Pushing on to Pushkar

J’ai quitté Udaipur pour Pushkar et un peu plus loin, á Raj Samand, j’ai rencontré des kilometres et des kilometres des vendeurs de marbre au bord de la route. Comme bureau ils avaient une hutte d’un metre carré et devant ceux-ci se trouvaient le mabre en plaque penché comme les jeux des cartes géants. Il y avaient tellement des vendeurs et de marbre que je me suis demandé si ils vendaient pour toute l’Inde.

Left Udaipur for Pushkar and not far down the road, at Raj Samand, came upon kilometres and kilometres of marble sellers lining the roadside. They had one-metre square huts as business offices and in front of this stood plates of marble in leaning stacks, like decks of giant cards. There were so many of them, and so much marble, I wondered if they supplied for all of India.

This is where Brahma is reported to have come to earth. Brahma is one of the three principal gods of Hinduism, the other two being Vishnu and Shiva. I think Shiva is considered greater than the other two. Brahma has just one temple devoted to him in all of India and it’s here, in Pushkar. Made of marble, it’s reasonably big but not particularly elaborate and the passage of so many devotees makes it fairly dirty underfoot. At the heart of the temple stands a shrine with a small statue of the deity, oddly metallic with strange, sightless eyes. Here, size is not necessary to inspire reverence. The presence of the small statue, almost like a toy doll, is sufficient to convince believers that their god is here.

Pushkar is a small community around a small lake and, before tourism hit it, I’m sure it was like a jewel here. But now that tourism has changed the main street into a shopping mall of hippie clothes, kitsch knick-knacks, religious figurines, fruit juice stands, silver jewellery, cyber cafés and everything else designed to separate you from your money and you can well imagine the cynicism that rises within you after a while.

Pushkar est une petite communauté situé autour d’un petit lac et, avant que le tourisme l’a frappé, c’était certainement un petit bijou. Mais maintenant que le tourisme a changé la rue principale en centre commercial (vetements hippie, bibelots kitsch, objets réligieux, vendeurs de jus de fruit, bijoutiers, cyber cafés et tout autre pour vous séparer de votre argent), vous pouvez imaginer le cysnisme qui surgit en vous-meme apres peu de temps en ville.

Nightmare on alm street
Pushkarites are, well, pushy. That’s a bit unfair since they’re not all pushy. But just walk down the main street and the assault is on. Beggars with whining voices and hands out. Every shopkeeper saying “Yes please, look my shop.” Down at the ghats the holy men put the bite on you for rupees. Urchins tug at your sleeve asking for bread. In the end I found it tiring.

To one urchin who asked for bread I gave two rupees. He gave them back, saying he wanted bread, not rupees. I told him to use the money to buy bread (chapattis). He said No, he wanted me to buy him the bread. I told him to manage the issue on his own. I recall hearing somewhere that we should give food, not money, to beggars. I think the beggars have learned to turn this to bigger advantage because it turns out that the kid didn’t just want me to buy him a couple of chapattis (unleavened bread the size of a mini-pizza). You get sucked in to agreeing to buy the chapattis and then he drags you to the grocery store and wants you to buy an entire bag of flour to make chapattis for his family. This will run you about 100 times more than if you just give him two rupees.

And India is tiring in other ways, too. The endless racket of vehicles blowing their horns to warn you they’re coming (so get out of the way). The endless dust. The endless flies that trample the coarse-ground sugar in the steel bowl on the breakfast table. You know where they’ve been walking before this. That’s right. India’s streets are 70% cow shit and 20% human spit. The rest I don’t want to know about.

India seems to be a nation of rag-snappers and spitters. Everywhere people spit into the streets and in the morning they clear their throats and lungs with hawking sounds that make you think they’ve got some terrible bronchial disease. Shopkeepers and restaurant waiters beat the dust from goods and from seats by thrashing them with rags, which make a snapping sound.

But I also met some really good people, too. Jhon and Filter, who run the Akash Hotel where I stayed, and Ratan in his clothing shop where I bought a pair of lungis (big, loose pants). He’s got a Master’s degree in political science from the university in Ajmer and says that with two or three customers buying per day he makes his living.

I find in general that you find the irritating people primarily in big cities and in tourist places, and in between the people are kind, helpful and not seeking to profit from you. They see you as a person, not as a walking wallet.

Je trouve les gens qui m’agasse sont généralement dans les villes et les endroits touristiques et, en dehors, les gens sont sympas, ils m’aident et ils ne cherchent pas a profiter de moi. Ils me voient comme un etre humain et pas comme une portefeuille ambulante.

Early one morning I climbed the steep hill to the temple above the town to watch the sun come up. Went with Matthew, a Quebecois whom I’d met in Udaipur who now happens to be in Pushkar. Maybe I overexerted myself in the heat, but when I returned to the hotel I was ill and lay in bed all day.

That night, right across the street from the hotel, at the only Muslim house in the neighbourhood, it was grandfather’s birthday. Unfortunately for the entire neighbourhood, the family had rented a microphone and amplifier. At full volume they laughed, talked, sang off-key, and wished grandfather a very happy birthday.

Then the Imam came on to sing and to preach. It went on and on and on. Someone said the Imam was claiming that Hinduism was the wrong path and that only Islam was the true way. In short, the Imam had taken grandfather’s birthday as an opportunity to proselytize and preach to the neighbours.

Mix this amplified horror with the barking dogs, honking horns, braying bulls, squealing pigs, the heat, the flies, the smells and me feeling ill and you can imagine what kind of an evening it was. It all went on far too late but mercifully the amplified stuff eventually ended and I drifted into a fitful, miserable sleep.

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