Éanna Donoghueworks through his mixed feelings about India
‘I’M NOT DOING India again. Goodbye and good riddance. I abhor you from the core of my being, and I’m never, ever coming back.”
These are the sentiments I expressed boarding my flight from Calcutta and for a long time afterwards.
India is polluted. The smog that hangs over Delhi and Agra is severe on the nose and throat. I haven’t coughed up this much crap in the mornings since I stopped smoking.
It’s filthy. Men use the streets and rivers as latrines, and nobody has a problem dropping rubbish anywhere.
It’s smelly. It’s amazing how the acrid smell of stale urine in humidity so thoroughly invades your nostrils and takes up residence there and in the back of your throat.
There is so much hassle from rickshaw drivers, scam artists and shopkeepers who won’t take no for an answer as you walk down the street.
Drivers must blow their horns at everything that moves. Most vehicles actually have “horn please” or “blow horn” written on the back of them. Right of way is determined by the size of the vehicle – the bigger it is the more it has – although everyone gives way for the holy cow that ambles about without a care in the world.
And yet . . .
Some people don’t want to sell you anything or otherwise part you from your money; they just want to talk for a couple of minutes or take their photograph with you. The sheer delight of little children if you say hello or wave at them is contagious.
The Taj Mahal in the morning, the detail, the symmetry, is breathtakingly beautiful.
Then there’s finding the only honest rickshaw driver in India – and his earnestly telling me that there are many road rules for everyone to follow (please refer to the two above).
Or boarding a train and seeing two bespectacled, burka-clad women – all I could see were black and glasses; I thought we were off to a costume party.
Or getting lost in Jaipur during a kite festival, with every kid (and some adults) wanting me to fly theirs – good fun but not a career move.
After arguing with a rickshaw driver, two Indian lads asked if I was from Ireland (most of them assume England), sound skins who had travelled a lot themselves. We ended up driving around in their car, listening to Indian rock music (quite good until the high-pitched singing began; I tried to keep the laughter under wraps), then blasting out AC/DC.
India is all of the above, and that’s the thing about it: it’s the entire spectrum of life – one extreme to the other, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, belief and doubt, hope and despair – and there’s no escaping it.
India, always interesting, sometimes incredible.