Bouncing to Bhuj

It just so happens that many of my trips are totally antipodal in nature. One morning I could be touring the slums in Ahmedabad, the same evening eating out of a silver thali at an aunt’s house. I once spent a night in a pay-by-the-hour hotel in Hong Kong (sorry to disappoint, it’s not what you think), and the next in the Hyatt Penthouse suite. One day I had a designer bath towel the size of a bed-sheet, the next no towel at all (I can, however, vouch for the absorbency rate of Charmin). One week I was riding around Dubai in a Maybach with a liveried chauffeur, the next week in Kutcch, traveling in a Volvo.

I use the term 'Volvo' loosely here, but more on that later.

Spur-of-the-moment, impetuous decisions have sometimes left me in a miserable, ‘I think I want to kill myself’ state; others have led me on serendipitous journeys to experience the unknown. While in Ahmedabad on a volunteer assignment last year, I made one of those split, last minute decisions leading to one of the best travel experiences I have known.

Staying at the Manav Sadhna guest house is fun. You just never know who you will meet and where you will end up. In this case, I met Rajshree, a volunteer for Teach for India and I landed up the next day in Kutcch.

Over breakfast, Rajshree suggested that since my trip to Patan had fallen through, why don’t I just accompany her to Bhuj??

And so, placing infinite faith in a girl I had just met the day before, I agreed. I had always wanted to visit the village of Ludiya, or Gandhi nu Gaam as it has been renamed. After the January 2001 earthquake, the NGO of Manav Sadhna rebuilt it as a self-sustainable village. A group of highly-committed volunteers went there and within three months, the villagers were relocated in brand-new bhungas, their traditional mud huts.

While last minute decisions may work in India, last minute train tickets do not. We were left with no alternative, but to take the bus.

Throwing a few things in an overnight bag, we caught an auto-rickshaw to the bus depot. The price of the bus ticket had me worried – $ 8 for an overnight ride? Would we have to push? Would we have to drive? Would we have to sleep on the roof?

It took us a while to locate the office of the famous and reputable Shree Sahajanand Travels, where we were to catch the bus. One person pointed us up the street, another across the street, and the third scratched his head in wonder and had absolutely no clue, his hut of course being adjacent to the bus depot itself. The man at the ticket counter put my fears at rest and assured us a safe and pleasant journey. He pointed to the poster on the wall, touting all the benefits of traveling with them.

I heaved a sigh of relief to note that:

a) the bus was air-conditioned

b) it was a Volvo...

and...
drumroll please!!!

c) it had air-suspension.

The relief was short-lived, as:

a) the air-condition went straight from ninety degrees (F) to sub-zero temperatures within seconds. I spent the night, one minute sweaty and miserable, throwing off my shawl and then groping for it later with frost-bitten fingers. In their defense, they had thoughtfully provided us with a mothball-smelling blanket, having the same feel as a hair-shirt, in addition to having several hairs clinging to it from the previous user.

b) the name Volvo was used with reckless abandon and had no approximation whatsoever to that wonderful product of Swedish ingenuity. As far as safety and reliability, it was about as non-existent as the level of comfort.

c) In all fairness, it did have air-suspension. We were suspended in air for over half the trip. The Gujarat Highway Safety Commission apparently went to town installing breakers…one for every kilometer the whole way to Bhuj. Every time the bus lurched over a breaker or speed bump, I levitated off the seat and then landed…definitely not with the grace of a swan. Upon alighting, I heard noises. Was it the fracturing of my bones or just fragments of the bus as they fell on the road?

Being a fast learner, I soon caught on to the jouncing machinations, hanging on to the berth with the first squeal of the brakes. Slowing down meant we were nearing the speed breaker. While the front wheels rolled over the breaker with a gentle wave, those of us riding on the back wheels were flung about like popcorn.
So while the front wheelers slept in first-class comfort, the back-wheelers hit air-pockets without the aid of seat belts. Hitting a pothole however, turned the whole bus into an egalitarian society and everyone was tossed into the air with equal force, causing me to gloat in schadenfreudian glee.

Mr Raojibhai Patel of Shree Sahajananda Travels would do well to add a caveat to his poster on the wall: The bus ride is not recommended to anyone with wigs, dentures, hearing aids or any equipment not permanently welded to their body.

My Alma Mataji

The fine institution of Walsingham House School was located in the former palace of the Maharaja of Kutch. When His Highness moved out, it really would have behooved him to take his stuffed tiger with him. I am not talking about a plush, cutesy toy. I am talking six-foot (if any bigger) taxidermic trophy. As it was, he left it there, right at the entrance of the school, just before you entered the hallowed halls. As our driver Lobo dropped us off in the morning, I scrambled up the wide stairs, true to my scaredycat nature (no pun intended) keeping my gaze on my black, pointy loafers – the ones my grandmother or Ba as she was known, rightfully insisted were warping our toes.

It stood there, this panthera tigris, with its glassy hypnotic eyes, fangs protruded, mouth open in a frozen, perpetual promise of devouring the next student that walked up the stairs.

Shouldn’t the School Board, (if one did exist in India), have enforced an intimidation statute? “Against the law to display creepy objects to impressionable young students.”

Why would the Maharaja leave this gruesome beast at the entrance? Had he no place in his new palace? Hadn’t he thought about selling it? Not that there would be a huge market for stuffed tigers, but still. These days, it would’ve been a cinch. If you can sell your virginity or your kidney on eBay, selling a tiger would be a breeze.

My sister was in first grade when my father got his first parent-teacher letter. Apparently, she would raise her hand every period and ask to go to the bathroom. A bit suspicious after a few days, the teacher followed her and caught her, hands against the glass, bemused or bewitched, staring the tiger down with her own ferocious, snarling expression. I finally figured out that this is how she had perfected the look she used to scare the living daylights out of me at home.

The schema for getting ready for school operated like a well-oiled machine. The wheels would set in motion starting from the time we got up. The water heater was turned on early in the morning and buckets replenished with hot water after each bath. Ba would check that our servant Vishnu had combed our hair in tightly-woven braids. The braids, or plaits as we called them, stayed in their pristine condition from morn to night, with the help of a lot of coconut oil. We smelled like oleaginous crud, and looked like dorks, but at least we were well coiffed.

A belted, green-checkered uniform was worn over a white shirt, both duly washed, ironed and starched every day. Once a year, the tailor, Purshottam Darzi would arrive at the house, a measuring tape around his neck, pencil stub stuck behind his ear. Yards of green and white checked material would have been bought earlier and lying waiting for him, bound in newspaper and tied with a thin, white thread, which he would cut off with his teeth. He would make sure there was enough material to include a little extra for his own personal use.

A side-bar about the uniforms. When the darzi came, my sisters stood in front of him patiently, turning this way and that, head up, shoulders back, so that the measurements would be just right. What was not just right, is that I was rarely included in this little annual sartorial charade. That’s because, as Hand-Me-Down Hannah, I wore both their uniforms till the hems could not be let out any more.

The maharaj would have small steel boxes or dabbas ready, with a home-made snack, this being the age when pre-packaged, preservative-laden, plastic-bagged junk was mercifully not available.

Vishnu would have already loaded the car with our school bags, which were the square, gray, Air-India bags that my dad got gratis from the airline. He did a lot of business with them, and after a few, really, really good years of business, got upgraded from free school-bags to free international tickets (which I used with great aplomb).

Lobo then drove us to school.

By noon, he was back at school again to take us for Home Lunch. There were three kinds of ‘Lunches’ in school. In pecking order, at the top, was Home Lunch. This was if you were fortunate enough to live within walking distance, or lucky enough to have rich parents (in more ways than one), you went home for lunch in a car. The next strata down was Hot Lunch. This was when your parents could afford to send a servant with a tiffin, but could not afford to send the car. The Hot Lunch people ate together at tables, with their individual nannies or servants standing behind them, serving them food. The bottom rung was the Dry Lunch. Oh! The poor Dry Lunches, who tried to hide their lunch bags from the Hot Lunches, who would look wistfully at the Home Lunches as they drove away. And the Home Lunches would dream one day of being able to bring a Dry Lunch and sit with the lucky students in the basement of the school.