Worship

In which Bala appears and we see another India

The full series of posts from my India trip can be read here.

We were meant to meet Bala, Chris’s friend who had been appearing in texts with plans over the last week, in Dindigul around six, but the train got late and we watched the sun go down behind the mountains. Gusztáv pointed out how quickly this happens in India, the sunset is gone in a moment and suddenly it is dark. I stood at the open door of the train and watched the countryside fly pass, thinking again about how you accept things as safe in India that you would never accept as safe in the UK, that if anyone saw what I was doing, they would be horrified. In India, the only strange thing about me standing in the doorway of an open train was me being a white man. Gusztáv said as we watched a family of four on a motorbike pass by, that if you saw this in Europe or in the UK, the man driving the motorbike would be summarily executed, there would be no question. Here, however, he was a good man, caring for his family and doing his best with what he had been given.

The train came to a stop in Dindigul and we climbed down with our backpacks on. A man tried to take my bag as I stepped down, and I shoo'd him away, thinking he was a taxi hawk, but then there was another man throwing a shawl over me and one over Gusztáv and suddenly, we were hugging people, Bala, yes, actual real live Bala, the man of myth, of all of Chris's stories over the years, this man who I could not have already loved more, was there in front of us with three other younger men. He was overjoyed and we answered the flurry of questions, yes, the train ride had been fine, yes, it was good to be there, yes, let's get a picture. And then we were immediately in another car and driving to the hotel, the last of the things we needed to sort out ourselves, having been sorted out. You are with me now, Bala said, I will take care of you.

We arrived at the hotel, which was the sort of hotel that one sensed did not have a lot of white people coming through, but with Bala in front of us doing the paperwork, there was no sense that any of this mattered. They took us to our room and then told us we had some time, maybe fifteen minutes to clean up before dinner, so we took quick showers and pulled everything we needed out of our bags and headed downstairs. Bala was waiting for us and we all hugged and shook hands again and sat around waiting while we talked a bit about the trip and about Chris and finally a man came with a backpack and they said, Okay, let's go up to the room. We went back upstairs, the room turning out to be our room, with all of our things unpacked and the bags everywhere and we apologised profusely, we didn't know what was going on. It became clear there was a connection between the backpack and us needing to be in the room. We all sat down and Gusztáv said, as he said earlier in the week to me, You can open a bottle with anything, a piece of paper even. Then there was a buzz of the door and food started coming, including mushrooms for me, because Bala knew what it meant to be vegan and could get me what I wanted.

The room party got larger as people appeared and sat on the beds and then they brought chairs and more food. Bala's friend who was sitting next to me on the bed was very good at singing we were told and so he was asked to sing. He gave an explanation for a song that he started to hum and beatbox and vocalise through, with everyone looking on excitedly and bursting into applause when it ended. Then there was a buzz of what turned out to be the room's doorbell and another man came in, and everyone stood up to greet him, a very important man they said, he was the head of the football association in the state and also, it turned out, the owner of the hotel. He welcomed us in Tamil and then immediately asked what we thought about climate change and what we could do about it, which led to a long discussion of the climate in India, in the State, and the different times that floods were coming. Bala's house had been flooded badly once, in a time that it wasn't expected, and we talked about what the government was doing about this problem.

Then everyone stood and went out when the owner had to leave, and more food came, and the younger men from the train platform ordered chicken. One of them, with a shaved head — Bala told us that his mother had died in October and he had shaved his head because of this and we all expressed our condolences. Gusztáv sang a bit as well, as he does Hungarian folk music and everyone was very happy to listen to this, and finally at around ten-thirty, they decided it was time to leave with Bala promising to come back the next day around nine to pick us up and take us to the villages.

Since the room was such a mess, we were asked to leave for a half hour so they could clean, so we went out into the street and walked around the little residential area where we were staying, with piles of rubbish on the corners and cows rummaging through them looking for food, but even though it was dark and late, I didn't feel unsafe at all. When we were noticed, no one seemed to want to do anything to us except ask questions and take pictures. The smell of the rubbish, however, was overpowering and unlike anything else we had experienced. It felt sad in a way that other things we had seen weren't sad. Why, of all the things that can't be solved, has this thing not been solved.

The next morning I woke up early because I wanted to run somewhere and the night before had decided the streets would be quiet enough for me to do laps around the neighborhood near the hotel, but they weren't really that quiet it turned and after a couple of laps, I resolved to just run back and forth in front of the hotel, getting five miles while the storekeepers looked on. The street was filthy though and I saw a man and a woman on a motorbike throw a bag of rubbish over a fence, something we had seen at night as well and which Bala told us later was very common. He said the children were becoming more concerned about it and there might be a change in the future, in fifty years maybe. And then there were cows. I ran past one several times, and as I was coming up the road on my third or fourth pass, in the distance, I could see it got scared or angry and began to chase a man, who started to run away from it. I couldn't tell if it was serious or not, if it was just a joke, particularly the comical way the guy was running, but we were assured later that it was very serious actually and many people had been hurt from bull goring.

We had breakfast and then Bala came to pick us up, greeting us at the entrance of the hotel with a kind of joyful energy that you'd misread as coming from a politician if he wasn’t so authentic. We took a car with a driver out of the city to meet a friend of Bala's, a man called Babu, who had been a banker in London for many years and decided to come back to India to cultivate some land that he had, something like 4 acres across two plots divided by the street. He looked younger, but was 69 years old. Gusztáv interviewed him about the land and food and we all went out to walk around and see the different crops he had: bananas and coconuts and turmeric and mangos. He talked about wanting to get into herbs and showed us a deep stone water reservoir that he could pump water out of to flood the land when he needed. I walked behind Gusztáv and Babu, listening mostly, as I am not that interested in farming, but am interested, and found on the ground a big feather that I picked up to give to Naomi for good luck, even though I knew it would likely not survive our next trip.

Bala took us to the family shrine then, for his family's god, Prajapati, and we went into the temple and the priest blessed us and spread ash on our foreheads and we took pictures. The priest gave us the ash, the holy ash, to take home as well, in little envelopes after he stood in front of the statue and rang a bell loudly and burned incense and chanted. We watched carefully, praying with our hands clasped. There were six older men sitting on the steps of the shrine and they all watched us watching the priest, and before we left they wanted to give us shawls, which they put over us. We went to the next shrine and another priest came in and took off his shirt and had a set of keys where he unlocked the cabinet next to the shrine and again, rang bells and burned incense and chanted. Bala and Gusztáv and I all took the incense in cupped hands and put it over our heads but our driver who was also with us, declined and I realised there was the connection between him and the rosary hung from the rearview mirror of his car and the small statue of the Virgin Mary on the dashboard.

Bala then said he wanted to show us his family house and we came to a small concrete building next to the shrine with a roof of thatched leaves in the front. Two women and a child naked from the waist down were sitting inside and an old woman in the front, who kept speaking to Bala in Tamil and Bala kept dismissing. Gusztáv went into the house and I hung back, not sure what to do, and one of the women began to wash fruit for us to eat, apples and oranges and some pomegranates. They brought out chairs, and we sat and talked about belief and about our parents' belief. Bala said his parents were very much believers, did many rituals but he didn't believe or worship, and I said, my parents were also very religious, but I was not, and he laughed and said, That's the thing, that's why we don't worship, and I said, Oh I worship, I just don't believe. I will worship anywhere, any god that will have my worship, but I can't believe.

We finished eating and washed our hands and walked back to the car and I realised the driver had not followed us. I asked Bala what the woman, who Bala said was his older sister, was talking about, and he said, She wants me to settle a land dispute, but I can't settle it. Babu, the man from London, had land for his retirement and I asked Bala if he had been tempted to do that and he said it was already his plan and we were going to his land next, which we arrived at after 45 minutes. We met a man there on a 125cc motorbike who Bala said was his brother, and I finally clarified with Bala if his father had many wives, which caused him to laugh out loud and he said his father didn't, No, only one wife unfortunately. After some questioning, I realised that all the brothers and sisters were actually cousins and all the sons and daughters were all nieces and nephews, and all the fathers and mothers were actually uncles and aunts. We walked around Bala's land which was not cultivated yet like Babu's, but there were trees at the far end and Bala said he had given the rest of the land to tenants to care for, but that this part of the land was all he wanted for now: they could use the rest of the land as long as they protected the trees.

His brother wandered behind us and came back at some point with a mango and cut it for us to eat, something that Gusztáv had said was his dream when we had done it with Babu at the first farm: to eat a fresh mango from a tree. The mango here was decidedly less ripe and tasted more like a bitter apple. We walked back to the entrance where the motorbike was and I said I wanted to ride a motorbike at some point during the trip, thinking this might elicit the offer to ride this bike, and indeed it did: Bala's brother offered me the bike and all the muscle memory of riding came back, even though I felt a slight panic come up as I went through a deeply rutted part of the clay road and came over the rocks. It was okay and I rode up and down, stopping only when I stalled and didn't remember the need to keep the clutch in when you’re stopped and in gear.

Bala took us to lunch at a biriyani place and explained to the man that I would eat vegetarian with no milk and after some discussion it was agreed I would have fried rice. Another man came, from another NGO and he told us all about a big judgement Bala and he, but mostly Bala, had won just that morning for a sexual harassment law that the government had not been required to enforce but would be now, a project that he said Bala had been working on for many years. There were banana leaves spread out in front of us and they told me to sprinkle the leaf with my water which I didn't do very well, and then food came and everyone ate with hands and the driver, sat next to Bala, ate seriously, ordering more than everyone else. I spoke with the man from the NGO about sex trafficking and sexual harassment and the various laws and policies that dictated what was and was not acceptable and what women could do to stop abuse when it occurred. Bala too explained his role in the court case and what the success meant for everyone and finally the end came and Bala went to pay on his credit card although everyone, except the driver, attempted to pay and were waved off.

At some point, I realised that learning about farming had really been one goal of this trip for Gusztáv and Chris, and Bala next took us to the very edge of the mountains and we met with a couple who had an educational charity on sustainable and organic farming and ran education and training courses for children at the site we visited. This was the first meeting we'd had with a woman and Gusztáv interviewed them while I asked a few questions about education. The woman left in the middle of the conversation and returned with milk tea, and I said, I'm sorry I can’t drink it because of my stomach, and I worried I annoyed her, because she went away and came back with black tea, for which I profusely thanked her. We took pictures again, and they gave us seed balls that the children had made at the last training and I made Bala promise that we could stop some place for me and him and Gusztáv to throw them into the jungle.

They invited us into the house, which I initially thought belonged to the Bishop of the State based on a plaque on the outside of the house, but upon reading the inscription more carefully, it had only been 'opened' by the Bishop and with all of the Catholic imagery in the hall where the training was, I gathered they too were Catholic. We sat on the sofa and behind it, there was a cat and three kittens. The wife of the man brought out bags of spices which they said were from her business and Gusztáv left to look at them, before coming back with four bags. Upon trying to pay, was rejected by Bala and the couple, Bala saying if you buy this one, this one is free, if you buy this one this one is free, if you buy this one this one is free, creating a circle in which you get everything for free.

We drove back to town and on the way to the hotel, Gusztáv asked where the town centre was, if we could walk there and Bala said he would take us and we ended up dropped next to a massive Catholic church without walls, and with loud music playing and dioramas, Catholicism and Hinduism reflecting each other, the shrines looking the same and in some places, people with pictures of Jesus, Ganesha and a mosque together.

When Gusztáv saw me the first time, he gave me a cup that he and Chris had bought for me, a small one that they got for all of us so that we could avoid having to use the cups we were given and risk getting sick. Gusztáv left his at a restaurant and Chris left, so I was the only one left with a cup in the end, but we wanted to get new ones. We stopped at a shop in the market and Gustav and I both got cups for our families. Bsefore we knew it, Bala was already paying although we tried hard to stop him, we couldn't get there fast enough. There was a man there, an old man, who would inscribe anything you wanted on the cup, so I had PIHLAJA tapped into 6, for the family and one to spare, and Gusztáv had them done for his whole family. Bala paid for everything for us the whole time, and we tried on several occasions to stop him, but were unsuccessful. We asked Chris on our group message how hard we should try to pay and he said we could try, but Bala was clear again and again that he was paying.

Bala and the driver finally took us back to the hotel and we decided not to go out again, but went to the hotel bar to have a beer and they brought us some snacks, but the lights were almost completely off in the bar, and Gusztáv made the point that no one wanted to be seen drinking so the point was that this was meant to give us privacy. We sat and talked and the TV was so loud we ended up having to sit next to each other. I ordered dosa and they brought snacks. I tried not to eat too much as we theorised again about the things we'd seen during the day and what sort of things had become clearer and what things had become less clear, before heading back to the room and falling asleep in a moment.