India Nepal Chapter two (Final)

People and Places

The reason for our Delhi visit was to participate in an e-learning workshop to review progress being made in a recently-granted initiative of the International Spinal Cord Association (ISCoS) which both of us and other members of ISCoS have been working on over the last year. The aim is for ISCoS to carry free online education regarding spinal cord injury (SCI) on its web site. The process in Delhi was for each faculty member to present what will become his/her module in the e-learning curriculum to an audience of mostly-Indian doctors and therapists who have had experience and interest (but not necessarily any formal education) in the topic. All faculty attended as many of these presentations as possible (there were several parallel streams running simultaneously at times), and, following each half-day of teaching,  a curriculum “editorial” review meeting  was held. The weekend was surprisingly pleasurable for a project of this nature, thanks to great support provided by the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) in Delhi, led by its director, spine surgeon Dr Harvinder Chhabra.  Dr C created a cooperative, supportive atmosphere in which 20 strong personalities (some would say headstrong) from within the small international community of SCI specialists, all with definite opinions about what should be taught, how and to whom, felt free to criticise and be criticised by each other, with input from attendeesmostly from around India.

For us, the meeting in Delhi was enhanced by the attendance of three young Nepalese friends: our “mentee” (if we’re his mentors, doesn’t that make him our “mentee”?), Dr Raju, his fiancée Sheela (a social scientist in training) and Dr Nabina, the recent medicine graduate currently working at SIRC whom we had got to know quite well as we worked with her and the Swiss team in Kathmandu (see last chapter). We were especially proud to have Raju as a participant in the e-learning editorial group. He has recently started a five-year residency in rehabilitation medicine, Claire’s specialty, (some of you are actively supporting his education, as well as that of Dr. Prakash…see previous chapter….) at BSMMU in Dhaka – Bangladesh’s first and only medical university. The university has a well-drafted curriculum and seems to be particularly supportive of Dr. Raju. He has moved into an apartment with a junior neurology resident and showed us photos of his friends and the place he is living. There is a good spinal cord injury centre in Dhaka and we hope he will get to know the team there over the next few years.

Interestingly, after Kathmandu, where motorcycle helmets are just gaining acceptance, we noted that they are used universally in Delhi (enforcement) and that there is now a push for passengers to wear them (not seen to be "cool" otherwise). On the contrary, we saw no one wearing helmets in Aurangabad (see later).

The remainder of our time in India was purely recreational:

In the three days between the end of our commitments in Kathmandu and the beginning of the Delhi workshop, we visited Varanasi (aka Benares), a holy pilgrimage destination on the Ganges for Hindus. We had found a delightful smaller hotel on one of the ghats looking out over the river, run by an interesting man whose family had owned the house for generations. He being a Jain, the hotel offered a purely vegetarian menu that excluded even onions and garlic, which suited us well. We were joined here by our close friend Naomi from New York who had been able to get away at fairly short notice (Shimon, her husband, was not so fortunate). Claire and I both had our only – and minor – GI upsets here. Our Aquatab treatment of all our water and the use of Pepto-Bismol before meals seemed to help except for this. Peter’s discomfort passed rapidly, but Claire took some of Naomi’s Oil of Oregano for what was really just a slight rumbling of the gut. Folks, the dose (if you really feel it might do you any good!) is 2, not 20, drops in a glass of water (there is no dose information on the bottle, and Naomi incorrectly remembered dosage information!). Claire lost a day of her life to projectile vomiting and feeling like hell! The rumbling of the gut, however, was gone when she recovered from the poisoning, and she only had to wait for two days for her peeling lips to heal!

We took boats down the Ganges both at sunrise – a lovely peaceful time of day - and to see the exciting fire ceremonies at night. Naomi and Claire spent time being guided around the Golden Temple. Pushed, pulled, prodded and sweat-upon by an unbelievably dense crowd of frenzied believers, they would never, ever have been admitted to the temple, let alone gotten the chance to see and touch the sacred Shiva lingam (generative symbol for Hindus) at the temple’s core without the firm guidance of a local Hindu priest who accepted, but didn’t demand, a donation for his services. (For further description of surging, dense, fervent crowds, see tale, below, of the Pooram at Thrissur.)

We had been to India before so were not new to its bustle, its crowds, aromatic and spicy food and so on. Nonetheless we were still amazed by the vivid colours of women's clothing, as no two saris or kurthas worn by women seem to be alike, all are beautiful, none were black or grey (Naomi opined that in India, orange is our basic black!). It must be the most flattering garment a woman could wear, even when working on farms.The food we had was mostly vegetarian, much of it too spicy for P but never a problem as there were always some mild dishes and lots of tongue-calming rice and curd. We had many different forms of rice - steamed, in logs (puttu), breakfast pancakes with names like dosa, idli and udapam, different colours and styles of dal, sambal, fenugreek leaf and other Maharathi food items. The weather was uniformly hot, around 40Deg + in Delhi, somewhat cooler but with very high humidity in the southern state of Kerala where we could find ourselves drenched with sweat within minutes of walking outside. For us softies, air conditioned rooms, when we could get them, provided relief, although it was always nice to step out into the warmth of early morning to listen to the birds, even in polluted Delhi.

From Delhi the three of us flew south to Kerala, the state south of Goa, on the Arabian sea West coast of the country. It seems to be a state in which three quite disparate religious communities live in harmony, only vying for visible presence with their religious buildings. Where we were, there was a definite preponderance of mosques, mostly painted a rather garish shade of lime green. The Christian community, more obvious close to the Kerala capitol of Kochi, advertised its presence with enormous, brilliant-white prosperous-looking churches and cathedrals. We actually saw little architectural evidence of the Hindu community, reportedly the (invisible?) majority.

Our itinerary in Kerala was set up as a tour for the 3 of us by Blue Yonder, a company mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide, the first time for us to take such a tour. We corresponded with them from Nepal expressing our wish to attend the annual Pooram – Hindu Festival – in Thrissur, and identifying other sites of interest, and they put ogether a great trip for us. It included pickup by a driver and an air-conditioned car which was available to us for the entire time, accommodation in some lovely hotels and homes, customised trips to see artisans and enjoy local musicians.

The Thrissur Pooram is reputed to have 1-1.5 million attendees. Not knowing what a crowd that size looks like, we could not confirm the number but there were certainly more people, more densely packed than we have ever experienced, including the Golden Temple in Varanasi, Times Square NY on New Years’ eves of yore, and the NY City and Tokyo subway rush hours! There was a lot of (to us) cacophonous “music” (P stuffed his ears with toilet paper, thus likely preserving his fine sense of hearing, Claire’s having long ago succumbed to the various auditory assaults of childhood and adolescence in New York.)  A number of (to us) very odd instruments in bands usually accompanied the slow procession of decorated elephants, each with three mahouts on their backs and another three guiding from ground level. There were small groups of musicians jamming, and sporadic large firecrackers being set off.

We were amazed by the helpfulness and friendliness of people in the midst of the crush, and we enjoyed a sense of comfort even in a pressing crowd. Heat, noise, and loss of fluid from sweating were issues there and conscious fluid replacement was essential, as our sense of thirst seemed diminished.( In fact, the only way we figure you can fully appreciate this blog is to read it in a sauna set for “maximum”.) The festival runs without interruption for about 36 hours, with fireworks between about 2 and 4 am, more sound than light, and giving the aural impression of the bombing of Baghdad. The main purpose of the festival seemed to be the face-off between 2 opposing lines of lines of 10-11 elephants each guided by mahouts and their elephant-riding assistants who hoisted increasingly elaborate ornamental umbrellas, changed every few minutes, the leader in each heat being greeted by enthusiastic roars from the crowd (us). Claire expressed the thought that it would be wonderful if all our human disagreements could be resolved by a peace process consisting of hoisting decorative umbrellas at each other at a distance of 200 metres!

We followed this denervating, exhilarating experience with two quiet days at the River Retreat, a resort with a pool (heaven!) on the banks of the River Nila, offering wonderful oil-oversaturated Ayurvedic massages (getting off the stone massage table, dripping oil, was a death-defying activity). From here we visited local weavers, a potter, and the Vayali music group, dedicated to reconstructing some of the Kerala performing arts.

Some wonderful people we met:

Namboo and Uma – Our hosts in the first home stay were completely delightful, seemingly born into the hospitality “industry”. Retirees now living in a 350 year old red laterite stone house built around a small courtyard in a village near Uma’s family place, they invited us into their lovely home with a wonderful lunch of Keralan and North Indian specialties and warm, inviting chat. Later we were led to a tree house looking out over the rice paddies where we snoozed in the heat of the day until woken by delivery of freshly-squeezed mango juice. The peace was only mildly disturbed by a small pack of dogs that made off with Naomi’s shoes and, later, Peter’s hat. It was Namboo and Uma who invited us to the Khatakali night, and their daughter Nibha who introduced us to the Mudras.

We were indeed fortunate to arrive in time for an evening of Kathakali dance – beginning at about 7 pm with a 2-3 hour session of applying makeup (chutti) and costumes. This was at a neighbour’s house to celebrate a 60^th birthday. The show was held in a backyard tent set up for this, first providing a simple but delightful dinner to 60 or 70 guests or more. The troupe included about 6 actors, several makeup specialists, several dressers, drummers and two singers. The show began with an ‘audition’ piece (by two young performers, one a 12 year old girl) at about 9:30 and followed by three major pieces, all with hundreds of years of tradition behind them, telling various stories from the Ramayama and Mahabarata. The audience knows the stories, the music, the characters, their makeup; surprise and twist endings are decidedly not part of the deal We arrived at about 7PM, and makeup was still being applied, a 2-4 hour process, including the grinding of pigments! We held out until about 3 AM, but the performance went on until after 5! The author, Arundhati Roy said, in The God of Small Things, that "It didn't matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings."

We were fortunate to have some explanations of the plot during the show from Kathakali master Sasi, an intriguing man from whom we would love to have learned more (you can read about him at http://kottakkalsasidharan.com/biography.html). His web site also gives you an idea of the style of the hand movements known as mudras, done in a wonderful rhythmic style accompanied by specialised drummer  http://kottakkalsasidharan.com/kathakali_handmudras.html which you can see him demonstrate at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NIT8u-izY

Praveen and Vydia were our hosts at Maranat Mana,  our next home stay, an old “16-verandah” farmhouse-temple house, so described because it is built around four separate courtyards each surrounded by 4 verandahs. Praveen told us about his midlife change in career from that of an officer in the merchant marine to farmer on land owned by his family, a decision made with the help of the family astrologer; the horoscope featuring prominently in decision-making in Hindu families. Kerala has had for several decades a democratically-elected communist state government, interesting especially because it is the state with the highest literacy rate and apparently the most prosperous one in India. The estate had lost some of its lands when they were (peacefully!) distributed among the farm labourers who had previously worked the land, but Praveen’s family had been able to hold on to enough land to make the move to rubber farming and other crops. A few cattle were kept for milk production and because their excreta could be converted to biogas used for cooking. Other crops include nutmeg and mangoes. Vydia is a school teacher in the school started and run by the family.

Our last Blue Yonder stop was Ourland near Aleppey, where we transferred from our car to an auto rickshaw because the road through the rice paddies was too narrow, thence to a canoe to the island where another great Keralan meal awaited us, along with a gracious welcome. A short canoe trip and swimming in the river brought us to the end of another fulfilling day. Early the next morning, we walked along the network of canals, some, sadly, almost completely blocked by the spreading of beautiful-but-life-depriving water hyacinths. Later, we enjoyed a personal languorous day-long houseboat cruise on the famous backwaters near Kochi, an area known as the Venice of the east. What luxury!

Our last (brief) stop was Kochi, to admire the Chinese fishing nets as the sun set over the Arabian Sea. Naomi had spent the day here while we braved the Pooram and recommends the Folk Art Museum and other institutions at Fort Kochi, the historic part of town.

The next morning we flew to Mumbai, taking a taxi in to the architecturally stunning Victoria Railroad Terminus. We were less than adventurous for lunch – a McDonalds (!!!) spicy paneer wrap. The train trip to Aurangabad was in the ‘3AC’ class, sharing our compartment with two gents, one an otolaryngologist who decried the kickbacks expected by referring GPs (and outlawed in the west some decades ago). They kindly thrust upon us whiskey and various tasty tidbits, and helped us make arrangements for a car and driver for the next two days as we visited the historic decorated caves at Ellora and Ajanta. Arriving late in Aurangabad we slept in the railway station waiting room (the ‘retiring rooms’ were full), then met our driver to head off to Ellora, where truly amazing caves have been carved into a cliff-face, each representing places of worship for Buddhist, Jain or Hindu believers. We were the “exotics” here - everyone wanted a photo of and with us, and it was sometimes difficult to get away – not that we really wanted to, as everyone was so sweet: “What is your name; where do you come from?” Their names were difficult for us to pronounce, and ours seemed challenging to them! We next visited the famous. older-than-Ellora, Ajanta caves which feature not only amazing sculpture, but also some of the best-preserved frescoes from the late pre- and early Christian era. Astonishing!

After our night sleeping in the Aurangabad railway station, we were a bit disappointed by the very basic hostel accommodation where we spent the next night, but we were rewarded in the morning by meeting some wonderful people visiting from Andra Pradesh, all of course, wanting photos taken with and by us! We spent our last two nights in India, decadently, at the Lemon Tree hotel in Aurangabad, a place of comfort, air conditioning, hot showers, fabulous food, helpful English-speaking staff, and an enormous pool that drew us in morning and evening each day. One cook in particular, Manas, was truly charming when he came out to explain local dishes to us and has since sent us several of his recipes!

From there, it was back to Delhi where our wonderful hosts at the Indian Spinal Injury Centre met us at the airport, happy, tired, and ready to go home. They took us back to the centre to repack (they had kept our bags for us), brought us dinner, gave us the opportunity to for a short sleep, before driving us back to the airport for our 2:30 AM departure for our long flights home.

What a trip! If you have the fortitude, there is a partly-reduced gallery of all our travel photos on our Smugmug site at http://peterandclaire.smugmug.com/Travel/Nepal-India-2012/22644263_cJNLWC

For those of you who are supporting the work we are doing with our young protégés, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, as do they! Here is the link to the photos about our visit to Kathmandu and the work in the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre: http://peterandclaire.smugmug.com/Travel/SIRC-April-2012/22267282_2TcSxb

If you've made it this far, thanks for your interest and perseverance!

Claire and Peter