Holy Sites Bodh Gaya

Crushed in Bodh Gaya




Aimee and I left early from Calcutta for the train to Bodhi Gaya, one of the holiest sites in India. In India there is a women's queue and a men's queue for tickets. Thank God for that because we would have waited hours. There are also separate compartments for women on the train and thank God for that, too, because it would have been hell having to put up with the hacking, spitting, ball scratching and nose picking that is male social etiquette in Asia. We rode in a small compartment with a grandmother, her daughter and her baby grandchild.

Everything was perfect until we went to get off the train. We gathered up our things and stood in the aisle as it screeched into Gaya. It was dark, and peering out the window I couldn't see anything because there were no lights on the platform. I re-adjusted the knapsack on my back and took Aimee's hand and we waited for the doors to open so we could get off quickly, but when the door to the train opened a wall of water carrying trunks and suitcases and boxes and chickens surged onto the train and thrust us all backwards towards the seats and empty compartments we'd just vacated. Everybody started screaming as we reeled against the stampeding hordes galloping by in their mad scramble to find seats, thrusting Aimee and I and everybody else out of the way. I hung on to her and for a moment I thought we were going to be crushed or suffocated. I told her to hang on to the back of my knapsack and DON'T LET GO FOR CHRIST'S SAKE and then I leaned into the surging tide and pushed and shoved and swore and elbowed my way through until we finally got to the door of the train and jumped down on to the platform. I could feel Aimee's hand clutching the back of my knapsack as she collapsed beside me. I lost a shoe but we didn't have any broken bones.





The platform we found ourselves on reminded me of the movie Blade Runner. There were no lights, only the ubiquitous flickering of candles and small fires. The smell of urine and smoke permeated the air and I held my breath. I tripped over somebody lying on the ground and that's when I realized just how many people were camping out and making it their permanent address. Babies wrapped up in tattered blankets slept beside their mothers and orphans in tattered, filthy clothing wandered about asking for handouts. I didn't go near the toilet, a platform with holes. When the kids spotted us they all ran towards us in a mob with their hands out, jumping up and down. Backsheesh! Baksheesh! Baksheesh! They pulled on my arm and tugged at my bags and I wished I could have given them all money because they were such a sorry looking lot. I pushed past them and into the station where I was surprised to see that a cow had also taken up residence and was scrounging around for his dinner.





Men on horses wearing turbans, bullock carts, tongas, cycle-rickshaws as well as bicycles crowded the road while cows and goats roamed freely. It seemed I had either traveled back to the fifteenth century or traveled ahead into a post-nuclear future. We passed food stalls, restaurants, kiosks, and people drinking tea until we came to a small hotel. I asked a fellow wearing a turban sitting outside what looked to be a hotel whether he had a room and he nodded and picked up a gas lamp and took us up a dark flight of stairs to a cramped room on the first floor. It had one double bed and a table and we had our own bathroom - a hole in the floor. It wasn't the Ritz but then, it wasn't the refugee camp I'd left behind at the train station, either.





Of course, everything looks different in the morning. We visited the massive Great Buddha Statue.





Then on to the Mahabodhi Temple complex.
















When we were in Bodhgaya we stayed at a barracks that was empty when we were there, but has been turned into the Tourist Bungalows. There were more than 10 large rooms with at least 25 bunks in each one. It was strange and spooky staying there all a-l-o-n-e at night. We had to walk down a long, dark walkway to get to our dormitory room at night and the power wasn't very reliable so frequently we were in the dark. Thank God I had a great flashlight. Don't leave home without one if you're going to India.



The poor are everywhere in India, some living their entire life sleeping on pavements. This is just outside the wall of the Mahabodhi temple complex.

An Unpleasant Sight in Calcutta

The line-up at Calcutta immigration went on forever, and it took forever to finally get out of the airport. Wandering out into the dark was scary and I was glad I brought my flashlight. In a big, dusty yard across from the terminal people were climbing into banged up tin cans that might have been dragged out of a wrecker's yard and hammered into a bus, but not wanting to be left behind Aimee and I climbed on to the last one leaving. It was cramped and dark and stuffed with people and luggage and the ceiling lights blinked on and off as we bounced over the potholes to the highway. I had no idea where we were going.

Garbage lay in heaps and red spittle juice was splattered on walls and pavements. Trucks, cars, bicycle rickshaws, street vendors, smoke and people choked the streets and every so often the smell of urine blew into the bus through the cracked windows. Down the middle of the main thoroughfare of Calcutta a long, deep tunnel had been dug out where people had lit fires and set up camp. Lean-tos made of corrugated tin, wire, blankets and cardboard had been erected and people were cooking and canoodling on banged-up furniture that looked like it came from a dump site.

 

Dust swirled outside and blew into our bus as I asked the Indian woman sitting beside me why the street had been dug out, leaving mountains of dirt for everyone to walk around. She replied that it was a subway system that hadn't yet been finished and because the city had run out of money, there was no telling when it would be. It went on for blocks.

My daughter frequently grabbed my arm. 'Mommy, look at that!' she said as I gazed, stunned, out the window at the men and women in rags staggering about as if in a daze. Whenever the bus stopped, children ran around outside of the bus and crammed against each other with their filthy hands outstretched. Baksheesh! Baksheesh! Baksheesh!

We stopped at a main square and I got out my guidebook and looked again at the hotel section of Calcutta. I didn't feel any threat from anybody even though many people stood and stared at us, but by this time it was eleven at night and not the time to be wandering around looking for a place. A taxi took us to Sudder Road, a tourist district with hostels and cheap hotels and I thought we'd easily get a room, but everything was booked. My mind was collapsing, until one hotel owner said we could sleep in his office on the floor.  While we were setting up, a tall, black fellow wandered in and said, 'you can share with me if you want.  I have three beds in my room.' I got a good vibe from him and so did Aimee, so we brought our stuff in and unpacked. His name was Chuba Paul Moneke from Nigeria and he really helped us out.

The streets were quieter and shops were closing up when I stepped outside the hotel for a moment to take a break.  Out of the dark shadows an old man with bowed legs and wearing a filthy white dhoti appeared and as he trudged past I thought, that old buzzard hasn't had a wash in at least ten years. Holy shit bags!  His hair was matted and covered in bits of fluff and dirt that he'd picked up from sleeping on the ground. His feet and legs were tarred and he was covered in scabs and scars. Suddenly, about thirty feet away from where I was standing he stopped and put his back to the wall and removed his dhoti. He half squatted, resting his butt against the wall and proceeded to take a huge crap that sputtered out of him like a cow. After he finished, he turned around and looked down at his pile then peed into his hand and washed his butt. A shopkeeper came out and started screaming at him and hit him and pointed to the mess and hit him again, but the old guy didn't miss a beat as he stooped down, picked up the dhoti where he'd dropped it on the sidewalk and nonchalantly wiped his butt. He then tossed it over the soggy mess and trudged off again stark naked down the sidewalk. The shopkeeper shook his fist and swore as the old chip disappeared without so much as a howdy doody. Welcome to India.











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I had wanted to go to India, but I was nervous about bringing my 9-year-old daughter along. I thought we'd probably get sick and die from either food poisoning or some disease because I'd heard so many horror stories. (People love to regale you with their horror stories) However, when I was in Marang, Malaysia I met a young couple who'd been all through India, and even though at the time I met them they were supposedly going to Bali, they missed India so much they were going to cut their trip short to return. It was a sign for me, because up until meeting them I couldn't decide whether to go to India or not, and hearing their stories I decided it must have been divine intervention. I decided to travel to India, disease and food poisoning be damned.