Song of India - I - I Arrive

It was Oct. 1, 1961.

As our ship neared India my friends became increasingly concerned about my welfare. “Don’t stay in India”, they warned. “The country is full of dirt and poverty and the people are dishonest. It will be unsafe too, and you might get malaria or cholera.” They tried to persuade me to travel on to Europe and forget my plans of a long stay.

India was pictured as a country only dishonest and full of disease. This was a typical, superficial view, I discovered, but held by many people. I was surprised at them. I had known many Indians at the University of Illinois and all of them were charming. In fact, I was to be the guest of one of them during my stay here. All the students I had known had been so lovely and everything I had read about India had been deep and profound. Why such disparate views? Surely the things I had known would be in India.

It was true that on the boat the Indians seemed very different from those I had known, Westernized no doubt. Their clothes were very strange. There were men with long hair and sarongs, and woman from Viet Nam with trousers. Men and woman seemed all mixed up and the deck had quite an assortment of characters, each speaking his own language. But this was part of the strangeness of the East that I was looking for. What was wrong with that?

I differed with my friends and their dire warnings. I wanted with all my heart to see India, the strange and fabulous land of which I had heard so much. Besides, I was getting used to the East after my year’s stay in Japan. I felt like an old veteran.

Thus in spite of warnings I disembarked at Bombay, looking forward with the utmost expectations to my trip. My first experience was of the sort I had known. The customs inspector looked at my one small box and suitcase. “Anything to declare?” I mentioned a toaster I had brought for my friend. “Well, you might want to make toast in the morning” he said, and smiling waved me and my little parcels on.

It was true the next experience verified my friends, for the taxi driver I later discovered charged me too much. But that could have happened anywhere.

I had planned on staying at the Y.W.C.A. in Bombay during my first week, and soon we arrived at an impressive looking building four or five stories tall. A gracious lady in a sari opened the door and escorted me upstairs. Tea would be at 4:00 she said. The room was long and narrow with three beds and chests and doors swinging open onto a balcony at the end. The floor was cool cement. The ceilings were twelve feet high and more, and seemed enormous after Japan.

Instead, my first impression of India was that the whole country seemed to leap into the air. Buildings were tall and ceilings were high. And everything was made of stone and cement for coolness, instead of the wood of Japan. Even the people seemed to grow up. The long saris make the women seem more mature and dignified, and the men were taller.

The girls at the Y were somewhat different than the ordinary girls. Most of them were Anglo-Indian and sometimes wore European dresses instead of saris. Some of them even wore lipstick and their hair rather short, which I never saw again in my long stay. They lived here on the third floor, apart from their families, and worked for a living. One of them had had a family in Pakistan but they were forced to leave and lost everything, and she was forced to work for a living.

The girls congregated in a lounge on the third floor. It had couches and chairs European style. They listened to music on the radio and the Voice of America too when they could get it. There was no TV in India. Some of them smoked too, and they tried to persuade me they were typical. They looked very beautiful lounging there, and the setting, except for the high ceilings and saris, were not too different from home.

Tea was served not only at 4:00 but there was the luxurious custom of tea in bed in the morning. At 7:00, the houseboy or bearer would open the swinging doors and bring in a tray with a pot of cream and sugar. It was delightful. I later found that they had to arise at 5AM to prepare this luxury for us. The houseboys were youthful looking and dressed Indian style but with white jackets. They had worked here at the Y since they were little boys seven and eight years old, and were trusted completely. They didn’t seem to speak English as the girls did.

The dining room was upstairs, up a wide winding flight of steps. It was very large and had many tables set European style with plates and silverware. The food was a combination of Western and English dishes, and not too hot. It was served by the bearers.

One of the charming things about eating was that the birds came thru the open doors leading onto the balconies, right into the room. They would hop around on the floor, picking up crumbs, or just stand looking around. They were mostly large crows, but some little ones came too. The trees outside the balconies were enormous – 4,5,6 Indian stories tall, with swooping trunks that didn’t even bear leaves till the third and fourth stories where you were standing. There were palm and banyan and many others. It was hard to imagine how tall they were. They were certainly made to fit the bigness of India.

None of the balcony doors and windows were screened, and at first, I wondered at this, for this was a land of malaria and insects and surely here above the alleles there would be screens. But there were none, nor indeed anywhere that I traveled. I found that in the daytime the people are moving around so the mosquitoes don’t light, and at night they sleep under netting. The poor folk sleep with the end of their saris pulled over their faces and thus are covered at night. Actually netting is used very little.

As I pondered this problem of protection I ran into something equally fascinating. I found that one had to be careful using the iron as the connection was faulty and it was 250 voltages. One lady I heard had become partially paralyzed from touching it. So I had to laugh at myself looking for danger from mosquitoes, and all the time it was the iron I should be careful of. At first every mosquito was malaria, and every sip of water dysentery, but gradually I ceased to think about it. The water at the Y was all boiled so I had nothing to worry about.

That night, I took a walk around Bombay with an English girl staying there. She had just gotten over jaundice, with her eyes still yellow, reminding me of the lurking danger. But she had recovered and was going to stay. She told me we shouldn’t stay out too late and that girls don’t go out or travel alone in India. Indeed, the men seemed more loose than at home, and instead of minding their own business seemed to have nothing better to do than stand and stare, and sometimes follow. Sometimes they would follow for miles, she said. And sometimes they would make a whistling sound, but to whom and for what I never found out. And I must report too that they spat all the time, and one walked along feeling that he was being spat on. The spitting and whistling were one of the few unpleasant things in India.

It was crowded as we made our way down the sidewalk. The first thing I noticed was that most of the people were barefoot. Women wore jewelry on their ankles and toes too, and sometimes the soles of their feet were painted red. Except for a few Anglo-Indians, everyone wore saris. Along with the double decked busses were bullock carts in the streets.

The shops opened directly onto the sidewalk, and there were merchandise stores and tiny stalls of many kinds. One sold chapels, or sandals. They were made from leather and had either a toe ring or a place for a thong between the toes. They were very attractive and I bought some.

The shops not only opened directly onto the sidewalks, but they are all only one story tall. The apartment and office buildings are higher. Nowhere in India did I see a shop more than on ground level. There are no department stores as here and in Japan, and only a few places have glass fronts. They are quite rare and only in the largest cities. And I only heard of one elevator in all of India.

While we were walking, we met a group of people from the boat staying over for the day. I told them how nice the Y was and how everything was fine so far. I gave them a glowing report and reassured them how glad I was to be there.

The next morning I again explored Bombay. This time I was impressed with the beggars on the streets. They would come by where people were waiting for the bus with their cry “Baksheesh, Baksheesh, “ (free). Some would give them a penny. There were twisted forms, emaciated with ribs showing, lying on the pavement with a hand raised for coins. Some of them were deformed children begging. Women squatted in the doorways – “Baksheesh.” I found later that some of the children were deformed intentionally for the purpose of begging, and that there is a beggar’s organization in Bombay that even rents out babies for the beggars to use in their work. Even so, the poverty is unmistakable and I could not help giving and giving. But there is no end, and after one has been in India a while he comes to realize the endless sea of poverty, for which giving is only a drop.

There was one man the worst of any I saw. I was walking down the sidewalk and saw him lying there almost naked, and thought he was dead. He was only bones. His hipbone was clearly outlined with only the skin around it. Everywhere the people’s legs impressed you as skin over bones but this was different, it was really bone. I was sure he was dead. But I walked back again and no! He was breathing. I longed so much to do something but how? And the people just passed by. It was a terrible shock and the worst of anything I saw. It was unforgettable and dulled my impressions and saddened me for many days.

There were also little shacks about head-high along some of the sidewalks, made of scraps of wood and leftover material. They were sidewalk huts of the poor. Outside they were cooking rice for their meals. I was always impressed that the government allowed the people to live in the railway stations and on the sidewalks, but indeed they could probably do nothing else.

It was strange how different Bombay seemed to me on first coming, and when I returned before I left India. The first time it seemed Indian, and I was impressed with the bullock carts, bare feet, shanties and beggars. But on my return after six months, Bombay seemed only clean and wide and modern. How had I ever formed a first impression of drabness? Everything seemed big and modern and solid after seeing the rest of India. It is strange how impressions can change.

In my explorations in Bombay I also saw a large market. Again I was impressed by its size. It was in a large building like a warehouse, with high ceilings. The merchants were ensconced up high in booths surrounded by their produce. It seemed funny that they sat up high and peered down. The fruit and vegetables were neatly arranged around them. The oranges and fruit were piled up cone-like in tier after tier of huge round flat baskets. The whole was very neat and clean and I was quite impressed.

I also took a bus out to a Jain temple. I was shown through by a young boy who was similar to those I had known in the states. He was very clean in his white Indian outfit and spoke perfect English. He showed me all thru and explained the Jain religion. Its emphasis was on self-control of passion, anger and greed. It aimed at purity. He explained so sweetly and calmly and seemed like such a good example of his religion that he left a deep impression of India – of purity, the same as Gandhi taught, and the saints. Thus one of my first deep impressions on India was not of dirt but of purity, and there it was before me.

He told me all the stories of the murals of the gods around the walls. There were also many statues along the altar in front. It was the first time I had seen the brightly painted gods in India. In Japan the gods were natural colored wood or stone or gold painted Buddhas, but here as had begun in Saigon, the gods were brightly painted.

I saw even more gods at Elephanta caves. These temples are on an island in Bombay harbor, and it takes about forty minutes in a boat to reach them. They are very ancient temples carved out of rock, with high stone gods. It was very ancient and impressive.

One more fleeting impression of Bombay was the countryside around Malad. I visited with an American girl staying at the Y who had lived with a family there for a time. We took a train there and she bought a first class ticket. It was the only time I traveled first and I was embarrassed to walk to the first class car. It had cushioned seats and a fan that was not going, but otherwise was the same as third. She said it was cheap so she always traveled first. We were the only ones in the car.

I had only one impression of Malad. It was as if a giant vacuum sweeper had sucked up parts of all the world and suddenly dumped them in this one spot. Mud huts, brick houses, cement, wood, all styles, shapes, sizes, assortments in helter-skelter disarrayed fashion. It was the total lack of organization of India, the century overlaid upon century. It was true India.

On to II - Song of India