Puri, Light and Dark

  Puri, Orissa, India
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Part I: Hotel Stench/Mosquito Hell

My time in Puri degenerated quickly from bliss to misery, due to the fact that my hotel (the Samudra) had been recommended by Lonely Planet and shouldn't have been. It was a lovely new building, with great staff, seaside facing balconies, and a very reasonable price.

Rickshaw Driver's Puja Temple

The problem: the "creek" running beside the hotel was nothing short of an open sewer that deposited its virulent and noxious, mosquito infested material wealth into a marshy field almost immediately in front of the hotel (though that fact was visually obscured) before emptying into the sea about a hundred yards to the north. The stench was overwhelming, no matter which way the wind blew. Even with a strong wind, the balcony was unbearable. Though management provided a mosquito device in the room that did a fairly adequate job at night, the bathroom had no screens on the vent or drains, so mosquitoes were always coming in there. In an area where filthy ponds are breeding grounds for malaria and dengue fever, in addition to a number of other, equally deadly diseases, every mosquito bite is life threatening.

Not having quite mastered the art of the stable mind, all of this led to a paranoid freak out on my part. Rushing into the bathroom waving my arms and legs, armed with the room-service menu to kill any and all mosquitoes I possibly could, I would violently banging and fanning around the toilet to send any that were there into flight. Then I would sit down, wave my arms and legs the entire time on the John, jump up in a murderous rage to kill as many mosquitoes as possible, furtively make sure there were none around me as I opened the door and jumped through it to my room, slamming it behind me.

Showers were almost as much fun. Rush in like a mad woman. Kill any mosquito I could spot and reach. Watch for others while I jerkily doused myself with soap and shampoo, rinsed off in seconds, grabbed the towel and ran out, slamming the door behind me to dry myself off in my room rather than the bathroom. It was exhausting. I would lay there for hours trying not to need to pee, telling myself why I didn't need to take a shower just yet.

Shore Village from Lake Chilika

By day 2, I was ready to move hotels, but had no confidence of finding a better one, and was too exhausted to do so then. By day 3, I was sick. [Suspected culprit: though one of the bottles of mineral water I had purchased at the hotel had a fresh, sealed cap, it smelled and tasted bad (ever so faintly sewer-like). ] One bad thing about India is that you cannot ever be completely sure that the bottled water you are buying has not been oh-so-cleverly-and-deceptively locally recycled! A fortunate thing about India is that you don't need an Rx. You just go to a medicine shop, tell them what you need and they sell it to you. It's cheap, too. Now well familiar with this routine, my 5 day regimen of Flagyl 400mg, 3xDay cost me exactly Rs 10 (about 30 cents!). I slept for 3 days, ate nothing, and was thrilled to get on the night train back to Kolkata, but fast approaching zero tolerance for the filth of India.

Part II: The God of the Small

There were high points to my time in Puri before I got ill. The Peace Restaurant's clean little garden quickly became my safe haven. I trusted the food and the water there. The aesthetics were great. When I was well, I sat under its open air, bamboo and thatched roofs, enjoying the plants, clean and fresh, odor-free quiet as I sipped on pots of milk tea and visited with other travelers at its brightly painted blue and red wooden tables.

My rickshaw drivers were the real gems of my stay in Puri. I rotated between two of them, Vijay and Hari, because I couldn't bear to say no to either's request to reschedule for the next outing. I asked both if I could interview them about their lives and take some photos of them. Vijay was thrilled to accommodate me. Hari, who was older, shy and spoke less English, with very bright eyes and an eager, vulnerable smile, was not the least bit interested.

Puri Gothic

At one point, Vijay and I passed an intersection filled on one side with an anxious crowd, many of whom were pushing and shoving one another.

Anxious Oil Rationing Crowd

Vijay explained to me that they were waiting for their weekly ration of cooking oil. The poor are given ration cards and receive 1/2 liter of oil each week for Rs. 5, when the normal price is Rs. 50 for 1/2 liter). When I asked if I could take pictures, he urged me not to, that it could cause trouble. The government might take a dim view, and the crowd might react. (49% of Orissa's population lives below India's poverty line, and the only way to keep violence down and ensure any stability is to ration certain domestic supplies at a subsidized price. Like all government programs, a lot of the goods and funds are siphoned off the top by graft, so the oil might run out before everyone in this crowd receives theirs.) When we later drove past the crowd again, I hid my camera and took one of these photos. Then Vijay took me across the street to the roof of the humble "rickshaw driver's temple" that he visits every day to pray, where I took another photo of the crowd.


Vijay: rickshaw driver sage

Vijay, a very young looking 42, is strong, energetic, talkative and speaks relatively good, though definitely limited, English. He is sincere and kind, nice looking, married, a father of 4, always respectful. His rickshaw, which he rents for Rs. 25/day (about 65 cents) is tattered and worn, as was Hari's. It costs Vijay Rs 100/day to feed his family. His 86 year old mother lives with him and his wife with no financial help from his older brother, who is in the military, has a good salary and a big house.

Vijay's 86 year old mother

When I asked if Vijay usually makes enough to feed the family, the answer seemed to be yes. When I asked if they have ever gone hungry, the answer was no, "except for after the 1999 flood" caused by a monster cyclone. They lived on U.N. supplies for months, which were inadequate. Almost no one came to Puri for 6 to 8 months, and the tourist industry didn't fully bounce back for 2 years.

Vijay rents the house they live in for Rs. 1000 per month. They moved there after the flood (it killed over 300,000 people in Orissa, the Sundarbans and Bangladesh). The water came up to his chest in their previous house during the flooding. When he later drove me by that house (which rented for Rs. 300), I was aghast that it sat right next to the smelly "creek" that eventually empties in front of my hotel.

Family Photo

I could only wonder how horrible it would have been to live within 10 feet of that filth and odor, and was relieved for the entire family that they now share a nicer house farther away.

Vijay's father was a railway worker who was killed in a train accident when Vijay was very young (before he was 5). Vijay became a rickshaw driver when he was only 10 years old.
The thought of a 10 year old Vijay struggling to pull overly generous western bodies like my own, sometimes 2 or 3 of them at a time, up the slight hills of Puri, was haunting.

Honored to be invited to Vijay's house to meet his wife and family, I asked Vijay if there was any place we could stop for some flowers for me to buy for his wife. He said there wasn't. Luckily, I had brought a packet of Marie biscuits to offer, just in case.

Their house turned out to be a one room, windowless cement structure in the back yard of a larger, more middle class home. It was about the size of a garage, and very dark, with only natural light coming through the open doorway and a two 15" square vents at the top of the side walls, near the 12-15 foot ceiling. Floor to ceiling shelves, stuffed with who knows what lifetime accumulations of meager, gray and dusty goods, clothing, bedding, etc., lined three walls. One wall, with fewer shelves, held the family altar. Literally half the room was taken up with a four poster, double bed, the only furniture in the room. Their 15 year old daughter was asleep on the bed. Vijay's mother, who sat on the cement floor, in a green cotton sari with no under blouse, and his wife greeted me warmly. I pranamed to both of them, touching their feet, then touched my own forehead and heart, a ritual of respect, feeling very humbled to be a guest in their home. In the far corner of the open area kitchen utensils, a few pots and an oil lamp sat on the cement floor. They obviously had no electricity.

They woke their daughter, who was not in the least excited to get up to meet me.

Vijay's wife & daughter

I asked if I could take their photos. Vijay's wife gave their daughter's hair a vigorous combing and changed her sari, putting on an under blouse. Vijay went to his landlord's house to have someone write out their mailing address so I could send them photos (probably the only ones they will ever have). Not wanting to overstay my welcome or intrude as a voyeur into their private lives, I thanked them for meeting me and we said our good byes.

"My people... my class... my family name... not rickshaw drivers," Vijay would often say, "My people priests, offer pujas." Vijay attempted to share his spiritual insights with me, the full significance which I rarely grasped due to the language barrier. Once, though, pranaming, with his hands held together at the palms in front of his face, he asked me several times, "Which finger first?" Not understanding the question or the urgency and significance he was obviously giving it, I initially had a difficult time responding. I finally guessed, "The middle finger? ... because it is longest, and reaches the highest?" "No," Vijay informed me emphatically as he bowed, again and again to show me. "It's the little finger, the smallest finger. The smallest finger is first, because it is first to bow before God."

Vijay is a happy man who enjoys his life. He is proud of his family. His son attends the local college, studying science. He has a 10 day old grandchild. "Many families, much fighting. No fighting, my family! My wife, my mother, my children - all my children good children -- love each other. My mother says, 'MY daughter, MY daughter' to my wife."

Though Vijay dreams of owning his own rickshaw (that would cost Rs. 7000, almost $200 USD) and his own home, he does not squander the smallest particle of his peace of mind or enjoyment of life because he does not see the realization of those dreams anywhere on the horizon. I wondered how many of us are as happy with our lives as Vijay is. How many of us can say there is no fighting, only love in our homes? How many of us live, like Vijay, with such an open and content heart, while being driven to penetrate the heart and essence of the mystery of what makes a worthy, first offering to God?

The longer I stay in India, the more I realize how much we all have to learn from people like Vijay. Vijay is not uncommon among the poor here. These good people, however poor and whatever their hardships, so often retain their emotional availability. The life of their soul blooms in the context they are given. More and more I see these people as the soul and heart of India, the message of India to the rest of us.