Anindita Sengupta

This is at one remove–a substitute
For final answers. But the wise man knows
To cleave to the one living absolute
Beyond paraphrase, and shun a shrewd repose.

~ Derek Mahon, Preface to a Love Poem

Impossible to look directly into
another’s eyes. Impossible to look
into your own. You read the dense book
of being like a document you flick through.

~ George Szirtes, Rough Guide

The entry is the usual narrow lane crammed with shops selling kadas, rudraksha necklaces, brass artifacts, flowers, garlands, sweets. Jumbles of colour. Women haggling over fake gold rings. Boys clanging dekchi lids. Frothy lassi being poured into glasses. The lane opens out suddenly into a temple compound, a clear white space. Neat counters where you can keep shoes or get prasad. An automatically replenishing puddle for people to wash their feet. And a small shrine of Durga. Through a gate is the main temple. It’s built in the middle of a lake.

And it’s very gold-infused.

On a weekday morning, it’s relatively quiet. A few boys clang the bells with more enthusiasm than devotion warrants and a Bengali family stands around, commenting on…well, everything. I find it amazing how Bengali travelers are everywhere, jabbering on in Bangla, confident that nobody understands and therefore indulging in happy, private conversations, mostly about food.

The idols in the inner sanctum glitter fiercely gold. I find it hard to muster up devotion for gods who look like wealthy businessmen kids dressed up for their own wedding. In front of them, two children — a boy and a girl — sit on makeshift thrones, dressed up as gods. They look like they have to sit there all morning, possibly all day, squirming in their prickly, fake-gold crowns, their flaming orange outfits. Bengali woman says to daughter who looks about eight: See Radha-Krisha! Do you want to be? Radha-Krishna? Daughter looks utterly bemused.

I walk around the temple, looking at the beautiful doors and some very interesting statues enclosed in glass which depict scenes from the Ramayana.

At the back, I find Shiva. He’s spouting water from his head and this, I now realise, is what is supposedly creating the lake. The Ganges in miniature. A friendly priest says I must have the holy water. He looks pained that I can even consider not doing so. I frown and think of dead fish and human spit. I like Shiva. I really do. He’s the coolest in the pantheon. But I’m sure he’ll forgive me my fussy drinking habits.

Outside, the temple guard looks disturbed when I’m about to leave. It turns out I haven’t seen the other temple, the Durga temple. This must be what the place gets its name from. He points me down a narrow lane, looking pleased at having done his good deed for the day. The lane smells vaguely of cow dung and construction debris but is relatively clean. This temple is simpler, nicer somehow. There’s something stark about the trishul as an object of worship.

There is a gigantic tree in the courtyard, encircled with yards and yards of red and yellow string, years of prayer wound around it like a noose. At the back, there are two large walls covered with story panels on Hanuman’s life. Quite a labour of love.

On my way back through the lane, I pass a large room which seems bare and purposeless, almost a place for the priests to generally hang out. In one of the alcoves, a girl sits studying the scriptures. She looks very peaceful. And perhaps,
she is.

There were fields, lots of them; fields yellow with mustard flowers very reminiscent of the movies, fields burning in neat squares of orange flames. Also trees, roadside markets, men sitting on charpoys, men sleeping at bus stops, funny film posters, and a ridiculous number of shops selling ‘English Wine and Beer’. As opposed to ‘desi’ I suppose because, of course, English is synonymous with foreign. (That’s turning out to be quite the theme of my month, by the way.)  I didn’t see any water bodies, which saddened me because I love water bodies.

For some time, a woman with two kids came and sat down next to me. With both kids. One in her lap and the other squashed between us. I tried to think kind thoughts about the goodness of children and so on but it was quite uncomfortable to sit like that, four people on two seats, and I was relieved when they moved to other seats.

There was another woman with a tiny baby just across the aisle and there was much crying and feeding activity going on. The man next to her looked so indifferent to both of them that I was quite surprised when she tapped his arm at their stop and he left with them. Daddy, I guess.

Jalandhar is a major stop on the route and most people got off there. I almost got off too because I asked someone if we had reached Amritsar already and this person said yes. Anyway, the bus driver, a gruff old Sardarji, looked at me as if I was daft when I went up to the front. Understandably. Then he growled ‘Amritsar is two hours away’.  Then he went on to ask me if someone was picking me up at the bus station since I was reaching at 10.30 pm, insisted that it was not safe for me to take a cab from there, insisted that I call the hotel and get them to send a taxi and paced about until I had sorted this out. Through all this, he maintained customary gruffness of expression and voice.

Not to generalise and all that, but yeah, Sardarji completely lived up to the famed Punjabi reputation for friendliness despite the gruff exterior.

The incident also reminded me of a conversation I had with someone about the kindness of strangers. She’s a reluctant traveler and was quizzing me about how I manage ‘all alone’. I casually said I’ve always been lucky enough to find nice strangers whenever I needed help. ‘But isn’t that a bit risky,’ she asked, ‘to trust strangers.’ And of course it is, now that I think about it.

The truth is I’m always getting into situations while traveling. (See here and here and I haven’t even gone into how I landed up in Jo’burg with way less money than I had planned to carry…I forgot one pouch at home. So that was just plain careless but we’ll let it go. Okay? Okay. ) But so far, I’ve always been lucky in unexpected ways. Random acts of kindness, the mercy of strangers, that sort of thing.

I don’t have any logical reason or rules for this really. Except that sometimes, one has to take help from any quarters. And as we move around more and more, strangers are often our only bet. (Vaguely related is this 2008 study that the world is, in general, trusting strangers more and more as evinced by the rise of social media.)

Also, the greatest betrayals sometimes come from the closest people so you can never be too safe in any case.

Note: I’m not recommending that anyone run out and hitchhike across India or befriend random people on the streets and so on.