Indian Roadtrip

Our last stop in Bangalore was to buy jasmine from sellers gathering before sunrise for the weekend market, to adorn the statue of Ganesha on the dashboard in well wishes of a “safe journey.”  It was just after 3 am when we started off and exited the city limits and shortly after crossed into the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. A Tata truck with neon lights, equivalent to our 18 wheelers that traverse the interstates at night, flew towards us flashing their high beams and blaring their sequenced horns. This wouldn’t be unusual, to see an oncoming 10 ton truck in your lane except that we were on the national highway. There are rules here! Cones, dividers, if not speed limits at the very least signs that read “Speed thrills but kills.”

“Um can he do that?” I asked after I sat up alert in the backseat and the lights and noise passed and before us returned the darkness and silence of the highway.

“It’s India” my coworker friend said, “Incredible India.” We laughed and the music continued and the four of them joked in their mother tongue and I just smiled, a real smile. My first Indian road trip. The nation with the largest stretch of road second only to America. Eisenhower highways, the road leads West, Grapes of Wrath, Route 66, roadside diners, ghost towns, the car. I wondered what this would reveal about India. And that maybe, as at least I interpreted, that look some give you when on the road, the one that conveys the same message you have seen on faces elsewhere scattered across the Southwest, is universal. Where are you coming from? Where are you going? A look from the ones who dream of mobility in faraway towns and villages, even in the big cities you pass through. Not a look concerned to find an answer to who are you? The need to move isn’t an exclusive tenant of some American “exceptionalism.”  

I realize in writing this a few weeks after the fact is a disservice to my recollection. But after such a long writing hiatus in general, I accept infrequency as a side effect of my return. But I disclosed that to you in my first post, that my sharing might be sporadic. And, as in the following retelling of the trip, I will also call upon the transparency clause of my first post. For many reasons. When I return home I can share with you over some laughs the parts that even after a few weeks of not putting down in paper, I won’t soon be able to forget about this trip and the entirety of my stay in India.

Alas (because you never get to say that enough unless you are Tolkien or Whitman, but the latter is a prick) we continued driving into the night and soon passed what was to be the sole McDonald’s (or any Western fast food joint for that matter) we would see on a 13 hour road trip.

I had my knees bracing against the backs of the driver and passenger seat, since there were no seatbelts in the back. Going 135 kmph, this little useless precaution made me feel safe. “Do you want the corner seat belt?” my friend asked when he noticed my peculiarity. “No its okay, my life isn’t any more valuable than yours” joking and we laughed.

I did my best to stay awake, but woke up to a roadside pit stop. It was just after sunrise and through the fog, a village was waking and a few in the distance were already walking through their mango groves and sugarcane fields. After an extended visit to Vellore and the Golden Temple, we picked the last brick buildings on the outskirts of town to eat, before the road again gave way tropical forests of green, only to break into the clearings of rice paddy fields and isolated inhabitants. At a three walled blue building we sat outside next to an open fire and metal slab that turned out hot dosas we dipped in even hotter sambar and chutney. As soon as we got inside the car and not a second later my friend reached under his seat and threw me a beer (because it’s legal-ish for passengers). Cold beer is not a necessity they told me. I had one and immediately passed out from exhaustion, waking up half an hour later to be instantly handed another.

The roads led through forests and farms, until villages turned into trading hubs were we would stop at crossroads. At each we pulled over and asked directions to Pondi, take an unmarked turn, and were back on green stretches, stopping only for fresh pressed lemonade or sugarcane juice.   

By the time we reached Pondicherry I was feeling excited, immediately though I sobered up when seeing a commotion on the side of the road. A crowd of people was attempting to lift a car off a calf that was trapped underneath. It came bolting out full of adrenaline and small streaks of blood on its white coat. I sunk back in my seat processing that image, just as we passed the sign welcoming us to the union territory of Pondicherry. The greeting humidity and lack of sleep set me into a gentle delirium, but that was soon calmed with a gentle stroll down French quarters and Goubert Avenue that ran alongside the Bay of Bengals. Over pineapples from the fruit carts, we spent the rest of the evening on the boulders overlooking the sea.

On the first full day and after a good night’s sleep, we headed out to an island of Puddacherry full of dragonflies. After volleyball and beers under a shack, we headed back to the mainland to sample some Indian seafood, a spread of masala crab, minced shark, and curry squid in a dimly lit restaurant. The usual food coma set in, mixed with that blissful post-beach exhaustion. After eating we drove outside the French quarter to an open beach head to swim. I had apparently lost some weight since summer and had to use one hand to hold up my trunks. I can only guess it lends itself to being cut-off cold turkey from craft beer and tortillas. However my exploratory addiction to sweets here and the revelation of an expansive world of Indian breads beyond the naan will likely counter the issue. Think roti, chapatti, parathas, poori, all in different types of finishing adornments, cooking methods and regional flare.

                I asked my friends to come out deeper and join me bobbing out in the murky water, but they all confessed to not being able to swim, a reality I often forget growing up by the sea. I never understood how American inlanders could travel miles to a beach vacation to just sit on the shore and read, to deny the euphoria of the waves and summers past, forgetting not knowing how to swim is a damn good reason. I stayed out there till I spotted a red jelly and came back to shore. We left shortly after, not before eating fried fish from the seafront stalls and drinking them down with coconuts, sitting amongst the painted fishing row boats beached on shore.

                That evening again we spent like I imagine brisk weekend nights of French Rivera would be spent. French heard drifting through the air from vacationers and residents helped. The pastel yellows, blues of whites of the colonial buildings all stood silently facing the sea, with families and lovers walking down the yellow lit boardwalk. The slight humidity and faces under swaying coconut trees reminded you weren’t in Europe, but somewhere far far away. We went for drive later, past the old French administrator buildings, churches and residences, across the canal and into the Tamil Nadu quarter with narrow streets of concrete and steel, painted signs and billboards, and metal storefront doors and roofs. The streets were abandoned except for the laying oxen near empty carts and occasional orbs of red light that would appear down a narrow alley as someone struck a match to smoke.

                We had plans to sleep on the beach under an awning but with the cyclone advisory for the neighboring northern state, we were content with the room. One by one we feel asleep until it only a friend and I were awake, with another snoring in the middle of us. We got to talking over beers about our perceptions of each others’ countries but also of a shared and I presume somewhat universal goings of 20 somethings. How when answering what were some things that intrigued me of Indian culture, I answered a reverence for the family and the measure of restraint and duty people seem to govern their lives by. This was something missing in the cities he said, the fluid definition of family, how when he would go home everyone comes by your parents house to see you through open doors, to hear your stories and share in your victories. Things were shifting, demands that had driven people from the villages to the concrete cities of Bangalore, amidst a great backdrop of changing norms of the individual, love, faith, and obligation, playing out in the lives of millions. He got to telling me a religious story from childhood, how the humble Chipmunks got its stripes, adding he did not know if people really believed it. I nodded saying I was not sure not if believing that story or maybe even others was the point, but rather what the story represents. A connection to our roots, the families we left back home, our communities that sustain us and a framework instilled since childhood that determines how we see, interact and make sense of this world. It’s written on our foreheads, he added at the end of one the stories shared where it can be hard to make sense of it all. A reference to How Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer have marked you with an ineligible destiny.

                On our last morning we took our time. We stopped at a roadside stall for vada, idli, sambar and coconut chutney, down a cobblestone corridor that fed into the sea. The ocean breeze channeling down the walls kept the rising temperature at bay. After we strolled alongside the sea one last time, passing the weekend carts selling trinkets on the sand. We found the old man who was shouldering a hundred pounds of necklaces over his neck, shoulders, elbows and wrists that we had spoken with last night, with his wife carrying their baby. She talked me into a red coral necklace for my sister. Our last stop was to the liquor store to stock up on alcohol in the union territory where taxes were suspended, but limits strictly enforced at border checkpoints. We held our breathes as we crossed the border from Pondicherry back into neighboring Tamil Nadu and when passed, laughed and drove off fast.

                We took a different route home and found the national highway, stopping in a town known for leather. We quietly ate biryani and deep fried quail on palm leaves, to the sound of clanking metal bowls in the open kitchen and the call to prayer from the adjoining white mosque. It had been sometime since I have heard the call to prayer, but hearing it an enclave of town where India’s largest minority was the majority, added with the heat of food and atmosphere, and commotion of foot traffic and motorcycles that had become my white noise, seemed to heighten its impact. A feeling of serenity and affection for strangers around me, the normal act of a roadside lunch turned transcendental communion.

                And that all too common “I don’t know what I am eating exactly but damn this is good.”

                After lunch we stopped in leather shops (the byproduct of anything but the revered cow) and sampled shoes and belts in one basement level shop. The power cut, stopping the single fan that cooled the storage container-sized store, the fan that I had been standing under sipping my lemon soda. I returned to street level to walk around. Soon after we piled into the car and onto the highway, catching the sunset before it cast the valley into increasing darkness.