I headed back north to Pushkar and spent good chunk of the day on buses. Once I arrived I was pleased to quickly find a good cheap room. For 550 rupees I got a very nice AC room at the Hotel Everest. The place is run by its owner, a very kind gentle man who was probably the nicest man I’ve met in India thus far. It was close to 6pm when I left the hotel in search of food. This was perhaps the closest thing to “charming” I have seen. The town is genuinely appealing in a very Indian way. I mean it was still very Indian but it felt different from other places I’ve been. Perhaps it is the scale, this is the smallest place I’ve been, only 15,000 people. It is kind of like an oasis town, surrounding a lake, which was dry at the time, and surrounded by hills. The streets were small and almost empty of cars and even rickshaws. Most traffic was pedestrian and some motorbikes. The buildings more of the same for the most part but there are also many remnants of better bygone times. There are some very beautiful facades, almost all of them have fell into despair. Perhaps the most glaring difference between this and other places I’ve been is that daily life goes on on the main street rather than give way to desperate attempts to sell tourists worthless crap. There were actually all kinds of shops selling sweets, and food goods, tailors and barbers, vegetable stalls, Chai shops, in a way I felt like this is the India I wanted to see. Haridwar was a bit like that but its scale and chaos was overwhelming. Pushkar immediately made an impression on me and I liked it.
Pushkar is also an important Hindu pilgrimage town. There are many little temples and shrines and a rare Brahmin temple (my people). There are also many bathing ghats leading down to the lake. Since the lake is dry because of the poor monsoons in recent years, there are pools filled with water that give pilgrims a place to bathe.
My search for food on that first night led me to a rooftop café, one of many in pushkar, called Baba. Many of the businesses targeted at tourists were closed but this didn’t affect the town since there is actual life here that goes beyond the tourist trade. Baba was recommended by a few people I had asked along the way. After four very uneven flights of stairs I was at the top, sat down, ordered a special thali. As I was waiting for my food, looking around I struck conversation with a couple sitting at the table next to me. Andrew and Thom were British with vastly different travel experience. I had first noticed Andrew when I walked in because he was wearing a very colonial 1947 straw hat, like he was hunting for a kill. He was also rolling a joint. Conversation was good, I can’t really remember what we were all talking about but once I had finished my food we kept on talking, mostly bonding over our criticisms of India and all that has gone wrong. Thom took a back seat in the conversation and seemed to go in and out of consciousness. Andrew and I seemed to agree on a lot. It was an instant connection. We were smoking, and talking for hours and without really noticing the sun had gone down and it was close to 11pm.
I walked back with Thom and Andrew to their hotel to hang out by the hammock, smoke more and talk more. I was already a bit stoned since I haven’t smoked in a long while. But its seemed appropriate at the time. Walking back the streets were silent and almost pitch black. I was paranoid that I would get lost if I try to go back to my place, I haven’t walked back there every before yet as I had just arrived that evening. The Brits’ hotel was a very budget backpackery kind of place with a “swimming pool,” a couple of hammocks and a dozen budget rooms. Thom went to sleep and Andrew and I continued to chain smoke joints and bond over common views on the world. It seemed like we talked about everything that night: colonialism, India, world history, sexuality, travel, healthcare, immigration, racism, you name it. It was one of those continuous mouth diarrhea induced by a subtle high from bad quality hash. I say bad because you had to keep smoking it to hang on to that barely high feeling.
I think we really liked each other. Andrew was very British, almost in an antique way. He, 25, was also very proud to be British and convinced that white British people are among the most evolved humans. British Empire accomplished much to the world and made it better and it is a shame that character like Gandhi had to come along and mess it all up. In fact he thinks Indians should wake up and realize that Gandhi ruined their country as it has clearly gone down hill since the British made an exit. He is extremely proud of the long list of British-built infrastructure and institutions in India that he actually reminds Indians often “you know that train you were on, we built that.” I must admit all this was extremely entertaining and even convincing, I actually found myself agreeing “you’re right, these people seem so susceptible to colonization.” while we were stoned these conversations went on and on and at times I wondered what someone overhearing who was not under the influence would think. “you have to wonder how a few thousand Englishmen run a country of 300 million Indians for 250 years with minimal resistance.” he said. I had never even thought of it that way, it all sounded so appealing. I actually started thinking that India was the first country I have been to that was colonized where I felt I could see how empire worked. I felt so guilty to even have such thoughts but while with Andrew in the security of a hammock and with the help of some low grade hash I was very comfortable with that thought.
Andrew is an adopted child. He seems to be preoccupied with that and insists that because his parents went through a lot of trouble, two and half years of processing, to adopt him, they have high expectations of him. He feels unwilling to fulfill anyone’s expectations and instead he spends most of his time away from England. Hence he loves India because according to him “it is dirt cheap and he can live like the empire never ended.” He is involved with building an orphanage in Nepal, something he is very passionate about. He is very smart but not because he took his education very seriously, he just is. He thinks his experience at boarding school shaped his sexuality. He is gay. He is very privileged, however this he does not flaunt very much, but he is reminded often by his friend Thom. He refers to his “socioeconomic” status in context to the issue of marriage. Marriage is another subject he is obsessed with. He met a girl, Sarah, while traveling in Asia who is of the same “socioeconomic group” and who would make an excellent wife because she knows he is gay and they both want to marry because of its social importance for their families. They seem to have a mostly platonic relationship that has at times crossed into brief sexual exploration while in Goa. He talks about this marriage as a very possible next step in his life and he seems to have given it much thought. In fact he talks about it a lot, even to someone he just met like me. He also thinks about having his child. He wants one child, a boy. And he even contemplated what name to give the boy. It has to be a very British name. the boy will travel with his free spirited parents and will live in exotic places and learn many languages. Andrew doesn’t want his boy to go to school or live in England. As much as he is proud to be English and for all the great things Britain has done for the world he hates being there for too long. He is one of those people who hates home when he is there but misses it dearly when he is away. But don’t we all feel that way. He doesn’t like how people, like his mother, are too formal all the time with no emotions expressed in public not even to her son. He hates how gray it is and how everything is so fixed and almost too organized. Yet he hates that India is too chaotic and needs to be fixed and organized.
“I love the Sikhs, they came to England and integrated very well, they wanted to be part of British society, kept the turban on but were British.” he said. We talked about immigration for a good while. He noticed that the issue was “a chip on my shoulder.” he complained about immigrants who don’t seem to be interested in integrating into British society but seem to take advantage of the social system. I tried to raise questions about the reasons behind this kind of immigrant “resistance.” I don’t think we got anywhere.
Much of the conversation evaporated into thin air and the first light of the day changed the color of the sky. It must have been after 5am. Now that I can see a bit more it was time for me to walk back to my place. He offered I stay but I really wanted to be in my own bed. On the walk back I was in very good mood and the streets were completely empty, just cows and dogs.
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