India Journal - Mark McGinnis

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will then hold a seat for me. Well, I reluctantly say “OK.” The man at the kiosk calls and talks for quite a while. He then hangs up the phone and says everything has been arranged. I have a seat and the ticketing charge will be $49.00, and I’m to pay him. Right. I tell him to undo what ever he did. I will handle it at the airport myself. He is furious and says he can’t. We are surrounded by his cohort of young Indian men. I don’t back down. I tell my driver, who is of course part of the scam, to get into the taxi, we are going. He does and the screaming man follows us. He wants $20.00 for the phone call. I give him a dollar and he screams at us as we drive away. The driver finally gets me to the airport and tries to gouge me on the taxi fee. I give him about a fourth of what he asks for and he screams at me as I walk away dragging my bags behind me. At the Sahara Airlines office I find the flight has been canceled just as my Aberdeen agent had said. They can put me on tomorrow’s flight in the afternoon but I remember that Indian Airlines has an 8:00 a.m. flight. I find their office and book the flight with them.

      Now I need a hotel room for the rest of the day as it is only about 10:00 a.m. although it feels like 10:00 p.m. to me as I’m half way around the world and haven’t slept on the 30 hours of flights. I look in my travel books and find a hotel that is close to the airline that I need in the morning. I get an auto rickshaw to take me to the hotel that is only about six to eight blocks away because my bag is too heavy to carry. The driver tries to gouge me again - the word must be that stupid Americans will pay whatever is asked. I give him what I was told at the airline office would be a fair rate to get to the hotel and he is very unhappy. I get my bag to the hotel office and two clerks who alternate between being rude and disinterested get me an overpriced room. I’m exhausted and I take it. I get my stuff into the room and collapse on the bed and finally get a little sleep.

      I wake mid-afternoon and check my travel book for interesting things to see in Mumbai. The only place that really interests me is too far away to get to before dark. I decide to stay in my room and hide from the kind of people I have met so far in Mumbai. I notice a construction site out my small window. It is very strange. It looks like a cross between construction and archeology. The project looks as if it has been going on for decades. Building materials lay in rusted masses and all the along the rear there is a long row of make-shift shanties where the construction workers live with their families. This was my first big clue that, as Dorothy once said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” People are eating, bathing, urinating, and occasionally what may be working at the site. I decide to break out my paints and do a couple of quick sketches of the shanties. I also notice a strange large crow-like bird hanging around the construction site. It is very similar to our crows only maybe a bit bigger and a combination of black and a grayish-brown color. I do one sketch of the bird and then a flock of them settle down on some scaffolding and I do a sketch of them as well. The painting was fun and I feel a bit better. I order dinner from room service. It’s OK. I’m sleepy again and take another nap. I wake at 10:00 p.m. and am not sleepy – my body, of course thinks it is morning.

      At about midnight very loud yelling begins in a nearby room. It is very angry, hostile and violent. It goes on and on. I finally call the desk fearing someone is going to get hurt. The call has no effect. The yelling goes on for hours. At about 4:00 a.m. it stops. It doesn’t matter I can’t sleep anyway. I finish reading The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre, a 500 page book given to me as a travel gift by my colleague in the art department, Bill Hoar. The book is a very well written documentation of the poverty of Calcutta in the 1970s. It is a very good priming for the trip.

      December 29

      pigs behind my favorite eating place in Bodhgaya

      I start getting myself ready to go at 5:00 a.m. to be at the airport very early for my 8:00 a.m.` flight to Patna. I get a taxi and set a price with him before we go - the only way to use taxis in India I have figured out. At the airport I find that the flight has been delayed because of fog in Dehli which we have to pass.

      While waiting I discover that none of my flights on Indian Airlines for my entire trip are in their computers. I have no reservations at all for flights I have already paid for. I find one helpful clerk who enters them in the computer for me — I hope. The Patna flight finally departs at 9:30 a.m. It is then delayed in landing by even more fog. All the airports in India are packed with army personnel. Security checks are everywhere due to the hijacking and threats of more.

      In Patna I need a taxi to the train station where I plan to catch a train to Gaya and then a taxi to Bodh Gaya, already altering my well planned itinerary. It is a free-for-all of taxi drivers trying nab me. I set a good price and off I go. The driver tries to talk me into having him take me directly to Bodh Gaya in the taxi for 2,000 rupees, about $47.00. He then goes down to 1,200 rupees. I refuse. He is driving like a madman and the taxi doesn’t sound like it could make it that distance.

      He drops me at the train station. It doesn’t look like it could be functioning. It appears to be in a state of decay that has seen no attention for the past 50 years. But there are people, thousands and thousands of people. I get a porter and go to get a ticket. There are no lines to get tickets just a solid mass of humanity surging and pushing until one surfaces by a window. The porter tells me where I need to go and I do it. I finally get to a window and make it known where I’m going and I ask for a first-class ticket; there are none left. I have to go to another window to get a second-class ticket, so the struggle starts all over, but I finally succeed. Next I must find out what platform the train departs from. A huge area has to be walked across and I go up flights of stairs before I find the platform and departure time. The porter takes me there. It is about a half a mile from the station on the lowest level. I have not seen another Westerner in the station yet. On this particular platform I would guess a Westerner has never been seen before. I am a freak. Some people seem curious, some shocked, some hostile.

      The environment is almost beyond description. The many tracks that run around us are nearly covered with trash. People are urinating and defecating out in the open on all sides of the tracks. The place smells like a sewer and worse. Cows and dogs are all over, both half-wild scavengers. What was to be a one-hour wait turns into four hours. I sit on my big black duffel bag and try not to seem frightened, which for the most part I am not.

      Finally the train arrives. It is unbelievable. People are hanging out the doors, they are stuffed in the car and somehow more manage to stuff themselves on. There is no way my bag and I will fit anywhere. Some kind soul tells me that the train on the other side of the tracks is also going to Gaya in a while and it’s an express train. I thank him and decide to take my chances on it. I find a car and get on it. It is strange with benches rather that seats. I figure it must be a cheap car and I have a cheap ticket so I’ll give it a try.

      I sit on the train for two hours before it slowly starts to fill. I discover that this is a sleeper car. The benches are actually the beds and more fold down from the wall. I figure the car can’t be full and I can get an extra seat. But I was wrong, not only is the car full but each “bed” is assigned by number to a passenger. I end up sitting on a tiny conductor stool by the door and balancing my big bag in front of the door. When the conductor finally comes. I plead with him to let me stay. He is reluctant and I don’t think has any English and finally shrugs his shoulders and walks away. I am relieved. The car is full of a strange variety of men, some army, some laborers, some lower-class businessmen. They all seem equally hostile to me. I definitely get the feeling that Westerners don’t belong here. The train finally gets going and it is pitch black out. The men all settle into their beds. I look back into the car and one man seems to be sitting on the edge of his bed masturbating. I do not prolong my gaze to find out. I shift my view to the front of car where the toilets are, basically two reeking holes in the bottom of the train. This “express” train seems to stop about every five minutes. Everyone is bedded down when the train stops and out of the blackness our car is attacked. What seems to be dozens of men are beating on the car, beating very hard. There are bars on the windows and we have the doors bolted. The attack goes on and on. I am terrified. I look around to see how the rest of the passengers are reacting. They looked terrified as well and that does not comfort me. My thoughts, and maybe theirs

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