has one Raj replaced another?

I take the noon train back to Delhi. For the last three or four miles into the city, the tracks are bordered by hideous shanty towns. Children, smiling broadly and waving at the train, play on the tracks; thin men collect rubbish from the lines. J G Farrell, in a diary he kept of a trip to India, commented on how quickly western eyes become used to these sights, as horror piles upon horror. I’ve yet to reach that stage: this is a vision of the inferno, kept alight with piles of burning rubbish.

Am collected from Delhi station – if I hadn’t been, I might still be there – and taken to the Taj Palace Hotel, where, on balance, I think I would like to spend the rest of my time in India. The hotel pool is ringed with westerners – Germans with perfect bodies, Americans with imperfect ones. December to March is the peak time for western visitors; then it gets too hot. I eventually venture out intending to have a short walk but give in to the third motorised rickshaw driver to demand he give me a guided tour. He is vague on price and his meter looks as if it last worked in about 1952, but we set off for the Lutyens-designed Parliament building and the President’s House, the imposing Gate of India (an Arc de Triomphe lookalike) and the tacky Connaught Place, the centre of Delhi. He also insists I visit a carpet shop – every driver is on a percentage – where I narrowly avoid buying a rug.

Revived by my stay at the Taj Palace, a few days later I join the stream of traffic on the Bombay Highway. Trucks mainly, which can get from Delhi to Bombay in about three days, but much else besides – bicycles, buses, jeep taxis crammed with passengers, newlyweds on a motorbike, a motorised rickshaw out of which at least 14 perfectly-turned-out schoolchildren clamber, carts pulled by donkeys, bullocks and camels, and groups of pilgrims carrying water from the Ganges back to their villages in Rajasthan. They walk hundreds of miles to fetch the water, usually in groups of about 10 and carrying bright garlands. I ask my driver, a devout man who seems equally at home with Hinduism and Sikhism, to explain the symbolism. I quickly get lost, but like his reply to my question about the number of deities: “In India, there are 900 million gods.” The two-lane highway is surprisingly jam-free – proof that anarchy can work. “Always be Mr Late, not Late Mr,” advises one sign wisely. For the first time, I feel I like India – this middling, winning-through, all-on-the-road-together India.

A couple of hours’ drive from Delhi, and halfway between the capital and Jaipur, is Neemrana, a typical Rajasthani village with a magnificent fort palace, which has been tastefully converted into a hotel. With its heat, scrubland, camels and groups of old men playing cards, Rajasthan immediately feels like home, and you can see why it is the most popular destination for Brits. Time feels suspended, not least in this miraculously preserved 15th-century fort. Now I have to make a decision. I had intended to head north to the old Raj town of Mussoorie, but lower temperatures and more Himalayan foothills don’t appeal. Perhaps the bands of pilgrims heading back from the Ganges carrying their precious loads inspire me. I need to cleanse my soul too. I will head for Benares, now known by its pre-Raj name, Varanasi.

The flights from Delhi to Varanasi are full, and since it’s 12 hours by train, I take the sleeper. I book first class – it costs about £27 – but there is no first class on the train. There’s less privacy in second class, and less security too. My travelling companions, also downgraded, are terrific: a major-league MD of a glass-making company, who is brilliant on Indian history and politics, and the owner of a three-star hotel in Varanasi. I sleep fitfully – mildly, but probably unnecessarily, concerned that my luggage will disappear overnight. (The fact that hawkers were selling locks at New Delhi station had not inspired confidence.) Arrive at Mughal Sarai, the mainline station near Varanasi, at 7.30am and take a taxi with my hotelier-friend into town through an improbable traffic jam that can only be negotiated by leaving the road entirely and driving along the adjoining dust track.

The hotelier is very proud of his city, one of the oldest in the world, and points out the ghats – the steps that lead down to the river – as we cross the bridge. Home of Shiva, the Lord of All, Varanasi is usually called the “City of Light”, but I prefer his description – the “city of learning and burning”. It has three universities and does a roaring trade in cremations, with the ashes of the dead being scattered in the sacred waters.

Stay at the $100-a-night Taj Ganges, which is distinctly dispiriting. A large, unhappy-looking Saga group are having breakfast, while a red-faced man berates the major-domo because the milk is too hot or too cold or too something. Outside, another group is lined up watching snake-charmers and performing monkeys. I feel guilty on several counts: I hate the it’s-Thursday-so-it-must-be-Varanasi mentality, but I am engaged in precisely that “let’s-do-India-in-17-days” exercise. I loathe the snakes being charmed on the lawn in front of me, but I prefer to stay at this high-walled, Fodor-recommended, five-star hotel than in a budget hotel in the middle of town. I despise the insulated view that western tourists have of India – from the sixth floor of top-class hotels, with guides and attendants to smoothe over problems. But, of course, I have been cocooned in just that way.

Take a pedal-driven rickshaw down to the Ganges, a 20-minute ride away. Hairy but enjoyable journey through the traffic, brushing against cars and motorbikes, buses and bullocks. Down to the ghats, the 70 or so flights of steps that connect the city to the river. The driver, of course, has a friend with a boat who, for an outrageous fee – which I pay out of a combination of naivety and fellow feeling – gives me a two-hour tour of the sacred left bank. Again, touristic voyeurism. This is the stretch of the river where Hindus bathe, and where they come to dispose of the ashes of their dead. Two of the ghats are designated as places for cremation: one for the poor, the other for those who can afford higher fees and proper pyres – even in death, perhaps especially in death, India is rigidly hierarchical.

A pyre is built and the body burned for three hours or so, with the ashes then placed in an urn and thrown into the river by the eldest son. On Manikarnika Ghat, there are 15 fires burning, with a queue of elaborately-trussed bodies waiting their turn. My oarsman takes his boat to within a few feet of the ghat, close enough to hear the crack as the chief mourner breaks a corpse’s skull with a stick. Oddly, because there is no hostility from the mourners (outward displays of emotion are frowned upon), I feel no shame. No doubt I should. At the second burning ghat – reserved for the poor, lepers, priests and children – there is the horrible sight of feet protruding from a pyre, always the last thing to burn. Babies are given up to the waters without cremation, wrapped in a sheet. A father, entirely expressionless, and an uncle are being rowed out to the centre of the river with a tiny white bundle, which with scarcely a moment’s hesitation he lets slip, straight to God, without the travails of an earthly life, so Hinduism would have it.

It is inspirational, but surreal too. The tourists; the hawkers and beggars and money-making boatmen; the hippies on houseboats. It has a resort feel to it; for some, of course, the last resort. Without meaning disrespect to a great religion, whose home Varanasi has been for 3,000 years, it feels like Brighton. The decaying maharajahs’ palaces all along the bank – built in the 18th century, attempting to outdo each other in opulence; the children splashing in the river. Religious fervour and the business of life hand in hand, as throughout India. Later, back in the lobby of the hotel, I overhear an elderly American say to her husband: “Don’t bother to unpack, we’re flying to Kathmandu tomorrow.” Millennia of religious tradition and cultural history compressed into half a day.

The next day I hire a taxi and drive to Sarnath. As well as being the historic centre of Hinduism, Varanasi is also the founding location of Buddhism – the Buddha preached his first sermon here – and has a claim to be the centre of Jainism too. A religious triple-whammy. A resourceful young man manages in the space of a few moments to sell me two Cokes and a set of slides of Varanasi, and to offer to act as my guide, which is fine except that his English is idiosyncratic and his facts perhaps imperfect. He convinces me that the Buddha’s remains are in the central stupa (shrine), though I discover later that they are in a silver casket in a temple at the edge of the park.

Buddhist pilgrims to Sarnath have to walk 108 times around the stupa, counting the 108 beads on their rosary. My guide, rather audaciously, stops one elderly pilgrim in mid-walk and asks for her rosary to show me the beads, thus losing her place. I edge away guiltily as she begins the procession all over again. I try hard to think deeply spiritual thoughts, touching the stupa to derive inspiration, but “rupee” is also a sacred word at Sarnath. You are stopped at frequent intervals by small children selling carrots to feed the deer or begging for money. I am also touched for a contribution by two “holy men” – one asks whether I want to take his picture; the other says he is saving up for a heart bypass operation. Buddha, can you spare a dime?

The following day, having communed with the soul of India, it is time to visit its vigorously beating heart. I leave Varanasi and head for Mughal Sarai to catch the mail train to Calcutta. Poetry itself, except for the rat scurrying about in the station’s first-class waiting room. Thank God/Shiva/Rama/Buddha that I’m not in second class. The journey to Calcutta is uneventful. Few Indians can afford “First AC” and my sole companion is a senior railway official, who gets to travel free. He entertains me with facts about the railway network, of which he is justifiably proud: 60,000km of track, 1.3 million employees, 50 million passengers a day, etc.

I reach Calcutta at 7am and take a taxi through an already bustling town. Calcutta is an odd amalgam – of proudly autonomous Bengali culture, of Asian wheeler-dealery, and of decaying Raj traditions. The Maidan park and the centre of Calcutta are creations of the British, who attempted to make a home from home in what was then the capital of British India. They built a cathedral called St Paul’s, sporting clubs, a racecourse which still runs pukka classics, spacious Victorian residences and the great Victoria Memorial, a sort of mini Taj Mahal. Downtown Calcutta feels very different: cramped, crowded, in places seedy, more threatening than Delhi. At Kali’s Temple, opposite the birthplace of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, I am touched for a large number of rupees by a man who claims to be the Brahmin but may be a crook – to feed the poor, he says, mildly plausibly. I pay up, feeling morally compromised, and call down the vengeance of Shiva, god of destruction, on him if he is lying and exploiting the poor of Calcutta. So that shows him!

I go to the Maidan in the afternoon. It is sultry, smoggy, typical of Calcutta, which has increasing problems with pollution – there is a controversy raging about the number of planes which have been grounded or diverted because of smog. Dozens of cricket games in progress. Cricket is a religion in Calcutta and I pay a visit to the shrine at Eden Gardens, a tatty concrete bowl that can hold 120,000 impassioned fans. The obsession with cricket, trains and films makes India perfect for men who never quite grew up.

The rest of my ridiculous high-speed passage through India was of little consequence. I had to fly back to Delhi for a four-day conference and had no time to explore further. This was now rather tiresome business rather than leisure or pleasure. It worried me that I hadn’t had time to see the Taj Mahal – it’s a four-hour drive from Delhi and the conference schedule didn’t allow it. I bemoaned the fact to a young, well-educated native of Delhi – how ridiculous that I should come to India and not see the Taj. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve never seen it either.”

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