Silks, oils and uncles

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Inspired by Mell (tried to do a link but can't seem to) who writes really enjoyable travel email blogs, I thought I'd put this one up which I sent to a friend of mine whilst travelling. I did also write it partly as a piece of writing I thought I could use one day. I've added in a few photos as well.


24 Jan 2007

Mysore

Hi Tracey!


How annoying - I was in the middle of a great piece of writing about Mysore, then the power failed (again) and I lost the lot. AAAARRGH! Ok let's try again.....

So - I got on my bus to Mysore on Friday afternoon, thankfully this time it was indeed a Volvo A/C bus as promised and was a nice comfy ride apart from the screening of a really loud Bollywood movie for the entire journey, which even my MP3 player on full blast could not drown out. I also incurred the wrath of the bus driver by asking if I could run to the loo while the bus had stopped to load up with something. 'No madam' he said sternly, 'Time is over'. He eventually relented after I looked pleadingly at him and started shifting on my feet as if I was about to wee on the bus floor, and he said crossly, '2 minutes - you go directly' (interesting for you - the Cornish way of speaking?).

As soon as we got to Mysore bus station I was pounced upon by a rickshaw driver and I and my rucksack were ferried off to the guest house I'd booked - briefly, as it turned out, as they had no record of my booking, though did helpfully keep suggesting other names I might have booked under: 'Riga, madam? No? Hans? Perhaps Hassan?' The rickshaw driver was quite pleased as this meant he could take me somewhere where he got commission for bringing tourists, so we started on a battle of wills around Mysore, with him insisting on taking me to all kinds of horrible-looking places, while I was waving my Lonely Planet around in the back of the rickshaw, asking him to please take me to the places I was asking him to, and not the ones of his choosing, though he kept protesting that they were in Lonely Planet. Eventually our worlds converged on the same place, which was both in my Lonely Planet and one of his commission-generating hotels. He became very excited at this: 'yes madam, good place - it's in your lonely planet - good place.'

The guest house is great apart from being right next door to the Mysore Bollywood movie theatre, which seems to screen films from 7am till about midnight, and generously provides surround sound within a mile radius so that others can benefit without paying to watch. It also means Sri Harsha Road, which I'm on, is frequently a crowd scene of people clamouring to get in the doors, windows, and through the grilles of the cinema, so you can hardly walk down the street without either getting crushed, or tripping over the piles of rickshaws, mopeds and saffron-painted cows (not owned by anyone except on Festival days apparently).

My Mysore madness began properly on Saturday morning. The rickshaw driver from the previous night had persuaded me to let him take me on a tour of Mysore, so I met him outside the hotel at 11am. (Actually it was a bit after, as I was quickly using the internet when I saw him knocking on the window and pointing to his invisible watch on his wrist. I mouthed 'two minutes' to him and couldn't help giggling to myself over that, the amount of times I've had it said to me here.) He had a 'friend' with him, which I was a bit bothered about at first, as they both excitedly said the tour was going to start with a trip up 'Chamundi Hill'; but as it turned out it was fine. Babu was there as my guide as his English is much better, and also this meant he could instruct me on when to take photos and of what. Making my own decisions in this regard was out of the question and obviously not the done thing, as I tried for a close up of a sandalwood tree and was instantly told off for not taking instead the view of the Queen's Palace.

Apart from this he was very nice and also told me that God had guided him to come along with me that day: ' madam, I have own rickshaw and do own tours but today, strong feeling, madam, God guides. I knew I had to come with you. God guides us madam.' Because of God's guidance, Babu then insisted on reading my palm, which was all going quite well until he told me that I had been in a very dangerous, life-threatening situation, (this one?) but had been rescued. I said, no, this had never happened to me, but he insisted over and over again that it must have, and then eventually grinned with relief, and reassuringly said that if it hadn't happened yet, then it soon would: yes, I would be in a very dangerous situation, my life would be hanging in the balance, but at the last minute I would be rescued. So, something to look forward to. I was thinking after, I suppose it could have been narrowly avoiding a falling coconut the other week...?

Anyway, I had a nice day with them; at one point I was dropped outside an oil shop (to become a very familiar occurrence in Mysore: the home of sandalwood oil, and god how they milk it); there was a lady rolling incense and in the back room sat a man surrounded by glass bottles of oils, who proceeded to give me a photocopy sheet telling me all about the oils, then gave a mini lecture on the oil's uses, and dabbed my skin with various scents and potions. Midway through, along came a tall bearded Glaswegian guy, here to pick up some bags of what looked suspiciously like grass (and was). I ended up buying some lotus oil (for stress) before leaving. Then I was taken to the government silk and sandalwood emporium, and ended up being forced to spend a fortune there. As soon as they realised I had pounds and dollars in my money belt (as they were delighted for me to pay with them) they went on the hard sell and I was stuck in the shop for more than an hour while they desperately laid out everything they had, tried to get me to buy more and more silk, have clothes made etc etc. I stood firm with my purchases and eventually they let go, but not without me weighed down with a few sandalwood elephants (who knows what I'll do with them) and a sandalwood face mask.

At about 3.15 Babu and the rickshaw driver dropped me outside the Maharaja's palace for me to have a look round and said they'd meet me again at 4.15. I was getting quite tired and thought I would call it a day after the palace. I had to give in my flip flops at the entrance, at this huge counter with millions of pairs of people's sandals. Thought I'd probably never see mine again. When I went into the grounds I could see crowds of people, and started getting a bit worried, imagining a similar scenario to the Hampi temple groping incident. A really narrow, roped off path snaked around the whole of the palace, herding everyone in the same direction and at a certain pace so you didn't really have time to look at anything properly. I was just wishing that I could bump into a tourist to walk around with, and suddenly a German girl appeared at my side! She was called Katarina and was over here for a friend's wedding, so was doing a few day's travelling before that. So we spent the rest of the time together, just chatting, which was nice.

I got surrounded by all the garland, postcard and jewelry sellers as soon as I came out of the palace and ended up buying 2 jasmine garlands from two children. I asked the rickshaw driver to drop me back at the guesthouse (Babu had gone off by this time).

I went along to the internet cafe later, and as I was walking back, listening to my music, a guy started trying to talk to me on the street. MP3 players can be a really helpful way of not being pestered by people here, as you can just walk along pointing to your headphones and saying, 'sorry! can't hear', but this one was being persistent with the usual ' where are you from, tell me tell me. England! You know Glastonbury?Very nice place, I know people. come with me to my uncle's shop. you come with me. just 10 minutes - this way.' I was saying, no, no, I'm just going back to my guesthouse, but he wouldn't leave me alone, and then suddenly the cinema crowd was surrounding me and I couldn't get through the crush. Ahead of me, the guy in the red shirt was saying, 'come , this way, I show you,' and had created some space for me to walk through. I stood there and reckoned: well, I've got nothing particularly to do. And I'm about to get crushed. So I either get crushed, or go with this guy. So I just said,. ok I'll come with you, but just for 10 minutes.

Before I knew it, I was being whisked off in a rickshaw to god knows where in Mysore, through narrow, dusty, noisy streets full of dimly lit shack shops. The guy in the red shirt spent almost the entire journey telling me how marijuana was legal in Mysore and where he could get me some, and how he was going to open an Amsterdam-style coffee shop in Mysore. Meanwhile, I was watching the streets outside and vaguely thinking, 'this could be a really stupid idea' and wondering at myself for making this decision, and I was becoming slightly uneasy, as we began turning down darker streets, with no shops. We stopped eventually outside an open door to a small building, and the guy in the red shirt (Mukatir, as his name turned out to be). We went inside through a small hall and then Mukatir said, 'here's the doctor' and showed me into a room on the left which had a curtain over the doorway. The room thankfully looked quite normal and was just full of books and bottles of oils (already looking familiar). Still, I was a bit surprised at the 'here's the doctor' introduction. ??????
Sheka, the 'doctor' stood up to shake my hand and asked me to sit down, then explained that he sold these oils and would tell me all about them. (Out came the photocopy sheet again) Outside in the corridor, Mukatir was talking to some others, two women and a child who presumably lived here.
Sheka asked someone to bring some chai, and I sat on the sofa and drank my chai. Sheka then left the room and I was just sitting there remarking to myself about how calm I felt considering I had no idea where the hell I was or who these people were, when suddenly I became aware I didn't feel very well. I started getting palpitations, feeling giddy and also kind of tired. All of a sudden I just got into this huge panic, exacerbated by someone walking past the room at that point and drawing the curtain across the doorway, closing me in. My head was literally spinning and then my mind raced as I was thinking, god, I've been so stupid. These people have put a drug in the chai and I'm going to collapse and then they're going to rape me or take my stuff, and how could I have been so stupid as to come here. I stood up while I still could, and went over to the doorway and pulled the curtain back again, looking for someone in the hall. Then Sheka came back in the room. I said to him, 'What have you put in my tea? You've put something in my tea, haven't you?' and he looked at me, puzzled, and said, 'no, of course not, what would I do that for?'. He seemed quite genuine and even a bit concerned. My heart was still racing and I still felt dizzy but sat down again and in a few minutes I was feeling better. I can only imagine that subconsciously I had already been feeling panicked at my decision to go there, but hadn't thought I was feeling that, so it had just manifested itself phsyically. Still, it was a good reminder to just take more care - that's the first time I've done something like that and it was on an innocent whim with a sort of good energy behind it - but I do need to be careful.

Anyway, having got over that, Sheka then set about the task of telling me all about the oils, and then took my palm, looked at it, then stood up and said he would be back in a minute to tell me my 'whole future'. I was quite excited at this, and looking forward to what he'd say. Two palm readings in one day ha ha!
He came back shortly followed by a tall guy who sounded Australian, who seemed to know Sheka. This made me feel better as well as he seemed quite normal, and I felt reassured that actually there was nothing ominous going on here. Well, he seemed normal at first. However, when I started talking to him, (Roy was his name), the conversation started going down a route I am becoming quite familiar with in India - meeting travellers who have 'seen' some sort of cosmic light and really want to tell you all about it. Roy delighted in the fact that I had commented that his Australian accent sounded a bit funny, as this gave him a way in to explain that because he'd freed his heart energy, and only operated from there, his intellect had been overpowered, therefore things like accents become more fluid, and less defined. All the while looking at me very intently.
Roy listened in on my second palm reading of the day, which was less of a future prediction and more of an advice-giving session ie don't have sex before marriage, and always ask God for things between 4 and 5am in the mornings. However he did start on my love life, telling me my last significant partner had really really loved me, and what had happened? why weren't we together? Then suddenly he switched to talking about his oils, and when I tried to bring him back to my love life, he said firmly, 'No, enough future' which I thought was a bit unfair as he had promised me he was going to tell me about my whole future, and all he had done so far was to tell me about my past. I pressed him on it once more so he eventually had another look at my palm, reasserted that I should not have sex before marriage, but that I would meet someone and have two sons and a daughter.
Unfortunately this was all I was going to get from him and Roy was being no help, by reminding me I should focus on being in the present moment instead of being concerned with my future so I resigned myself to listening to his oils demonstration.

I ended up doing exactly what Lonely Planet had advised against for the second time that day, ie buying oils that probably were not pure, from dodgy market vendors. I came away with some more lotus oil for stress, bala hair oil, and some sandalwood oil, and was assured that after 40 days I would never forget Sheka because after taking a drop of Sandalwood in hot milk every night, this would solve all my problems, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Mukatir said he would take me back in his rickshaw which was good, although during the time I had been there his eyes had become extremely bloodshot and half closed, leading me to suspect he had been trying out the products he would be selling in his Mysore coffee shop, over the last hour, and I wondered how this would affect his driving; but he got me back safely, and even managed to get me to agree to go to the sandalwood oil factory tomorrow (which is recommended by Lonely Planet, so I would redeem myself there).

I decided that I might try the Parklane hotel restaurant further down Sri Harsha Road as this was recommended by travellers and I thought maybe I will meet people there. I also wanted to check out if they had any available hotel rooms, as it seemed a bit more of a travellers place than the one I was staying in. I was just on my way down the street when an Indian guy stopped me and said, 'are you from England?' Feeling tired, I had just started to back off and say, yes, but I haven't got time to talk (you can have hundreds of the same conversations every day with people who stop you like this), but he kept on, saying, ' no, no, I'm from England too' Still I started to walk away (this comment too being very familiar) but he said' I live in Southampton, and I'm here just for a few days, back in India, and I haven't had anyone to speak to'. I stopped then, and he told me he was originally from Bangalore but moved to England 5 years ago, and worked for P&O Cruises in Southampton. He'd come across to Mysore for a few days and had been feeling quite lonely: would I go and have coffee with him? So I said I was on my way to the Parklane restaurant, he could join me if he wanted.
So we ended up having drinks and a snack there, which was nice, but then got a bit sticky as he asked me afterwards if I wanted to have coffee in his hotel; I sort of knew he must mean his hotel room and not the hotel restaurant, but for the second time that night found myself making an unthought out decision and going with him. I made sure to sit nowhere near the bed, though he did try and come and sit next to me to look at a map; but thankfully it was too late for room service when he tried to order coffee, which gave me my cue to go, even though he was trying to persuade me to stay. I didn't really feel threatened or anything and I think he was just lonely, and in the end I felt a bit for him as he had kept saying, 'just stay for a while longer' so I said well, why don't we have breakfast instead tomorrow before he goes back to Bangalore. So he agreed to that, but then the next morning he didn't turn up, though he text me later to apologise and said he'd woken up late.

Mukatir arrived at the hotel at 11am the next day and was impatient to go and got quite cross when I tried the 'two minutes' thing on him.
We set off for the sandalwood factory, also with Mukatir's younger brother accompanying us, to find it closed as it was Sunday; so he ended up taking me to a lake which some other people in my guest house had mentioned the day before, so I thought we may as well go there as Mukatir suggested it. There wasn't much to do there though, and I didn't have a change of clothes so I could swim (and you have to swim fully clothed there) so then Mukatir said was I interested in going to see a children's orphanage and maybe making a donation. I had heard of an orphanage in the area so said yes, ok. On the way we stopped at a road shack for lunch, dahl and roti.
Then when we climbed back in the rickshaw Mukatir started saying maybe it would be better if I just gave the money I would donate to him, and he could pass it on to the orphanage - (!) I was a bit suspicious, and then he started talking about going to his home and meeting his wife and it was all getting a bit confusing, and slightly suspicious. However, I was open to the idea of visiting his home, so we drove for a few miles, reached the outskirts of Mysore, which became a sprawling area of small stone dwellings, shack-like (not quite slums, but maybe just one up from that). We stopped outside one of these and went into Mukatir's home, which consisted of a tiny room, a sectioned off 'kitchen' and a bed hidden behind a cupboard in one corner. Mukatir's wife, 8 months pregnant, was sitting sewing on the floor; Mukatir's mother was also there, and his young son of 3 years too. They asked me to sit down and offered me chai.
Word quickly spread around the neighbourhood that there was a white woman in Mukatir's house, and within minutes his room was crowded with about 30 men, boys, women, and young girls, all laughing and pointing at me (but in a friendly way). One girl insisted on braiding my hair, amidst the laughing and joking, and then the pointing got more insistent, and at my ankle. I'd had this two or three times in the last few days. I had one anklet on and a couple of times Indian women had stopped me and pointed to my empty ankle - I'd presumed that it was because Indian women generally wear an anklet on each ankle, and they were pointing out that maybe I'd lost one? But now I asked Mukatir: why is it so funny?
He said: 'it's because you look like crazy woman, just one.' I asked why and he said ' because it's like wearing half a clothes. Half a t-shirt. It looks crazy'. ( I have taken this to heart now, and religiously wear both my ankle chains.) I had started to get paranoid that myabe it was a symbol of being a prostitute or something.
Children were crowding more and more into the room and every so often Mukatir then pointed to one and started saying, 'this is one orphan'. I was getting more confused and we spoke some more and eventually I thought that what he meant was that some orphan children live in his community and they share looking after them - this is what he meant by the orphanage. I really couldn't tell what was going on: I didn't want to feel suspicious of it, but he seemed to be just picking on a child here and there, and of course no-one there could understand what he was saying as he was talking English to me, and he was saying how it costs 300 rupees to buy a t-shirt for this one and another 300 for shorts etc, and not to give him money here, but when we get back to my guest house I can give him lots of rupees and then he will go and buy clothes for the children.
Anyway, I finished my chai, and Mukatir seemed keen to get me back to the guest house. I really didn't know what to do and found myself again in this familiar situation in India of feeling pulled in different directions, suspicion and compassion and the tension of - even if I'm being had here, does it really matter, and maybe he just needs the money, etc etc' so in the end I gave him 500 rupees and said he could use half for the rickshaw journey today and half for the children. Then he started getting a bit nasty with me and said 'but the rickshaw journey is 300 rupees! (not really true, normally about half that for where we went) and what can I do with just 200 for the children - what do you think this will buy?' I got a bit annoyed at this, but kept a lid on it and just said, ' look, take that, it's all I'm giving for now' and eventually he just took it and went off but wouldn't even say good bye or look at me.

Nothing much else happened the rest of that day and I just relaxed back at the hotel. The next day I had some stuff to get packed and sent off at the post office so set aside some time to do this: in India this can be a whole day job: you have to go to the Post office, see if they have a packing service (if not, you have to find the nearest one, normally nearby) as you have to get everything you send packed and then sewn up in cotton before it leaves India - some tradition left over from colonial days apparently, and the law hasn't yet changed: nothing must leave India unless it's wrapped in cotton.
I arrived at the post office, and had a look round to see if I could see anyone behind the counter at a sewing machine. I was pleasantly surprised that a man behind the counter called me over to him to ask what I needed (this has NEVER happened before - normally I'm wafting around for about 2 hours trying to work out what's going on, with Indian men all pushing in front of me). I told him I needed my parcel wrapped and he said, 'hold on' then left the post office and came back a few minutes later with a man, who said he'd pack up my parcel. I went with him, across the road and down a small alleyway, up some outside stairs to a tiny balcony, where he motioned for me to sit, while he went to fetch boxes and linen for my parcel. We had the usual conversation: ' you from England! Good country, very nice people. Me, I have wife, 3 children...' Then the conversation rapidly turned (as I have now discovered, within about 30 seconds in Mysore, all conversations take the same route) to ' my uncle, he has special oil shop, just pure oils. Not like others, - his from oil factory - proper oils. You come after? Just looking? No buy, just 10 minutes' and got out a small business card of his 'uncle's ' I began saying no thanks, I've already bought some oils (against Lonely Planet's advice), and thought I'd make a bit of a joke of it, (as I do from time to time now I'm a bit used to being here), saying, Indian people are always saying just look, no buy! Then he said, ' no, madam, I am Indian man. Good man. Just looking.'

I was sitting on the balcony looking into the dusty alleyway, just musing on the scene - here I was in deepest darkest India, sitting cross-legged while this person wraps up my parcel in an old sari box and sews it up in cotton. Then I thought - oh what the hell, I'm not doing anything else today - so I said, ok, after I've sent my parcel off, I'll come along just for 10 minutes. He was very pleased, and said he'd wait outside the post office for me.

After I'd dealt with my parcel, I went with the parcel guy on a long walk through the winding streets and alleyways, and I was just beginning to feel I was on a repeat of the other night when we turned up outside a door, through which was the ever familiar scene of incense rollers and glass bottles of oils in a back room. I promptly (not having my glasses on) trod on a pile of newly rolled incense sticks, thinking it was a straw mat, but fortunately didn't crush them or anything. In the back room was a Dutch man who'd also been collared by someone, parcel men or rickshaw drivers or something, and the 'uncle' himself, who got out the photocopied sheet of explanations of what the oils do. I could almost have done the sales pitch myself.

A few minutes into it, along came an Irish guy called Tom with his rickshaw driver who'd (strangely) also brought him along to meet his 'uncle' (clearly this man was everyone's uncle). He was very clear he wasn't going to buy anything and kept saying so; we started chatting a bit and then his rickshaw driver said they were having a tour of Mysore and why didn't I go with them? Although I'd already been on a tour, I thought why not?
I bought some Jacaranda oil this time ('for wrinkles and pimples madam' - should I be taking this personally?), and jumped into the rickshaw with Tom and Ravi, the driver. Ravi did his best to take us to just about every silk shop in town, telling us on the way that he was taking us to a silk 'museum' where you 'just look' and time and time again we fell for it, till Tom started getting really annoyed and said absolutely no more shops, so eventually Ravi relented and took us off to a lake and bird sanctuary and said he'd come back for us in an hour. That was quite nice, we wandered around and chatted, and it was really interesting to see it was a bit of a lover's lane: lots of young Indian couples sitting around cuddling, which is a very very unusual sight here - both in terms of relationships of people's own choosing, and of demonstrating affection in public.




The rest of the day was a bit of a washout as I was very tired so I just ate and slept. What was nice though was Mel, who I was with in Hampi, emailed to say she was arriving in Mysore the next day and would I still be there? I hadn't been able to decide what to do and was thinking to move on the next day as it had been great but it was enough time; but I thought it would be nice to stick around and see Mel, so anyway, it's also good to put off my decision-making about where to go, for another day or so! I'm now hoping Mel might want to come with me to Ooty for a day or two before she heads off down to Kerala.

This morning, true to Mysore form of multiple encounters with people, I bumped into a Dutch guy called Peter (Pieter? Peiter? not sure of the Dutch spelling) whilst writing this!
He asked me if I wanted to go on a trip tomorrow as they need a certain amount of people on the minibus to make the trip. I said I'd check with Mel when she arrived so he took my number to call later. I don't think we'll probably go though as I'm sure Mel will be tired and there's better stuff to do in Mysore - this is a temple trip and you can be all templed out very quickly here! But we had a nice chat anyway.

So this is Mysore so far! It feels like it's been one adventure and encounter after another: every time I think I'm doing something, something else happens, or I meet someone, or get taken off here and there..... It's an amazing place though. They are really full on over the sandalwood and silk as this is obviously everybody's prime revenue one way or another - everyone seems connected in the same business of finding tourists to sell to. But it really feels like a great place and I have had a really good time here. I think it's one of my favourite places so far, actually. Really truly richly Indian in the best ways!

So - finally! That's it for now. Sorry for rambling on and on and on....

Can you save this in case I might use it one day? Thanks very much!

Lots of love
Debbie xxx

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Congratulations! You now have 4 recommends. This should be enough to get your future blogs on the Front Page. :)