Don’t Look Now, But It’s Lucknow

As the bus slowed down, Shantum announced it was time for a “pee break,” and across the aisle from me, John said, “Chai? Oh, I thought you said ‘tea break.’ I only hear what I want to hear.”

One and a half hours before the estimated arrival in Lucknow, the bus stopped in a village, and we hung out in front of a tent-like shop and drank chai. The business we patronized was sort of an outdoor bakery or café, but not like something you’d see in Paris: it mainly consisted of a tent with tables inside, but we sat at tables outside in the open. A guy serenaded us, singing and playing a harmonium. It hung from straps that looped around behind his back, so that he could stand and walk with the instrument.

In front of the tent, two male cooks used a black iron frying pan over an open fire, and in the pan were round pastries and mushy stuff, perhaps made of rice. The main cook took a small leaf bowl and put in it mushy stuff and cilantro and powdered spices and yogurt; he mixed it together and thus created a snack. According to Jagdish, this leaf snack is both a tasty desert and good for the digestion. Americans could learn some lessons from India’s culinary focus on digestion, not to mention its emphasis on vegetables, legumes, and rice.

Shantum called Erika, and soon I saw her behind the counter at a little makeshift booth, like countless others in India, made mostly of branches and with a tarpaulin roof. I meandered from the end of the long table that was closest to the stove and approached the booth where Erika worked. We’ve seen hundreds of these booths, or little outdoor shops, on the pilgrimage: stands where the merchants make and sell food, and hanging from the front of the booth are strings of shiny metallic packages. Mukesh explained that it’s mostly tobacco and peppermints. To me, they look a lot like ketchup packets.

A bright green leaf lay on a red wooden board on the countertop in front of Erika, and next to her stood the guy who runs the stand. He handed her ingredients in little spice bottles, much like spice bottles in an American supermarket. Erika sprinkled the contents onto the leaf: a white powder that I surmised was sugar, colorful candy sprinkles, a red powder like paprika, and other ground-up ingredients. Shantum explained that the leaf was from the betel nut plant, like the betel nut juice that I sometimes see people spitting in a dark pink streak.

I found a seat at the head or foot of the long table, sat back, relaxed, and drank scrumptious masala chai while observing my surroundings. Local people hung out, children stood hoping for a handout, and curious bystanders hovered around watching us. All these people surrounded us, in addition to the men and boys, but no visible women or girls, at work. To eat with our chai, Mukesh passed out biscuits, or cookies in American lingo, and I suggested he should pass them out to the children who stood around watching us. I also chose not to eat a cookie so soon after taking the Mindfulness Training; I was all the more serious about cutting back on sweets. Mukesh finished offering the cookies to us pilgrims before he gave the remains to kids.

I took a picture of the musician, and he gestured to the top of his harmonium where people placed money. I smiled, turned toward several members of our sangha, discreetly opened my brocade Nepali passport bag, and pulled out thirty rupees, because the other bills on the musician’s harmonium were ten rupees. I gave the bills to him with a smile, and he gave me a big smile back. Actually, I meant to give him money anyway, since he was performing for us the whole time we were there. Whether you’re waiting at a London Tube station, waiting for a cable car in San Francisco, or having chai in an Indian village, I think there’s an enormous difference between giving money to beggars and giving it to street musicians.

Jagdish had finished ordering and paying for beverages, and amid the crowd he stood near the musician, in front of me, and started singing the same song as the musician, who stopped singing and let Jagdish take over the vocals entirely. Smiling, Jagdish sang beautifully in a smooth tenor voice (not to mention a much younger and stronger voice than that of the musician), while making a “gimme money” gesture with both hands. Yvette, while we all laughed, gave him a ten-rupee bill, which he placed on the harmonium as he stopped singing.

Close to the end of the bus ride, I noticed that Jagdish, in the front seat on the left side of the aisle was singing. Apparently Yvette or someone had urged him to sing after his impressive performance at the chai stand. His singing was interspersed with discussion of the meaning of the songs; Yvette and Liz sat up front, and Natalie stood in the aisle near them and held onto the back of a seat. I was seated three or four rows back and wanted to hear Jagdish better, and so I slid over and stood with one foot up behind Mukesh’s seat and listened to Jagdish sing a Hindu love song. Natalie handed him the microphone, and he sang a couple songs into it, between translations, and I happily listened, while the traffic moved by, trucks honked, and the sun set.

We’ve been through a major traffic jam. While the traffic was at a halt, Rikki moved to the front of the bus and started a sing-along. Jennifer also moved up and joined in, sitting next to me, since she was “getting stir-crazy in the back.” Rikki usually sits in the back and likes to periodically walk up the aisle when she wants to socialize. The music was assorted: Joan Baez, Joanie Mitchell, Beatles, and even songs from the musical Westside Story.

The white lines painted on the street indicated that it was meant for two lanes, but two lanes were headed our way, and both lanes sat still. Perhaps the vehicles were meditating. To our right the oncoming traffic slowly arrived and passed. Bikers had it easy coming the other way; they could slip around the other vehicles like mongooses slipping through tall grass. The cars, vans, and trucks moved more slowly.

One car driver behind us and going in our direction became impatient and cut over to the one lane in which the other traffic was coming. This resulted in two vehicles facing each other, at a standoff, and only bicycles and motorcycles could move, by slipping in between the bumpers. I heard some amusing comments from inside the bus.

“These people are not on their best Buddha behavior,” Val said.
“Do you know the song ‘Stuck in a Traffic Jam’?” Jennifer asked. This was between songs in the sing-along.

“Notice how calmly they’re taking it. There’s no road rage,” Ann said, refering to the driver who cut over.
“Maybe there’s no road rage because the other drivers know they’d do the same thing,” Erika said. The male driver looked quite deadpan, and his car beeped like a truck as he attempted to move in reverse. Now I can’t remember how he slipped through, but after he did, we moved slightly forward, and I saw a couple guys pushing a red car along the shoulder from our direction, thus giving oncoming traffic limited space.

Our bus driver, Mishra, shut off the engine and got out, and I observed someone directing traffic. Eventually the red car was pushed off the street. We had a long but fairly entertaining wait, with the continuation of the sing-along, till we came to a large tree lying in the road, blocking oncoming traffic. After that, the traffic moved so much faster, like normal.

I just saw out the window a large carcass, perhaps a cow, lying in a field, and a dog and crows picked at it. Ick. It occurs to me that, unlike in Kansas, I haven’t seen the corpses of animals, such as squirrels, lying in the road. The giant carcass was an exception, as was the dead puppy lying on the meridian in Varanasi. Given how much the corpse grossed me out, I don’t think I’m ready to meditate in a charnel ground. I wonder if monks or nuns who did that ever went insane.

3
We arrived in the evening at what were probably the true outskirts of Lucknow, on a lively street full of male pedestrians and lined with shops in two or three story structures that stood right next to each other. The bus stopped in front of a store so that Shantum and Natalie could get off and get camera batteries. The bus driver took us a few yards further down the street and pulled over at the right side of the road. I looked out the window at the crowd bustling around in the street after dark and particularly observed carts piled with colorful fruit.

Meanwhile, I heard misogynistic males just below us, close to the bus, making whistles and catcalls. I muttered, “Creeps,” and scooted away from the window. It was like being back in St. Louis, or Topeka, or Washington D.C., or any city sidewalk in the United States. Sometimes a cloak of invisibility has a certain appeal. I think this goes back to how Indians perceive Western women and that if the bus had been full of Indian women, the immature creeps would have kept quiet.

At breakfast this morning, Erika had commented to Peter that he was about to leave, and Peter had said, “Yes, well, bye-bye,” quickly, and Erika and I laughed. It was obvious that he isn’t comfortable saying good-bye. I rather think he dislikes farewells even more than I do; I do give it a try, or at least pretend it’s not an excruciatingly awkward situation.

This evening, after arriving in the large modern city of Lucknow, we stopped at a gratuitously fancy hotel, where Elly and Peter both got up and headed down the bus aisle. Since their flight from Lucknow to London was coming up, they were the first to part from the sangha. Peter moved quickly and quietly down the aisle and got to the bus door. Shantum announced into the microphone, “Elly is leaving now, but pay no attention to the person who’s sneaking off the coach. That’s Peter.”

We all went inside the hotel, the Taj Royal Residence, which if possible is even more gratuitously posh and extravagant-looking than the Radisson. It was neoclassical, with a big white dome, and I thought it had a stronger resemblance to the White House than to the Taj Mahal. It has crystal chandeliers, a white marble floor, and indoors the enormous dome was paneled in little squares. Centered in the lobby, under the dome, stands a big renaissance-looking astrological gadget; it’s made of a dark metal and forms a sphere several feet around.

We saw quite a few people walking around in the lobby, and one of them was a really tall man wearing a black turban that has a lump toward the front. Liz said that he was the first Sikh she’d seen on this pilgrimage. I remembered that while we were on the bus and it was still daylight, I had seen a two-story whitewashed school in front of which was a bunch of little boys wearing white but with the same kind of black turban.

I’ve noticed people walking through in some resplendent clothing here, like in a Bollywood movie. While Christine and Rikki and I stood talking in the middle of the lobby, by the astrological gadget, I kept getting distracted when someone dressed up walked by, such as a woman wearing a sparkly bright silk kamiz. A light-skinned guy with shoulder-length hair strutted past wearing a spiffy white and gold kurta and pants worn with a bright red scarf, and I smilingly said, “That guy looks like he could be a Bollywood star.”

Christine and Rikki simultaneously said, “He probably is!” A woman in a pink kamiz with orange pants and scarf went by, and then one in a blue and turquoise kamiz and pants, and it went on like that, wealthy people passing by in rich and brightly colored and sparkly clothing. Rikki and Christine were amused at how easily I got distracted from the conversation. Notice I can’t even remember what else our conversation covered. That may have been when we got to the topic of feeling seriously underdressed: I for instance wore a bohemian purple kurta, a pair of blue jeans, and canvas sneakers, and Christine, who also wore blue jeans and sneakers, said, “When you’re in a fancy place like this, it’s the best time to be grungy!”

We had an excellent gourmet dinner tonight in the hotel restaurant, which looks like it belongs in a Maharajah’s palace, or in early nineteenth-century England. The walls are pale blue with white and gold molding. Above our heads hang chandeliers, and below our feet the carpet is a red, white, blue, and turquoise pattern. I sat at a small table with Liz, Yvette, and Val.

Looking around at the people in the restaurant, Liz commented that the Sikh guy was tall and handsome and observed that here in the big city there were lots of tall people, in contrast with the many short and skinny people we’ve seen during most of the trip. Of course, we did go to the poorest part of India, where Bodh Gaya is located, and obviously wealthy people live here in Lucknow. Val pointed out that they’re taller in general here probably because they eat more than the poor people; nutrition does wonders for height. On the other hand, as I think about this, we have throughout our journey seen several men who were beanpoles.

Waiting for our dinner, Yvette remembered that she needed to write out her insight poem and turn it in, so she wrote it out, with some stopping and starting since she was going by memory, onto a paper placemat. Yvette’s writing reminded me that Shantum had, in the Jetta Grove, asked if anyone was willing to type up the poems.

I walked over to the next table and stood next to Shantum. When I had his attention, I asked, “Do you still need someone to volunteer to type up the insight poems?” Natalie sat next to him and said that she would still be in India for a while and therefore wouldn’t get to it for some time, so apparently she had intended to type the poems. It was fine with both her and Shantum if I did it. After all he’d done for us, I thought this was the least I could do. It would be good to make myself useful for a change. Shantum mentioned that he would give the poems to me and let me look over them to make sure I didn’t have any trouble with handwriting.

An elaborate wedding will occur out in the hotel’s courtyard by a shimmering pool, which we could see out huge glass windows in a walkway leading from the lobby to the restaurant. I saw white lights, like Christmas tree lights, all over the courtyard, such as on the trees, and a red archway stands in a pathway for the wedding.

Gail said, “It’s almost enough to make me wish I were heterosexual.” I decided that I’d rather be a wedding guest than the bride. That way, I can enjoy the festivities and afterwards go home to my cats and books. True, if were an Indian living in India, I’d most likely live with my parents and maybe siblings and other relatives, in which case I wouldn’t be in a quiet house or apartment all to myself. Much as I like the idea of communal living, for me personally it might be better to be a hermit living in a cave. Make that a really capacious cave that won’t give me claustrophobia.

Seven people were to spend the night at the Taj Royal Residence instead of heading to Agra, since visiting the Taj Mahal has nothing to do with the Buddha and is therefore an optional part of the tour. Back in the lobby, outside the restaurant, we had much saying of good-byes and hugging; even I hugged some people back. Peter would have hid behind a curtain or under a table, but he had already left us. Fortunately, Erika will type up a list of addresses and e-mail addresses, and it’s easy for me to communicate by e-mail. Because of that, I don’t feel like I’ll be completely parting with the sangha.

Jagdish coaxed those of us who were not staying in Lucknow out the front doors. Well-dressed people stood on the steps and watched the wedding procession coming by foot up the driveway that approaches the hotel’s front doors. Ann and I paused for a moment before stepping hesitantly around this crowd. The procession consisted of a group of musicians and people in formal garb singing and dancing something Bollywood-like as they made their way up the path toward us. The mood was lively, celebratory and infectious.

Grinning delightedly, we remaining members of the sangha headed down the driveway, leaving the front doors and thus moving away from the procession, but it didn’t prevent us from tarrying to watch the procession gleefully. Amid the crowd came a white car bedecked with strings of flowers. We gawked and laughed and let ourselves be distracted by the procession, despite Jagdish urging us on, and Ann danced as she moved like the procession, with her arms in the air, while Jagdish urged us on to hurry up and get on the bus. But at least he was doing it with a smile; I could tell he was amused at our enthusiasm for the wedding.

Apparently someone behind me asked Jagdish about parents forcing their kids to marry, because I overheard him explaining that with modern arranged marriages the bride and groom get to know each other before the wedding, and parents don’t usually force their kids to marry someone they don’t like. Bollywood movies have given me that impression, although I realize that comparing Bollywood to the real India is like comparing Hollywood to the real America. When Westerners think of arranged marriages, it conjures medieval and early modern European images of extremely young royalty or aristocrats forced to marry total strangers as a political alliance. Marriage was invented for the purpose of bartering females, using daughters as chattel.

The bus passed at least one other wedding accompanied by fireworks. We saw fireworks several times while riding the bus that night. In future, I think I’ll jokingly react to fireworks by thinking, “Must be another wedding!” When it’s the fourth of July, I’ll be thinking there sure are a lot of people getting married tonight. On the bus, Shantum said that “ninety-nine percent of Indian weddings are arranged,” unlike his wedding. They still stick to the same caste, with the exception of a few really liberal-minded Indians.

Those of us who were not staying behind at the Taj Royal Residence took the bus from the posh hotel to the crazy train station. The bus pulled over at the curb and we looked out the windows, admiring the train station, a sprawling pink and red building with many towers and cupolas. Shantum said, “The train station is, on the outside, the most beautiful building in Lucknow.”

Dean got the picture and said, “On the outside!” As we climbed off the bus, we dodged a big stinky mess of cow excrement. Just inside the entrance, I could see lots of people sitting and lying asleep inside the station, and a cow stood to our left.

Shantum led us to the platform, where lots of people stood or sat around waiting and waiting, and where to our vast amusement a bull wandered. Now that we were no longer in a hurry, I took a picture of the bull on the platform, and Erika did too, saying, “Oh, look at those crazy tourists, taking pictures of a cow.”

Yvette said, “We’re staring at the bull, and everyone else is staring at us.” We were definitely the only Westerners on the train platform and perhaps in the entire station. We moved out of the bull's path and watched as it stopped by a turbaned guy who fed it pieces of bread. Shantum explained that the train before ours was running late, since according to schedule it shouldn’t have still been sitting there in front of us.

A little girl walked by us wearing yellow plastic sandals topped with yellow plastic daisies. With every step she made, her shoes squeaked. Yvette said, “Oh, that’s a good idea, so the kid doesn’t get lost.”

I said, almost in time with the squeaking shoes, “Squeak, squeak, squeak.” The little girl and the two women accompanying her passed us, and the women looked back at me with giggles as they covered their smiling mouths with the edges of their saris, which were draped over their heads. I giggled back.

Later Shantum said, “I’m going further down to make sure Jagdish isn’t at the wrong spot with the luggage. Don’t move unless the bull charges!” The train showed up not long after that, at the same time that Shantum returned. He showed us which cars we had to climb aboard. We each had a ticket and were assigned by car rather than to specific seats. I chose a window seat, one of the narrow beds that runs parallel to the length of the train and has its own window. Jennifer chose the bed directly above mine. Plain white cotton curtains hung so that anyone ready to sleep could have some privacy.

While we sat on board admiring our narrow blue vinyl beds for the night, Jagdish and the porters arrived with our suitcases, which they scooted underneath our beds. Erika’s suitcase is huge and green and took up much of the space under my bed, but each of our suitcases is identified with our name in addition to red ribbons tied to the handles, so it doesn’t matter if my suitcase isn’t close to me.

Lying behind a curtain on my bunk of the sleeper train, I got comfy in a reclining Buddha pose. That is, I lay on my right side, with my legs just about straight and one foot on top of the other and with my right arm tucked under my pillow. The train hasn’t started moving yet; I think it’s waiting for other trains to get a head start.