Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant, page 13
The Cobra Situation
One afternoon, the gate guard came to the door and said there was a snake charmer there who swore that we had a cobra in our garden. Frank and I immediately grasped that yes, we probably did, and wondered who threw it into the garden? He was carrying a sack filled with cobras that he had “taken from our neighbors’ gardens.” Well, really. Should we call his bluff and send him away? We thought not. He said he would remove all his clothes and leave his sack outside to prove his honesty.
I sat in our parked car but closed my eyes, not because I was afraid of the snake, but because I was less than enchanted with the idea of seeing the snake charmer naked. We paid him ten rupees up front. He played his flute and wandered in the garden, until suddenly a cobra uncoiled itself from beneath a large tree were our children played. He picked up the snake and milked it of its venom, then threw it in his sack. Then he said, “All cobras have mates. You must have another in the garden.” Did we want to take a chance? Another deal was made and transacted. The children really enjoyed the show.
“That guy has a good thing going,” Frank said. “I kind of admire him.”
Animals for Entertainment
Birthdays for children, everyone said, are magical in India. When Johanna’s birthday came, we hired a dancing bear, a snake charmer, a performing monkey, and a camel trainer who took the children for rides around the neighborhood.
As I watched the various acts, I found myself feeling more than uncomfortable. The men who brought these animals and who were the performers, so to speak, treated the animals terribly. The bear was mangy and cowering, and the performing monkey was obviously terrified of his master with the pointed stick. I didn’t go near enough to the camel on the street, the main reason being that camel breath is an experience one does not want to be exposed to twice.
I looked over at Johanna and she was grimacing, looking away, a tear running down her cheek. After the party, she came to me and said, “Please don’t ever ask for animals again. Those men hurt them, and I don’t want to watch.”
One weekend, we went on an expedition at a wildlife park where we all rode elephants. We were there with Indian friends who had invited us to go and possibly see the tigers in their own habitat. We waited for the tigers from a very high viewing stand, but none appeared. On the way home, in the car, we played I Spy. When it was my turn, I chose the dashboard of the car, and said that I spied something that started with the letter D. The children began guessing, as they looked out the window:
“Dung?”
“Dead person?”
“Dirt?”
“Dead animal?”
What a nice place to live.
The Sacred Cow and the Rescued Pony
Although our house was in a neighborhood that was considered to be very posh, we had to drive through a desperately poor area to get home from the stores. I knew that I had to inure myself to the terrible displays of poverty, or I would not be able to contend with everyday life. Then one day, when we had stopped at a corner, I saw two Sikhs who were playing soccer on the street, using a baby pig for a ball. I rolled down the window and shouted at them to stop. Once again, the driver, always smiling, cautioned me not to interfere, because if I did, he would have to get out of the car to defend me. I hated to ignore this atrocity, but I had learned to listen to the driver.
It was impossible to understand that in a country where the cow is sacred, other animals could be so mistreated. Oxen were used to pull wagons, and they were constantly whipped and prodded anally with long sticks. Yet Hindus do not harm flies, because of their belief that all living things return to the earth after death, in some living form, and that everything living in the present could be a manifestation of a person who has died. This could not be clarified when it applied to the cruelty I had witnessed.
A few weeks before Kristin’s birthday, she came to me after school and asked me if I could do something “now” for her birthday. From the school bus, she had seen a small horse that was scarred and beaten, which she had witnessed, and she begged me to get the driver and go with her to find the horse and buy it. She said she had to save it. I admired her for her empathy, but I doubted we would find the horse. Kristin insisted the horse could be kept at the back of our garden, near a tree, and she would look after it.
I agreed to call the driver and look for the horse. She directed us to the street and as we slowly drove, she saw it: it was a small pony. I asked Sharma to park the car and walk to where the pony was standing, as though the transaction were on his part, but the owner had already seen our car, and demanded a high price, too much for the value of the pony, but acceptable for Kristin’s act of kindness. We bought the pony and tied her loosely to a tree in the back yard. Sharma bought a feedbag and oats. Kristin visited the horse every day, brushing its torn coat. It was a sedentary life, but at least it was a life without abuse.
The Mayonnaise Adventure
In the early weeks of living in the house, I had fired the cook and the bearer for stealing. In the interim I had flared my nostrils and pranced into the kitchen to make mayonnaise. The kitchen was so unbelievably hot, my clothes were sticking to my back and my hair was plastered to my head. I took off my cotton blouse and pants, and was trying to mix oil and eggs and vinegar in a bowl, with little success, but this was a crisis. We had bread and cooked chicken to make sandwiches for the children’s lunch, and mayonnaise was a must.
I heard someone come in the front door, and when I looked up, I saw an Indian friend who knew the guards at the gate and had been waved in. Without exception, he was our closest Indian friend, and the guards knew that. I began a tirade about how the hell was mayonnaise made and he looked down at the recipe and said it looked like the right ingredients, but the consistency of my bowl full of glop was obviously not thick enough to be mayonnaise. This, by the way, was during a power failure, so I couldn’t use the blender.
“Let’s try whipping it with a wooden spoon,” he said. Yes, sir. I handed him an egg and turned the project over to him. “Let’s put another yolk in,” he said, “before the eggs go bad.” “We’d better get this done right now,” he said. Side by side, we addressed the project, whipping and beating, but the result was a disaster.
“We have a jar of American mayonnaise at home,” he said. “I’ll just drive home and put some in a jar for you.” I said that would be great. When he left, I started cleaning up the counters, and realized that not for a minute had either one of us mentioned the fact that I was in my panties and bra.
Sights and Sounds at 4:00 a.m.
All international flights out of Delhi left after midnight, in the wee hours of the morning, and 4:00 a.m. seemed to be the most common hour, so those who were leaving were treated to a carnival of orifices blowing in the wind. It is the religious custom that all orifices of the body must be cleansed and purged early in the day, which is probably a fine contribution to the smells of India. When one considers the openings about which we speak, it can well be imagined that this is not a pretty sight. Noses honk, mouths spit, bladders are flushed, and bowels are blown and emptied. Cold water is snuffed up the nose and into the mouth and throat. None of this pageant is conducted behind closed doors, for indeed the preponderance of these people had no doors, and the great open spaces belonged to them . . . fields, front yards, ditches, preferably in plain view of cars on the main road. Bare bottoms are displayed with abandon. As can be imagined, there is a certain amount of sound that accompanies this ceremony, and the hawks and spits and the booms and the snorting are blessedly not audible from a moving car. But when these people live close to your house, these sounds are as common as the crowing of a rooster.
The School: AIS becomes AES
The American International School in New Delhi was an excellent school. I remember the fifth grade teacher, a young man of less than thirty years, who had made a sign that hung over the door to his classroom and that said: “Through these portals pass the most important people in my world.”
The school was called the American International School (AIS) but soon after we arrived, Indira Gandhi proclaimed that the school name must be changed to the American Embassy School (AES). The purpose of this was to deny Indian children enrollment at the school, which meant that those who had already been attending were now forced to leave. Mrs. Gandhi was vehemently anti-American.
An American friend of mine who was married to an Indian had to face a fierce battle trying to keep her two sons in the school. At the time, they were in junior high school, preparatory to qualifying for entrance to an American university. They’d been attending the school since they were in elementary. As her sons had dual citizenship and carried American passports, they were reluctantly allowed to stay. All other Indian students were forced to leave.
It was because of this caveat that only embassy children could have lunch in the cafeteria.
The one time I saw Indira Gandhi in person was at an Indian wedding. I was stunned that she was such a petite woman, not much more than five feet tall, but her intense presence was palpable. A pathway was cleared for her to approach the bridal couple. When a small plate was offered to her, her bodyguard tasted the food before she took a bite. The plate held only peanuts, which we learned was a rule when Mrs. Gandhi was in attendance. After this small ritual, she departed. I swore to Frank that she gave me a nasty look, as we were the only non-Indian faces there.
Making Friends with a Local
Frank had quite a number of Indian acquaintances connected with his work. They were factory owners and traders who were very wealthy and well educated. One of these men came to visit on his way home from a trip through Europe. He was a carpet factory owner, and had been in our home on several occasions for dinner or drinks. On that particular night, he became very drunk, and when he was preparing to leave, I noticed that he was staggering a bit. He was carrying a coat, which he had needed for his trip through cold countries, and as he put it over his arm, he almost lost his balance.
I suggested to him that he spend the night in our guest room, rather than leave in his condition. He demurred, but I took his coat from him, and when I did, a bottle of scotch fell on the floor from inside his coat. He had stolen it from the bar (bootleg whisky is recognizable). Why? This man could afford to buy a distillery and most certainly could bribe all the customs officers in India if he wanted to import liquor.
When I went into the bedroom to turn down the bed, he lurched after me and tried to kiss me and wrestle me onto the bed. I was disgusted and easily escaped his advances. I knew this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been drinking. When I went to our bedroom, I told Frank about the entire unpleasant episode, and without looking up from his book, he said, “It pisses me off about the scotch.” In difficult times, our values change.
Merry Feces to You
During the Christmas season, when Frank and I were driving downtown to try to find some presents for the children, we drove with the windows open, and just as we were driving through a rather shabby residential district, we were suddenly pelted with what we thought were dirty stones, but soon realized were human feces. And all the best of the holiday season to you too, merry gentlemen.
That evening, at a dinner party, I was seated beside a wry foreign correspondent, one of my favorite dinner companions, and I told him what had happened. “Well,” he said, “it beats the hell out of indifference.”
The Black Market
Every now and then black market foods were sold in certain shops, set at whatever price they chose. We were willing to pay. One evening, we got a call from an Indian friend, saying he had found a small jar of Kraft cheese, and would we like to come over and have a drink with crackers and cheese.
When we arrived, we saw the small jar, the size of a juice jar, in the middle of the coffee table. We took turns eating crackers and glancing at each other to make sure we didn’t take too much. It was like a religious rite. And it was pimento, a cheese I didn’t even like. But oh, how we missed cheese!
The sense of sharing amongst those of us who lived on the local economy was a constant. On another occasion, a German friend called to say he had a can of Maxwell House coffee and invited us for lunch, after which we actually watched the coffee percolating. Conversation was hushed. This was a holy moment. Coffee was available from the regular market, but the local coffee tasted different.
Occasionally, I found jars of jam or cocktail sausage (which would be too plebeian to serve in the U.S., but was exotic now) and once, peanut butter, the most coveted food of all for those who had children. I asked the proprietor where it all came from, and he said that diplomats from the Middle East who didn’t drink alcohol made a profit bootlegging it to distributors. We were glad they did.
Silk and Bread
How could anyone with ten servants say she had a hard life? True, I didn’t clean or cook, and the laundry was done and fresh flowers were in place every day. It was the life of the raj, I suppose. I would have traded that life in a heartbeat to live in a small house in a civilized country, and I wouldn’t have ever minded preparing the meals or doing the laundry. I definitely would not mind shopping for groceries.
Throughout our stay in India, people from Frank’s cover company came on business trips and sometimes brought their wives. One wife told me how much she loved India, with all its antiques and brass and silk. It was a fantastic shopping spree. And, of course, meals were taken either in the hotel or with us at our home. One of the wives I particularly liked, and I went shopping with her. Without any exposure to the hardship of everyday living, I could actually see her point. They always travelled to India in the winter months when the heat was not hellish. They had our car and driver at their disposal, and our home was welcoming and teeming with servants in white coats.
I search my memory for Hallmark moments. Those that come to mind were the times when we shared what we had, in a place where even the smallest luxury was an occasion, and I mean a jar of strawberry jam, not four yards of silk. It was a question of values.
One of the best birthday presents I ever had was given to me in India. A woman whom I knew slightly, and who, for some reason, knew when my birthday was, dropped in with a gift-wrapped package. When I untied the ribbon and unwrapped the package, there was a loaf of Wonder Bread (she had embassy commissary privileges.) I nearly cried. There had been no flour on the local market for weeks.
The Transfer
From the very first day we arrived in India, Frank had kept a large calendar on the wall, and now the last days were being ticked off, with large black Xs. We were looking forward to moving. Frank went to Washington for his annual trip, and while there he miraculously reached me by phone, and said that he was asked to go to Japan as our next post.
I was stunned. It made government sense that the fact that we all spoke fluent Spanish would qualify us perfectly for Japan. I was not elated. At this point, I was already dreaming of home, although I didn’t know where home was. I had no particular dream about a house with a white picket fence, and certainly did not have a vision of Frank barbecuing in the backyard. But. Something like that. Frank kept telling me that what I was dreaming about just didn’t exist, and that now that our lives had so richly been interrupted, I would be a different person.
When Frank came back from Washington, we had a long talk about what we would do. He said that he felt sure the move to Japan would bring about the promotion that had been withheld from him, particularly because we would first spend a year at an Ivy League campus, famous for its linguistic department, where he would study Japanese with total immersion. We both knew that would be hard for him. Frank knew that I had been unhappy in India, and so had he. He said he would not accept the new post if that was what I chose.
I thought about our situation for a long time, and facing reality, saw that if Frank were to stay with the Agency, there appeared to be no alternative dream assignment. His option would be to take a desk job in Washington. We had no money to invest in a house, and the children would go to public schools, but more than anything else, I very seriously considered what our life would be like if Frank was forced to work in a cubicle in Langley. He would be in hell. This man who loved the work as he did, and knew that it had value, work that gave him a sense of accomplishment and pride, could not be imprisoned in an office. The entire family would be unhappy. Even from a selfish point of view, I knew that Frank should accept the new post in Japan. It would be best for all of us. International schools were excellent, and the tuition was paid. We could not return to America and live on a salary lower than that of a garbage collector. Not when we had been living the life of a raj.
I had never met a Japanese person, but had seen them alighting from tour buses and entering hotels, where they all stood obediently, waiting for the tour guide’s instructions. When I noticed a group in our hotel in New Delhi, I was struck by the fact that even their luggage was all the same, as though they had purchased it as an adjunct to the cost of the tour. How did they know which luggage was theirs, I wondered. Movies had depicted the language as being menacing and growling.
Common sense dictated that my impression was superficial and probably did not represent the Japanese in their own country, going about the activities of their daily lives. This was the only location offered to us, and we would stay with the same cover company, so that was a huge bonus.
We agreed to go to Japan.
Our Departure
We had made good friends of every nationality and background during our stay in India, and when we left, joyous parties were held for us, acknowledging the abundance of sharing and friendship, the depth of which could only have been found in a third world country, or as Frank described it, “the night soil circuit.” (Night soil is human excrement collected from buckets, cesspools and outhouses and sometimes used as manure.)
And we did leave on July 17th at 4:00 a.m. on Lufthansa, destined for Frankfurt. The general manager of Lufthansa was a friend of ours and he partied with us the night we left. He sent an Indian employee with us to make sure that our departure was smooth. After Frank went through the scanner, which was not a machine but an Indian inspector, the Lufthansa employee who had escorted us started to run after Frank, who was galloping toward the airplane. The man followed in rapid pursuit, waving something in his hand, shouting, “Sir! Sir! He took your wallet!” Frank kept running toward the plane, which was on the tarmac, and shouted back, “Keep it! Keep it! It’s poetic!” But he did get his wallet back and we got on the plane and smiled. And smiled and smiled and smiled.
