Pink Monsoon Summers

By Sandra Crawford

In Part One the story begins in Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan in 2010. I venture out into the chaos and an unknown environment. It is like entering other worlds simultaneously. The parallel world of un-owned animals that live in close proximity to suburban houses, the world of dire poverty and dirt, next to the world of incredible wealth. I encounter the strangeness of Hindu and Jain religious practices. Who are all these bizarre gods and goddesses? The longer I was there, the more I slowly began to comprehend the very particular Indian way of life as well as the many concepts behind the god figures. Over two monsoon summers I built up some very warm relationships with the people I met, which I also unfold throughout the narrative. After completing the elephant project work I flew to Varanasi and delved into the complexity and ancient holiness of the oldest inhabited city in India. The Indian devotion, reverence and importance attached to the river “Mother Ganga” and their complete disregard of pollution is difficult for a western acculturated person to understand. Amit, who became a friend and guide, gave me a lot of explanations. In Part Two I relate how I returned to India one year later. This time I wanted to do more travelling as well as doing an art project with school children in Jaipur. My first stop was at Amma’s Ashram. Amma is well known in India and runs many recognised NGO’s. Brief stop in Delhi. An encounter with two beggar widows and their daughters. Dealing with poverty and beggars. And the difficulty as well as pleasures of train-travel. There is only one “Rat Temple” in India; it is situated near Bikaner on the edge of the Thar Desert. By that time I had also become interested in how the caste system functioned. How do Indians always recognise which caste someone belongs to, even though they only very reluctantly talk about it openly? Corruption was a major topic and the 76-year-old activist Anna Hazare was constantly on TV news programmes wherever I went, campaigning for the Lokpal Bill, a bill against corruption. Huge demonstrations were taking place all over the country. I could sense the excitement wherever I went. Revisiting Jaipur. I describe how my friends had changed, how Jaipur was changing, and how the elephants were doing in their new village. These transformations are indicative of the rapid developments taking place in India today. This time I worked on an art-project with children in four different schools. The project happened to take place around Independence Day so I was confronted with an Indian view of the British army and the effects of the British Raj and colonialism. Climax of the visit was a ride on Pinkie, our favourite elephant through the countryside and villages.
Next stop: Khajaraho a national heritage site. A unique complex of restored medieval Indo-Aryan temples, which are quite different in style to the Moghul architecture I saw in Rajasthan. Here I describe the story surrounding the temples, as well as writing more about Yogi Sharma, caste and my guide’s arranged marriage.
Varanasi revisited. Varanasi is a very crowded and chaotic town at the best of times but with everyone worrying about whether Anna Hazare would die from his fasting, the demonstrations had reached a frenzy, even child monks dressed in orange were demonstrating. Tourism and traditional pilgrims jostled side by side. I tell of my friendship with Amit, his problems as a young male Indian, his relationship with women and gender aspects, as well as what is like to be an “older woman” alone in India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Crawford
• Release date: Jul 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476277424

Sandra Crawford

Sandra Crawford is a professional artist who lives and works in Vienna Austria. Born 1955 in London, grew up in Sydney, Australia and studied Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in London. She has had many international exhibitions, as well as teaching English as a foreign language.

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Pink Monsoon Summers

Sandra Crawford

Published by Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Sandra Crawford

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Part 1 2010

Chapter 1 Elephants and Gods in Jaipur, Rajasthan

Chapter 2 The Varanasi Ghats experience

Part 2 2011

Chapter 3 Delhi Chaos

Chapter 4 Amma’s Ashram

Chapter 5 Camels and Holy Rats in the Thar Desert

Chapter 6 Jaipur Revisited

Chapter 7 Hati Gau

Chapter 8 Khajaraho and Tantric Visions

Chapter 9 Varanasi Revisited

1981 North London,

Where am I? I am sure I am somewhere in India. It is very, very quiet, just the swishing noises of a paddle sliding into the water. I am sitting in a long, wooden rowing boat on a wide river floating along swirling grey-brown currents. Maybe it is the Ganges, mother of all rivers. My hand is trailing in the water brushing against blood red petals and discarded garlands floating past. The dawn light is a pinkish blue. There are no people anywhere so it must be extremely early. My boat glides silently close to the Ghats, steep, stone steps leading down to the water’s edge. I stare up in awe at grand palace walls and temples. The frosty, cold light shining through my bare window wakes me up. It is only five in the morning. I am confused as these images are so vivid. I have an insecure future ahead of me but I make a definite, clear decision: one day I will go to India, the land of my dreams. I will visit Benares, also called Varanasi. I know I will.

Chapter 1

Part One 2010

Elephants and Gods in Jaipur

14.08

I arrived on a direct flight from Vienna to Delhi airport at 12.20pm. My very first impression was walking down an endlessly long corridor of beige-patterned carpet, and thinking the colour was much pleasanter than the grey-greeny and violet choice of colour for carpets in public places in England. Other countries don’t usually have carpets at their airport, more likely inconspicuous tiling. My next flight to Jaipur isn’t until 5.00am next morning, which means I am going to have a horribly long wait in the departure hall. After asking various officious-looking Sikhs and wandering about in the enormous but empty hall it took me a while to sort out that my flight was from the international airport and not the domestic one even though it was a domestic flight, Tired and itchy-eyed, I found two uncomfortable plastic seats to spread out myself and my irritatingly, heavy hand luggage. I spend hours in a kind of dazed worry about losing important items like my passport, purse, bag with camera, and bag with my computer. Time passes even when it doesn’t seem like it, and after being checked by very fussy guards and much stamping of bits of paper stuck onto my hand luggage, I am able to spend the last hour in the inside departure lounge where all the duty-free shops are, and have a coffee and croissant, just like anywhere else in world, only paid for in rupees. Opposite me is a huge blue and white neon sign for WH Smiths. It would be easy to pretend I am at Heathrow or Gatwick, I feel I am in a kind of weary dream-state, in the kind of non-place Marc Augé talks about. I also have to prove my identity constantly. The coffee is the same as I can get at Wifi, the institute in Vienna where I teach English, or in Chicago where I can get the same coffee out of a paper cup in any coffee shop. This day is an endlessly long day. It hasn’t ended yet. Karnika Datta, the elephant-volunteer project-organizer came to pick me up from Jaipur airport with her driver, Tapan. The poverty strikes me immediately and I try not to stare at the beggars on the side of the road. We pass an interesting looking white marble temple, a Lakshmi Temple, Karnika says. I’m looking forward to exploring all these unknown places. We park outside a row of houses next to a walled-in park. Karnika introduces me to Sharda Sharma and her family who I am going to stay with. She is dressed in faded, dark pink Punjabi dress, the long shirt and baggy trousers with the typical Indian scarf covering the breasts. A homely, friendly face with large brown eyes is smiling at me. Sharda led me along a long corridor and unlocked my room. It is completely filled by two beds, and one greeny-grey steel cupboard.

There you lock your valuables, she says. A couple of posters with romanticized Indian peasant women are stuck with sticky tape on the wall above the beds plus two in-built shelves on the opposite wall with some English books and a photo of past volunteers. The people on the photo are all much younger than me. The room has no windows, only air-grids above both doors on either side of the beds. The second door leads into a small square room that gets light from a skylight two floors above. The light shines down through a small room next to Sharda’s kitchen onto the ground floor. Later she would always know when I come in and call down Sandra, Chai ready, You come, dinner ready. And there is a small bathroom, and a kitchen area next to another bedroom occupied by Masami, a Japanese volunteer working with a children’s theatre. This was to be my home for the coming two weeks.

Sharda and her family live upstairs on the first floor. I am sitting on a sofa in the large room living room chatting to her. It is still early morning so she insists that I eat a piece of white bread and jam that she spreads for me, and drink chai. Her husband is sitting on the kitchen floor with his legs crossed in the lotus position while their nine-year old daughter Hashita is doing her geography homework next to me on the coffee table. She shows me what she is doing. India has the world’s second largest population and the colours of the flag are saffron and green, with the symbol of the wheel in the centre. Saffron is a very special colour I am told.

Later after I have unpacked and cleaned up the bathroom a bit, Karnika comes and picks me up again with Tapan. We drive amongst reckless traffic to the theatre production where Masami and two other English volunteers, Claire, a bouncy, somewhat overweight red-haired Liverpudlian, and an equally young, but more reserved art student from Cambridge were doing a performance of a play they have been working on with Indian school children. It is their farewell performance, as they will be leaving tomorrow. The theatre is a government institution and all performances are free for everyone so there was a large and noisy audience. Despite hurrying we missed the main part of the show. Karnika informs me that everyone drives so fast and recklessly because they are always late and we were very late. Everyone is trying to get somewhere on time. Women ride sideways in their saris on their motorbikes, kids squashed in-between, no helmets, cars hooping and overtaking, and what’s the point of red lights. Very soon everyone was streaming out so we went backstage and I am surprised to see all the performers and producers hug and kiss. Claire went bright red and cried. She doesn’t want to leave them. Masami introduces me to the director and his wife, Babita, they run the theatre together. In the meantime it was quite dark outside and after everyone calmed down the couple drove Masami and me and their small son to an open-air café. Before we can go in, there are security checks, and strict bag controls. Plastic chairs are organized in a big circle and everyone ordered eating paneer pardak and sweet jeelabies. Tasted good. I didn’t drink the water even though it is supposedly drinking water. I tell myself I must overcome my paranoia of catching something, dinned into me by my mother before leaving Vienna. Sharda is waiting for us when we returned. She insists I eat a pickles sandwich so that I am not hungry at night.

My first day and evening in India have finally ended. I think I will manage to sleep as my room is pitch black and quiet. I have to leave the fan on though as it is very hot and stuffy without. The energy-saving bare light bulb isn’t very friendly. Tomorrow I will buy cleaning agents for the toilet and bathroom.

15.08

Pooran, the auto rickshaw driver picked Masami and me up and drove us over to the other side of Jaipur to Karnika’s house. Millions of pilgrims walk along the side of the road next to the murderous traffic. A never-ending stream of men, women and children all wearing bright colourful clothes and carrying bundles and bags on their shoulders were all walking in the same direction. Pooran manages to explain in almost non-existent English that they are walking to a faraway temple and will be on the road for at least 6 days, they will live on the road during that time. The area where Karnika lives is supposedly a better-off area but even better-off houses here seem poor to spoilt Western eyes. Karnika is a psychologist and married to an army general who is stationed in Jodpur, the Blue City. She visits him every second weekend and has to travel six hours by train. Her work involves not only the volunteer scheme to help the elephants; she also organizes teaching in the slum schools and theatre projects for children. She seems to be very busy, constantly slightly wheezy and out of breathe, but very friendly, concerned about how I am adjusting to the culture shock. In a funny kind of way, I tell her, everything seems rather familiar, maybe because I spent almost three years in the Indian area in Birmingham as a student. I often ate in the Dream House Indian restaurant where there were only men, the street smelt of curry, the women wore Punjab clothes; even I wore Punjab tops over my jeans. And many areas in Birmingham were extremely run down with people living in poverty. The Indian shops were full of saris and other Indian-looking things. So maybe that is why. Karnika says my age makes a difference usually only very young volunteers come. I am very lucky, she tells me, being the only volunteer, I will learn a lot about the elephants and the Mahout families. I am to communicate with them, (I am not sure how I will do that, as they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Hindi) but I am not to have any expectations.

Later in the afternoon Masami shows me the nearest supermarket. It is just past the park and up the road past a Montissori Christian Kindergarten, and a huge temple made out of reddish stone and only half finished, nevertheless it is unusually big compared to the other houses in the neighbourhood. An extraordinary amount of young men are standing around everywhere. On entering the supermarket a man tells me I have to leave my bag behind the counter to my left. We can only take our purses with us. At the counter there are at least 4 young men, who already know Masami and laughingly take her bag and then mine. We proceed to the food section, I want some coffee; I am missing my coffee shot in the morning. Another young man appears immediately and asks,

I help you?

I have noticed that Indians often talk in statements or orders. You sit, you wait, you give…etc The young man hovers while I find some instant coffee. It is relatively expensive compared to the tea. I tell the young man I am fine thank you, and take my bottled water, biscuits, mango juice and instant coffee packet to the checkout desk. Another two young men appear and take my things out of the trolley and put them into a basket. Meanwhile I pay and get a receipt. The man behind the counter points to another counter where I have to go and get my groceries with my receipt. Then I have to wait until the person in front of me has each item checked against their receipt. My groceries are checked and I am given another receipt. Another young man puts my items into a colourful bag sewn out of old bits of flimsy, gauzy material. They do not use plastic bags. I am impressed. Finally I can take my groceries to the first counter to get my rucksack that I left there. Before leaving I have to show my receipt again and a woman in a sari wearing dark sunglasses checks the items against the bill once more, when she is satisfied, she clicks it with a metal instrument. All this takes ages and involves a lot of staff.

16.08

It isn’t easy getting up at 4.15am. I have to quietly lock my door with an awkward lock that I find difficult to handle, and then unlock two front gates which is challenging in the dark. Tapan my co-ordinator jumped out of the auto rickshaw and helped me. Unfortunately at my age it is difficult to see when there isn’t enough light, it is moments like this that I am aware of my age. It is a strange rickety ride in the early hours through the deserted streets of Jaipur, also called the Pink City, the first planned city, and capital of Rajasthan, built in the early 18th century. Now I can see why. The huge Pols, or gates and the high walls surrounding the original city are a dark salmon colour in the faint dawn light.

Why do dogs lie half-asleep in the middle of the pot-holed road? Why do cows like to stand in the middle of the highway? Every now and then I see sleeping men in doorways or on carts. Traffic muddles its way past the animals.

We arrived at Amber Fort just as the sun was breaking through the overcast sky. Tappan opened a tall tin gate onto three beasts, female elephants, Lakshmi, Pinkie and the dangerous Pur Pur. I am not to go near her unless her mahout is there. Tapan, who is about my size, 160cm, dressed in a shirt and trousers and looking very urban, compared to the mahouts in their more traditional clothing, tells me what to do. First give Lakshmi long grass bundles, and then throw the huge elephant turds that he shovels into a bucket onto a walled-off section outside the gate. I am not strong enough so the dung falls into a drain and a yellow-sari-ed woman appeared from a house and yells at me in Hindi. We swap shovel and bucket. Meanwhile the mahouts stand about or crouch on the concrete ground smoking skinny cigarettes, the women peer out of the doorways of their small rooms in the low building on the opposite side of the courtyard where each family lives in one room. Kids of all ages start appearing and smiling. Cheeky ones come up to me and demand attention but I don’t understand them or can’t even pronounce their names, so they all laugh at me. Monsoon rain starts pelting down making the turds all soggy. Pinkie and Lakshmi are allowed to stand by themselves enjoying the wet on their skin. They happy I’m told. We stay under the awning. Crashing and banging above our heads. Monkey Aha. When we have finished clearing away the dung, the mahouts begin painting the elephants. They get orders from the government when there is an event. Tapan says it is probably a wedding. The elephants are very patient, they don’t at all mind having their make-up put on, bright leaves first drawn in white and then filled in with pink, yellow, blue and green. The tops of their foreheads are painted black. Very striking! After the make-up is done, the mahouts get very old, very heavy iron contraptions called palanquins, chipped-pink painted, out from under a tarpaulin cover stored in the middle of the courtyard and help each other put them onto their elephant’s backs. The gentle animals slowly lower their heavy bodies and kneel obediently when the mahout gives them the command. All the men work with quiet concentration making sure the palanquins are secure. Finally the mahouts climb up the elephant’s trunk and scramble onto their necks. Elephant after elephant marches regally out of the yard but each trunk tries to grab a bundle of grass on the way. Tappan and I finish clearing away the dung and grass. An old bedraggled woman comes and gets the leftover grass for the skinny cows. I am rather glad when Pooran comes and picks us up with the auto rickshaw. I am also relieved that I didn’t need to use the toilet; somehow I am worried it might be dirty.

We drive home along the highway in the rain, rather than through the centre of town. Less traffic, Pooran says. It is nothing like a European highway, bikes with small children, no helmets, auto rickshaws, rickshaws, pedestrians, cyclists, elephants, camels, horses, in fact everyone and anyone who wants to get somewhere uses the highway. We pass slums on the side of the road just before entering the city. Large families live in makeshift squalor, even much worse than the one room the mahout families live in. It must be even worse when it rains; everything will be damp and in some cases flooded. Imagine the smells.

Muslims. It’s a Muslim area, they don’t use contraception, and children are a gift from God. Sharda tells me without much sympathy, when I get back and sit on the kitchen floor drinking milky chai, and a slice of white bread and jam.

In the evening I eat sitting on the floor with Sharda, her husband and Hashita. They eat on the floor to remind them that food comes from the earth.

My brother wanted to buy us a table, but we don’t want a table, we eat this way. Sharda explains. It takes a bit of getting used to for Western knees to be bent for long periods of time, but I am sure it is good for your back. We watch a historic soap series on a very large TV screen. It is about the Rani (Queen) Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi who was a leading figure in the first struggle against British colonialism and for Indian independence. She led the rebellion in 1857 and has gone down in Indian history as a legendary figure. The soap has changed the plot somewhat, the heroine is extremely beautiful and the heroes are dashingly handsome. The setting and costumes are lavish. Each episode is always interrupted heightening the suspense artificially. And the British are portrayed as brutally cruel.

17.08

On my way to do my daily morning e-mail I decide to enter a small temple en-route. There are three elderly men sitting around on a kind of entrance porch. The man in-charge motions to me to take off my shoes and wash my hands. I enter and a little girl points to a metal stool I should sit on. Rows of small mental tables fill the entire space except for a square altar at the front. Two families or they seem like it, couples and a grandmother are doing some kind of ritual. They are moving bits of rice and tiny bits of something onto another metal plate and reading a devotional text. This is a Akshat Puja, meaning a rice ritual.

Rice is used because you cannot grow rice by seeding with household rice. Symbolically it means that rice is the last birth. The devotee strives to make all effort in this life to become liberated.

Meanwhile every now and then a man enters and rings a bell, walks up to the altar, bows and walks round the inner sanctum. I watch all this for a while and then on my way out the man in charge, who was watching my bag, instructs a young boy, who has been helping to clear away stools and trays, to show me something. He led me downstairs to a meditation room with a devotional lit-up figure at the front. The floor was covered with matting. On my way out one of the two men tell me to sit and pointed to the bench. No one likes you to just stand. The other man with light blue eyes, most people have soft, brown, almost black, eyes, asks me, "Who are you?

I am sure what he means so I say my name.

No. He says very sternly and launches into a lecture that my name means nothing, it is given, my body is nothing, only my soul is good. He struggles to find the right words in English, so he stops abruptly and says, You learn Hindi, too hard in English. You come again, I bring book in English. I thank him and leave rather confused. Later I discover this is a Jain temple. Jainism practises non-violence towards all living beings. Each individual through self-effort should conquer inner enemies, i.e. negative emotions, and the principle of non-violence minimises the effects of karma, enabling the soul to reach its full potential, or Siddha, Param-atma highest soul". Jainism is believed to have originated before the beginning of Indo-Aryan culture with prehistoric origins dating from before 3000 BC and organized Jainism to have arisen between the ninth and the sixth centuries BCE. Today it is a small but influential religious minority with as many as 4.2 million followers in India, and successful growing immigrant communities in North America, Western Europe, the Far East, Australia and elsewhere.

At 12am Pooran and Tapan picked me up we drove through the mad traffic and back to the elephants. I’m getting used to the insanity. This realisation occurs to me as we pass the slum dwellings, that are stuck together with corrugated iron sheets and ragged materials perched on the side of the road, as I watch a child shit amongst the dogs, cows, goats, and pigs. It seems it has to be like that, always has been like that and will always stay like that. I am troubled at how easily I just take it all for granted and feel voyeuristic.

Today I help bundle long grasses with Pur Pur`s mahout, Khalil, a Moslem. He can speak broken English. He is originally from Dehli, his father was also a mahout so as his family couldn’t afford to send him to school he did animal training. Khalil seems to be more experienced and professional compared to the other mahouts and can therefore handle Pur Pur who is very temperamental. She plays with her food and will only eat small bundles. The other mahouts seem to respect Khalil, I can’t remember their names. We discuss prices and how much I had to pay to be a volunteer. How little they get paid compared to the elephant owner. How the elephants get painted with intricate designs at a festival in March. The kids stand around and communicate wordlessly, smiles, looks and the two goats chew at the grass. The goats greet me when I come in so I am shocked to hear they eat them after Ramadan. I couldn’t possible eat an animal I live with, I don’t eat any meat anyway so I in this particular instance I agree with Pooran who says Moslems are cruel but of course I don’t think Moslems as such are cruel, anyone, who kills animals is cruel but it is too complicated to explain this to him. Many Hindus are vegetarians.

Covered in sweat and dust from the drive back, it was a joy to have a good wash. I have to have a bucket bath. There is a large, white plastic bucket and a tap. When you wash you just pour the water over you, and get used to a different way to wash. Sharda reminds us to be careful with how much water we use. Rajasthan has suffered a drought and water is a problem. At the moment it is monsoon so the problem isn’t quite so acute, but around the hottest period, June, July it is a problem. I often forget to turn off the light in the corridor and hear Sharda reprimanding me. Electricity is expensive. I can hear my mother’s voice in my ear from my childhood. How many times, do I have to tell you to turn off the light?

After a self-made coffee in a tiny kitchen I share with Masami I went to the supermarket again. One good thing about so many young men with nothing to do, is that they rush up to help carry and find things. Then I wandered around the area just looking. I found a market full of fruit and vegetables I’ve never seen before, a hospital, a park with groups of men sitting around playing cards, groups of elderly women sitting on the grass praying and chanting together and boys playing cricket. I saw another temple, but quite a different one. It had the most unusual, almost life-like statue sitting in a niche. A woman with her little daughter sat down on the floor in front of the statue and lit a candle. There were many niches with gaudy ornamented figures, all with many arms. Then at the centre at the back of the temple a man sat on a slightly elevated square platform separating blossoms and leaves. He left the leaves on a green mass in the middle and put orange flowers in a pile next to him. The woman came over and sat down in there and lit another small candle and meditated again whilst two men walked in and rang the bells. To my western eyes all very strange and incomprehensible. I am amazed at how the woman can concentrate on her meditation with the noise of the bells and knowing her child is wandering around. Just outside the temple entrance a man dressed in dirty white rags and a turban sat on a tatty even dirtier matt next to a couple of very mangy dogs.

Around where I’m staying there are many stray dogs, they seem to be territorial, as I recognise the same dogs grovel about amongst the rubbish with the pigs in the morning when the rubbish is tipped into a huge heap just outside the park wall. Dogs. They have been domesticated since the dawn of time, so they are like street children, unkempt, scarred and filthy. Poverty. How can people who can hardly afford medical treatment afford dogs, or even have them treated if they can’t even afford to have their children treated? Cows and monkeys are noticeably holy, people lay grass out for them on the side of the roads, and they drive around them carefully. But dogs?

They were mentioned for the first time in the Rg Veda. Sarama is the dog of the gods and the ancestor of all dogs. In pre-Vedic and Vedic times dogs were herd dogs, watchdogs and hunting dogs,