A View from The Egg

On our 7 hour car trip from Jaipur to Udaipur, a panorama of continually evolving images go by our air conditioned window. Some of them are touching … like the group of Hindu girls in the car next to ours at a stop light, laughing and waving at us on their way to temple. Pure happiness. Some of them are awful ... like a small, naked child (he couldn’t have been more than 2 years old) sitting on the edge of a four lane road, playing in the dirt. Doesn’t anyone care that he could be hit by a car? Where is his mother? Why is this okay? 

Jim is reading a book called ‘The White Tiger’. The narrator is the Indian driver of a wealthy businessman in Mumbai. He accurately describes tourists as travelling in an ‘Egg’ here, totally protected from the reality of the country and its elements. You can see it but you don’t have to engage with it. That is exactly what it feels like, sometimes.

As we move from city to city, Jim and I spend a lot of time talking about India and how it is a study in contrasts. We can’t begin to resolve its shortcomings in our minds so we come up with lot of easy solutions to its problems .. things like, “Why not throw a coat of paint on that beautiful building?” or “ A community garbage pick-up day would be a good idea here”.  We think of simple solutions … simple ideas …  but this country is anything but. There is so much corruption in politics. There is deep distrust of the police and a distinct wariness between Hindus and Muslims. There are stories of rape in the paper every day. There are old ways and new ways. There is pollution and there is suppression of women and, honestly, the list is endless. Sometimes, The Egg looks pretty good. 

We don’t know what the solution is but we do know that things are changing, however slowly. We also feel that, just by being here, we will continue to think about what is possible. In the meantime, here are a few lighter observations from our ‘Egg”:

Food on the Road:  On our car journey to Udaipur, we had been advised by our guide to have the hotel pack us a boxed lunch rather than rely on roadside restaurants, “for safety reasons”. These reasons became evident when we stopped for tea at a spot along the highway and were handed a menu that proudly stated at the bottom, “We do not serve the most poisonous foods”.  Good to know – but not very reassuring.

Indians are very curious about tourists.  They look at you quite intently …sometimes for long periods of time. In other words, they stare. This is especially true in areas outside traditional tourist areas. We stopped at a roadside restaurant to eat our recommended boxed lunch. After much negotiation between our driver and the café owner (we were bringing our own lunch, after all), and promises that we would purchase something, we were ushered into an empty eating area separate from the rest of the café, and the door was closed.  As we began to eat our lunch, the door opened and one of the café employees sauntered in, looked over at us and then went over to the window to look out on a brick wall. After a minute or so, he turned around and left the room, glancing back at us before he closed the door. Two to three minutes later, the process was repeated by another employee. This happened two more times before we finally finished our lunch.  Who knew a brick wall could be so fascinating? 

There are people everywhere.  Jim and I play an “I Spy” car game on our car trip.  Could you look out the car window at any point and NOT spot a person? With a national population of 1.2 billion, and a landmass one-third that of Canada, it’s hard to find a bit of green space without someone else on it.  We spied people in fields … on roadsides … under trees …. There was literally nowhere you could look – rural or urban – where there wasn’t someone looking back at you. 

Vehicles travelling on the wrong side of the highway are perfectly acceptable.   There I was, happily playing my I Spy game with Jim (who I suspect was sleeping behind his sunglasses), when I look to the front of the car to see an 18 wheeler barreling straight towards us at full speed.  No problem. Dave, our driver, simply moves over to the right lane the truck zooms past us.  As Dave explains, the truckers don’t want to drive further north than they need to after they’ve dropped off their loads, so they just drive on the wrong side of the road.  Okay then.

Looking forward to Udaipur.  It’s called the Venice of India for its beautiful lakes. We’ve also heard that it is quieter than other cities. We wouldn’t mind a day or two to get that beep-beep-beep sound of the tuk-tuks out of our heads.