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Published: February 18th 2010
The next morning I got up early in order to catch a bus to the city of Kota for my subsequent train back to Jaipur. Mama walked me out and we said a brief and impersonal goodbye, and she let me take what turned out to be a terrible early morning picture of her. While waiting for the train in Kota, I got an email from Craig titled “The B Word,” which asked where I was and if I was okay. “Oh great,” I thought. I jumped on my iPhone and learned that a popular tourist bakery in an Indian city a few hours south of me had just been bombed. Ten people, including two foreigners, had been killed, and many times that amount were injured. The country was subsequently put on high alert, and trains were packed with people trying to get out of the area. Fortunately, my stellar planning skills provided me with a pre-booked seat and I was assured a bunk to sleep in. A few minutes after I boarded the train, I got a call from Dustin wanting to make sure I was okay as well. After speaking to him and sending a follow-up email to my
parents to assure them that I was safe and remind them of the statistical unlikelihood of anything happening to me, I fell asleep.
I arrived in Jaipur a few hours later and was taken by rickshaw to Krishna Palace, a popular budget hotel that I’d eaten at before and that always seemed to have plenty of vacancy. I had a train to catch onward to Rishikesh at 11:00 that night, but I decided to spring for the $10 it would cost to rent a room for the day so that I could take a shower and store my things. Although I had been to Jaipur for two days prior to this, I had spent them relaxing in my high end hotel and hadn’t seen the sights of the city. So, I decided, I would spend the afternoon having a rickshaw tote me about town for a tourist extravaganza. Unfortunately for me, the streams of people leaving the country because of the bomb had arrived in Jaipur before I did, and Krishna Palace was practically booked. “Hmmm…” said the reservation desk man as he looked over the books. “If you come yesterday or tomorrow, we have many availabilities. But today
is very busy here.” “Okay,” I said, prepared to depart and head to another spot. “Wait!” said the man. “If you come back in two or three hours I can have room for you until you leave tonight. I charge you half price.” We arranged for me to leave my backpack in the meantime and I departed with my rickshaw driver.
“How much for the afternoon?” I said to him, knowing that a reasonable price for an afternoon and evening of rickshaw would be around 350-400 rupees. “You know the price,” he said. “What do you want to pay?” Expecting the inevitable haggle I started low. “How about 250 rupees,” I said. “Okay,” he replied, surprisingly. “Whatever you like.” We stopped at a nearby gas station and he turned to me. “My name is Ali. Sometimes I’m a tour guide, but I drive rickshaw to make extra money. Because of this, my English is pretty good. Do you understand my English?” I understood quite well, actually; he had some of the better English I’d heard yet. “Yes,” I said. “So where are we off to? I just want to see the City Palace and the Hawa Mahal, and everything
else is up to you.” He rattled off the list of things we’d do and we were on our way. He was really chatty, and seemed genuine when he repeatedly stated that it was his pleasure to share tidbits about the history of the city as well as Indian life with me. “Sorry about all the blah blah blah,” he said at one point. “Indians are always blah blah blah.” “Oh no,” I replied. “Your English is very good and your information is interesting.” So we continued talking throughout the day as he took me to various places of historical importance.
At one point we stopped at a famous garden area and ended up sitting down for a break. The conversation started to get more personal and I learned that he was 23 and had a similar love of traveling and had backpacked all over India. He was in the minority by the fact that he presviously had not one girlfriend that he didn’t marry, but three, and on of them had been French. “In the countryside,” he said, “arranged marriage is still all that happens. But in the big cities love marriage is now very more common.” When
I asked if he would end up following his parents by having an arranged marriage, he told me that he would see if he fell in love again in the next couple of years, and if not he would make his parents happy by marrying a woman of their choosing. I’ve had similar conversations with other Indians here, who all - including those that want a love marriage - seem to agree that arranged marriage is the smarter choice economically and would thus benefit the family in the long run. Arranged marriages, from what I understand (limited, I admit), are more like a business deal that join two families together and provide support. Whether the couple actually loves each other is of minimal importance. They have babies and contribute to the larger family as a whole. Everything in India is about family, and they seem to find western ideals regarding independence and personal space to be cold and lonely.
Eventually we got on the topic of Indian religions, and he shared that while he was a Muslim, he had a Hindu guru that he went to occasionally that helped him lead an better life. “My guru is amazing,” he
said. “He was born with special abilities. I’ll never be like him, but he helps me anyway.” I enquired further. He told me that his guru is not the kind of man one thinks of in the west, with a long beard and a turban and swami clothes. He’s just a regular guy, but he travels all over the world and helps people by teaching them to restore their energy. He said that he doesn’t know the future (because no one does), but he knows things about people that have happened in this life and even past lives that no one else would know, and that people often come away from meetings with him crying. He works with charity and gives money to poor organizations, and then apparently takes all of the good karma this provides and puts it into stones that he uses to help people.
Fortunately for this tourist, the guru was in Jaipur for another week before returning to Canada, where he lives. “Would you like to go see him?” said Ali. “He won’t ask you for any money, but most people have a question they want to have answered.” “Ehhh…why not?” I said, and we
were on our way. After waiting a half hour for him to be available, I walked into the gem shop that he works out of. “Namaste,” we said to each other, and went into the back room. “Look,” he said as I sat down. “I am not a bullshitter. I’m an energy healer. I travel all over the world and deal with skeptics all the time. Just hold out your hand. I will tell you what you need to know.” He placed his hand over mine so that there was about an inch of space between us. I’ve had people try to tell me to feel the heat of their energy before, and I’ve never really been able to. I could this time. It was warm…really warm, and I remember opening my eyes in surprise and staring at his hand. He kept his eyes closed for about 30 seconds while he presumably read me. He opened them and startled me a bit with the first thing he said. “Two and a half years ago you began a relationship with a man. Tell me what happened.” Dustin and I have been together for two and a half years to the week.
Impressed, I began talking. He then went on to tell me many other things, some of which could, in theory, be true for a reasonable percentage of the population and were thus not too overwhelmingly impressive. But he also told me other things that only apply to me only a tiny fraction of the population, and in the end he said nothing that was incorrect. He gave me advice on various things I needed to do to live life to the fullest, gave me a stone that would help me achieve this, and I was on my way. I’m a huge skeptic when it comes to things that cannot be intellectually explained (to a fault, I would say), but this guy was definitely making me teeter on the brink of belief, and that is a huge feat indeed.
After the reading Ali took me to the famous Monkey Temple, which has, as the name implies, lots of monkeys. It also sits on top of a hill and has grandiose views over the city. “It’s almost sunset,” he said as we arrived. “Try to make it to the top in time; it’s really magical. I’ll be here waiting.” As I
approached the bottom of the path a little boy walked up and introduced himself. I was suddenly not in the mood for talking and was actually just wanting to be alone to reflect on my meeting with the guru, but the kid insisted that he be there to “protect me from monkeys.” “You don’t need to come,” I said, fully aware that there was little if any danger from monkeys and that he was just trying to earn money. “No, I come,” he said. “Fine, but I’m telling you that I can go alone.” We had this exchange once more about five minutes later at the halfway point, but other than that he just walked next to me silently, clearly picking up on the fact that I wasn’t feeling very friendly. Additionally, the afternoon had been filled with increasingly frequent stomach pains, and I was starting to feel really tired again.
The view from the Monkey Temple was actually pretty amazing, and I took a lot of pictures before heading back down. “You pay me now,” said the little boy about half way to the Rickshaw. Expecting this, I pulled out the only change and small bill I had, which amounted to 15 rupees. “Here,” I said as I held out my hand. “No, you give me 50 rupees,” he said. “Look, kid, I’m not giving you 50 rupees. I told you not to come with me twice and you came anyway,” I replied. “Fifty rupees,” he repeated. “So do you want the 15 rupees or did you come on this 20 minute walk for free? If so, thanks.” “I don’t want,” he said, pouting. A couple minutes later he changed his mind. “Okay,” he said, and held out his hand in disappointment. “Okay,” I said, and gave him the money as he scrambled off. Meanwhile, a professional adult guide at another monument was giving 20 minute personal tours for 30 rupees. Fifteen was certainly acceptable for the service the kid provided in the same amount of time. Had I been in a better mood and had the change, I suppose I would have gladly talked with him and given him the 50, but my energy and good temperament were waning by the minute and it just wasn’t in the cards for him.
“Can we just sit for a bit, Ali?” I asked after driving for a couple more minutes. “I’m not feeling so good.” “Sure,” he said. As we sat there motionless, my neck really started to hurt. “Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked. “You can tell me if too much personal.” “Sure,” I replied. “How are you feeling without your husband?” he said. “Fine, I just miss him,” I replied. “But how are you not afraid of…you know…cheat?” I explained that while it took a great amount of trust on each of our parts to be supportive of each other spending a month in foreign lands, we did it because we had the trust required. “It’s not hard?” he said. “Sure, but we know that we are strong and we love each other very much. There is no reason to be unfaithful because we’re very happy.” “But,” he said, “sometimes people just lose control. When my girlfriend was in France I had time with other girl on New Years. I don’t know how it happened. And then 19 days later I telled my girlfriend. At first she was like tiger, but then it was better.” “That’s the thing, Ali,” I said, “I don’t think that people ‘lose control.’ I think that people are either happy or unhappy in their relationships, and if they’re unhappy they lash out in various ways. There is nothing missing in our relationship. We’re very happy, so ‘losing control’ isn’t an option.” “Oh,” he replied, “And I wasn’t talking about you.” But as the conversation continued I started suspecting that he was talking about me. He was playing devils advocate to everything I said, and it would have seemed completely innocent had he let conversation run its coarse and quickly moved on to the next topic. But he didn’t. He consistently asked my opinion on more and more fidelity-related questions and it became clear that he was trying to get me to agree with him. Had he gotten me to agree, I’m sure he would have thought that his prospects for an especially wonderful evening would have been elevated. But I was just getting annoyed, and ended the conversation by asking him to drive me somewhere to go to the bathroom.
When I returned to the rickshaw, he asked if I’d been to the Sun Temple. “It’s really cool. It has a beautiful view over the whole city and me and my friends used to go there when I was younger. Its really nice and relaxing. We can go! I bet you like it.” It all sounded very romantic, which I’m sure was the point. “Sorry, Ali, but I think I’m ready to go back to my hotel. I’m tired and I’m really starting to not feel well,” I replied. “We can go to the Sun Temple for just a little bit! I’ll let you drive the rickshaw!” he said. “No thanks. My neck hurts and I just want to lay down,” I replied. “But I don’t want to take you home,” he said with a pathetic childlike pout. “We can go to my house! My mom is a really good cook and my sister makes great henna!” “Not this time,” I said, “I feel like crap. I’m cold, and I’m getting sick. I just want to go back to my hotel.” We drove for about 10 minutes before he spoke again. “I can take you to massage place to work your sore neck!” “Ali, I just want to lay down on my bed in my hotel room. That is the only place I want to go and I want to go there now,” I said, with frustration now growing in my voice. “You know,” he said a couple minutes later, “there’s a rooftop restaurant close to your hotel with a beautiful view. We could eat there.” “No!” I said. “Hotel. No stops. Not one. Not a single one. Just get me to my hotel a fast as possible.” I could tell that my fever was getting worse and I was starting to shiver. A couple blocks away from my hotel, he slowed to almost a stop as we rounded a corner. “Here is the restaurant,” he said, sheepishly. “Are you F***ing kidding me, Ali!?!” I practically yelled. His only reply was a giggle at my unexpected use of the F word.
When I got back to the hotel I felt terrible and was feeling extremely impatient. I had two hours until I had to catch my train, and I hadn’t showered in what was going on my third day (no showering in the stinky bucket water of Mama’s house!). “Is my room ready yet?” I asked the new front desk person. He looked through pages of reservation books and talked to a number of people before having the manager, who originally made the arrangement with me, come and speak to me. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the room is not available today. I will take you to another hotel I know for no charge and they will only charge you half price for the room as well.” “Do they have hot showers?” I said impatiently. “I just want a god damn shower.” “Yes, yes, please come.” Twenty-five minutes, price haggling over the accommodation, pages of paperwork and all remaining patience I could muster later, I was let into my room. My neck was stiffer than it had ever been in my life (I’m assuming from the shock-less rickshaw pounding into potholes all day), so I laid down very carefully into a ball on the bed. My body was burning up and my teeth were chattering, but I decided that if I didn’t have a hot shower right then that I might, in fact, murder someone. But to my amazement and yet somehow meeting my expectations, the water coming from the showerhead wasn’t hot. The only way to get hot water, it turned out, was to crouch under the spicket that was three feet or so off the ground. I wanted hot water in a bad way. So there I was…fevered, aching, angry, and exhausted, heaped into a pile of pathetic mush under a faucet of water that doused me in mildly hot water for about 30 minutes. This was not my most shining moment.
Soon thereafter I boarded the train for my 13 hour journey to Rishikesh, where I am now. I’m staying at an ashram at the foothills of the Himalayas, and am feeling wonderful. From what it seems an ashram is like the Hindu equivalent of a Buddhist monastery. Everyone eats on the floor together, there’s a curfew and strict rules about codes of conduct while one is staying here, and yoga, meditation, and spirituality are the name of the game. The Ganges river comes fresh off of the Himalayas up here, and there are steps from my ashram down to the beautiful greenish blue water, where ceremonies of chanting, singing, and lighting and sending candles and flowers down the river take place every night. I’ve been here for three days, and have cancelled my trip back to Rajasthan for my camel safari so that I can stay for another five. Hooray for being a healthy, happy camper again!
Photos for this entry to be added later.
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Marissa Leitch
non-member comment
wowza
KACI! thank you for the desciptive wonderul writing...I've been enjoying reading about your travels! I know your having the experience of a life time love rizza