Sickness paradigms
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2007
1
18
20
Trip End
Dec 15, 2007
Jodhpur,
India
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
i think that being sick while traveling, especially alone, is harder mentally than it is physically. or maybe that's true of all illness, that it's not so much our deteriorated bodies that bring the most hardship but what we see in them. i coupled my body's sickness with homesickness. i just wanted my travels to be over and to be back home. my desire to explore stumbled and died. it was a moment of small joy when i discovered a star wars movie marathon on an indian cable channel on the tv in my hotel in chandigarh. it was showing all six films back to back...i started watching at the end of episode II and watched all the rest to the end. that i sat through more than a few seconds of any of the monstrously terrible prequels says a lot. i find fascinating the fragility of my adventurous spirit, how quickly it can evaporate. i suppose my illness folded itself into a certain weariness that was lying just underneath the surface. my time in asia is almost up...i have less than two weeks left...and i've been able to feel myself falling towards my departure, almost longingly. three months seems to be just about as long as i can deal with. i've met people traveling for six months, nine months, one, two, three years. i wonder if i could do that, if i would enjoy traveling for that long. and then i wonder if maybe it's like trying to stay awake...there's always a point where the pull of sleep becomes the most strong, and if you can resist that you can stay up all night, reborn into energy. maybe the call of home is a bit like the call of sleep. the other possibility is that after so much time spent traveling with others i have let these few weeks being back alone become less somehow. i've never set out on travels by myself out of intention...it's just that i always sensed that if i allowed the absence of available traveling companions to hold me back i might never go. the amount of time that i've spent traveling with others this trip has been a pleasant surprise and i've made some friends that i hope to keep. i suspect that at the root of my weariness is a loneliness, and that traveling in the right company could keep me going for a long time.
i've managed to keep moving forward and to still go out and see the few things that i felt i couldn't miss, not knowing if i'd ever get another chance to see them. i greatly enjoyed the golden temple in amritsar. i seem to have developed a bit of a soft spot for sikhism. i only know a bit of the history but what i've learned casts it as a fairly progressive religion, particularly considering the time and place of its origins. it joins a host of other indian religions in a long tradition of being born out of a rejection of hinduism, in particular hindu social structure...although the religion does borrow ideas from both hinduism and islam. the sikh gurus were ahead of their time in the manner in which they taught ideas of equality and religious tolerance. there is a disconcerting undercurrent of conflict in sikhism rooted in ideas of a noble warrior race, but i think what made the greatest impression on me was how kind everyone was while i was in amritsar. conversations with rickshaw drivers and merchants that might have ended in hassle in other places ended in smiles and handshakes. if it was clear i wasn't interested in what was being offered i would be left in peace. i wandered into a bathing tank and gurudwara (sikh temple) that i thought was the entrance to the golden temple, but wasn't. there i met two young sikh men in their early twenties. we sat and talked for a while about all manner of things: life, philosophy, religion, work. they accepted my description of my agnosticism without alarm and were happy to discover that i had a fairly unfavorable view of the caste system. after our discussion one of them gave me a ride to the entrance of the golden temple on his motorcycle and then took his leave, thanking me for the afternoon's discussion. anyone is welcome to enter the golden temple...you just need bare feet and a covered head. outside all the entrances are stalls that will keep your shoes for you and provide head covering if you don't have any, free of charge. just before all the entrances are foot baths to wash your feet, ensuring that the temple marble stays clean. the temple complex is a large bathing tank ringed by buildings. at the centre of the tank connected by a bridge is the golden temple itself. the surrounding buildings are all gleaming white marble and the cool surfaces combined with the water and the shining golden top of the temple proper are quite spectacular in a strangely calming kind of way. the sound of priests singing hymns was broadcast throughout and the beautiful music was also soothing. the music was more islamic than hindu...the first guru, guru nanak, composed many hymns with the help of an islamic musician who he traveled with. as i was making my way around the tank i met an elderly sikh man who invited me to come with him to eat at the temple's communal kitchen. i happily agreed. the man has a son in england and goes to visit him every summer when india is at its most unbearably hot. the guru-ka-langar, the communal dining hall, was an amazing experience, even with my tender stomach. anyone is allowed to come and eat a free meal offered in the spirit of unity among all peoples. apparently, most sikh temples have such a dining hall...the one at the golden temple serves 40000 people a day. the meal is simple but delicious: dalh, roti, rice, and rice pudding for desert. everyone is given a thali plate and a spoon at the entrance. there are strips of carpet in rows on the floor that everyone sits on and then people come by with huge buckets full of the various foods. they move quickly to feed everyone in a timely manner, ladles dipping up and down in rapid succession resulting in lentils and rice being spilled on the floor. the floor is then routinely washed and wiped down between waves of eaters. it was amazing to see all the volunteers outside the hall prepping vegetables or washing the immense piles of thali plates. i've never been to any kind of religious institution that i felt managed to capture the spirit of what was being professed so well as at the dining hall...but then, i'm probably a sucker for a food based message. happy that i'd enjoyed the food and the experience, the old sikh man left to go home as i continued wandering the temple complex. it seems strange to me now to think that most people in canada probably filter their knowledge of sikhism through the air india bombing and the turbulence of the mid 80s push for a sikh homeland, the occupation of the golden temple and the assassination of indira gandhi. there are strains of extremism in any religion (even buddhism) but for one so new (relatively speaking) sikhism seems to be fairly at peace these days.
the other excursion of note that i made was to see the fantasy rock garden in chandigarh. a man named nek chand, a hindu who relocated to the indian half of punjab following partition, started making statues with all the industrial waste piling up as a result of the construction of chandigarh. he ended up with thousands of them by the mid 70s strewn across a swath of government property. when they were discovered, 15 years after he began, instead of tearing it all apart the city council recognized the value of the art and started providing chand a salary to continue working on the project. the end result is the fantasy rock garden. it's a strange place with walls and water running everywhere. it seems maze-like at first (even though there's only ever one path to walk) with an alice-in-wonderland feel, tiny doors and narrow passageways...but it eventually opens up into a massive space full of mosaic murals, swings, and colorful stands. the bulk of the statues are arranged towards the end of the garden and they are fabulous. endlessly creative in his use of the rubbish and junk he recycled into his art, chand has the kind of simple, honest talent that untrained artists with a touch of genius often seem to have. i met nek chand while i was wondering around. a pair of old men, one western and one indian, were sitting together...i looked at them as i was walking by and the western man called me over. he introduced me to chand and i sat down to talk to them. chand was fairly quiet and soft spoken. he was obviously proud of what he'd created but in a way that seemed to involve very little ego. the western man's name was tony and he was from wisconsin where he teaches at a university. his link to chand is that he is the main force behind the nek chand foundation, a group run out of the US that promotes the rock garden internationally and recruits volunteers to come and help maintain the garden. in many ways i found tony more fascinating than chand. he spoke in this strangely affected manner, english spoken with an indian lilt, hindi words sprinkled here and there. at first i thought that it was an honest shift of his voice, a result of much time spent in india. but as my curiosity grew and i began to ask him more questions about himself and his time in india his voice quietly regained its american qualities over a fairly short amount of time. he seemed to become a bit disconcerted by my interest in him as opposed to mr. chand who was right beside us. as i left the both of them i got the impression that they spent most days like that, sitting in a courtyard of the garden, holding an understated court, the noble king of recycling and his esteemed advisor.
the city of chandigarh is a strange place in the context of india. it was built to be the capital of punjab following partition and the entire thing was conceived and designed by the swiss architect le corbusier. the city is divided into rigid one square kilometer blocks forming neighbourhoods that are all named sector x, where x is the number assigned to the sector. my hotel was in sector 22 and there are somewhere close to 100 sectors. the city feels incredibly spread out, and instead of feeling modern it feels trapped in a particular period who's time has come and gone. i felt like i was wandering around a dilapidated suburb or a university campus. there is much art, especially literature and design, that fails to live outside of the specific time period in which it was created. while some works are timeless, these are weighed down by the inescapable timing of their birth. the whole of le corbusier's vision...the streets, the capital buildings, the statues...feels like a relic of post-war modernism, frozen in time and then made fuzzy by the chaos of india that can never totally be held at bay. i will concede that the traffic in chandigarh is the most well-behaved i've ever seen in asia and makes possible the argument the the insane driving here has little to do with temperaments or culture and everything to do with poor infrastructure.
and now i'm in jodhpur, sadly my only stop in rajasthan. as wonderful as rajasthan is, i decided to forgo spending time here to give myself time to explore gujarat, a state that i didn't get to see last time due to a recent earthquake and communal violence. i would have liked to go back to the fort at jaisalmer, but just getting there and back would eat up a few days. i'm happy to be able to wander around 'the blue city' (most of the buildings in jodhpur's old city are painted the same shade of baby blue) and to check out the impressive meherangarh fort for a second time...but i had plenty of time in rajasthan previously and i'm happy to skip it this time to be able to explore other corner of india.
Comments
Being sick in India
Wow, really feel for you.
Been here 7 months and cant even count the times i have been sick. Required hospital twice.
Can recommend in Bangalore Apollo hospital in Bhannergata rd. For dental www.expatdental.com