For Sujal

They taught us in school how to see it.

Danger, hidden as it may be
Within ourselves, or around the corner.
That’s how you knew danger lies
Not in romantic places, where one thinks of it:
Rocky cliffs, or deep in the waves, or the sudden flame of an explosion.

You saw danger hiding in our everyday
Apathy, the same apathy that leaves cancer to run reckless
Through a body. It’s in our hearts, and you told us
Not to wait, that momentum is the only cure.

So I know that if I said, “don’t go—
It’s dangerous.” You would have laughed.
The danger is here and now, in the simple ways
We expect it, still catching us unprepared.
That’s why I’m not surprised death came for you that way,
Prosaically, the death we see daily on the streets,
Walking languidly between the wheels and the curb.
The part I can’t accept is- I know
When pushed into the air, you wouldn’t fall,
You would only rise. To fall isn’t in your nature.
When the force of your convictions struck
Against those more mundane forces of gravity or attraction,
I know reality could never stop a dream in motion.

(c) 2010 Alison Hayward

Remembering

My friend Sujal was in a serious car accident a few days ago in Uganda. He was on a motorcycle taxi struck by another vehicle and sustained severe injuries. As it turns out, he was never stable enough to transfer out of the country. He passed away last night in Uganda, and a large community of friends is mourning his loss today.

I would like to tell you a little bit about Sujal and my memories of him. I first encountered Sujal in early 2005, when he applied for a position on one of the UVP summer teams. After acceptance, I noticed that he was always the first to respond when I sent e-mails to the team members, and that he asked many insightful questions about the trip. Although he was only 18 years old, the minimum age for participants in our program, I knew that he had the potential to be a great team leader, and I asked him if he would be willing to lead a team. Sujal was not one to take commitments lightly, and he asked if we could have a phone conversation so he could learn more about what was involved. I clearly remember calling Sujal while I was on a ski vacation, describing Uganda and our teams to him, impressed by his maturity which was beyond many other participants despite being much younger. He agreed to become a team leader, and went on to lead a successful team effort working in the village of Ibulanku with our partners at People and Development Initiatives clinic. He turned in an excellent report of the summer's work, and I ended up entreating him to join our executive board. I wanted to harness his energy, intelligence, and care for those living in poverty. Again, he carefully considered the decision, asking me for copies of many pages worth of documents he wanted to read about the organization before deciding. He read them all, and UVP was in luck - he decided to join the board as treasurer.

He attended our annual board meeting and consistently arose as a voice of reason and insight into what would be most helpful for our communities. Although he was new to the experience of working in a developing country, he had an innate sense of what was right. After an excellent performance as treasurer, he continued to be one of our most involved alumni, year after year requesting to remain on our board of trustees. He attended in person meetings, online meetings, and he responded to innumerable e-mails. I have worked with many people interested in global health, but Sujal was one of the rare people who put his convictions, truly, into practice. (how difficult it is to write that he "was"! Instead I would like to change that to 'will always be'...)

Just in the past few months, Sujal had become involved in a number of initiatives with Uganda Village Project - pushing us to become more involved with researching our programs and presenting that research to others. He practically single-handedly spearheaded an effort that resulted in our presenting of 4 different research abstracts at a national conference in Kampala last month. Not only that, he was the sort of person who joined in on conversations about how to improve our organizational technological capacity, and other such details that others might consider minutiae. He would become really involved in the conversation, giving real consideration to the options and weighing them. Those who work with organizations that function online know what a rarity this is, and how hard it is to find the people who always respond to questions and concerns immediately. The people like Sujal, who really care about what they do, even though it is not for school, not for credit, not for work - just for making the world a better place, in their spare time.

That is what I loved about Sujal, and why I knew that he was going to have a huge impact on global health and human rights. He wasn't in it for prestige or for power, he was becoming a leader so that he could create positive change in the lives of others.

The strange thing about the way our lives intersect in the age of the internet is that I am able to have very close relationships with people whose faces I hardly ever see, whose voices I hardly ever hear, but yet I feel that we are good friends. There are a number of people, through the nature of how Uganda Village Project works, who I correspond with on a near-daily basis, sharing ideas, thoughts, jokes, and conversations with, and yet- we are many miles apart. My friendship with Sujal was like that. I had a very small wedding, and I invited him, even though we hadn't seen one another in person more than a handful of times. And now, I feel like there is an empty hole in my life, even though it's hard to explain how a person who you had a relationship with over the internet can leave a hole like that.

Here is how I heard the news about Sujal. He had given me a great deal of advice, because I was nervous about traveling to India for the first time. He had also given me the contact information for his aunt and uncle and urged me to meet them and have dinner with them. I could tell they were as kind as Sujal, because sight unseen, they offered me a place to stay while I was in Baroda. The day before I was scheduled for dinner with them, he called to ensure everything was all set. I showed up at their house and they were incredibly welcoming, and set out a veritable feast of delicious Gujarati food for me. I was afraid I might not like it, being a picky eater, but it was all so good that I had seconds and thirds. And even after I ate the seconds and thirds, his auntie and uncle kept giving me more, until I had eaten fifths and sixths. I ate until I thought that I might actually explode, and I had to stop because I couldn't swallow another bite.

At that point, we moved back to the living room, and his auntie showed me a magazine featuring Sujal's cousin, a vascular interventionalist, on the cover. After I read the article and commented on how proud they must be, they said how they loved to hear about the successes of their nephews. And then his auntie said to me "We were going to take you to the Navratri festival tonight, but we cannot go now. We have had some very bad news." "What's wrong?" I asked. "We have had some very bad news." She repeated, as if she couldn't bring herself to get to the news, pausing a moment. "Sujal has been in a terrible car accident. He is in a coma in the hospital." I just looked at them, and my mouth was opening and closing, and nothing was really coming out. They had known since before I arrived, but didn't tell me so that it would not ruin the dinner. Even though a terrible tragedy had befallen someone who was like a son to them, they were thinking of my wellbeing, and cooking food for me to enjoy. I felt like an intruder into their grief. And I had to steel myself so that they would not see me falling apart - I did not want them to think that I suspected the worst, even though I did, because a coma plus an accident equals a traumatic brain injury. The rickshaw man looked at me strangely as I cried in his backseat, all the way to our destination, watching the motorcycle taxis dodge in and out of the chaotic nighttime traffic.

missing you, Sujal.

Worrying.

I heard yesterday that my good friend in Uganda had a serious accident. I am terribly worried about him and waiting for a call from his family to find out how he is doing. It is hard to think about anything else. Please, let him be all right.

Day 9: Champaner/Pavadgarh

The sessions of the conference running today were about leadership, and I had to decide whether to attend or to go touring in the Gujarati countryside. I suppose some would say you can always learn more about leadership, but I wasn’t inspired for today to be the day for me to do that. I enthusiastically took off to tour a World Heritage site called Pavadgarh, about a 1 hour drive from Vadodara.

The part of Gujarat where we are is very flat and basically looks sort of like marshlands or jungle floodplains. But oddly enough, as you approach Pavadgarh, there is this giant cliff that rises up from the plains, and we were headed for its peak. You can hire a rickety old SUV to bring you up the steep cliffside most of the way through a series of hair-raising switchbacks, but many intrepid pilgrims are hiking all the way up this thing. The most entertaining thing about those traveling on foot was that they were organized into small bands of people, typically the majority of them wearing matching red, pink, or orange headscarves, or even matching T-shirts too. Each ‘team’ usually carried a flag or a banner, basically just homemade from scraps of bright fabric and metallic bric-a-brac. Some of the most elaborate teams even had these musical carts with them, that had drums attached and a bullhorn so that their music was amplified around them. The teams would be singing and cheering as they hiked their way up, and would wave and cheer harder as we passed by.

When we reached the top of Pavadgarh, there were further crowds of people and a meandering walkway through an old bazaar where people were selling trinkets for the pilgrimage like headbands and pictures of gods and goddesses. This place was full of oddities and points of interest, for example, as we turned a corner, a herd of donkeys decorated with orange paint stampeded by. Yes, you heard me right, they were donkeys painted orange, although later my fellow traveler joked that perhaps they were tigers in disguise. You can either hike up the stairs, a lengthy climb, or take something called “The Ropeway of the Gods”, which is a cable car to the peak. I can testify that only the most serious of hikers should undertake the stair pathway. It is lined with kilometers worth of further hawkers and souvenir stands, which is sort of impressive. We hopped on the cable car and were treated to lovely views across the Gujarati countryside of lakes and fields. The cliffs of the mountain were lined with ruins in various stages of decay, even ruins that looked basically new. There were also mini-altars and shrines all the way up. I was blissfully happy as we climbed to find that no one on this mountain seemed to speak any English whatsoever, so if they were trying to harass me, sell to me, beg from me, I don’t know, because we couldn’t understand each other. It was wonderful. I did notice that the few English words I heard came from beggars, such as ‘look!’ (pointing at stump where leg should be) and ‘hello!!’ (thrusting bowl into tourist’s chest).

Most of the shops sold Hindu trinkets and offerings to bring to the temple such as coconuts, small loaves and bags of sweets. My favorite shops, though, were these funny little ‘photo booth’ shops. The photo booth shops were just empty rooms with wall coverings made to look like mountainous scenery, with representations of people and gods on them as well, and you would get your photo taken in front of these backgrounds. Most of these shops also had large props you could put in the photos, specifically large stuffed tigers and toy motorcycles you could sit on. I was dying to get my photo taken with the giant stuffed tiger (preferably with both of us astride a toy motorcycle), but was too shy to do so and settled for taking a surreptitious photo of the booth. One of the booths had a life-sized stuffed llama.

We eventually processed up to nearly the top of the mountain, where a very steep stone staircase led to the temple itself. There was a pile of shoes by the base of the stairs, which gave my less-traveled companions pause. I was wearing a junk pair of flip flops that I kicked off, but some were wearing expensive shoes like Tevas and Merrells. They continued on. We climbed the staircase, sweating and puffing, past little carvings of gods that each had red ink on their foreheads. We finally reached the temple and queued to reach the altar. As we waited in the queue, banshee screams started coming from inside the temple. For a moment, I almost sprang ahead shouting  ‘do you need a doctor?!’ but I didn’t, based on two things, #1, no one else was moving or looked concerned, clueing me in that this might be some cultural phenomenon. #2, I realized that to some extent, I’ve heard enough screaming in the ER that I can tell a hysterical scream from a true scream of pain or distress, and this sounded like a hysterical scream. My suspicion was confirmed when a woman lurched out of the temple and pretended to faint into a policeman’s arms, waving her arms wildly. There was a 13 year old girl next to me from our group, who looked scared and said ‘did that woman just pass out?’ I said ‘no, she is just being dramatic. Don’t worry.’ And surely enough, the woman picked herself up and walked out, having been dispossessed of the spirit.

A few minutes later, more screams came from behind me. I looked in their direction, and realized the screams were being made at members of our group. “Shoes!! No shoes!! No shoes!!” Angry pointing and gesturing by the crowd accompanied the screams. Luckily, I had a little cloth reusable bag inside my handbag, and we hid all the shoes inside this, although much glaring continued to ensue.  As we processed through, a girl approached and said in surprisingly good English: “I am sorry, it is not my place to say things to you, but please do not ever bring shoes into a holy temple again.” We had become very unpopular visitors.

Inside the temple was an altar where two men were busily collecting offerings. They would touch some of the items, like the small loaves, to the temple wall. The strangest aspect of this little white stone temple was that just above the altar was a large digital clock face that was meant to display the time and date. The time was mildly incorrect, but the date read “1, 1, 2000”. Curiouser and curiouser…

As you exited the temple, the actual external walls of the stone building were thick with red, pink, and orange powdery vegetable dye, like the dye was actually seeping out from the walls. Some women had small jars or pieces of paper that they were collecting this powder into and taking it with them. Others, like me, just pressed their finger into it and touched our neighbor on the forehead. It’s good luck, or so I am told. I noticed that as you passed down the stairs, there was a little cave in the rock you could peek into, and inside the crevice, a pair of eyes were painted onto the back wall, and several small offerings had been pushed into the cave. These eyes were apparent in a number of locations in and around the temple, and prompted offerings wherever they were found. I assumed that the message was something like, god is watching you, so you’d better be good. But that may be just my wacky Western Christianized viewpoint of it.

We drove home and my companions joked most of the way back about how the temple visit was a hot, tiring ordeal and not worth seeing, but I found myself quite enamored of this strange place and happy with the journey.

Day 7/8: Vadodara

I’ve arrived in Gujarat, a coastal state in northwestern India that borders Pakistan. I spent my first day at the conference yesterday, which was nice – but somehow it is hard for a medical conference to measure up after you’re used to the excitement of traveling the countryside, seeing ancient marvels and World Wonders. 

This medical conference is very similar to medical conferences in the USA, except that it has a leisurely tea break of delicious chai with cookies in the afternoon, and the conferencegoers seem to have a different standard of etiquette with technology than what we are used to in the States. Every few minutes, some ringtone will peal out from part of the conference hall, which is not unlike conferences in the USA, except that here, people actually answer the phones and start having a conversation with whoever is calling them, during the conference, whereas at home people usually either try to clandestinely sneak out the door or just slouch in their seat looking heavily embarrassed.

Last night, we were taken out to a ‘faculty dinner’ that was held at some princely estate in the farmlands around Vadodara. We had been driving for about 45 minutes on the way to this place when some canny person noticed that we were driving through nothing but trees and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, and asked the driver if he knew where we were going. He admitted that he did not, and what better time to learn that than 45 minutes down the road?

 We eventually were able to end up at the right place, and it turned out that we would be eating outside in a grassy courtyard, or, more precisely, that the mosquitoes would be dining on us there. The evening began with a Hindu prayer ceremony, in which several elderly women in saris sat on an altar and lit candles and chanted loudly and wailingly for a very long time. It was charming but strange. We sat in a circle around the altar, and waiters brought us small appetizers. As they came by with the appetizers, they would tell us if the dish was vegetarian or not, only with their accents, it sounded like they were either saying ‘wedge’ or ‘non-wedge’. I was very excited every time a ‘wedge’ appetizer came by – they included chilly paneer, cheese omelet, cheese naan, and also something that the waiters called ‘Mexican dish’, which was like a miniature pizza topped with corn, except instead of a miniature pizza crust it had a miniature crunchy pie crust. I cannot do it justice with words. It looked sketchy and sounds even worse, but it was actually tasty.

After the lengthy prayers ended, a magic show began. Yes, a magic show with a real live magician wearing a top hat and suit. He had a table stacked with all sorts of props, and kept performing this lame trick where you pull a feather duster type thing through another object (like a hollow cylinder) and it changes color. He had numerous other tricks that were of equally dubious impressiveness, like throwing regular size cards into a box and pulling out big cards. My favorite trick was that he put this rabbit hand puppet on, and pretended the rabbit puppet was his baby, and made it pretend to drink a bottle of milk. Only it was one of those trick bottles, so that after it appears to be empty, you can turn it back rightside up and it appears full again. It was such a silly, bizarre trick. I kept applauding because I felt bad for the magician. Then one of the lights for the outside garden went out, and the magician was left in semi-darkness, and he stomped off with the air of: “I cannot work under these conditions!”

Dinner itself was fine and even included ice cream, and this very odd drink made of lychees and milk. We were out at dinner until extremely late.

Day 6: Back in Delhi

When I woke up back in Delhi I felt more relaxed and determined to enjoy what was left of my tour and stop fixating on money.



I first visited an interesting Hindu temple with extensive gardens around it. I decided not to enter the temple at all so that people would leave me alone. The gardens were a fascinating area that was partially overgrown by bushes and vines, and partially immaculately groomed. There were scattered statues of all sorts of animals with cartoonish expressions on their faces, brightly painted. For example, there was a fountain made of four cobras, with a little white statue of Shiva standing on top. There were also mini-temples or tiny altars hidden throughout these gardens, littered with flowers and coins. The strangest thing I found was a machine next to one of the imposing stone statues of a god, with neon flickering lights flashing in circles on its face. This machine turned out to be like a little carnival machine where you put in 2 rupees and it tells you your weight. I remain baffled as to how this fits into a temple garden. Do Hindus have particular obsession with weight? I actually found 2 more of these machines tucked into corners of the garden. “Check your weight!” They said. Very odd.


Next I visited “Gandhi Smriti”, which is the house in which Gandhi lived for the last days of his life. There are several large statues of Gandhi around the gardens, draped in flowers. In fact, the entire property was dripping with flower chains. The rear garden had been basically made into a temple for Gandhi, featuring a little monument where he was killed, and a raised pathway of stone footprints representing the steps he took in his last 5 minutes on earth. I found this monument very moving, and stood around on the verge of tears for a while until I tore myself away to see more of the sights.


The major event of the afternoon was that I decided to spend some rupees on an Ayurvedic massage. The price was too high, and their brochure about how Ayurvedic massage could cure diabetes and Alzheimer’s definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but I decided to purchase the massage anyway because my back was sore from the hard Indian mattresses I’ve been frequenting, and I decided that this would be a good way to release some of my ‘alone vacation’ stress. In the spa office, I was brought back into a small room with a bed and a little gas stove with a pot on it in the corner and asked to undress. I have a great fear of being burned, so this terrified me. I nervously hovered around the room staring at the hot stove and feeling like a prude, and the massage therapist had to tell me three times, laughing “take off everything! Everything!” This massage was in fact, quite similar to the massage I received a few years ago in Uganda, except in slightly classier surroundings. The massage therapist put on a little flowered apron and started cooking up a small bucket of oil. I ended up getting covered in oil from the top of my head to each toe. Aside from wanting to yell “hey, stop cracking my toes! I’ll crack them myself if it ever becomes necessary!” I enjoyed the massage fully. There was also a strange interlude involving giving a hard tug on each one of my joints as if the therapist was trying to dislodge them, and I got a sound smacking from neck to feet with a bag full of Ayurvedic spices soaked in oil. Between the stove, apron, and being slathered in sweet-smelling oil, I felt like a cross between a lounging massage recipient and a slab of maple bacon.


After the massage, I felt much more ready to go on and face the rest of the day. What I should have done is skipped lunch and demanded to be taken to the Jain Bird Hospital, which I know I would have loved. It’s the only thing I regret not seeing on my Golden Triangle tour. I was dropped at Delhi Airport and started on my way to the next adventure, in Gujarat state on the northwest coast of India.

Agra/Back to Delhi

They say that the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful building in the world. And yet it is built in this dirty little city named Agra, which is really not a very pleasant place to spend time. We woke up very early in the morning to go see the Taj at sunrise, which is the thing to do. I had a guided tour around the Taj and its surrounding gardens, which truly were beautiful. I think the problem was, I had been daydreaming and looking longingly at this gorgeous photo of the Taj in my guidebook, and it turns out that in my humble opinion, it actually looks better in the photo. Everyone says it is far bigger than they expected, and this made me think it must be enormous, but it is not. I know this is heresy. Anyway, it was certainly worth seeing. These rajas certainly had an obsession with symmetry. Everything on the entire property of the Taj is symmetrical, and Shah Jahan, who built it, was going to make a mirror image black Taj on the other side of the river as his own mausoleum. Unfortunately for him, his son thought that constructing giant multi-billion dollar marble mausoleums was a waste of money and locked him into a closet for the rest of his life to stop him, so there is no black Taj. But it is interesting to think of the mirror Taj and how far the symmetric revolution would have gone and gone with nothing to get in its way…



After visiting the Taj, I was taken to a marble shop, where people who are supposedly descendants of the workers who built the Taj carve semi-precious stones into marble just like the decorations on the Taj itself. These items were truly lovely, but once I started asking about the prices, I was just shocked at how expensive everything was. It was way out of my price range, and I kept asking to see cheaper and cheaper stuff until it became apparent that nothing in this store except ugly Taj Mahal magnets was within my price range. I also think I was suffering from the effect of being asked my profession (which I am still having difficulty lying about), because at least twice the salesman said “you are doctor. This not much for you.”


I must have refused this guy a million times (in case this point hasn’t gotten across, I am a failure at refusing things), and finally the boss of the shop came in and got me to agree to a deal. Then when I had half signed the receipt and gotten the thing wrapped up in a box, it turned out that he put in his last price offer, not mine, even though he had made it sound like he agreed to my price. This was simply the last straw for me and this dark black cloud came across my face that looked like it actually scared the salesman. He started apologizing frantically and saying “You be happy. Take this free gift! Here, free gift for you. You smile now.” Only the free gift was something that I absolutely didn’t want, and I almost threw it in his face, but decided there was nothing else to do but take it and get out. It is sad to admit but after this incident, I started feeling like I could not take this sales/begging rubbish anymore, and I nearly started to cry, even though I was telling myself how completely stupid it was to let something like that ruin my vacation.


After this we visited Agra Fort and then I started on my journey back to Delhi, after an accusation from my guide of the day that I had stiffed him with my tip. This tipping culture makes you feel like you’re being nickel and dimed all day long. Maybe if you grow up with it, it doesn’t seem bothersome, but to me it is exhausting. I think it is not just the fact that everyone expects a tip, but the fact that they really NEED the tip and are desperate for the tip to be big, and this makes them behave in very irritating and ingratiating ways that have the opposite effect on me.

Things to see on the way to Agra

En route from Jaipur to Agra, I had a number of very pleasant diversions. First, I stopped in a place called Galta, home of the Monkey Temple. This backwater village was way out in the jungle up a winding dirt road, wedged in between two mountains. As you walk in the temple entrance, there is a very slick monk/guru sitting inside who takes money to ‘register your camera’ – a sneaky way of getting around the fact that you cannot charge an entrance fee to a temple. The slick monk then tries to keep the change as a donation. At first, this angered me, but then he smoothed things over by putting some orange ink on my forehead, saying a prayer, and giving me a little crumbly piece of sweet cornbread. I noticed there was a little bowl with a bunch of 10 rupee notes and 1 and 2 rupee coins. I relented and let him keep the change.



The Monkey Temple is this dilapidated series of stone structures that look like they were built 500 years ago (and maybe they were), and they look straight out of Indiana Jones. They are covered in old murals and vines, and unfortunately, scattered rubbish and even graffiti. And there are monkeys, monkeys everywhere. According to the person I asked, the monkeys are rhesus macaques. They are fuzzy, sociable, and have bright red bottoms. They are simply streaming over the walls of this place like it’s monkey mecca. There are also a number of placid cows meandering around, just as there have been in all places I have seen in India.


As you continue through the temple, you go up a steep stone staircase in the mountainside and pass by three baths. The lowest bath is a beautiful long pool, and this is the women’s pool. I scuttled by when I realized there was a naked woman in there, just hanging out. Note to self, find out why it is OK to publicly bathe naked in a country with such conservative dressing standards. Up higher, past a few beggars, there is a smaller pool with an elephant head fountain filling it, and in this pool there were about twenty screaming wet boys. They took the opportunity to scream ‘I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOUUUU!’ at me as I kept hurrying up the steps. I had decided that no matter what strange things I ran into, I wanted to hike to the top of the mountain where there would be a view over Jaipur. I continued on and came to an even smaller pool in a courtyard, this was the monkeys’ pool and they were diving and splashing there. Further and further up the mountain I went, until the last of my admirers had fallen away and I was alone. I had almost made it to the top when I rounded a corner and ran into a man peeing in the road, pointed my direction. That was the last straw, I virtually ran back down the mountain with “I LOOOOVVEEE YOUUUU!” echoing behind me.


Next stop was at a national park called Keoladeo. This is a man-made wetland that is home to many many types of marsh birds and other animals. This was my first chance to ride a famous Indian rickshaw, although I had to run a small gauntlet of park rangers who wanted me to hire them as my guide. I refused because my driver had informed me that the rickshaw drivers know everything about the park anyway, but I felt guilty since these rangers are just trying to do the job they’re trained to do, and not getting much public support for it. Anyway, my rickshaw driver was this elderly Sikh gentleman, almost so elderly I felt guilty having him ride me around, though he was very spry. He knew where all the birds were and would stop and seem to know exactly what branch the birds were in without even looking for them. We saw a jackal, an antelope, a deer, tons of storks, doves, peacocks, partridges, parakeets, and a bunch of other things I can’t remember the names for. Oh, and I even saw a monitor lizard! They look ultra-prehistoric and wild. When you get to the end of the road, the rickshaw drivers are in league with this little Hindu temple there and they strongly suggest you make a donation. Did you know peacocks made a loud yowly meowing noise to communicate with each other? It certainly must be embarrassing to be so pretty with a voice like that. My driver told me “You tell friends, I am best driver, #5 rickshaw! You happy-happy, you like, you pay me good tip.”


Final stop of the day was an old fort known as Fatehpur Sikri. It is made up of some palaces, a mosque, and various outbuildings that are in states of ruin. Although there is a lot of garbage scattered everywhere in the ruins, it still manages to be an incredibly beautiful place, which says a lot about Fatehpur Sikri. I boarded the bus from the parking lot and immediately this kid glommed onto me like a barnacle and started insisting I use him as a guide. I had refused him about 10 times, but then he cut his price down to nearly nothing and said “and I will make sure the people up there don’t bother you.” “It’s a deal!” I said.


Unfortunately this deal was too good to be true. My guide actually had quite good English and knew a lot about the fort, and I was able to hide behind him to skirt some hawkers, but there were other hawkers he was clearly in league with, and he kept telling me these were poor students and the money they make goes to educational charity, which I think was probably all lies. So I ended up getting ripped off by a crew of mosque con children, which I suppose is better than getting ripped off by a crew of raging terrorists or something. I don’t know how they sleep at night after telling lies to people all day like that. As the icing on the cake, my guide started to make some very sketchy comments to me towards the end of the tour, I’ll spare you the details but it started off with a rumination about how sexy Brazilian ladies are in their short skirts, and was I familiar with that? Then he appeared truly surprised when I became offended, threw his pittance of a fee at him, and ran away. “I am sorry madam! You are not happy??” My driver chastened me for giving in to this guide character’s con game, and I spent the rest of the night in a stormy mood, picturing myself getting vengeance on the hawkers and touts of the world.

High Intensity Begging: Street Techniques in India

I have heard your requests and will begin to focus on the great things about India... after this post.

These are the strategies I have learned from observing beggars and touts in India.
- In rural Uganda, beggars are generally children repeating ‘some money, some money please’ or ‘mzungu give me money’. If you reply “no, you give ME money!” They generally giggle and leave you alone. It’s mildly annoying at worst. But here in urban India, begging is high-intensity. These beggars have no sense of humor and never smile, just vacillate between a look of eternal suffering and a look of scornful ‘how dare you pass me by?’ They don’t bother trying to speak English. They just point at whatever their personal guilt-and-shame inducing device is (leg in a brace –come on, couldn’t you have cut it off for realism?-, infant being used as a prop, etc.) and then hold out their hand. Then they put their hand to their mouth and make a sign for ‘eat’, then hold out their hand. It’s painful for everyone involved. What kind of psychological impact does growing up doing that all day have? If I sound cynical, which I must, I can promise you I didn't start off that way and the continuous onslaught of beggars over time has brought it on.


- There are little children selling postcards, and they will say ‘promise you will not buy from anyone else! Meet me here after going inside!” And the first time I heard this, I relievedly said “OK! I definitely won’t!” But then I came back out and the child looked at me like I killed his puppy, and the guide said to me “you must buy. You promised.” Don’t these people understand semantics?! This would never stand up in court.


- Hated technique #1: the seller involves you in a conversation about where you are from that is much more pleasant than the harassment of a moment before. They ask you what you do for a job. If you say doctor, it is a huge mistake because doctors have money, and trying to explain about residency and student loans is lost on hawkers (which my driver says “hookers”… hm. ) I specifically noticed after telling my guide that I was a doctor, he would say something to the hawker when I asked the price of something and the price would be very high – yes, I confess, I did buy one thing from a hawker! That guide did not get a tip from me, and now I am saying I’m a ‘student’, which does not make hawkers smile.


- Clearly, most people in the world who have any street sense do not chat with hawkers, they simply ignore them, or say “get out of my face’ or ‘leave me alone’ or something. However, I have realized that my brain is wired as a small-town girl and that’s very hard to unwire. When someone says, “hello, where are you from?” and smiles at me, I instinctively say “I’m from the USA!” and smile back like a fool. I also noticed that although my guidebook suggested that I adopt the local greeting “Namaste” (delivered with hands clasped together like a prayer) to avoid being a rude American, I decided to do so only to discover that the handshake reflex is in my American genes. When I meet someone new, it’s like Roger Rabbit hearing ‘shave and a haircut…’ – I think “Namaste! Prayer hands!” but my hand uncontrollably shoots out and I loudly say “Hi there! Nice to meetcha!”


- Final technique is just to create the most severe annoyance possible. This one boy who looked about 10 years old must have thrust a bunch of cheap bracelets in my face a hundred times as I walked around the ruins of an old fort. He was so persistent, keeping an auctioneer’s patter going “5 for 100, good price, I give you, only 100 rupees, cheap for you, you buy from me, you must buy, 5 for 50 rupees, I must sell this morning, good luck for me, please help me and buy something from me, I need to sell something, 5 for 20 rupees, only 20, nothing to you, it is nothing!” He was getting as close to me as possible, so as my guide walked forward in a straight line, I was veering sharply off to the side and had to perform defensive maneuvers to get back on track numerous times. I showered him with “no thank yous”, and also tried telling him several times “listen, I get what you’re saying, but it doesn’t matter what the price is, I don’t want this stuff! I’m sympathetic to you needing to sell something, but I don’t want to buy this!” This of course was ineffective. Towards the end, he just kept repeating “please, you buy something, just one thing, then I go. Just buy something and I leave you alone.” This was starting to actually sound like a good deal, but there were a number of factors to consider – he could be lying, and would redouble his efforts if shown money. If I paid him to get away from me, it would encourage him to use the same tactic again. What if he was a child slave owned by a cruel master who would chop off his finger tonight, and that’s why he was so desperate? This decision was complicated by the fact that he really looked like he was about to either cry or throw a temper tantrum. And he was just a child. My guide resolved this by grabbing the kid by the shoulders, looking at me and saying “do you want this stuff?” I said “no” and the guide yelled something in Hindi and practically tossed the boy across the courtyard.


- Such is the experience of visiting tourist destinations in India. Serenity, now…

Day 4: Agra Voyage

Day 4: Agra Voyage



Do you want to know if you could hack it traveling in India alone? I did, before I came here. I conducted an informal poll which was inconclusive, because a number of the people I asked encouraged me to go it alone, and a number of other people told me definitely not to make this trip by myself. I then performed a highly scientific analysis of the subgroups in this survey, and found that the people I asked who told me I could do it alone were non-Indian women. The people who told me not to do it alone were Indian men and friends of my parents. Interestingly, the reasons given by Indian men were that it is fairly safe in terms of violent crime, but the harassment will be too much – very sympathetic of them. Since I presumed that non-Indian women would probably have the best perspective for advice, I came here alone.


They were both right, though, in different ways. I’m really happy I decided to come here and would take the opportunity again in a flash now that I know what it’s like, but I would not want to return here without a travel companion. I am not a city girl. I like quiet, pastoral getaways. I am a New Englander. I believe that if you leave people alone, they ought to leave you alone. This personality type does not mesh well with India, where everyone is all up in your business and in your face, and people from ages 3 to 90 are all clattering after you everywhere you go begging you for some money (well, the senior citizens just sort of lie pitifully in the mud, pointing to it as a part of their shtick). Part of the technique that touts, hawkers, and beggars use is to ask where you are from and try to start a conversation with you about that, then find some cruel way to twist the conversation towards money that you need to give them. I think this is true psychological warfare. Did you notice I used the word ‘tout’? That is because I am hip to the lingo of travel in India. Touts are basically con men and other such tricksters. More on touts later. When I'm not so exhausted from touts wearing on me all day.

India, Day 3: Jaipur

A fantastic day in Jaipur. Today I had a tour of the sights with a local guide. I was so thankful that I hired the driver and had the guided tour, because walking the streets here alone as a white person is so horrible, it would have ruined my vacation. The hawkers are so aggressive – for example, one hawker took my photo at one of the monuments, and cried out to me “look for me, Johnny, at the parking lot!” (all the Indian photo guys claimed their name was John, Johnny, or Tony). In the parking lot, to my distress, he met me with a packet of photos of myself that he had had printed glossies made of. He kept thrusting them at me, despite my thousand “no thank yous”, and reducing his price by a hundred rupees every few steps. When I got into the car, he managed to throw the packet of photos into the car with me THREE TIMES, and each time I had to somehow give them back to him because he was chasing the car and banging on the windows. It really took some serious focus on “serenity now!!!” to keep saying “no thank you” instead of starting a knock-down fistfight with this guy or at least having him arrested for assault and battery. The worst part of it was that there were hundreds of hawkers like Johnny, everywhere. I think if they asked tourists to make a contribution to a welfare fund for India so that these people could be subsidized by the government to go perform some actual useful service, everyone would gladly contribute.



The guide and driver really didn’t do much to dissuade these people, but at least I could use them as a physical barrier to hide behind. The first thing I did was ride an elephant up into Amber Fort. I wished I hadn’t read Lonely Planet, since the book insinuates that these elephants are treated poorly and riding them is like supporting the circus. Well, I enjoyed my elephant ride, and I think if the elephants have to wear a feather and walk up and down a hill every day to be useful, that is probably better than being poached into extinction for ivory. The ride was really fun and relaxing. Even though you were being chased by an army of hawkers and beggars, you were too high up for them to reach you, and there was an element of enjoyment to that, aside from the whole calming, swaying-up-the-hill, looking out over a view of a magical Arabian city element.


The fort itself was incredible. I have to say, a lot of what the guide said was strangely redundant and uninformative, i.e. “The name of the fort is the Amber Fort. A-M-B-E-R. Amber Fort. In the town of Amber. In Hindi, Aamer, in English, Amber. For the color Amber. Amber for the color of the fort…” But it was lulling in a singsongy way and I liked it, it kept me company. He also had a cutesy way of saying some things that made me wonder if he was doing it on purpose, for example, he repeatedly said “queenses”, saying it about a hundred times, in every sentence, almost like he was daring me to correct him (which I didn’t, because I was getting the giggles from it). For example, “this ramp design is for the wheelchair of the queenses. The queenses do not need wheelchairs because they cannot walk, no, the queenses can walk. The wheelchair is for special occasions, when the queenses wear their dresses and jewelry which weighs 21 kilos, then the queenses cannot walk and must be carried in the wheelchair. The queenses are carried by eunuchs, one for the push, and one for the pulling.”


The tour of the fort really impressed upon me that the Indian men have been, historically speaking, jealous people. Basically, once these queens were married, they get closed into a little private apartment with slits for windows and heavy curtains blocking them from ever being seen by anyone except the raja. He had 12 wives all in separate little apartments set into a square, and he could travel between their rooms through a series of tunnel-like hallways, but they were not allowed to visit with or talk to each other, or know where the raja was at any time he was not with them. There were eunuchs in watchtowers surrounding them who would report them for punishment if they were caught speaking. A polygamists’ dream. I think the royal lapdogs probably had more freedom. Wandering the hallways alone, I could hardly imagine how claustrophobic and small the life of a Rajasthani queen was, compared to my wide open and wonderful world of a life. I had the urge to yell out “hey, queenses, we’ve come a long way, baby!” But instead I just felt sad.


(in case you were wondering what the queens’ punishment was, like I did, the guide told me it was grinding flour for chapatti)


We then stopped to view the beautiful Water Palace, and I also saw the City Palace where the Rajasthani king still lives. In between, I also was brought to some specialty shops where they showed me how certain handicrafts of the region are made. It was charming enough that I spent some money there, and I shall say no more, because these gifts are going to be surprises. I probably paid more than I would have at an open air bazaar, but it was kind of fun getting schmoozed like a VIP for hours on end, with assistants bringing me drinks and laying all sorts of gorgeous treasures out in front of me. One particularly slick salesman gave me a palm reading, and tried to use what he read there to sell me certain things that he said would get my chakras back into alignment. He kept saying “I’m not a god, just a human being.” So many times it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. Oh and by the way, apparently I’m going to have some horrible ailment of my heart strike me at age 37, so keep an eye out for that. The palm reading was hilarious to me because he was trying to do the classic fortune telling ‘say what you think they want to hear’ routine. He was like “I see you have a lot of pain in your past. Someone has hurt you.” “I think that’s true of anyone,” I said. “Your childhood was unhappy,” he told me.


“No, not at all, I had a wonderful childhood!”


“Your parents, perhaps they did some things to harm you.”


“Certainly not, my parents are great!” “Of course they are.” He replied gravely, raising an eyebrow.


“Your husband is like fire, hot, and you are more cool, like water,” he suggested. I just smiled and drank some chai, because it was really getting funny how far off the mark he was.


India really makes me prolific! I am truly enjoying my trip.

India, Day 2: Jaipur Voyage

After some various travel frustrations which I will not bore you with (kids, don’t ever travel without 3 backup ways to get yourself money), I spent the day en route from Delhi to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. I was surprised to find that it would take nearly 6 hours to travel 230km, because somehow I didn’t picture a highway in India being more like the town lounge for cows. The cows seem to truly enjoy hanging out on the dusty center strip of the divided highway, rather than something you’d expect them to like to do, like frolicking and grazing in a green pasture. Plus, they are unflappable. You can lean on the horn all you want, they won’t flick an ear at you. It’s like they know they are bulletproof around here.



I also learned a few other things about highways in India, after spending all day on one. If you are on the divided highway and you decide you went past your actual destination, all you have to do is turn back so that you’re going the wrong way on the highway and then drive into several lanes of oncoming traffic until you get back there. This is expected and will not surprise anyone. I took part in this charming local behavior myself (sorry, Dad). Another thing is that rather than being like America, where we try to avoid all contact with other drivers aside from the occasional fatal shooting, or like Uganda, where drivers communicate intimately through a complex signaling pathway of flashing headlights and gestures, in India drivers like to liberally use their horns, honking them constantly to alert all other drivers to their position on the road. This is necessary because lane markers here are meaningless and people are constantly drifting around the road like aimless clouds, so if you are anywhere near someone’s blind spot you have to let them know not to drift into you. The trucks are even all emblazoned with the slogan “HORN PLEASE”. The trucks also tell you constantly “USE DIPPER AT NIGHT” – which naturally means flash your headlights instead of using the horn, but I have seen no evidence of ‘dipper’ use.


The trucks here are actually quite interesting because of how festive and decorated they are. Each one has delicate little painted patterns all over it and pictures of birds, hearts, Indian flags, whatever. They have gold and silver streamers flying from them, or strings of pompoms, or a variety of colored scarves, or all of the above. Even the construction machinery is decorated in this way. These observations lead me to believe that India could be far more accepting of a crew of gay, diva construction workers and truckers than the USA would be. I could be wrong about that though.


It’s amazing to see so many women crouched in the fields doing what looks like back-breaking manual labor in the stifling midday heat. They are like fallen flowers, surrounded by many-colored sari petals. The favored colors in this part of Rajasthan seem to be as loud and as unnatural as possible. The top favorite sari color appears to be ‘safety vest orange’, but neon green, pink, yellow and red are also popular.


Along the way to Jaipur, I was surprised at how similar the surroundings were to my road trips in Uganda. It was the same towns and shops, just populated with Indians instead of with Africans. I began to think that perhaps ‘developing country’ just has its own style. Then I arrived in the outskirts of Jaipur, and instantly, I was not in a place like any I’d ever been before.


The buildings were ornate and crowded together around tiny alleyways, like an old Arabian medina. The walkways were crowded with vendors, camels, and elephants, and the exotic-ness of it all seemed not at all apparent to anyone else. When I arrived at the hotel, a smartly outfitted doorman handed me a frosty glass of Coke and put a fragrant necklace of flowers on me. I couldn’t wait to see more of the town. I had a fancy dinner at one of the well-known restaurants here, which was sad only because I hate eating out alone, and I was mobbed by beggars when I stepped outside. I gave my leftovers to the beggars (a huge mistake as it redoubled their efforts), and fled across the street to ‘Lassiwala’, a famous lassi shop. The lassi was the most delicious I’ve ever had, cool and sweet and served in a little terra cotta cone that you throw away after using, which was a difficult concept for me. Enchanting!


I also attended a service at a Hindu temple that was all white marble on the inside, with serene looking god statues wearing pink and gold outfits in the front. They splashed me with water and the rest of the Hindu audience clapped and sang.


The major event of the night though came after this, when I went to see a Bollywood movie. A nice person in line warned me there would be no subtitles or English, but I decided to go anyway, which was the right thing to do, especially since it was only a dollar. The theater itself was brand new, incredibly ornate, and once inside, the crowd appeared awed and began snapping hundreds of photos. I have never seen so many people trying to take photos with their mobile phones all at the same time. We had assigned seats in the theater, which had an old-fashioned curtain and stage. When the movie started, though, the real wackiness began.

The audience was screaming, shouting, cheering, clapping, every time a new star came onscreen. The movie seemed designed for this and the first half hour consisted of very dramatic entrances for each star. The style of the movie (called “Dabangg”) was basically slapstick old Western meets Crouching Tiger and the Matrix. I regret to report that I think the title’s English onomatopoeia was intentional. I have no idea really what the plot was, but the hero was a police officer and so most of it was devoted to him beating up bad guys and then dancing and singing his way down the street while adjusting his belt buckle in a very studly way. Believe it or not, this movie was nearly 3 hours long, including intermission. I could not make it and had to give up after 1 hour, which I’m afraid greatly disappointed my driver, who was loving it. “This was a good movie, not a bad one.” He told me.