Wednesday, December 30th 2009
He poked the pen deep in his ear, twisting slightly, then brought it out and chewed on the same end, contemplatively. It took three cellphone calls, and much waiting time, for him to confirm that we three foreigners, going on the same three-day trip that he’d been scheduled to drive, and the only car-waiting passengers in the alley, were indeed the people he was meant to pick up.
Our driver was a revolting man on some combination of drugs and alcohol, with the whites of his eyes turned red with whatever substances he abuses, and thumb nails that were at least twice as long as the actual part attached to his thumb, probably around 2-2.5″ total. The nails were yellow with age and nicotine, and had bits of dirt caught under them. These were extended toward me when he leaned back to get a twenty Rupee bribe, to pay off the policeman who was trying to write us a ticket for being stopped in a no-parking zone. We’d briefly stopped in said no-parking zone because the one student we’d been meant to pick up and bring back to his village actually ended up having 4 extra compatriots who he’d thought we’d have room to bring as well – we didn’t. To give the student credit, the typical car sent by the school would’ve had room, it’s just the school is closed over the holidays and so we only had a local rental vehicle, which was tiny.
Though this is India, where lane dividers and street signs appear purely for decoration, and general road rules seem meaningless, the aforementioned physically cringe-inducing driver was completely not interested in accommodating so much as one extra passenger, and so we ended up sending all but one of the students on a selection of 5 buses to the destination village. I felt guilty, and we all felt a little dubious about our ride. That was how our trip to Tirupattur started.
We’d planned on stopping for food along the way, and had started the trip hungry. This ended up being a mistake. With only a single student, and a desire to get to our destination as quickly as possible, we ended up passing the four and a half hour journey in progressively stronger stages of hunger. The driver stopped for tea around three-quarters of the way through, at which point we bought a couple of packs of chips and a pack of miscellaneous puffs recommended to us by the stall keeper. Deciding local tastes should be attempted, I’d purchased the 5 Rupee ‘Pudina Puffs’, which I shared with the rest of the back seat passengers. They grew on me, but Greg figured it was only ‘cause there was nothing else to eat. In retrospect I think he was right. Comfortably seated shotgun, with the only seat belt in the car, Mike chewed contentedly on his respectively chili & ketchup flavoured chips. He hadn’t gone with the shopkeepers’ suggestion. Smart guy.
Finally we arrived in Tirupattur, the town that really must be the armpit of the state of Tamil Nadu. It was chaotic and dusty and packed with people – the India that is, but that the guys had never really yet experienced. It reminded me of my travels with Evy, as the plush two-bedroom apartment and fancy restaurants in Bangalore had not. I had never yet experienced what was to come however.
The student and I started to look for a place to stay, a basic lodging all that was really necessary. This turned out to be a problem. Upon seeing me, or even hearing of my presence, the keepers of vacant hotels would suddenly be roomless. The issue? No ladies permitted. It felt like we’d entered some archaic land. Hotel after hotel refused me entry. I’ve never felt quite so scandalous, or rejected. Maybe the term should be discriminated against. Traveling with Evy had its issues, in terms of two girls traveling on their own, but to be traveling with two guys and be shunned was completely unexpected.
Upon facing this heretofore unforeseen challenge, the student called his cousin, the same age but more at home in the town, and together they motor-biked around without us, eventually arranging with the uncle of a connection for us to stay in a lodge titled ‘Modern’. “Not quite up to it’s name”, said the student, but as the only place willing to take me, and that only through the pulling of a connection, we didn’t seem to have much choice. Even at that, there were rules:
1.I was not to go into the boys’ room, for whatever reason.
2.The boys were not permitted to come into my room, for whatever reason.
3.We should not speak to one another in the rooms, or anywhere in the hotel really
4.We should not attempt to speak to the hotelkeeper in English, because he wouldn’t understand.
5.Should the police come, we were to show them our passports, and that was it. (Why the police might disturb us in the middle of the night was not explained.)
The hotelkeeper, missing all but a couple of side molars, took down Greg’s passport information – all hotels in India must take down the information of each guest. Old Toothless, however, did not take down my information. Nor Mike’s either. Perhaps our skin-colour was the issue in this case, I’m not sure. We were then led up to our quarters.
The rooms were dank, the floors had no obvious recollection of a washing. The walls were a collection of miscellaneous dark splotches and liquid track marks, with no obvious sources. Mike figured spit, but that was a thought process I had no wish to follow. Each room possessed a squat toilet, from which odd smells emanated. The sink in my room didn’t work, Greg & Mike’s room smelled like their squat toilet throughout. With our Indian escorts we were permitted to sort out our luggage (my sweater from Mike & Greg’s room, Greg’s clothing from my bag, etc.)
We were then escorted to the one restaurant deemed acceptable for us, which was just around the corner. We drove the student to his home village and then came back for dinner.
Starved by this point, having neglected to eat anything substantial since breakfast, we ordered our usual (Mutton Biryani) along with half a tandoor chicken, a mixed veg curry and 6 rotis. We dug in with vigour, and made short work of it all.
Upon return to our lodging, we greeted the hotel owner with a Namaste (having paid through the nose, as the Germans say, for the rooms, he greeted us with quite a cheerful, if toothless, grin). I quietly said good night to the guys from the hallway outside their room, and then we all went to sleep.
We’d been invited to breakfast at the student’s place the next morning at 8am, meaning we needed to leave by 7:30am. I woke up at 7, having slept sans pillow because it was just too disgusting, and keeping my shoes right next to the bed for bathroom purposes. When it was almost 7:30, and the boys hadn’t come out yet, I went to knock on their door. I was a little frightened that their room looked dark – I’d thought I’d heard noises that meant they were up, but apparently not. I knocked.
Greg answered the door, then tottered immediately back to the bed – slight problem. He’d been up all night emptying his stomach from both ends. He looked revolting. Mike was just in the washroom. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around how positively ill Greg looked. I stepped slightly in the door, just as the hotel owner/manager came up the stairs. Shoot. Stupid room restrictions. The last thing we needed at this point was to be thrown out of this so-called hotel. I stepped quickly out into the hall, waiting to see what would happen. The manager toddled over slowly in his dirty button-shirt and bedraggled lungu (the Indian man-skirt). He looked vaguely menacing. There wasn’t really anything I could do at this point, and I was too worried about Greg’s health to care. As to what Old Toothless’ original intention was, I’m not sure – but as soon as he’d peered in and spotted Greg, plainly in the throes of some sort of all-consuming sickness, he grunted vaguely understandingly, and moved on.
Mike and I left on our own, only 15 minutes later than planned, after having left Greg with a stock of drugs & food/drink, not that he was likely to be eating much.
We spent a lovely time in the village, which was really quite picturesque, but were worried about our man down. We returned at noon to check in, and found all not well in the least. Greg was in no way better, and the room had acquired a humid, jungle-like atmosphere in our absence. Together with the lack of light (there were no windows to the room) as well as the whorking sounds emanating from a gentleman in the room above, and in no way forgetting the squat-toilet feeling native to the room, all in all it was plainly not a set up for convalescence. Even my room was slightly less overpowering, with a functioning fan and less smelly bathroom. With commitments back at the village, and at a loss of how best to proceed, we eventually prodded Greg out of his sweaty hole of a bed and over into the slightly more amenable bed in mine. This of course all completely illegal, given the original room agreements.
Then, quickly, while Mike looked into some footage issues in the diseased-jungle room, I went out to look for an even slightly more acceptable lodging, preferably one with even the smallest of windows to the outdoors. Almost anything would be better for Greg than the place we were at.
The trudging through the dusty heat ended up being for naught however – once again obviously vacant hotels turned me away upon sight. With a Joseph and a well-progressed pregnancy, I’d have been a walking nativity story.
I returned to the “Modern”. Greg, now ‘comfortably’ established in my room, was plainly in no real state to move anyway. We put the keys to both rooms under his pillow, and left him to attempt sleep through the whorking of our upstairs neighbour and construction goings-on below. We grinned amicably at Old Toothless on our way out, praying he wouldn’t discover our room rearrangements during our absence.
The end of the day eventually rolled around (we spent the whole day in the village, one of our most successful shooting-wise). Unfortunately, absence from our lodging had not made our hearts grow fonder. In fact, Mike had by this point gotten himself into a complete state about the hotel. To give him credit, the rooms really were disgusting. That said, I’ve definitely been where Greg was, and when you’ve reached the depths of those lows, typically the last thing you’d like to face is travel. Because travel means distance from a toilet. And when you’ve spent the day lying within feet of a toilet, there’s a serious push-pull relationship going on – the last thing you want to see is more of the toilet, but the last thing you want to do is get more than a couple of feet away – just in case. So I left Mike in the car with the camera (we were hesitant to show it in all it’s glory around the lodging, not wanting to incite anything) and went up to have a chat with Greg.
I presented the options:
1. Emerge from bed and drive the five-ish hours back immediately, arriving in Bangalore around 1:00/2:00am, to a much cleaner, pleasanter apartment and no more squat toilet, but without any significant toilet access throughout that entire journey
or
2. Spend another night, in proximity to toilet facilities, but in these plainly less-than-stellar accommodations, and depart at a more reasonable time the next day, once all is slightly more stable
The invalid, lying prone on the bed, pondered briefly.
Option 2, toilet access, took precedence.
But then, Greg being Greg, even in his state and my attempt at couching the terms in as non-pressure laden a way as possible, perceived through it all that Mike was super keen to leave. So he decided to see if he could make it to the car, and check the lay of the land, so to speak. {It was a significant lure. Our apartment in Bangalore, though considered nice before, was Eden when compared to the “Modern”. If the Ng stomach could handle it, we’d probably all be better off not spending a second Modern-style night.}
We made our way slowly down the stairs, past Old Toothless, and out toward the car. Mike’s eagerness to be out and away was palpable. I’d say it was that puppy-like excitement with which he presented his case rather than the actual arguments (‘more comfortable’, ‘real toilet’ blah blah) which sealed the deal.
And so it was that we left Tirupattur in the middle of the night, hopefully never to return again. Ever. It was with relief that we arrived in Bangalore early the next morning - a wonderful, western-toilet possessing, female-friendly haven, with windows, a porch and a TV. I didn’t even really begrudge Babu, the grotesquely-manicured driver, his rather excessive self-included tip. It’s good to be back.
