A
New Notebook
– a piece of travel writing about India, is going to
be published in
an anthology later this year and it's got me thinking
about
what
I've
written about
that journey as
well as the vast
swathes of territory I passed through that I've
written nothing
about.
I would like a seamless and continuous
narrative, but that's not the
way it has appeared. But, heartened by Irena Vrkljan's brilliant
non-narrative autobiography The Silk, the Shears, I feel that
chronological order is not a necessity and so, in no particular order,
I'd like to post what I have already written about that time.
Let's
play with chronology. I'll call these pieces Carnets
(notebooks) even though they are not, strictly speaking, as they
were
written after the event sometimes a long time afterwards. But
then,
every travel writer edits to some extent what they wrote
down at the
time (see the Dubravka Ugresic quote at the top of the
page) as
what's written then
is often just the briefest of notes. And
on this journey east, the carnets
I'd made notes in, were lost. This
forms part of the story A
New Notebook that
will be included in
the
anthology so
I couldn't post
it on the blog anyway, until after it has
been
published.
An
excerpt from Quetta
to Tehran has appeared in Sons of Camus
International Writers Journal
8.
It
begins on the bus going across Pakistan, from Quetta to the
Iranian
border.
 |
| Road in Balochistan - from
From Quetta to Tehran
Gustaf
had to wake me when the bus stopped for the night. It was about three
in the morning and we were due to leave again at seven. I never felt
sure about any of the information we were given, it all seemed so
changeable and slippery. The bus drivers went by rules which I could
not follow or understand. Sometimes I doubted that there were rules
at all. So I lived in a kind of limbo that swung alternately between
faith and cynicism.
Gustaf's
reaction to the incomprehensible was one of annoyance or contempt.
But the Indian and Pakistani people simply dispersed in front of him
and if he wanted to argue, they refused to meet him. They disappeared
like sand in the wind and there was nothing he could do about it.
I'd
travelled through India and was now beginning the long journey back
to Europe, leaving behind India's profusion of colours, smells,
movement, activity and human contact. To enter fully into the life of
India or so I felt, meant abandoning the more rational constructs
surrounding one's identity and precious individuality. It meant
reacting in a different way. Any communication problems did not arise
from the language, for many people speak English. Talk moves like
waves of sensations drifting in the hot Indian sun. If you try to
make sense of what is being said with your intellect alone, then you
will find it frustrating. You have to let the country break down your
inhibitions and reservations, until it enters you and claims you. If
you can do that. If you can allow that to happen. India is enormously
alive, frantically alive. Life in all its forms and varieties is
waving, kicking, yelling, dancing, struggling to live. Everywhere is
profusion. Life spills and overflows, scatters into the air like
seeds on autumn winds.
Life
in India is very public, streets are meeting places and very little
is hidden away behind doors. Shops are open to the street or people
simply take up a piece of pavement to sell their goods. Life is
shared and communal and finding time and space to be on one's own is
no easy achievement. Some people revelled in the abandonment of the
formal and the supremacy of the senses, while others, like Gustaf,
resisted this as an intrusion, and fell back on irritation and
judgement.
But
none of us found it easy in the stifling, crowded and claustrophobic
bus that was taking us across Pakistan. People and baggage were
crushed together. A couple of goats joined us later on, near the back
of the bus, where we were sitting. Gustaf's reaction to the lack of
space was sometimes to become annoyed, and at others, to fall into a
sullen silence. He muttered words like stupid, ridiculous, absurd,
and glared angrily as the bodies pressed closer and closer to us and
the amount of space he liked to keep between himself and others,
slowly diminished.
The
Pakistani people did not react to his annoyance. They stared through
it or ignored it. Gustaf's expression of ill-temper dissolved under
the sheer weight of the silent disregard that met his verbal and
emotional attacks. From time to time, his temper would flare up, if
goat or person pressed their flanks too closely against his, then it
would fade away again, among the silence. As the journey wore on,
Gustaf became more and more silent and morose, sitting slumped in his
seat.
 |
Amritsar's Golden Temple - from
http://www.bestourism.com/medias/dfp/2335
David,
an American, had been my travelling companion from Amritsar, in
India. The first leg of our journey had been from the Golden Temple
to the station, where we took a train to Lahore, in Pakistan. The
next stage was to cross Pakistan from Lahore to Quetta, a journey of
a night and a day, in a packed train. As I looked around at my fellow
passengers, I tried to imagine what their reasons for travelling
might be. Many of them looked pursued. Others had expressions of such
utter resignation that I was convinced that some higher authority was
forcing them to travel. Not that it was a grim ordeal. Their faces
were not hard or punished. Mostly they were soft, wide-eyed and
smiling. People seemed to move in waves, they formed a total
movement, a wave complete unto itself. At each station where people
got off and others got on, the wave reassembled itself. Those who got
off formed another wave with those on the platform (there is no such
thing as a deserted station in India or Pakistan, whatever time of
day or night) and they would spill out of the station to join the
city waves, the street waves, with its café clusters, its traffic
swarms, its market streams and rivers.
During
the night, David and I took turns at lying on the wooden
luggage-racks
above the seats. It was the ultimate in luxury, to get
somewhere to lie down.
The dawn was grey. We had to change trains and
there was some confusion
about David's ticket. But we were lucky and
we were allowed to board the
next train. It was dark again, by the
time we reached Quetta.
Quetta - from
We
stayed at the China Hotel, which advertised clean, airy rooms. The
hotel
rooms were all off a central square, which was also the roof
over other
buildings. This was open to the sky so the moment you
stepped out of the
room, you were outside. We certainly could not
complain about the lack of
fresh air. It was early March, and Quetta
is high up in the mountains. We
stayed there two nights. There was no
running water in the rooms but water
was available in a brass pot
left outside the door. Outside the door meant on
the roof, and in the
morning we had to break the ice over the brass pot, to
wash with. Our
ablutions were minimal.
Comments
Rubyxx
M xx