East Infection: Kolkata to Mandalay

By Richard Taylor

THE CULT OF HORN detailed my second go-round with the subcontinent and confirmed that India's chaotic urban centres, in an advanced and permanent state of rush hour, rendered most of the planet's cities stunted, somnolent mining towns, their silver veins long tapped out. EAST INFECTION picks up where CULT left off, tracing a run through the teeming humanity of Calcutta and Dhaka, then Bangkok, Yangon and the road to Mandalay. Due to civic ructions, I left Bangladesh prematurely, despite a welcoming people who aided me at every fork and turn. Bangkok, seventeen years after my first visit, was seemingly reborn and along with Myanmar reaffirmed an affinity for Southeast Asia, due not only to the charms and fascinations of the region but my appreciation for a people who tended to mind their business while respecting mine. As the new book title suggests, internal as well as external forces were at play throughout the journey but I hope (once again) that the photographs serve as a tonic to any surly eruptions on my part.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9780228804277

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor is an experienced and popular watercolourist, who regularly teaches and lectures on all aspects of painting. He is the successful author of several books, including The Watercolourist’s Year, Learn to Paint Buildings in Watercolour and Painting Houses and Gardens in Watercolour and was the Consultant and Contributor to The Art Course partwork. He writes for The Artist, Leisure Painter and Artists & Illustrators magazines and has also made several instructional painting videos.

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Contents

Foreword

Sultans and Sheihks

Dancing Wives, etc.

‘Political Situation’

The Greek List

Pause

Bird in the Hand

Due To Circumstances…

Spittle & Polish

E-Biker Punk

Lake Exotica

Dutch Treat

Custom Finish

Copyright

Near the Royal Palace in Mysore, India

Foreword

I finish India the same way I entered it – with a cold.

One night, in a cheap Yangon hotel room, the mild case of shivers I’d picked up on the streets of Calcutta burst into painful hacking bloom, aggravated in the interim by the vapours of Dhaka, capital of a nation where plastic bags were banned but poisoned air was not. Consequently, from the Sundarban mangroves to the temple plain of Bagan, the journey and my reactions to it were coloured not only by my usual sour temperament but the fickle status of personal health.

THE CULT OF HORN: Honking Through India, detailed my second go-round with the subcontinent, to states previously unexplored. Similarly, EAST INFECTION deals with unknown terrain, for Bangladesh and Myanmar were new to me and Bangkok may just as well have been, given the change that had overcome the city seventeen years after my first visit.

Certain portions of the text, particularly those dealing with Myanmar, have been lifted from articles I’d penned for the Globe and Mail and InTravel Magazine. Plagiarizing oneself is a lazy way to go, but those short pieces do expand on a few points, and in a more civil and engaging way than I might otherwise have done in my feverish ground-zero condition. In the same vein, as in the last volume, I have augmented the journal with flashbacks, flights of fancy and other frothings. These have been italicized.

RT

Sultans and Sheihks

NEW YEAR’S EVE, 2014

I will not be recommending the Hotel Wellesley.

Rained last night in Calcutta. Lots of noise. Lots of bangs. Some of it thunder. Most of it doors slamming and the raucous laughter of guests, or the manager’s buddies, or somebody who required killing. I didn’t expect to sleep anyway: final preps; the concern that the clock alarm would faithfully fail me, and of course, the image of that rat in the window last evening – every gnaw and tickle under the sheets was that rat. But as far as I knew (I’d left the drapes shut), there were no more vermin on the windowsill.

6:25 AM: The Green Line ticket office is closed. I’m sitting alone in the dark patter of rain. Ticking about the piles of wet garbage, is the dark patter of rats. Looking for windowsills no doubt.

Fellow travelers are starting to dribble in.

8:50 AM: The Dhaka bus is off to who knows where.

You are going to Bangladesh? one passenger asked me earlier. He shook his head. But now there is a strike.

Okay. Well. I guess we’ll see.

We’ve been coursing along a main drag lined with small shops and services – mechanics and the like – and we’ve stopped to pick up passengers, all of them formidable toweled and bearded men from some Pashtun cave.

PASSAGE FROM INDIA

We’re getting near the border. So we’re almost done here. India’s done. Certainly taken me for a spin. If I wasn’t bi-polar before…

And yet. Can’t refute what they told me, about Southern India that is.

It is totally different, said the teller at Scotiabank.

What do I tell them back home? Much the same as the first time I gather. Back in ’98, Asia was meant to shake things up. I’d been too complacent, too comfortable, too fat. Asia was as expected. Not predictable. Never that. But the experience was a wild oscillation of giddy highs and bloody lows (on the plus side I lost thirty pounds, so I’d discovered an effective five thousand dollar diet). This time I’m not covering as much ground, not bouncing from steamy Mekong jungle to frigid Tibetan highlands to sultry Nepali game parks – one reason I got very sick I think, these violent shifts in temperature. India bore the brunt of this. I arrived in a nasty humour. The subcontinent demands patience. I returned to India because I owed it another try. I don’t think I owe it a third. Again, what do I tell them back home? India’s a hard sell at the best of times.

I have no desire to go, is a common sentiment when the subject comes up. There is a smaller, more intrepid group, willing to try it. Then there are the neutrals, curious but hesitant.

I’d kind of like to see India but you hear so many different things.

India is colourful. There’s lot’s to see. There’s fascinating history. The gems among the dross can be outstanding – Agra was a pit but the Taj Mahal is a crown jewel…and on and on.

But the temperament is required, the flexibility, the patience. One could be as phlegmatic as jolly Buddha and I’d still predict a slow boil. I wouldn’t want to dissuade people from visiting India. But they have to have the mindset. I don’t.

I quite liked Calcutta though.

11:45 AM (Bangladesh time): I’m in Bangladesh.

The bus ride was uneventful but the passenger behind me was a nuisance, his racking cough erupting every ten minutes like a geyser. At the border, we exited the bus and entered a dark waiting room. The bus driver asked us to line up, singled me out and returned half my bus fare.

"You want to change to taka?" he asked. Taka was the new currency.

Okay, I said, mystified by the discount.

We walked through a string of border offices. A young man offered to carry my bags and suddenly disappeared with them. The customs processing took an hour, the officers were all smiles, I was classified non-threatening and issued a visa.

Now I know why the little man at the Bangladeshi consulate in Calcutta kept repeating port of entry. The papers he filled out for me were completely ignored here. Ten rupees for nothing.

The young baggage handler reappeared, hustling my luggage to his motor rickshaw, a larger sturdier contraption than its Indian counterpart. We drew a small crowd.

Is there a Green Line office? Can you take me there? I asked.

Yes, he said.

How much is that going to be?

Five hundred taka.

There was an uproar as the bystanders shouted him down to a hundred. He ignited the motor and gave the crowd an ugly look, I a grateful one. We said no more about it and carried on. Traffic was nonexistent, a few passersby kicking up roadside dust. It was a flimsy, haphazard border town, something dropped from the sky, the pieces scattered at random.

The Green Line office was closed.

So the private companies were affected too and the bus strike was supposed to continue through New Year’s Day. That’s why they’d returned half my fare.

Train station sir? asked my cabbie.

I guess.

The station was a warped, washed out thing. The wicket man sold me a ticket to a town called Joshur, apparently the only destination available.

Joshur has connections to Dhaka, said the wicket man.

I squeezed into a railway car held together by rust. Benches spanned the width of the car, with a small passage between. The place was packed to the grates. I was resigned to stand.

Sit here sir, sit here! cried voices from the back, as shadowy bodies pushed and prodded and opened a gap. I thanked them and sat down. They were a mix of old men, young men, two ladies with kids and a young woman knitting. Their faces were alight with smiles, partly due to my personal larder. I’d bought cookies in Calcutta and started passing them around. Worked wonders as usual.

4:05 PM: So we’re heading south. The wrong way. If Joshur doesn’t have connections to Dhaka, I suppose I’ll have to come back and punch the wicket man.

My bench mates have explained which of the passing squares are rice paddies and which are fish ponds and which fruit are papaya and which are mangos – these would hang outside the train window, almost close enough to touch. Whenever we ground to a halt, which was frequently, a great running and thumping would commence above us. Too heavy for squirrels. Monkeys maybe. Bloody pests.

People riding on the roof, I was told.

This is how I’d envisaged Indian trains and yet I’d never seen it, not in ’98. Not now. Well we were finally getting the Indian version, one country late.

A gabby old woman waddled our way, looking for a seat. I offered mine. An indignant chorus of NO burst around me and I sat down again. The young girl knitting gave me a disapproving shake of her head. This abrasive old woman was unwelcome. Or perhaps offering seats to ladies was just not on.

We arrived in Joshur. I picked up my bags, stood up and sat down again. Hundreds were jostling to get off this train, hundreds trying to board. No yield. Gridlock. Angry shouting.

I looked around and snorted. There was no way.

Sir, we will help you, said the young men. The window.

Several riders were choosing this option, so I passed my bags out the side and contorted myself backwards. The knees and shins took a bad scraping but the final drop to the platform broke nothing, I hadn’t slipped under the train, my baggage was safe and I felt pumped. All was confusion. Commuters jamming the station wickets, barking demands; schedules posted, written in whatever language the Bangladeshis use. No buses to Dhaka. That I knew. Apparently no trains either.

I sat on the outside steps and sulked. I wasn’t going anywhere.

That kind of year. The last day of that kind of year.¹

A gentleman signaled to me. He’d been on his cell phone