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September 18, 2004
A very Indian traffic jam(This entry was started in July, but only finished on 18 september and published. After a few weeks I'll move it and put it where it belongs on the July archive page).
7th July 2004
Traffic jams are scarcely a phenomena unique to India, or indeed worse in India than anywhere else - Bangkok's gridlock always seems far worse than the Delhi traffic which does at least move. But India, with the swirling mayhem of its roads, inevitably has to has its own unique take on this blight of the modern world. This is usually the ability to manufacture traffic jams with no obvious cause, or to produce them in places where realistically no traffic jam should exist, and from a bare minimum of raw material.
In theory it only takes two vehicles to have a proper traffic jam in India, and I have seen blocks with only three or four cars that have taken half an hour to unpick. A high degree of selfishness on the part of at least one driver is also essential, and this vital ingredient is likely to be provided in spades by most of the participants in proportion to the size, shininess and newness of their cars, and is directly related to how "important" they perceive themselves to be (probably an inverse function of how important anyone else thinks they are). Freud would no doubt have a few words on the subject, especially in light of the penis size/car size relationship apparent from motoring magazines. Those who avoid Indian roads like the plague can still enjoy something of this fascinating spectacle, as the same mathematics of self importance apply to queues in post offices and railway stations, although in absence of cars, moustache size seems to be the main determining indicator.
The roads in Himachal Pradesh are particular favourites for the minimalist jam; the roads are narrow with little or no verge, with large drops and high cliffs giving little room to manoeuvre and make space once a jam has been set in motion. It works something like this:
Bus 'A' and truck 'B' meet head on a moderately narrow road, and have to stop to edge past each other, a manoeuvre that will take them a few minutes given the narrow road. Car 'C', an 'important' person in a Toyota Qualis (who has been stuck behind truck 'B' for nearly 5 minutes before this, and has 15 Punjabi tourists in the back) decides he is in a hurry, and this is the ideal opportunity to slip by the pesky truck 'B'. He moves round the outside of truck 'B' hoping for a gap between it and bus 'A'. He moves far enough down the other lane to block it and stop the bus moving.
Meanwhile, on the other side, car 'D' (an especially 'important' civil servant from Delhi on his holiday, with wife and kids in the back of the white Maruti 800), has pulled the same trick, blocking the forward movement of truck 'B'. Now both lanes are nicely blocked by vehicles pointing in opposite directions.
Car 'C' (the Toyota Qualis) has now discovered there is no gap between bus and truck, and spends five minutes sitting trying to psyche out the driver of bus 'A' into backing up, with much imperious gesticulation and horn honking. Failing to intimidate (bus 'A' is driven by a tough looking Sikh who has played this game to Olympic standard), he tries to back up, only to discover that he can't because car 'E' (another Maruti whose driver has a morbid fear of reversing) has come up behind HIM. To make it worse, scooter 'F' and rickshaw 'G' have hemmed car 'C' in on the right, making any attempt to use the minimal verge to pull a three point turn impossible in any case.
The mess on the other side has done much the same thing, with car 'D' hemmed in by a cliff to his right, and Mazda truck 'H' behind leaning aggressively on his horn. In fact, everyone else is leaning on their horn too.
An so it goes on, with the rest of the alphabet rapidly filling up as others join the fun. Later entrants, unable to see the entertainment at the front, will join those blocking the right hand lane just to get a view, and most of the male bus passengers will get off to have a closer look and a quick cigarette. Within half an hour a fully fledged two or three km traffic jam will have formed in the arse end of nowhere for no especially good reason, the solution looking rather tougher than doing a Rubik’s cube with a hangover and both arms tied behind your back.
Somewhere out of this blaring snarling mess of traffic, a natural leader will emerge, probably the Sikh driver of truck 'X' (further back in the jam), who has doubtless done this a thousand times. By a process that can only be likened to magic, he will cajole, wave, shout, push, bang and generally shout orders until something starts to give and wheels begin to turn. There will be setbacks. Someone in a green Maruti Zen with 300 camouflage covered suitcases on the roof will look studiously unaware of the chaos around him as he drives into the space recently made to allow truck 'B' to inch forward, and seek to gain advantage, but a few sharp words and a lot of honking from the others and he'll give in.
Finally, about 2 hours after dark, everyone will finally be on their way, only a few hours later than was strictly necessary. If they are really lucky they might just get to where they are going without another improbable jam.
There are many other possible scenarios in which these techniques can be applied. No road in India is too big or too small to create some impromptu traffic chaos - except possible the impossibly wide roads close to the secretariat in New Delhi. Railway crossings are big favourite; by the time the barrier goes up, a whole line of cars, scooters trucks etc will be filling the width of the road in both directions, perfectly set up for a jam in the middle of the rail tracks.
One of the more inexplicable traffic jams came when travelling to Delhi by night bus from Manali. Somewhere in a small and extremely obscure village close to Bilaspur, lacking even a side turning, a queue of more than a hundred trucks stretched in both directions going precisely nowhere, for no obvious reason. A hour and a half and a packet of Wills Flake later, we got going, passing no evidence of an accident or breakdown on the narrow road.
Bombay rush hour has a special design feature to guarantee chaos; the solitary road out of the city is simply too narrow to fit any reasonable amount of traffic through at an acceptable speed. In 1996 I came up with the incredibly dumb idea of waiting till it was dark (and theoretically cooler) to drive out of the city from Churchgate station. After dark, of course, is the rush hour, and the Bullet insisted on overheating regularly in the almost stationary traffic necessitating a few stops to let it cool, and, factoring in chai breaks, it took us about 7 hours odd to get out to Panvel, just beyond the city limits. The same journey in reverse, done at just about daybreak with almost no traffic on the road, took 25 minutes.
But for all the chaos, revving engines and aggressive sounding blaring horns, there never seems to be any actual violence. "Road rage", as it is known, seems to be an increasingly common feature of traffic chaos in the UK these days. Blast your horn impatiently at someone a bit slow off the mark on Hyde Park Corner, and like as not he'll pull over and take a swing at you or worse. Stabbing, ramming and murder are not unheard of. In the US it must be worse, if for no better reason than they are allowed to carry large firearms, and some seem to enjoy using them. But assuming there is no collision, I have never actually seen anyone in an Indian traffic jam get physically aggressive, and even the verbal is fairly limited. The most worrying aspect of the lack of violence, I suppose, is that Indians may just possibly enjoy traffic jams. In which case I am missing the point, and should perhaps be joining in more wholeheartedly.
The reason I mention all this is that we encountered an especially fine example of the breed today - twice at the same spot just before Patlikuhal when coming from Manali. A bit of road widening is going on, so the road is a little narrower than usual, but still wide enough to take two trucks or buses with a little care, and the assumption that not too many 'important' people are around. On the way down to Kullu in the morning, Pointless Traffic Jam Number One was fairly mild, only adding half an hour to the journey, but that must've been a warm up for Pointless Traffic Jam Number Two which got us on the way back, and closely resembled the description further up the page. It might not have been too bad, but terribly important Qualis and Maruti driving fuckwits were a little thicker on the ground than usual, and the dark made it all a little harder to unpick for the large Sikh trucker who grimly undertook the task. The star of the show was the especially dense driver of a Swaraj Mazda light truck, who clearly had not the vaguest clue how wide his vehicle was, and seemed to need at least four feet of clearance each side before considering trying to move forward. The combination of his fixed and rather embarrassed grin and his lack of competence eventually enraged the Sikh traffic jam manager, who resorted to a mixture of bellowing, gesticulating and eye rolling to coax Mazda Man forward. Having got this mobile roadblock out of the way, a Maruti wallah of the "nobody'll mind if I just nip through here" variety tried to, well, nip through, but quickly gave up and headed to the rear of the line, after being on the end of the ultimate Darth Vader Death Stare from the outraged Sikh. If he can bat as well as he glares, he could be the answer to India's weak middle order batting.
One hundred and fifty fun packed minutes later and it was all over and we were rattling off once more to Manali, the road behind apparently clear of traffic, although almost certainly the whole scene would be repeated within the hour.
To some extent we all visit India to experience "the swirling chaos and teeming streets", but sometimes the whole swirling and teeming bit is far more enjoyable in the abstract, discussed over a chai than in an actual participatory role, unless perhaps you are a sociology professor or writing a paper on "practical applications of chaos theory in the real world".
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September 15, 2004
Chai crawl in Jagatsukh(This entry was started in July, but only finished on 15 sep and published. After a few weeks I'll move it and put it where it belongs on the July archive page).
6th July 2004
A few days after watching the rice planting in Jagatsukh, we printed the pictures off and headed over to deliver them to the women. This is always a barrel of laughs, because addresses are not exactly "22a Temple street, Jagatsukh, J21", but more like "near the temple store" if they are specific, and more likely to be vague, as in "lower part of the village", which obviously leaves some vast scope for error. Having names and pictures in hand is far more helpful, as people generally know each other.
The pictures we give are almost always inkjets run off from our rather aging digital camera, and hence not usually large, about small postcard size, although the prints are good quality and far better colour than is possible in Manali from negative film. People are often quite taken and want a bigger print, which is where it gets entertaining, as to explain why involves a brief lesson in digital image resolution (or lack of) in our (mainly Kirstens) very inadequate Hindi. OK for asking where Kesari lives, not up to scratch for "the image is only 1250x960 pixel dimension, so its not up to A4 print at 200 DPI" Like I said, a fun day out.
We started from Prini, taking the winding path from the village and up to Shuru, where we popped into the new temple to see how work was going. A few more panels had gone up, but progress was still slow. We were told the Pratishta ceremony, held when the temple is finished and the roof beam added, is going to happen in January. The idea of dragging a 50 foot pine tree for the Dhoj down the icy snowy hillside makes the mind boggle. (For a hazy explanation of a previous pratishtha try this blog entry.)
The temple has a large (for a village) dharamshala next door, and a kitchen to provide food, tea etc for the guys working on the temple, some of whom have been there for more than a year. The guy who runs the temple kitchen is extremely nice (to our shame we have never asked his name, but then he has never asked ours either) and if he's around, will invariably cook us up a chai and offer lunch. We sat for a while in his makeshift kitchen and drank tea, along with another local guy and his cute but shy 4 year old daughter, who made a big show of moaning about her tea being too hot.
If there is ever a reason to go into the Kulu valley's villages (who needs one?) it is the sense of peace and near silence - really an absence of background noise, broken only by the gentle sounds of village life; a cow, the clank of a scythe, the rustle of hay being stacked or the occasional laughter of village women talking as they carry baskets of grass home. This day had the additional sound of a light breeze rustliing the branches of the huge and ancient deodar that stands close to the temple. Idyllic? Just doesn't do it justice.
After a fill of chai and temple building news, we continued on the path up to Banara, the village above Jagatsukh. In all, this is a nice walk, not too much uphill, and not many of the plunging drops that turn my stomach when I look over the edge. The path winds up through the forest that covers the slopes, before emerging within sight of Banara and with a stupendous view down onto the rice fields of Jagatsukh, and far down the valley toward Kullu town in the hazy distance. The spot is special enough that there is a large flat stone set in the ground at the optimum viewpoint. We always thought the stone might be a place for the statue of the Banara God, but a local guy told us it is just there as a place to sit and soak in the view.
The guy who told us was Dule-Ram, who we met with his wife Kimtu at the spot on a previous walk. They were the first picture delivery on our route, a couple in their late 60s and possessed of the character filled and lined faces that a movie director would kill for. We showed the picture and asked for the house. "Purana ghar" we were told; old house. In a village where every house is of indeterminate age and a high degree of wonkiness, thats not a lot of help, but eventually someone pointed to the house we were standing next to.
Dule-Ram's grandson showed us up to the balcony where the old man was sitting and relaxing, pointing to the 4 foot pine beamed ceiling so we wouldn't bang our heads. Been there enough times. Dule-Ram invited us to join him on his blanket, set under the wooden cut out windows that commanded a view of the valley almost equal to the flat stone. He sent his grandson off to make chai, and took the picture we handed him, just staring at it for a long, long time, with what seemed like a slightly sad smile. We had taken the shot a few months before, and as we watched him staring, we began to wonder if Kimtu - who wasn't in the house - had maybe died. Communication is often tough even with a bit of Hindi, and our cultural understanding on matters such as death are sketchy, so we just didn't ask where she was, and Dule-Ram didn't say. Eventually he stood the picture against the wood of the balcony, and we passed a few pleasantaries with him and his grandson about the view, and the huge walk the poor kid has to school every day - a steep half an hour down to Jagatsukh. We asked about the age of the house, and, as so often, got the answer of 80 years, which adds up to about 10 years more than Dule-Ram, and hence beyond his memory. History beyond personal recollection is rarely a big concern among villagers, and I would be amazed if the house was less than double the age of the old mans guess.
With a load more piccies to deliver, we began the walk down to Jagatsukh village, home to most of the rice planting women we had photographed. The village is spread a long way up the steep hillside, and we were determined to make the most of going down and to avoid having to go up again to find the right houses, for which we had only very, very rough locations plus names. We struck lucky on the first go. While walking down the path, one of the women, Dropti, came out of the house we were just passing. We handed over the picture, and were immediately surrounded by 5 or 6 other curious villagers, all having a good laugh at the image of the women ankle deep in water.
To get some directions to the other houses, we got out the other pictures, and in what became a familiar ritual for the day, they were grabbed from us and sifted through by the onlookers who demonstrated the usual Indian insatiable appetite for "snaps" of any sort that involve people they know. We got a few contradictory and confusing clues as to the locations of the other houses, so confusing in fact that we had to stop someone else 100 metres later to ask again.
A few wrong paths and impromptu snap viewing sessions later we arrived at Kesari's house, a slightly less wonky construction with a massive courtyard paved in local stone. From the rice planting, Kesari was memorable for her incredibly beautiful smile, and we were treated to another sight of it as she shouted hello from the balcony and invited us up. With me never one to say no to chai, we settled into a couple of comfy chairs and chatted with Kesari while one of her 5 kids brewed up, coming back with a tray of glasses and a plate of biscuits. We were joined by her in laws, another old couple with wide smiles and lined faces, the old lady's eyes shrouded in a pair of glasses with lenses like the bottom of coke bottles. Old people (women especially) are sometimes reticent in talking to foreigners, but these two could hardly stop, both chipping in at the same time, as Kesari showed us some snaps from the family album. She told us she had been married at 14 - an incredibly early age by Kulu Valley standards, and the first woman we had met who had been married so young. A lifetime of hard field work and chasing her five kids had done her no harm, and even at 38 she is a an extremely good looking woman with a drop-dead smile and humourous, sparkling eyes.
Kesari gave us directions to the next nearest delivery on our list, but as usual the directions relied on village features and shortcuts we didn't know, so we took about 20 wrong turns before arriving at the post office, ironically the one building in the village we could have found on our own, had anybody mentioned it. Ritu, whose picture we were delivering, was out somewhere, so we left the picture with her family and asked for our next address, Ubi Devi.
Ubi Devi was clearly well known in the village as everyone knew her picture and pointed in the direction of her house. Her principle claim to fame seemed to be as the mother of Chuni Lal, as every time we showed the picture someone would say in Hindi "Ah, Chuni Lal's mother". Quite who Chuni Lal was we never found out, but clearly the family had a fair bit of cash and clout as the two storey house we eventually reached was extremely large, modern and well appointed. We were invited in for chai, but declined on Kirstens rather spurious assertion that we would miss the bus.
This is the point on such occasions that Kirsten and I tend to have disagreements. I am a great believer in the notion that there is no such thing as too much chai, or too little time to drink it in. To me the best way to get to know the place and the people is to drink chai with them. Were we to follow this philosophy entirely, clearly there would be time for nothing else, but Kirsten's "just say no" policy means we drink less chai and miss the bus anyway; clearly not cricket.
I expounded this "chai is good" theory as we got comprehensively lost in the maze of the lower part of the village, walking past Thakeri's house about five times before someone pointed it out, cunningly hidden as it was in a narrow alley. By this point Kirsten had absorbed some of my approach, and agreed to a chai. Thakeri was the woman who had kindly fed us bhaturu and subzi in the field when we went to see the rice planting, and after she brought us chai, we showed her some video footage of her feeding us and up to her ankles in mud planting rice, which caused her and her wide eyed four year old son huge amusement. She told us to look out for her husband, who apparently drives rickshaw number 1680 in Manali. I struggled with trying to work if revealing to 1680 that we knew his wife would lead to a reduction or increase in the level of overcharging. She was happy with her picture, and inevitably wanted a larger one - impossible given our digi cam's resolution. So in the interests of not appearing like we couldn't be bothered, we gave her a crash course in the basics of digital imaging and printing, but she still didn't look entirely convinced.
Not being prone to breaking traditions, we got lost once again on the way to Ramde's house, but by one of those strokes of luck we bumped into another friend, Dinesh, who took us there. Dinesh, and Ramde's son Raju have been the principle force in raising local awareness and opposition to the negative consequences of the World Bank funded Allain Duhangan hydro electric project, whose future is currently under review. Ramde was out and we left the picture with a neighbour.
The last stop for the day was just opposite at the house of Kundi Devi who - as with many of the women - threw her hand over her mouth giggling at the sight of her photograph, her kids jumping up to grab the picture out of their mum's hand. Ignoring the fact the bus had probably gone, Kirsten had reverted to her former approach and politely declined the offer of chai, earning herself a grumpy boyfriend for the next ten minutes.
We said goodbye to Kundi Devi and went down to the main road to check out the bus situation. Unsurprisingly, the consensus of those we talked to was that it was gone, and the firmness of their answers convinced us they were serious. I persuaded Kirsten the best way to be sure was to go and sit in one of Jagatsukh's excellent chai shops near the bus stand, so we'd have a chance if by some miracle the last bus actually came. It didn't, but I got a couple more chai in before we began the long and tedious walk back to Manali.
It seems to be one of the laws of nature that when walking back to Manali on this road, all rickshaws that are going the right way are full, and all going the opposite way are empty and uninterested in turning round. We paid close attention to number plates in the vain hope Thakeri's husband in 1680 might take pity on us, but inevitably none stopped. We walked as far as Aleo and had a couple more of the especially fine chai sold by the Tibetan woman next to the Holiday Inn, and finally managed to find an empty rickshaw for town.
Indians love seeing their photos, and it was a fun day delivering them. Somehow giving people a copy of a picture loosens them up, and you are usually treated like an old friend when you go to deliver it. There is also an added bonus next time you wander off to the fields to take pictures. Women in the Valley are often reluctant to be photographed - especially by foreigners - and if someone else is there who you have given a print to in the past, it is a real ice breaker, the atmosphere is much more relaxed, and your request for a picture is more likely to be granted.
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